(18) O nobly-born, whatever fearful and terrifying visions thou mayst see, recognize them to be thine own thought-forms. O nobly-born, if thou recognize not, and be frightened, then all the Peaceful Deities will shine forth in the shape of Maha-Kala; and all the Wrathful Deities will shine [forth] in the form of Dharma-Raja, the Lord of Death; and thine own thought- forms becoming Illusions [or Mdras], thou wilt wander into the Sangsdra.

(9) This opening of a window in the heart towards the unseen also takes place in conditions approaching those of prophetic inspiration, when intuitions spring up in the mind unconveyed through any sense-channel. The more a man purifies himself from fleshly lusts and concentrates his mind on God, the more conscious will he be of such intuitions. Those who are not conscious of them have no right to deny their reality.

(18) O nobly-born, by not recognizing now, and by fleeing from the deities out of fear, again sufferings will come to overpower thee. If this be not known, fear being begotten of the Blood-Drinking Deities, [one is] awed and terrified and fainteth away: one's own thought-forms turn into illusory appearances, and one wandereth into the Sangsdra; if one be not awed and terrified, one will not wander into the Sangsdra.

(7) Now the rational soul in man abounds in marvels, both of knowledge and power. By means of it he masters arts and sciences, can pass in a flash from earth to heaven and back again, can map out the skies and measure the distances between the stars. By it also he can draw the fish from the sea and the birds from the air, and can subdue to his service animals like the elephant, the camel, and the horse. His five senses are like five doors opening on the external world; but, more wonderful than this, his heart has a window which opens on the unseen world of spirits. In the state of sleep, when the avenues of the senses are closed, this window is opened and man receives impressions from the unseen world and sometimes fore-shadowings of the future. His heart is then like a mirror which reflects what is pictured in the Tablet of Fate. But, even in sleep, thoughts of worldly things dull this mirror, so that the impression it receives are not clear. After death, however, such thoughts vanish and things are seen in their naked reality, and the saying

(190) For he is asleep, and deaf to the other's voice. But the perfect spiritualist who has broken his boat He is then neither silent nor speaking, but a mystery. That marvelous one is in neither of these states 'Twould be irreverent to explain his state more fully. These illustrations are weak and inappropriate, In short, the vengeance of That Jealous One (God) When the King awoke out of his trance to consciousness, When that incomparable one looked into his quiver,

(44) O now, when the Bardo of the Reality upon me is dawning, Abandoning all awe, fear, and terror of all [phenomena], May I recognize whatever appeareth as being mine own thought-forms, May I know them to be apparitions in the Intermediate State; [It hath been said], 'There arriveth a time when the chief turning-point is reached; Fear not the bands of the Peaceful and Wrathful, Who are thine own thought- forms'.

(18) If one's thought-forms be not recognized as soon as one dieth, the shapes of Dharma-Raja, the Lord of Death, will shine forth on the Chony id-Bar do. The largest of the bodies of Dharma-Raja, the Lord of Death, equaling the heavens [in vastness]; the intermediate, Mt. Meru; the smallest, eighteen times one's own body, will come filling the world-systems. They will come having their upper teeth biting the nether lip; their eyes glassy; their hairs tied up on the top of the head; big-bellied, narrow-wasted; holding a [karmic] record-board in the hand; giving utterance from their mouth to sounds of 'Strike! Slay!', licking [human] brain, drinking blood, tearing heads from corpses, tearing out [the] hearts: thus will [they] come, filling the worlds.

(23) In most of these cases, while the actual consciousness has passed away after a few moments, there has been left a memory which abides ever with the individual, and which gives to him such a certainty of the truth of which he has been a witness that nothing can ever shake his conviction thereof. It must be remembered that these flashes of consciousness are prophecies of the stage of consciousness which at some future time will become the normal state of consciousness of the race. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that there exist certain advanced souls on this earth to whom this stage or state of consciousness is the normal and habitual one—and in whom there always exists a realization in actual consciousness of At-One-Ment with the Universal Life. Such beings are indeed Demi-Gods, as compared to the average human being. Some of the great world leaders—the founders of great religions, and others of their kind, were filled with this consciousness and strove to make it manifest in a veiled form to their followers who were not strong enough to bear the full truth. Many of these great souls are still present on the earth-plane in the flesh, in newly incarnated forms, continuing their work and striving to uplift the race.

(12) But if thou raisest thy thoughts, and considerest where God is, then thou apprehendest the astral birth or geniture, where love and wrath move one against the other. But when thou drawest up the faith in God, who ruleth in holiness in this government or dominion, then thou breakest through heaven, and apprehendest or layest hold on God at his holy heart.

