AMORC
Sanctum Ritual number 3 for Plane 4
1973
Salutes in omnibus punctis trianguli!
Beloved Members of the Esoteric Hierarchy:
It is appropriate at this time that we endeavor to reduce some of our study
to personal experiences and demonstration. In one of our recent monographs it
was explained that mysticism is not opposed to experience; rather, it is equally
concerned with experience as are philosophy and science. In fact, mysticism and
experience are synonymous. Without a special kind of experience we
could never be a mystic. However, on this occasion we want to illustrate and
demonstrate these principles.
Preparation:
To prepare for this exercise and demonstration, certain simple things must be
obtained in advance as follows:
1. See the printed strips of squares included with this ritual. Cut them so
that each of the squares is separate.
2. Have a pen handy to use when instructed to do so in this sanctum exercise.
3. Also have a small scratch pad or extra sheet of paper to write upon.
Sanctum Arrangement:
1. Place two candles on your sanctum altar or telesterion—one on either
side of the altar and in line with each other. Light them before proceeding with
this ritual exercise.
2. At the same time your candles are lighted, if possible also ignite the
incense, all of which is conducive to the proper atmosphere for the exercise in
which you are to participate.
3. To dignify the occasion and to be aware of its ritualistic significance,
place upon your person your Membership Apron, the symbolism of which you are
familiar with.
4 . Place the little squares which you have cut from the strips on your
sanctum altar in a little pile.
5. Be seated directly in front of your sanctum altar.
Sanctum Ritual-Exercise
ILLUMINATUS: (Throughout the ritual you will be referred to as Illuminatus.
You will be addressed by the Master-this alludes to the sanctum master as
though he were an actual physical presence.)
Lighting: The lighting in your room should not be intense or harsh. There
should be just soft light to read by, allowing the candlelight to be the
principal source of illumination.
ILLUMINATUS: (Be comfortably seated in front of your altar and read):
MASTER: Beloved Illuminatus, what has
been your mission in life? To what end have you directed your life? Have you
been solely motivated by the compulsion of circumstances or have you felt the
need to fulfill a definite purpose? Be it known, Illuminatus, that neither a
course in life nor an ultimate objective is decreed for us by any cosmic cause.
We have been endowed with the faculty and innate power to perceive, conceive,
and manifest our own mission in life. It is our responsibility.
Each day, no matter what ideal we may have set for ourselves, we see it, find
it challenged by some events that arise and which appear as an obstacle and seem
to thwart it. Yet there are those who have never even formulated a personal
mission in life. They have never combined their intelligence, reason,
imagination, experience, and knowledge to form a transcendent mental image
toward which they might direct their personal lives.
In the monographs that you have been recently studying there was a sketch of
the different basic types of human minds and the way that man thinks. You were
told that the philosophical mind seeks to relegate all knowledge to a
comprehensible order. Such a mind is troubled at times by the segregation of the
experiences had. It is not content to allow the phenomena which it perceives to
figuratively remain separate, isolated, and not related to all else.
Such separateness of experience suggests to the philosophical mind chaos and
confusion. Consequently, that type of mind deductively conceives a pattern, an
order into which all experiences, the things known, may be placed in a
comprehensible arrangement. This philosophical mind not only wants to give unity
to the universe and to human experience, but to show a progressive development,
a causal connection between all that occurs and that man experiences.
Now, Beloved Illuminatus, I wish you to meditate upon the principal incidents
of your life as far back as memory can recall. What events, experiences in your
childhood left definite impressions upon your mind? What in your youth, your
maturity, your later life had an impact upon your thinking? What changes did
these bring about in your understanding of, for example, birth, life, death, of
divinity, of mankind, of the universe, of society? These ideas, these
experiences, are building blocks from which one may construct a personal
conception as to his mission in life.
As you meditate and one idea after another is recalled as having had an
effect upon your mental attitude, write the idea down
on one of the paper squares. Make your
notes brief so that just one or two words appear on each square, which will
symbolize that event and the emotion and psychic response it aroused in your
life.
Continue to meditate until each of the little squares has been written upon.
