"If we wanted to experience consciously the influence of the World of Archetypal Images we should have to be able to hold back this world in some way. 

"It is only possible for us to have physical sense-organs eyes, for example by admitting the Elementary World into ourselves and then holding it back. We can only have a nervous system by admitting the World of Spirit into ourselves and then holding it back; we can only have a brain and reasoning faculty by admitting into ourselves the World of Reason and then holding it back; thereby the brain is formed. If higher organs are to be formed, it must be possible for us to hold back a still higher world. We must be able to send something towards it, as in our brain we send that which holds back the World of Reason. Thus man must do something if he wishes to develop in the true way. He must derive forces from a higher world if in the true sense he wishes to develop to a higher stage. He must do something to hold back the forces of the World of Archetypal Images which would otherwise simply pass through him. He must himself create a reflecting apparatus for that purpose. The method of Spiritual Science, starting from Imaginative Knowledge, creates such an apparatus in the way in which the man of today can and should do this. What man normally perceives and knows is the external physical world. If he desires to attain higher knowledge he must do something to create for himself higher organs. He must bring a world that is higher than the World of Reason to a halt within himself, and this he does by developing a new kind of activity which can confront the World of Archetypal Images and, to begin with, hold it back. He engenders the new activity by learning to undergo inner experiences which do not occur in everyday life. A typical experience of this kind is described in the book, Occult Science an Outline (Chapter V). It comes about by picturing the Rose-Cross. How should we proceed in order to have as a true experience within us this mental picture of the Rose-Cross? 

"A pupil who aspires to be led to higher stages of knowledge would be told by his teacher to contemplate, as a beginning, how a plant grows out of the soil, how it forms stem, leaves, flower and fruit. Through the whole structure flows the green sap. Now compare this plant with a human being. Blood flows through the human being and is the outer expression of impulses, appetites and passions; because man is endowed with an Ego he appears to us as a being higher than the plant. Only a fantastic mind although there are many such could believe that the plant has consciousness similar to that of man and could reflect impressions inwardly. Consciousness arises, not through the exercise of activity but because an impression is reflected inwardly, and this, man but not the plant is able to do. Thus in a certain respect man has reached a higher stage of development than the plant but at the cost of the possibility of erring. The plant is not liable to error, neither has it a higher and a lower nature. It has no impulses or appetites that degrade it. We may well be impressed by the chastity of the plant in contrast to the impulses, desires and passions of man. With his red blood man exists as a being who, in respect of his consciousness, has developed to a higher stage than the plant but at the cost of a certain deterioration. 

"All this would be made clear to an aspirant for higher knowledge. The teacher would tell him that he must now attain what, at a lower stage, the plant reveals to him; he must gain the mastery over his appetites, impulses and so forth. He will achieve this mastery when his higher nature has won the victory over the lower, when his red blood has become as chaste as the sap of the plant when it reddens in the rose. And so the red rose can be for us a symbol of what man's blood will become when he masters his lower nature. We see the rose as an emblem, a symbol of the purified blood. 

"And if we associate the wreath of roses with the dead, black, wooden cross, with what the plant leaves behind when it dies, then we have in the Rose-Cross a symbol of man's victory of the higher, purified nature over the lower. In man, unlike the plant, the lower nature must be overcome. The red rose can be for us a symbol of the purified red blood. But the rest of the plant cannot be an emblem in this sense for there we must picture that the sap and greenness of the plant have lignified. In the black wooden cross we have therefore the emblem of the vanquished lower nature, in the roses the emblem of the development of the higher nature. The Rose-Cross is an emblem of man's development as it proceeds in the world. This is not an abstract concept but something that can be felt and experienced as actual development. The soul can glow with warmth at the picture of development presented in the symbol of the Rose-Cross. 

"This shows that man can have mental pictures which do not correspond to any external reality. Those who are desirous of having normal consciousness only, where the mental pictures always represent some external reality, will speak derisively of the Rose-Cross symbol and insist that mental pictures are false if they represent no external fact. Such people will ask: wherever is there any such thing as the Rose-Cross? Do red roses ever grow on dead wood? But the whole point is that we shall acquire a faculty of soul that is not present in normal consciousness; that we shall become capable of elaborating mental images and conceptions which have a certain relation to the outer world but yet are not replicas of it. The Rose-Cross is related in a certain respect to the outer world, but it is we ourselves who have created the nature of this relationship. We have contemplated the plant and the ascendancy attained by man and we picture this to ourselves in the image of the Rose-Cross. Then we inscribe this symbol into our world of mental pictures and ideas. The same could be done with other symbols." (Macrocosm and Microcosm: 8)

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0119/19100328p01.html

Making these lectures available to people, Tom, is a wonderful service.  Thank you.  I look forward to studying them.  Hope you will keep them coming!  vickie