A few weeks ago I found myself with a number of similar unanswered
questions, about how science as I was brought up to understand it fits in
with the cosmology as set out in Max Heindel's Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception.
In a nutshell, I have been finding, within my own experience, that more and
more of the things that Heindel sets out to explain are true, but when it
comes down to being able to explain them to anybody else I am at a loss and
can't find the right words to help them relate these things to their own
experience.

When I first read Heindel's Cosmo-Conception, the concepts in it seemed
quite bizarre to me, and I could not relate to them, so the question arose,
how can I provide this information, proven to me through experience to be
truths, to people who are in the same starting position that I was, but
perhaps not necessarily with the same desperate need that made me willing to
take the inexplicable on trust?

Anyway, I asked my question, and searched on Google for a book, and the
first website it came up with was this one: www.esotericscience.org
The essays on it were perfectly readable and clear, so I ordered the book.


Hans Rieuwers has had a look at it, and describes it as 'Spiritual Science
for Dummies', and he went on to say:
'it's very Theosophical in that it's all about evolution which happens
slowly but inevitably to everyone. There's nothing about the Fall, or
dialectics, or liberation from the astral prison. I'd say the author is
pretty accurate about the factual things, but fails to mention transmutation
and transfiguration.'

Please take that as a health warning from Hans!

I read it from cover to cover and, being a dummy, found that it was exactly
what I needed. It was simple, written in simple, easy to read sentences, and
generally presented an excellent working model of the universe. It took my
understanding to new heights and helped me grasp in detail concepts which I
had only been able to partially assimilate before. And although the author
doesn't make a song and a dance about it, I found the concepts of the Fall,
transmutation and transfiguration in there as well, in his explanations of
secondary and tertiary matter. I'm going to give copies to a couple of
members of my family who don't understand my perspective, confident that it
will open up their vision to a deeper understanding of the world around
them, and of what is possible.

The things that Hans said about the book got me thinking about communication
in general, and how people understand eachother. When we try to explain
things to others, we tend to see in front of us a person with similar
experience to ours. I see people to whom the ideas behind The Rosicrucian
Cosmo-Conception are complete gibberish. Jan van Rijckenborgh set out to
explain the path to liberation to people well versed in Rosicrucian,
Theosophical and occult ideas. We all see people in terms of our own path
through life, and this can be very misleading, because everyone's experience
is different.

It seems to me that the Theosophists and Occultists are just people who see
the Divine Plan, but are still at the stage of trying to go the path with
their ego, so haven't yet arrived at what Jan van Rijckenborgh terms the
borderland. In terms of The Science of Spirituality, they are not yet fully
resisting the gravity of elemental essence, of secondary matter - or thought
forms, emotions and desires - and they're still trying to build with it.

One thing I value about The Science of Spirituality is how it makes tangible
the concept that we are on a journey from the concrete to the abstract, from
the solid to the diffuse. When human beings talk to eachother, one will put
forward their concept, idea, image, or thought form, and the other, viewing
it from a critical standpoint, will counter it with an alternative, one that
means more to them, resonates more with them. But the concept they counter
with is generally at the same level of abstraction. In other words, they
will counter it with something on the horizontal plane. In this way, between
them, they are building a concept on the horizontal plane, and their
thinking is starting to go round in circles ... we can do this for a long
time, until we see what is happening.

When someone says something we find illuminating, it is because it has
lifted us out of the plane we were on for a moment, to a greater level of
abstraction, and has helped us see our previous concept from above, as it
were, to see it from both sides and to understand where it fits into the
whole picture. We see it objectively instead of subjectively. Seeing it
subjectively, we are subject to it and it rules us. Seeing it objectively,
it no longer controls us.

The problem is, though, that having reached this level of freedom, we feel
satisfied with it, and start to put our new ideas into practice. This is a
problem because, at the physical, emotional and mental levels, liberation
from one plane is incarceration in another.

