STUDIES IN THE COSMO-CONCEPTION: Question: What is the relation of the Head of the Rosicru

                      STUDIES IN THE COSMO-CONCEPTION:


Question: What is the relation of the Head of the Rosicrucian Order to the 
outside world? 

Answer: The Head of the Order is hidden from the outside world by the twelve 
Brothers. Even the pupils of the School never see him, but at the nightly 
Services in the Temple His presence is felt by all, whenever He enters, and 
is the signal for the commencement of the ceremony. 


Question: Who besides the Brothers may be present at these Services?

Answer: Gathered around the Brothers of the Rose Cross, as their pupils, are 
a number of "lay brothers." 


Question: What is their spiritual status?

Answer: They are people who live in various parts of the Western World but 
are able to leave their bodies consciously, attend the services, and 
participate in the spiritual work at the Temple; they having each and every 
one been "initiated" in the method of so doing by one of the Elder Brothers. 


Question: Do these pupils remember their experience when they return to 
their bodies? 

Answer: Most of them are able to remember all that happens, but there are a 
few cases where the faculty of leaving the body was acquired in a previous 
life of well-doing and where a drug habit or a sickness contracted in the 
present existence has unfitted the brain to receive impression of the work 
done by the man when away. 


Question: Is the general idea of initiation correct?

Answer: The general idea of initiation is that it is merely a ceremony which 
makes one a member of a secret society; that it may be conferred upon anyone 
willing to pay a certain price, a sum of money in most cases. While that is 
true of the so-called initiation of fraternal orders and also in most 
pseudo-occult orders, it is an erroneous idea when applied to initiations 
into various degrees of truly occult Brotherhoods. 


Question: What is required of the candidate for initiation?

Answer: In the first place there is no golden key to the Temple; merit 
counts but not money. Merit is not acquired in a day; it is the cumulative 
product of past good action. 


Question: Does the pupil know when he is ready for initiation?

Answer: The candidate for initiation is usually totally unconscious that he 
is a candidate. He usually is living his life in the community and serving 
his fellowmen for days and years without any ulterior thought until one day 
there appears in his life the teacher, a Hierophant of the lesser Mysteries 
appropriate to the country in which he resides. 


Question: In what way is he qualified?

Answer: By this time the candidate has cultivated within himself certain 
faculties, stored up certain powers for service and help, of which he is 
usually unconscious or which he does not know how to utilize properly. 


Question: What service does the initiator render?

Answer: The task of the initiator will now be plain; he shows the candidate 
the latent faculties, the dormant powers, and initiates him into their use; 
explains or demonstrates to him for the first time how the candidate may 
awaken the static energy into a dynamic power. 

                  --Reference: Cosmo-Conception, pp 523-525