Beloved Members of the Esoteric Hierarchy:
We are pleased to send to you at this time another Sanctum Ritual-Exercise to be performed in your Sanctum. This Ritual-Exercise is definitely related to the subject matter, that is, the principles and factual matter of the monographs which you have recently been receiving in Plane Four.
We believe the importance of these subjects will be better realized by the intimacy of such exercises as these. This is because it constitutes a direct personal experience by you. Consequently, every effort should be made by you to perform this Sanctum Ritual-Exercise.
Accouterment:
Before proceeding, it is necessary that certain simple arrangements be made. Please read this carefully. Note the simple objects required:
1. Attached is a list of words and symbols designated "A." The ritual will tell you how and when this should be used.
2. A long blotter or sheet of paper that will cover the column of words on Sheet "A" should be obtained and used when requested to do so in this ritual.
3. Attached is another list of words designated "B." You will be instructed when to use this during the ritual.
4. A jet-black unshiny cloth of any material, approximately 14 inches square. Have thumbtacks to attach the stretched cloth against the wall or door at the height of your eye level when you are seated.
5. Two plain white candles and your sanctum candle holders. (Any other candleholders will suffice.)
6. A mirror not less than one foot square, such as may be on any dressing table, is essential.
Sanctum Arrangement:
1. Your usual sanctum table, or telesterion (sanctum altar).
2. The two candles placed on the altar on either side, unlighted until required in these instructions.
Sanctum Ritual-Exercise
In our recent monographs we have been studying man's conception of the mind. We have briefly reviewed the various ideas man has had of the phenomenon of mind from remote antiquity to the present day. These notions embrace the primitive ideas of mind as being a separate, supernatural entity; a divine infusion; the neurophysiological approach or mechanistic concept; the psychological; the psychic and mystical. The latter included the Rosicrucian explanation which reconciles to an extent the psychological, physiological, and mystical theories and certain factual knowledge also.
We saw that consciousness was the basic phenomenon of mind. We also learned that all phenomena of consciousness cannot be classified as humans think of mind. In other words, every manifestation of consciousness is not the complex state or function of the human mind. All animate matter--living things--possesses consciousness; yet we would hesitate to call it mind in the same sense as those functions which we attribute to the mind of man.
On the other hand, there can be no phenomenon designated as mind devoid of consciousness. Consequently, complex, highly organized mental phenomena as in the Homo sapiens (modern man) are but a more fully developed consciousness which comes into existence as permitted by the more elaborate organism, the brain and nervous systems through which it functions. It has long been the belief of the Rosicrucians and so expounded in their teachings that the plethora of consciousness, its fullness, has not yet been reached in man. In other words, there is a greater potentiality of power and expansion of consciousness in man which is innate. Simply, man is capable of a far greater use of consciousness than he now exercises. The occasional phenomenon categorized psychic, or popularly as extrasensory perception, is evidence of this latent power.
But notwithstanding all religious, mechanistic, psychic, and mystical explanations of mind, we can for simple understanding and for practical purposes reduce it to three broad categories. We may call these, dramatically, "Chambers of the Mind." You may have heard the ominous phrase, "the dark recesses of the mind." There are really no dark recesses. The dark is only our ignorance of what exists or what occurs in these three chambers.
In fact, with more and more research and an intelligent approach devoid of superstition and mysterious supernaturalism, we find not darkness but illumination in each chamber of the mind. This illumination is the light of the special functions of consciousness in each chamber which gives a greater understanding of ourselves and of the reality of which we are a part.
Now let us take a little exploratory journey into each of these chambers of the mind. In doing so we will better realize what each contributes to our awareness of our external and personal existence.
We shall, for ritualistic purposes, from now on refer to you as Postulant. As you will recall from earlier Rosicrucian Degrees, the word literally means a candidate, or petitioner. It is that which we are in this Degree also--that is, we are a candidate for greater knowledge of the Cosmic and ourselves.
POSTULANT: You are now to enter the First Chamber of the Mind, the Objective. Place List "A" on the table or altar before the two candles. Arrange the long blotter or strip of paper so as to completely cover just the column of words. The other half of the sheet which has the symbols or drawings of the peripheral sense organs is to remain uncovered.
Now be seated and move the paper that covers the sheet so that it reveals just the first word at the top of the column. To which one of your sense organs is that word related? For example, is it the eye, the ear, the nose? Look at the symbols, then look back at the word. Is your realization of it, in your opinion, exclusively the result of your perception of it by one of these sense organs? In other words, do you know that idea only through a sense organ?
Next, move the paper down to reveal the second word and follow the same procedure: Look at the symbols and ask yourself the questions as above. Continue with each subsequent word.
POSTULANT: Now were some of these words, the ideas of them, not attributable to the sense organs? In other words, do you feel that some of these ideas that the words conveyed to you did not directly come to you from anything you saw or heard, for example. Did they seem to come out of another Chamber of the Mind rather than the Objective? What is the important role that consciousness plays in this Chamber of the Mind, that is, the Objective?
MASTER: Reality begins in the Objective Chamber of the Mind. What we perceive is real because existence depends upon the sensations which we experience and our interpretation of them. The idea, the realization, is had in consciousness, but it also has a spatial relationship. In other words, consciousness has realization beyond the physical organism in which it exists so as to include the sources that act upon it. Simply, consciousness responds to externality.
