etheric, body is correlated to the Love-Wisdom
Principle and the Etheric Region of the Physical
World; and the desire or emotional body is correlat-
ed to the Activity Principle and the Desire World.
During man’s past evolution, he was given various
religions to assist in his spiritual development, each
race being provided with a religion suited to its par-
ticular needs. All race religions are of the Holy Spirit,
and the Race Spirits (mighty members of the
archangelic life-wave) govern all things concerning
their respective races.
In The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception it is stated
that race religions have been given to help humanity
to overcome the desire body and prepare it for union
with the Holy Spirit. The full operation of this help
was seen on the day of Pentecost. As the Holy Spirit
is the Race God, all languages are expressions of it.
That is why the apostles, when fully united and filled
with the Holy Spirit, spoke with different tongues
and were able to convince their hearers. Their desire
bodies had been sufficiently purified to bring about
the wished-for union, and this is an earnest of what
the disciple one day will attain to—the power to
speak all tongues.
The true union with the Holy Spirit, or the con-
scious ability to speak in other tongues, represents a
very advanced stage of evolution, and one which is
not attained until many initiations have been accom-
plished. Anyone who has reached such a high stage
of unfoldment has the ability to speak all tongues,
since the Holy Spirit (Jehovah) is the Lord of the
Race Spirits, the authors of the race languages.
However, there is another means of speaking in
unknown tongues, and that is by being mediumistic
or subject to control by invisible discarnate entities
or spirits. A medium is a person whose dense and
etheric bodies are loosely connected and subject to
control by discarnate spirits in the Desire World. He
or she corresponds to the subject of a hypnotist in the
Physical World. This is a negative condition wherein
the person’s activities are not under the control of his
own will. Any activity not under the control of one’s
will is of a questionable nature and usually is wholly
undesirable because it may lead to complete obsession
or control of one’s dense body by another entity.
The phenomenon of “passing out due to being
touched by the spirit” appears to be a similar mani-
festation, in which the individual’s act is beyond the
control of his own will. It would be hard to picture
the apostles, for instance—who, as said, attained their
abilities through positive development—as passing
out during their moments of revelation. The person
who develops positively will retain full conscious-
ness and will be able to utilize his new powers bene-
ficially and in complete awareness of what he is doing.
Emotions are intensely active during the various
manifestations of the charismatic program. To the
occult student this is quite significant, because when
a person is in a highly emotional state, he is most
easily affected by superphysical forces over which he
has no control. To allow another entity to direct one’s
actions on the spiritual plane is even more dangerous
than permitting such direction on the physical plane.
As far as “being prayed over with the hands”
(which we assume refers to the practice of “laying on
of hands”) is concerned, this, too, can lead to nega-
tive occurrences. No matter how sincerely the person
praying may be motivated to the good, he does, in a
sense, impose his own will on the person upon whom
he is laying his hands. This again could lead to exter-
nal direction of that person’s activities and develop-
ment, a practice, from the occult point of view, to be
shunned.
Certainly, we believe in praying for other people,
but such prayers always should be offered in the con-
text of “Thy will be done,” for who are we to know
what lessons must be learned by, or what destiny
awaits, another individual? Only the higher Powers
know this and safely can deal with the matter. We can
pray for other people from a distance as well as when
we are next to them, and, indeed, we do not believe
that the personal contact of “laying on of hands” is
desirable if the prayer is to be a petition that “His will
be done” on the other individual’s behalf.
As evolution proceeds, the bodies of men are
becoming more and more refined and responsive to
superphysical forces. The dense body and the vital
body are generally becoming more loosely connect-
ed. Hence it is obvious that there will be increasing
evidence of response to these forces. However, peo-
ple should not allow themselves to become passive
enough to be dominated by others, no matter how
honest, upright, religious, and well-meaning they
may be. Our task is to keep our will active, our hearts
