becoming conscious 
or: what is doing what is good?

 In the train, I met Daan Visser. He was still a student at the university, and we became engaged in a conversation about the use of drugs by young people, triggered by an article in one of those free newspapers.

 Daan used to be very involved with this: at one time, he had smoked dope himself to experience how that was, and also to be sure that he could stop! And he had succeeded! Afterwards, he periodically wrote articles about this topic in university newspapers and on his own website. The topic strongly occupied him, because he had seen several of his friends fall victim to drugs. This was his way of trying to do something about it. He was quite laconic about the impact of the help he offered in this way. This didn’t alter the fact that he absolutely wanted to continue writing about this topic.

 I met Remco while we were having a cup of coffee. This young man had travelled a lot in his life, had worked at all kinds of jobs, and was now finally graduating. He burned with a fierce indignation about use and abuse of animals, as a vulnerable and voiceless group of living creatures on this terrestrial globe.

 It was hard to determine where to turn with this indignation. Once in awhile in his life, he encountered a situation in which he was really able to do something for an animal in distress (saving a bird from the snares of a fishing net, for example), but generally speaking, he felt very powerless with regard to all this grief. This did not diminish his burning desire to help. Like these two, there are many people, young and old, who would like to help, even if they have realised that such attempts to do good have a flip side that is disappointing.

 What is doing what is good? Obviously, it is good to help an animal in distress, or a friend who threatens to collapse. However, things are not always that clear. What is good for one, is bad or less clearly good for someone else. After all, don’t we all look at ‘good’ and ‘evil’ from our own personal background? Perhaps not everyone is aware that this is literally the case.

 Any image begins as a ‘mental image’, in other words, as an idea, a mental conception. On the basis of this idea, of this mental image, the longing arises to express it in a form. Next, the power of the will is needed to realise it, until finally the idea takes shape, if it reaches this point at all. When we have ideas about, for instance, good and evil, this process develops as we just described.

The vehicles of the human being  According to the universal teachings, a human being has not only a physical body. The physical body is surrounded and irradiated by an ether or vital body, and around it, the astral or desire body extends. Mainly around the head, the beginning of a mental body is to be found. These bodies or vehicles, all of them belonging to the personality, are unaware of the microcosm in which they exist. In principle, the field in which the personality is active in the microcosm, is a rather separate field, called the respiration field. Only because the spirit-spark - that remnant of what is divine in every human being - is set in motion, can any notion of it penetrate to the respiration field of the human being.

 When we think something with our mental powers, cloudlike streams of thoughts are generated in this respiration field. If we only pay attention to an idea for a short while, this small cloud will soon evaporate, but if we are occupied with something for a long time, look at an idea from all sides, and sometimes continue to cherish certain ideas for years, a self-maintaining projection of this idea is formed in our respiration field. This projection demands our continuous attention, and demands to be enabled to continue its existence, for the image, this formed idea, demands its nourishment from us as its creator.

 Anyway, these projections always drain away energy from their creator, and manipulate the personality in accordance with their nature. On the basis of all these images and ideas, populating our respiration field, and this occurs in every human being, we determine our image of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ from our own perspective. All our observations are, therefore, personally coloured. No one is able to observe really objectively. This is one of the reasons why doing what is good in this world is always only partial.

 Also the earth has its respiration field: a sphere, in which all ideas, all mental creations of the whole of humanity during unspeakably long periods, have been formed. In this way, it is clear that this sphere is the sphere of the past. This field was, and therefore still is, a reflection of everything that humanity has thought, done, felt and wanted.

 One of the particular aspects of the coming time is that radiations will reach humanity which more than ever before, will be able to thwart the compelling influence of the past. These are new impulses, stemming from an original life that has not been defiled by the past. These impulses will set the spirit-spark into motion enabling new, pure ideas to penetrate the human being, the personality, aiming at making him suitable to enter the new life consciously.

 To this end, someone will have to understand that he or she has such projections, lives and acts from them, and therefore looks at the world on the basis of the past! How can we lose this compelling influence of these images? Partly this is possible through the magical words of this time: ‘letting go’, such that some images, to which the consciousness holds on, diminish or disappear. Solving everything personally is impossible for a human being. There is still too much of the past in our respiration field, matters of which we are not or cannot be aware. It would require many lives to discover this, lives in which new images and bonds might be created again.

The first step  In the School of the Golden Rosycross, the aim is becoming conscious of the other, of what emanates from the spirit-spark within us, present as a remnant of what is divine in every human being. This is the first step on the path to total susceptibility of our respiration field to this impulse. Once the spiritual aspect in our heart awakens from its dormant state and is set in motion, the energy emanating from it will also affect the head sanctuary via the blood. This power is of a wholly different, much higher vibration than the one we usually experience. This high vibration causes agitation: the human being progresses from confusion to self-knowledge, and ultimately begins to think more clearly.

 Because of this clarity of thinking, the human being will receive insight into his links, the personal ‘creations’ to which he is bound, and into the extent to which he is determined by the past. Facing this, and then making it subservient to this new light of the consciousness within him, will cause all these personal images and forms to gradually fade away. In the light and the radiation of the newly opened inner sun, these compelling influences diminish, while the self-generated creations in the respiration field gradually cease. What remains is the gained experience, stored as a nucleus in the microcosm.

The respiration field becomes calm, like a still lake, in which the radiation of the divine sun can penetrate to the bottom. This personal purification directly affects the whole field of this world, like a falling star forms a spot of light in the dark night. By combining his striving with that of all who are seeking the Light of the other life, a person in whom the spiritual spark of what is divine has been set in motion again, is also engaged in the purification of the earthly sphere of life. Wherever possible, he neutralises the agitation he encounters in his environment. This is the best and most effective help we are able to render, because whenever there is some rest, every human being receives room to choose in which direction he or she would like to go. There is room to choose freely.

‘He who overcomes himself, is stronger than he who conquers a city.’ In other words, he who purifies his own respiration field in the Light of the other, contributes to the restoration of the world field.

 © Lectorium Rosicrucianum 2009.

From Pentagram No 3, 2009