At one time in this life, this writer had the wonderful experience of living with a composer of music. All kinds of music from songs to concerti for orchestra and voice. It was a marvelous experience to witness the creative process unfold. It was painstaking and thorough. When a note or chord finally entered a score, there was no doubt about it being the right note or chord. When the music was played by the composer, the atmosphere was thick with it, as if it had been a pungent perfume. The experience was not without trial. The composer was rather eccentric and peculiar, weird in that Neptunian way. He had both personal and artistic eccentricities. Among the latter was a practice of occasionally starting a fire and burning piles of music that had been labored over for many hours. It was painful to see the record of so much beauty vanish into the ethers without being shared by many who could have been uplifted by it. He didn’t want his past works around him. He thought they would smother his muse, and that he would become self-satisfied, complacent or content, and his creative life would be stunted. He was not alone in that opinion. This writer has known other artists, some in other media, who have felt this way. To look back at creative accomplishments would be death to their creativity. Some have even urged other artists to do the same thing for their own good. They abhor crystallization.
Lot’s wife did look back, when told not to, and she crystalized into a pillar of salt.
As Rosicrucian aspirants we have been instructed to look back at our days at their ends. Have we been misled? Do we misunderstand?
Time is a continuity. A Faulkner character said it brilliantly: “But tomorrow is today also.” He was referring to the eternal present in the stream of time as we experience it. Both the past and the future seem illusory in the present, as though they were something in a dream. Yet, the past is decidedly different. To some, time is reversible. Perhaps in a physicist’s formula one can theoretically go back in time, change the causal stream, and produce a new future, but in the reality of life that is not possible. The reason why it is impossible can be stated in one word, experience. We may have never experienced something, say music, but once we have, we and the world are forever changed. We cannot go back. We cannot deny its existence. It is knowledge born of experience. Knowledge is factual. The past is factual — it was what it was.
Perseus, when he slew Medusa, could not look at her directly, or he would have turned to stone. He looked at her reflection on his polished shield.
Because of our limited consciousness, the facts of the past must be reflectively interpreted to appreciate their significance. Each generation of historians has a new interpretation and rationale for the United States Civil War. First it was about slavery, then economics, then psychology, and perhaps in the future there will be a spiritual rationale. Probably all are correct, but also incomplete. Our consciousness is incomplete. There is much more in the events of our individual and collective experiences than we realize in the moment. We often have to mature to be able to understand what happened to us in the past. We can do that because the past is factual. However, to do that successfully, we must have an attitude that matches factuality. An objective attitude. If we are subjective about the past, being what we are at this time, we tend to make the past what we want it to be, not what it was. Fortunately, experience in time mellows and seasons us, and we relent, and learn from the past. We see things differently than before, more as they were. If we don’t, we become dangerously subjective and deviate psychologically and spiritually.
When Perseus looked at the reflection in his shield, he was looking forward and backward simultaneously.
Experience in time is not bidirectional. Healthy attitudes about orientation in time are not identical. They are reciprocal.
If we are objective about the future, in the way that we try to be about the past, without even a trace of subjectivity, there will be problems. If we try to be totally objective about the future, we are extrapolating from the past and the present. We are expecting things to continue as they are now. We are not considering the possibility of the future presenting us with something new and different. This writer once worked in a small group supervised by someone approaching retirement. One in the group was covetous of the supervisory position, and sitting in that private office. That individual did everything one could do to win favor, including some not nice things. That individual was successful. The old supervisor retired and the position was given to that individual. However, during the time when the old supervisor was approacing retirement, everything was changing about what we were doing. Different services and personnel were needed. One by one, members of the group retired, transferred, or were laid off. Eventually, the unit was eliminated, just after the new supervisor was settling into the position. Toward the end, the supervisor sat in the coveted office with nobody to supervise, waiting to be terminated. It was a grim picture of poetic justice. We must have, at least a modicum of subjectivity, about the future to accommodate change, and the wondrous things it brings. It is so much better, if we expect, anticipate, welcome, and even probe the future.
