Monograph No. 4 of the 4th Degree in the Initiate Section begins with a Concurrence, a quote from a famous or distinguished personal that generally begins the monographs. This one is a discussion by John Benjamin Butler Burke, who AMORC claims to be a philosopher and mystic. It says that his writings agree perfectly with the subject of this monograph, which is about what happens to the human body after it dies and what happens to the human soul.
Being quite familiar with AMORC’s theories of reincarnation and spiritual development, it is almost shocking to see how disharmonious the teachings of Mr. Burke are with the mystical premises of AMORC- in fact, of any other type of mystical conception. For instance, when talking about how mind stuff, which are, according to his “modern view,” only composed of atoms and electrons, why “should we object if we once more return to that mind in which and from which we also have had our origin, the cradle of our birth, that great ocean of thought in which we live and move and have our being?”
Why not return to a sea of ‘atoms and electrons’ (despite the fact that electrons are just one component in atoms) and be happy? Well, what if we are not conscious in the process? So we just return to a sea of inert cosmic matter? To clarify that point for someone who might miss being conscious, he says: “Whether that ocean is itself conscious we cannot say,” he says, but then puts his bet on consciousness, saying, “…our own deep conviction is that in that self-consciousness alone would its unity exist as a reality.”
So John Butler Burke, the philosopher and mystic, is sympathetic- but guessing about the Universe being conscious. But I thought that the major attribute of mysticism was Cosmic Consciousness- that their ace-in-the-whole was that their psyche had merged with Cosmic or Universal Consciousness?
I guess John Butler Burke is not a mystic, but a philosopher, sympathetic with idea that there may be a reality out there, but he has only experienced it theoretically.
As I describe in The Prisoner of San Jose and AMORC Unmasked, mysticism, according to AMORC is what this whole show is about?
So why is this concurrence used at all- if it doesn’t really lead in coherently to a an essay consciousness, life and death from the standpoint of the mystical Nodin Manuscript?
Why not return to a sea of ‘atoms and electrons’ (despite the fact that electrons are just one component in atoms) and be happy? Well, what if we are not conscious in the process? So we just return to a sea of inert cosmic matter? To clarify that point for someone who might miss being conscious, he says: “Whether that ocean is itself conscious we cannot say,” he says, but then puts his bet on consciousness, saying, “…our own deep conviction is that in that self-consciousness alone would its unity exist as a reality.”
So John Butler Burke, the philosopher and mystic, is sympathetic- but guessing about the Universe being conscious. But I thought that the major attribute of mysticism was Cosmic Consciousness- that their ace-in-the-whole was that their psyche had merged with Cosmic or Universal Consciousness?
I guess John Butler Burke is not a mystic, but a philosopher, sympathetic with idea that there may be a reality out there, but he has only experienced it theoretically.
As I describe in The Prisoner of San Jose and AMORC Unmasked, mysticism, according to AMORC is what this whole show is about?
So why is this concurrence used at all- if it doesn’t really lead in coherently to a an essay consciousness, life and death from the standpoint of the mystical Nodin Manuscript?
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