Imperator’s Message April 2023

So dear fratres and dear sorores, today is a very special occasion. It’s an incredible emotion for me. I can only imagine you behind this screen. I can see only a little light in front of me and then I have to use my imagination trying to see you in front of me, trying to imagine that we are all getting together for this special meeting. I hope fratres and sorores that my message will reach your heart, your mind and will keep us and will strengthen the bones that unite us today.

I’m here in the Cultural Center in New York with all Grand Masters here. After my message they will send you their greetings in their own languages. So fratres and sorores I want to express this happiness for this special occasion.

The title of my message for today is gratitude.

Dear fratres and sorores,

An oath taken during one of our rituals reads: Before the uncertainties of mortal and earthly life, and before the certainty of the omnipotent judgment of the God of my heart I promise…

This phrase has always accompanied me from the day it was first said to me. The uncertainties of mortal and earthly life. The uncertainties.

Things can always go very differently from what we believe and wish, and life teaches us this all the time. Our very phrase “the mastery of life” which has brought so many of us to the Order, from a Rosicrucian perspective and after years of reflection turns out to be something unexpectedly different from what it might suggest.

Mastery of life, in this sense, consists in acceptance and obedience to a law that is greater than us, and not in some absolute control of events, simply because that control is not possible. It is a childish dream misleading from reality.

Let me share a moment of my life in the Order with you. As I write these words for this message, I am sitting in the office Grand Master Julie Scott prepared for me to use when I am at Rosicrucian Park, in San Jose. This office belonged to Ralph Maxwell Lewis. Before me is a framed picture of Harvey Spencer Lewis. More on the left, there is the famous cello we know from the photo where we see him playing it. And I can’t help but reflect on our history and how we got here. I think of how this history has somehow shaped me through the infinite relationships that make up my and our nature, what we are.

Such a reflection seems very appropriate to me on this occasion in which we celebrate the 108 years cicle. To reflect on the past giving meaning to our history is also one of the cornerstones of “knowing yourself”.

And when I look at our history what appears to me clearly is our concept of service.

I see a willingness to serve others, to share something that gave us the joy of living, that built a meaning for our life. I see a light and tenuous spirit, a kind of living thought or dream that has crossed the centuries, moving on the planet to reach thousands and thousands of people who wanted to understand something more about existence, to transform their presence on this planet into a real journey and not just some aimless wandering. I see people moved by an inner call and who have finally found their spiritual home.

This story is a bit the story of all of us gathered here today, I’m sure.

The Order introduced me to wonderful people, true teachers in my life, even if they have never presented themselves like this and they probably do not even know how important they have been in others’ lives.

Etymologically, to be im-portant means to be carried inside, to be carried in people’s hearts. Look carefully and you will see that being important does not mean being famous: there are a lot of famous people who are not important; and a lot of people unknown to the media who are definitely not famous, but who are very important.

For the purpose of this reflection we are naturally encouraged to define for ourselves what a life well lived consists of. And without much effort, we will soon conclude that a life well lived will be one in which we have created and nurtured bonds of affection with the people who have been involved in the time we have spent, in our life.

Life for us will have been well lived not because our bank balance is large, or because we have achieved an important social position: it will have been well lived when the people we have lived with, say of us that we were important to them; and when we understand that we also owe what we are today to the people we have met in our life, some of them still present, others no longer.

I would like to be important to you, and may I tell you that all of you are important to me. If we know how to behave in such a way as to be important to each other, then this will mean that we have not wasted our time, that being together has borne its fruits.

We could then say that we have manifested the dream of our fratres and sorores of the past who became important to us because of their service.

Here; we are the result of all these encounters, of all the emotions lived together, of all the experiences made together, of all the relationships we have built over the years, with those who are no longer with us, with those who still share this time with us, and also by relationships with those who are not yet here but will one day arrive.

Today we know a lot about human nature. We have knowledge which is scientifically based and which corroborates what spiritual traditions have always handed down. We are relationship. We are made up of the infinite plots that form from the moment of our birth to our last breath.

Psychologist Mwalimu Immara states that death is the last act of growth of human life. We are not born in a finished state. We are born incomplete, and we shape ourselves during life. A car, a refrigerator or a smartphone is ready and complete and wears out as we use it, whereas we are born not ready and we build ourselves by living.

What I see in the history of our Order, and especially in the 108 years cycle , is a great number of fratres and sorores who have taken care of relationships, who have nurtured bonds with feelings of affection and respect. People who have given the word “service” its true meaning, that is, who have acted with the sole purpose of building moments of harmony and happiness in others. This is the true spirit of our Order and to forget it means slowly eroding what others have built and losing the values that form our identity. Thousands of members who were not concerned about the end of any cycle – whatever it means. Their concern was and is to serve.