Even the Teacher does not know if the candidate will pass a trial or not, but still, He does think positively and encourages the neophyte.
When Max Heindel was asked how one knows whether something is true, his reply was simple, “Does it work?” It is in the using, that one learns whether an axe is sharp or not. A simple answer like that might be true for axes, but retrospection requires a deeper and more thorough understanding of functional application. For instance, this writer has encountered individuals who experienced horrendous things from the past, which tended to cripple them in the present. When retrospection was suggested and tried, it seemed to not improve the condition, and the flash-backs and responses were as terrible as ever. Some even resisted recalling the events, and recoiled at the thought of it. For them, once was enough. Some averred that the Rosicrucian teaching about the post mortem panorama, and the purgatory that follows, is another example of a religion with a cruel and personal God. Even without a traumatic past, or a painful present, some report no success with retrospection. Have we been misled?
Subsequent conversations with some of these individuals sometimes revealed why retrospection was unsuccessful. Suppose, for example, someone experienced severe treatment that was completely unjust in the context of the event (but probably not unjust in terms of rebirth). It would not be surprising if, when looking back, such an individual couldn’t help but want to feel justified — “I was robbed of justice,” or “life isn’t fair.” Suffering real or apparent injustice, is one of the most difficult circumstances to treat objectively, which is why the example of Christ-Jesus, in the face of true injustices, is so powerful, for inspiring spiritual aspirants. He even forgave his unjust accusers! Because of that action, love is overcoming the entire way of the world with its ways of private, personal, justice and injustice. Not all of the things we cling to are as dramatic, severe, and seemingly unjust as those just spoken of, but they all have subtle, subjective attachment which makes them so difficult to dissolve.
Lot’s wife did not turn into a pillar of salt merely because she looked back, but because she looked back with subjective attachment. She longed to go back.
Different versions of the retrospection exercises are given in various places in the writings of Max Heindel. Some versions emphasize one aspect of it or another. Some emphasize the feeling and re-feeling aspect of it, while others stress the reverse order and objective judgment of it. The latter aspect takes the form of “objectively judging ourselves.” Some aspirants do it by confessing to Christ, before whom one must be completely honest and objective.
Objectivity is of the transcendental individuality, the spiritual Ego. Subjectivity is of the concrete personality. In our dense, physical bodies, we cannot see the entire panorama around us. We only see what is in the field of vision in front of us, subjectivity. Because of this subjectivity, we must judge our actions and inactions before the higher self, if we wish to process experience successfully, and free ourselves from attachment to the past. This is not a new outlook. We learn from the Bible that “God is no respecter of persons.” Christ, in the Life Spirit, which transcends even self, said “And yet if I judge, my judgment is true.” Moreover, the judgment of Christ carries with it the grace of forgiveness from Life Spirit. In some places in the writings of Max Heindel, he calls the exercise, “the forgiveness of sins.” The blessing of forgiveness exceeds even the tenacious pain of injustice.
Over time some words in our language take on unpleasant connotations, not present in their original meanings. Sometimes there are better words to describe what these contaminated words have come to mean. Crystallization is a good example.
Crystallization is one of the most perfect processes in nature. A crystal is not only a thing of beauty, it is utile because of its structure. What is meant when one is said to be crystalized would be better said by saying they are hardened or, if one is pretentious, obdurate. When an anion interacts with a cation, the result is a salt, a salt that is a crystal. Such an interaction is vigorous. Goethe called its violence a war. A crystal of sodium chloride, salt, is a perfect cube. Through the ages the cube, or one of its square faces, has represented justice. In our folk language we speak of a square deal. The altar of justice of Zeus was a cube. The halls of judgment of kings were cubical. If there are no interactions, there are no salts, no crystals. In our lives, if there are no actions, there is no soul growth. Even misacting results in soul growth. We have to do something to have something to retrospect. The pillar of salt that is Lot’s wife may represent disobedient looking back, probably longingly, but that is no condemnation of salt … or of taking action. After all, “Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?”