We can lift ourselves above the purely material into the freedom of the
emotional. Then we embark on a long journey through the emotional until we
lift ourselves up into the world of concrete ideas. Each of these is a huge
step. But none of these steps give a firm foothold, and when the tide of
feelings, or emotions, or thoughts, rises once again, our consciousness is
overwhelmed, it dies, we are swept away. When we come to ourselves again,
when we wake up again, whether it is five minutes later or hundreds of years
later, whether it is in the same life or in a different life, we start again
to build up what we have lost. This happens over and over again, minute by
minute, hour by hour, year by year, and lifetime by lifetime. 'My people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge.' Our building needs to be constructed from
something truly 'solid', something eternal; something that cannot be washed
away.

What you have just read, I laboured to produce, to support and help make
sense of the paragraphs which follow, which flowed from my typing fingers
without the need for thought. The concepts behind what follows are, to
borrow an image from The Science of Spirituality, bigger on the inside than
they look on the outside, and each of them would need an essay to support
it, an essay in which, just like the one above, the real substance would be
hopelessly lost. So I'm giving up the role of Sisyphus. If anyone wants to
respond to any of it specifically I'll do my best to expand ...


Any words formed in the mind are without the Gnosis, and any written words
are a step further away still. In that way, no words can convey the Gnosis,
neither J K Rowling's nor Jan van Rijckenborgh's nor Helena P Blavatsky's
nor those in the Bible. They merely point to it. Different people respond to
different words, depending on their experience. On the basis of their
experience, one idea, one image, one flavour is going to resonate more with
the eternal in them than another. At any given moment, there are 49
varieties of every flavour beings, and no two people are going to be seeing
the same thing. In dialectics, ultimately, no-one agrees with anyone else,
and apparent agreement is superficial only, it represents a tacit agreement
to ignore differences. At this level, there is no Gnosis, and whether to
differentiate, or not, is a matter of personal choice and understanding.
Differentiation without that awareness, without that understanding, leads to
criticism. Non-differentiation, however, that sweeping of the differences of
dialectics under the carpet, leads to ignorance and to blind identification
with what is not differentiated. So it, equally, leads to criticism.
Criticism is identical with conflict and there is no Gnosis in it, it is a
denial of the Gnosis and worship of some astral or mental concept or image
that one has conjured up, some idol that one has erected.

We all have our idols still, or we wouldn't be in this fallen state. Some
worship food, some worship material prosperity, some worship dialectical
love, some worship Jan van Rijckenborgh's works or his astral creations,
some worship the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, some worship themselves, some
worship power over themselves and/or others, some worship Harry Potter, some
worship their own understanding, some worship their own link with the
Gnosis, some worship ... (add your own personal selection here). All of
these are the delusions of dialectics.

The Gnosis comes from another world; it comes directly from another world.
It does not touch the sides. It comes to break up the delusions of this
world and cannot be used to support them. As soon as we try to use it in our
idol-worship it has gone completely and we are in darkness, and selling
darkness; the armfuls we offer to others are writhing serpents of darkness.

We can choose to go around the Monopoly board if we wish, and try to take
others with us on our endless journey, but the Gnosis does not pass Go and
nor will it collect £200. It simply impels us to continue our journey:
whether we spend that impetus in going endlessly round the board, endlessly
playing out chess game after chess game, until we find ourselves completely
checkmated, or whether we see what's coming and decide to abandon the game
and go home, that's our choice

Gnosis can be indicated by words, but it is more 'visible' in the space
before words form, in the space where patterns form. And it is more
'visible' still in the space before the patterns form. Consciousness must be
very clear, though, to indicate such experience meaningfully in words, and
until we are at the point where we can live out of this state so completely
that the Gnosis communicates itself to others directly through us, we leave
others misunderstanding us and we are unable to communicate with them. And
even then, the words will be dialectical, it is what is behind them, 'that
space' (for want of a better way of describing it), that the Gnosis is
trying to communicate, and that is a wordless understanding. Our words are
simply models of the universe, symbols of what is beyond words.


Chris