We are relationship. The full power of the concept of community also resides in this statement. We, Rosicrucians, make up an initiatory community whose foundations lie in the positive responses that the soul gives to every one of our collective activities, to every moment of solitude in our sanctum. Our community is based on a feeling that can hardly be explained rationally but which, nevertheless, constitutes the true sustaining principle of our Order.

If we had to sum up in one word the feeling that surrounds us when thinking about our entire history so far, this word certainly would be “gratitude”.

We are deeply grateful for what others have done so that we could be here today.

So let’s say a few more words about this concept of gratitude.

Gratitude requires our recognition that things could have been different, and perhaps will turn out differently in the future. But so far, we must recognize the blessings that have been reserved for us, the privileges of the encounters, of the experiences that have formed us. It is a feeling that comes from sensing that we have received something for free, an unexpected gift, a gift that others give us with the sole purpose of seeing us live a moment of happiness, a gift that requires nothing in return; to recognize that we come to be at a point in life where the best things reach us, like an unexpected gift.

The mystery of the Rosicrucian work lies in this sense of happiness. After all, we all try to experience moments of happiness. The Greeks called this sensation eudaimonia, a sort of completeness of being, of completeness of the sense of living, a fullness that requires nothing else, being complete in itself.

Plato taught that this feeling that we continually seek is called love (eros in Greek) and regards the search for what one does not have. We desire what we do not have, and this sets human beings on a journey in their continuous search for happiness. Eros, therefore, is the desire for what one does not possess, for what is lacking in us.

Aristotle (a disciple of Plato) for his part, places this happiness in finding one’s position in the Cosmos. Cosmos is a Greek word that refers to an order which however carries within itself a form of beauty. Aristotle emphasized that this happiness and completeness is found in the moment in which human beings find their positions in the cosmos, the places they belong to. Aristotle called Filia that form of happiness.

In Homer’s Odyssey we see Ulysses (Odysseus) trying to return home to Ithaca. The whole work is about this return journey. At a certain point of the journey Ulysses is taken prisoner of the goddess Calypso, a beautiful goddess who falls in love with him and wants to keep him in her island at all costs. Calypso tries in every way to convince Ulysses to stay by offering him everything in her possibility, including herself. As a last attempt to keep him, she offers Ulysses immortality as well, but not just any immortality, which could also foresee an eternal aging. The goddess promises him immortality as Ulysses is in that moment of his life, full of vigor and energy. But in the evening she sees Ulysses heading to the beach and crying at the horizon. Our hero is crying. This is the first lesson that Greek philosophy left us regarding the pursuit of happiness: we are not willing to exchange the place we belong to in this universe even with eternity.

Fratres and Sorores, we come from there, from that Tradition. We are looking for our Ithaca, we are all traveling towards it, as the beautiful poem Ithaca by Kostantin Kavafis reminds us.

The celebration of this cycle, therefore, goes far beyond the simple re-enactment of the history lived up to now. We are actually celebrating an event which is part of the history of the evolution of human thought, in the history of the pursuit of happiness.

One hundred and eight years of thought, work, invocations, rituals, and celebrations that have built positive relationships, that have formed people, that have given breath to lofty ideals, that have built brotherhood.

And all this thanks to the work of others, of people who have served the Order, without themselves thinking they were doing anything extraordinary but simply serving for the pleasure of seeing our smile, our happiness.

There can be no other feeling, even rationally justifiable, other than a deep sense of gratitude.

Consequently, Fratres and Sorores, this awareness immediately places a great responsibility upon us. It imperiously requires that the AMRA law be fulfilled; giving and receiving; the balance of energies, so that they continue to flow. If we are here today, it is because we have committed to serve the Order and our fratres and sorores, with joy and without expecting anything in return other than their smile. Our actions must be a source of happiness in others, and even if we have not reached the status of Master yet, we have to behave as if we already are one.

This means being an expression of those ideals and values that we personally consider the most noble and lofty. Striving to express the virtues of the soul with dedication and discipline so that one day these expressions become natural within us.

Of course this commitment comes with great responsibility, and in this sense, brotherhood meets our needs. We have to support each other; if we fall we should find a hand to help us get up; we have to feed on the spirit of the community.

As Comenius reminded us:

“If we believe that knowledge, morality and faith coincide, we realize that paying attention to the purpose of Creation, turning our gaze to the essence of the soul, and caring for the well-being of others are one.”

Thus, I declare to you that the 108-year cycle which begins today will not be a cycle of dormancy, but a cycle of service. Selfless service, done with joy for the good of others, of our fratres and sorores and of humanity. Because this is why AMORC was born – and now, more than ever, the world needs this.

May we be worthy of the gift that has been generously given to us and may the Cosmic assist us forever in carrying out and fulfilling the mission that has been entrusted to us. We are closing a cycle, but we know what is expected from us and we know that the work is not finished yet.

So Mote It Be!

To view this video in other languages, please go to Imperator’s Message April 2023.