(18) O nobly-born, when such thought-forms emanate, be thou not afraid, nor terrified; the body which now thou possessest being a mental-body of [karmic] propensities, though slain and chopped [to bits], cannot die. Because thy body is, in reality, one of voidness, thou needest not fear. The [bodies of the] Lord of Death, too, are emanations from the radiances of thine own intellect; they are not constituted of matter; voidness cannot injure voidness. Beyond the emanations of thine own intellectual faculties, externally, the Peaceful and the Wrathful Ones, the Blood-Drinking Ones, the Various-Headed Ones, the rainbow lights, the terrifying forms of the lord of Death, exist not in reality: of this, there is no doubt. Thus, knowing this, all the fear and terror is self-dissipated; and, merging in the state of at-one- ment, Buddhahood is obtained.

(2) Therefore we must affirm no more than these three Primals: we are not to introduce superfluous distinctions which their nature rejects. We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true as its nature allows, of the Father.

And as to our own Soul we are to hold that it stands, in part, always in the presence of The Divine Beings, while in part it is concerned with the things of this sphere and in part occupies a middle ground. It is one nature in graded powers; and sometimes the Soul in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the Soul may never succumb entire.

The Soul's disaster falls upon it when it ceases to dwell in the perfect Beauty- the appropriate dwelling-place of that Soul which is no part and of which we too are no part- thence to pour forth into the frame of the All whatsoever the All can hold of good and beauty. There that Soul rests, free from all solicitude, not ruling by plan or policy, not redressing, but establishing order by the marvellous efficacy of its contemplation of the things above it.

For the measure of its absorption in that vision is the measure of its grace and power, and what it draws from this contemplation it communicates to the lower sphere, illuminated and illuminating always.

(4) We have, however, still to examine what is called the affective phase of the Soul. This has, no doubt, been touched upon above where we dealt with the passions in general as grouped about the initiative phase of the Soul and the desiring faculty in its effort to shape things to its choice: but more is required; we must begin by forming a clear idea of what is meant by this affective faculty of the Soul.

In general terms it means the centre about which we recognize the affections to be grouped; and by affections we mean those states upon which follow pleasure and pain.

Now among these affections we must distinguish. Some are pivoted upon judgements; thus, a Man judging his death to be at hand may feel fear; foreseeing some fortunate turn of events, he is happy: the opinion lies in one sphere; the affection is stirred in another. Sometimes the affections take the lead and automatically bring in the notion which thus becomes present to the appropriate faculty: but as we have explained, an act of opinion does not introduce any change into the Soul or Mind: what happens is that from the notion of some impending evil is produced the quite separate thing, fear, and this fear, in turn, becomes known in that part of the Mind which is said under such circumstances to harbour fear.

But what is the action of this fear upon the Mind?

The general answer is that it sets up trouble and confusion before an evil anticipated. It should, however, be quite clear that the Soul or Mind is the seat of all imaginative representation- both the higher representation known as opinion or judgement and the lower representation which is not so much a judgement as a vague notion unattended by discrimination, something resembling the action by which, as is believed, the "Nature" of common speech produces, unconsciously, the objects of the partial sphere. It is equally certain that in all that follows upon the mental act or state, the disturbance, confined to the body, belongs to the sense-order; trembling, pallor, inability to speak, have obviously nothing to do with the spiritual portion of the being. The Soul, in fact, would have to be described as corporeal if it were the seat of such symptoms: besides, in that case the trouble would not even reach the body since the only transmitting principle, oppressed by sensation, jarred out of itself, would be inhibited.

None the less, there is an affective phase of the Soul or Mind and this is not corporeal; it can be, only, some kind of Ideal-form.

Now Matter is the one field of the desiring faculty, as of the principles of nutrition growth and engendering, which are root and spring to desire and to every other affection known to this Ideal-form. No Ideal-form can be the victim of disturbance or be in any way affected: it remains in tranquillity; only the Matter associated with it can be affected by any state or experience induced by the movement which its mere presence suffices to set up. Thus the vegetal Principle induces vegetal life but it does not, itself, pass through the processes of vegetation; it gives growth but it does not grow; in no movement which it originates is it moved with the motion it induces; it is in perfect repose, or, at least, its movement, really its act, is utterly different from what it causes elsewhere.