Thus, pure energy, vibrations, as we say, are made to assume a form, a substance--to have identity, to become things to us in the First Chamber of the Mind, the Objective.
POSTULANT: Now you are to enter the Second Chamber of the Mind, the Subjective.
Pin the black cloth against the wall or door, stretched tight, as directed. Place the lighted candles, separated from each other and a few inches in front of the black cloth. Now select the sheet marked "B" and hold same in your hand while you are seated before the black cloth. Place the blotter or strip of paper so as to cover the column of words on Sheet "B." In this Chamber now, you figuratively close the door of the First Chamber-the outer, the Objective. You prevent consciousness from contacting externality. It is to be introverted-that is, turned inward.
Now move the paper so as to reveal the first word on Sheet "B." Is this word a "thing" to you? Is it something you have perceived, that is, objectively experienced? Or is it an abstract idea, that is, only a value that you have come to attribute to experience which you have had?
Gaze at the black cloth for a minute. Then close your eyes and try to find in your mind the answer to what is the origin of such an idea as the word on Sheet "B" has conveyed to you. Now there is nothing mysterious in looking at this black cloth. Here it just symbolizes the shutting out of the external world, blacking it out, as it were, and turning consciousness inward to the Second Chamber of the Mind, the Subjective.
Further, ask yourself: Is this idea on Sheet "B" before you a product of reason, memory, imagination; or is it a combination of such mental processes?
Follow this procedure for each of the words on Sheet "B"; then read the Master's comments.
MASTER: In the Second Chamber of the Mind which you have just been exploring, there are what are termed universals. These are certain values and judgments that all men have in common. However, they are not the same to all men in their particulars, that is, the details associated with them. These universals are broad categories that all men share and that go to shape their ideas.
Man's reason, we must state at this point, cannot come forth with an idea that is so original that it is not in some way related to a previous experience, to something that was once perceived in the outer chamber of the mind. However, the reason can arrange the ideas into new patterns associated with different categories, or universals, of the mind.
What are some of these universals of mind that all men share? The notions of justice, beauty, good, evil, infinity, causality, order, space, and time are examples. These notions are not concrete--that is, they do not exist in what we refer to as the outer or real world as experienced in the Objective First Chamber of the Mind. Rather, these universals exist as internal qualities of the Second Chamber of the Mind, the Subjective one.
We adapt our objective experiences to these universals. For example, certain realities, what we objectively perceive, appear to be in harmony with the universal of beauty, or perhaps with the universals of order or good, so we accept them as such. Consequently, the old aphorism that we create our world has a certain degree of truth. We, of course, do not create the cosmic energy, the vibrations by which consciousness has an awareness of what we call reality. But the universals of the Second Chamber of the Mind give them a personal, intimate relationship or value to us.
As a result, such experiences or ideas become an individual and intimate world to us. However, the same universals may not be attributed to a similar experience by others. For analogy, everyone does not see beauty in the same object or justice in the same situation.
POSTULANT: Now you enter the Third Chamber of the Mind, the Subconscious. This Chamber is the most intimate in its potentiality, its possible varied experiences for you. It is likewise the most profound and sometimes the most difficult to understand. Allegorically, we may say that this Chamber of the Mind has many alcoves, or recesses. The deeper we penetrate, the more varied are the manifestations, or expressions, of consciousness. It is for this reason that psychology, esoteric philosophy, religion, and mysticism, as we have previously explained throughout the monographs of this Plane , have given various names to the experiences of consciousness in this Chamber.
We now request that you, Postulant, arrange the black cloth over the mirror of your sanctum in such a manner that only your eyes and forehead are seen. In other words, do not cover the whole mirror, but arrange the cloth so that when you are seated before the mirror only your eyes and forehead are visible. Place the candles before the mirror in such a relationship that they are the only source of light and so that you can read this ritual monograph as well as see your reflection in the mirror.
Now gaze directly into your own eyes. Remember, this exercise is not intended to induce any trance state or any so-called form of self-hypnosis. Rather, you are going to reach into the consciousness of this inner chamber. You are going to contact the psychic aspect of your being the Self. You are going to experience an awareness of Self and its relationship to the universal consciousness that pervades the very life force in you.
We have said in previous monographs that consciousness is a stream. It is actually not subdivided into separate chambers but rather manifests in the different ways which we have called chambers. But in this final exercise you will reach into the cosmic source of consciousness, into the life force itself, which is the birthplace of the idea of Self. It is here where Cosmic Mind, the highest judgment, resides. It is from here that come the intuitive impressions and the awareness of the psychic unity of all mankind; it is a phenomenon which science is just now beginning to investigate.
After gazing into your eyes for two or three minutes, close them for three or four minutes so as to receive any impressions that come from the plethora (the fullness) of the Self within.
MASTER: Kindly extinguish your candles and remove the black cloth. This concludes the Sanctum Ritual and the Exercise concerning the allegorical three Chambers of the Mind.
Your reports on this Sanctum Ritual and its Exercise will indeed be appreciated.
Sincerely and fraternally,
YOUR CLASS MASTER
Sheet A:
RED
SWEET
FRAGRANT
SAD
HARD
LONG
LOVELY
LOUD
Sheet B