ILLUMINATUS: (Take as much time as you believe necessary reviewing, as it
were, your life, and then write as directed on each of the squares. Try to
complete the entire twelve.)
MASTER: Now Illuminatus, look at each
of the squares upon which you have written. See if you can arrange them into an
order of value. What did each square at the time contribute to your life? Which
ones are negative in the effects they had? Which ones positive,
that is, apparently advantageous to you at the time?
Lay all the negative ones in one row. Next, put all the ones you consider
positive in a separate row above the negative row.
ILLUMINATUS: (Kindly do as directed.)
MASTER: Beloved Illuminatus kindly
now look at the positive squares. Can you put them into an order, an arrangement
whereby each would seem like a link in a chain, that is, one seeming to have a
contributing value or adding something of importance to the other?
ILLUMINATUS: (Please endeavor to make such an arrangement even though one
incident or event may have been of a later period. They are all experiences you
have had regardless of their time sequence.)
MASTER: Beloved Illuminatus, now
kindly examine the negative squares. Place those that you think
detrimentally affected any of the positive events of your life directly above
the positive square to which they seem related.
Now think as you examine these positive squares with the negative one
placed directly above them. What did you do at the time when there was this
conflict of circumstances, that is, when the negative incident opposed the
positive? How did that particular combination of affairs shape your plan of
action? Did it favorably or unfavorably influence what you expected from life,
what you thought life should mean to you?
ILLUMINATUS: (Seriously reflect,
rationally and philosophically, upon these matters. Can you organize these
events, positive and negative, in such a manner that if they were to occur again
you might draw a conclusion, an idea from them that would differ in its effect
upon your life?)
MASTER: "We have said that
mysticism is also a matter of experience. However, the mystical mind, unlike the
philosophical and rational minds, draws its experiences also from a higher level
of consciousness. It does not exclusively perceive circumstances objectively or
even subjectively, but rather subconsciously as well. The mystical mind resorts
to the superior judgment of the intuitive consciousness that pervades it.
You should now seek a mystical experience in the form of inner impulses from
Self. This should relate how your past experiences, both negative and positive,
which you have outlined before you, may be integrated into a plan to form
perhaps an inspirational idea for a more beneficial and happy life here and
now. You must realize that no experience is valueless, even those you
have designated as negative. It is just as darkness creates a greater
appreciation of light and what it may afford.
Therefore, mystically, intuition should accomplish for you what past
reasoning about this relationship of incidents and events may not have
accomplished. Further, the illumination may reveal to you that certain incidents
which you have indicated as being negative did in fact have a positive effect on
your life-perhaps being the cause of other events more fortuitous that followed
from them.
Now separate your feet. Next, place the thumb and first two fingers of your
right hand upon each combination of positive and negative squares that
you have arranged one combination at a time, of course.
This done, close your eyes. Think for a few moments of each of the positive
and negative incidents indicated beneath those fingers. Do not attempt an
analysis of them. Then dismiss the thought of them and remain passive for a few
moments until some related impression comes to you. Then, finally, briefly write
that impression upon your little note pad.
Repeat this exercise until you have meditated upon each of the combinations
which you have arranged.
ILLUMINATUS: (Please follow the instructions closely. The placing of the
finger tips upon each of the squares is principally to help you focalize your
consciousness upon a single combination at a time.)
MASTER: Now examine the notes on your
pad. Can you determine from them a future course of action to follow, a plan, a
method for the improvement of your life-beginning now?
ILLUMINATUS: (This concludes this sanctum ritual and demonstration, though,
of course, you may repeat it at any other time. Now kindly rise and face your
sanctum, make the Sign of the Cross, and then read the following aloud):
May the God of my Heart and the Cosmic Intelligence with which I have
been endowed give me that clarity of inner and outer wisdom that I may direct my
life in accordance with the guidance given to me. So Mote It Be!
MASTER: Now extinguish your candles.
ILLUMINATUS: (Your report on this sanctum exercise and ritual will be
appreciated.)
Sincerely and fraternally,
YOUR CLASS MASTER