The nature of an Ideal-form is to be, of itself, an activity; it operates by its mere presence: it is as if Melody itself plucked the strings. The affective phase of the Soul or Mind will be the operative cause of all affection; it originates the movement either under the stimulus of some sense-presentment or independently- and it is a question to be examined whether the judgement leading to the movement operates from above or not- but the affective phase itself remains unmoved like Melody dictating music. The causes originating the movement may be likened to the musician; what is moved is like the strings of his instrument, and once more, the Melodic Principle itself is not affected, but only the strings, though, however much the musician desired it, he could not pluck the strings except under dictation from the principle of Melody.

(33) 'I, by not having understood these [things] in that way hitherto, have held the non-existent to be the existent, the unreal to be the real, the illusory to be the actual, and have wandered in the Sangsara so long. And even now if I do not recognize them to be illusions, then, wandering in the Sangsara for long ages, [I shall be] certain to fall into the morass of various miseries.

(43) When, through intense stupidity, [we are] wandering in the Sangsdra, Along the bright light-path of the Wisdom of Reality, May the Bhagavan Vairochana lead us, May the Mother of Great Space be our rear-guard, May we be saved from the fearful narrow passage-way of the Bardo, May we be placed in the state of the perfect Buddhahood. When, through intense illusion, [we are] wandering in the Sangsdra, Along the bright light-path of the abandonment of hallucinatory fear, awe, and terror, May the Bhagavans of the Wrathful Ones lead us, May the bands of the Wrathful Goddesses Rich-in-Space be our rear-guard, May we be saved from the fearful narrow passage-way of the Bardo, May we be placed in the state of the perfect Buddhahood.

(1) After the Valley of Unity comes the Valley of Astonishment and Bewilderment, where one is a prey to sadness and dejection. There sighs are like swords, and each breath a bitter sigh; there, is sorrow and lamentation, and a burning eagerness. It is at once day and night. There, is fire, yet a man is depressed and despondent. How, in his bewilderment, shall he continue his way? But he who has achieved unity forgets aU and forgets himself. If he is asked: 'Are you, or are you not? Have you or have you not the feeling of existence? Are you in the middle or on the border? Are you mortal or immortal?' he will reply with certainty: 'I know nothing, I understand nothing, I am unaware of myself. I am in love, but with whom I do not know. My heart is at the same time both full and empty of love.'

(33) The highest authorities inform us that the characteristic element of this highest form of all consciousness is the conscious realization of the individual that he IS identical with the Infinite, and is only apparently separated therefrom by the most tenuous and subtle veil of illusion.

(6) everyday feelings, such as anger, pain, pleasure, or love. They are thought-concepts, and cannot be recognised by the senses; whereas quality, quantity, etc., are sense-concepts. Just as the ear cannot take cognizance of colour, nor the eye of sound, so, in conceiving of the ultimate realities, God and the soul, we find ourselves in a region in which sense-concepts can bear no part. So much, however, we can see, that, as God is Ruler of the universe, and, being Himself beyond space and time, quantity and quality, governs things that are so conditioned, so that soul rules the body and its members, being itself invisible, indivisible, and not located in any special part. For how can the indivisible be located in that which is divisible? From all this we see how true is the saying of the Prophet, "God created man in His own likeness."

(8) No one can understand a king but a king; therefore God has made each of us a king in miniature, so to speak, over a kingdom which is an infinitely reduced copy of His own. In the kingdom of man, God's "throne" is represented by the soul, the Archangel by the heart, "the chair" by the brain, "the tablet" by the treasure-chamber of thought. The soul, itself unlocated and indivisible, governs the body as God governs the universe. In, short, each of us is entrusted with a little kingdom, and charged not to be careless in the administration of it.

(6) The man who has subdued the mind and is full of peace experiences the Supreme Self under all conditions in heat and cold, pleasure and pain, honour and dishonour. (The mind of such a man experiences the Self under all conditions).

(20) The characteristic feature of the Plane of Consciousness of the Demi-Gods is that of Oneness with Universal Life—the consciousness of the Life of All-Manifestation. Varying in many degrees and forms, of course, this is the characteristic feature of all experiences of this great plane of conscious activity. On this plane, the individual feels in close touch with all the rest of Creation—a united part of (not apart from) the ALL. The experience of even a slight momentary contact with this plane of being constitutes the common "mystic experience," of which sages, seers, poets, and illumined souls of all ages have sung, and regarding which they have tried to inform us in words inadequate to the task. The study of these mystic reports throw much light on the subject, and is well worth the time and attention of all true students of the Rosicrucian teaching. But the student must always remember that these experiences are not the end of all thought on the subject, nor the final word of Truth. As valuable as is this part of the teaching, it must never be mistaken for the highest peak of the Mountain of Truth.