THE FUNERAL SERVICE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Order of Funeral Service conducted by
The Rosicrucian Fellowship and its Centers, and by friends desiring to use
it.
Organ or Piano Voluntary.
Song: Third verse of "Nearer, my God, to Thee."
NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE.
3. There let the way appear
Steps unto heav'n;
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy giv'n;
Angels to beckon me,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
Unveil Emblem--White Cross with white
rose in center.
Rosicrucian Greeting by Reader: "My dear Sisters and brothers: May the Roses bloom upon your Cross."
Response by People: "And upon yours, also."
Reader: Let us devote a moment to silent
meditation upon the thought of love, peace, and tranquility.
ADDRESS
"But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not,
even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and
rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." (I Thess. 4:13-14.)
"But some man will say, How are the dead
raised up? and with what body do they come?...That which thou sowest, thou
sowest not that body that shall be:...but God, giveth it a body as it hath
pleased Him, and to every [man] his own body.
"All flesh is not the same flesh: but
there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another flesh
of fishes, and another flesh of birds. There are also celestial bodies,
and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the
glory of the terrestrial is another.
"There is one glory of the sun, and
another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star
differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the
dead....It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a
natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and
there is a spiritual body." (I Cor. 15:35-44.)
One of the tests of the value of
religion is the comfort it gives us when sorrow and trouble try the heart.
Ti fulfill its mission it must bring comfort in sorrow, particularly at
the time of the final separation from our loved ones. When the reaper
Death strikes, when it pleases God to end the present earth life of our
relatives and friends, when our human resources have been exhausted, then
we look to religion for courage and fortitude to bear the burden of our
great loss and our sorrow.
How do the Rosicrucian Teachings meet
these requirements? They tell us in the first place that death is not the
end; also how, under the Law of Consequence, the fruit of our actions in
this life, whether good or bad, must at some future time be harvested, for
the Bible says, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
We know that it is as impossible to
cancel our good or evil deeds by merely passing out of this body as it is
to compensate our debtors by removal to another city. The debt still
remains, and sometime, somewhere, it must be liquidated.
We rejoice when a soul is born, that is,
encased in a robe of clay; but we weep when this form is cast off at death
because we do not realize that such conduct is the exact reverse of what
it ought to be. The spirit is imprisoned in this coat of clay at its birth
into this physical world, to be subject for many years to the pains,
aches, and infirmities to which all flesh is heir. This physical life,
however, is necessary that the soul may learn its lessons in the school of
life.
If weeping is to be indulged in, then we
should weep when the spirit is born into this world; but we should rejoice
when death comes to liberate it from the pain and discomfort of physical
existence. if we could see and know the relief which our loved ones feel
when they are freed from a suffering body, we should truly rejoice, and no
longer weep. Think of a poor soul, who has been chained to a bed of
sickness, when it awakens in the invisible world where it is able to move
about freely whither it will, and free from pain. Should we not bid such a
soul Godspeed and not weep?
It has pleased God to call our
friend,................................, to a greater work, to broader
fields, in another world where he (or she) has no need for a physical
body, and he (or she) has therefore laid this garment away.
(Short talk here relative to the
qualities and past activities of the departed person.)
As a child goes to school day after day
for the purpose of gaining knowledge, with nights of rest between the
school days, meanwhile growing a body from childhood to the full stature
of manhood or womanhood, so also the spirit attends the school of life
during a succession of life-days, and inhabits a series of earthly forms
of gradually improving texture in which to gain experience. As Oliver
Wendell Holmes says:
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"
We know that our friend will come back
sometime, somewhere, with a better and nobler body than the garment which
he (or she) has discarded. We know that under the immutable law of
association he (or she) must return so that by repeated lives and
friendships his (or her) love nature may be widened and deepened into an
ocean of LOVE.
Death has lost its sting so far as we
are concerned, not because we are callous and love our friends and
relatives less, but because we are convinced that we have absolute proof
that there is no death. We have no cause for grief because the silver cord
has been loosed and the body is about to return to the dust from whence it
came, for we know that the spirit of our friend is more alive than ever,
is present with us now though unseen by most of us.
The garment which this spirit inhabited
we consign to the fire, that its elements may be transferred to other
forms by the alchemy of nature.
As the poet Arnold says:
"Never the spirit was born!
The spirit shall cease to be never!
Never was time it was not,
End and beginning are dreams.
Birthless and deathless remaineth the spirit forever;
Death has not touched it at all,
Dead though the house of it seems.
"Nay! but as one layeth
A worn-out robe away,
And taking another, sayeth:
This will I wear today,
So putteth by the spirit
Lightly its garment of flesh
And passeth on to inherit
A residence afresh."
Let us send up a prayer asking the aid
of God in speeding our departed brother (or sister) on his (or her) way to
take up his (or her) new work on the other side.
(Close by singing the last verse of the
Rosicrucian Fellowship Closing Hymn.)
GOD BE WITH YOU TILL WE MEET AGAIN
God be with you till we meet again
At the Cross with Roses garnished;
May our lives be pure, untarnished,
Till the Rosy Cross we greet again.
REFRAIN:
Till we meet, till we meet,
Till we meet, the Rosy Cross to greet,
Till we meet, till we meet,
God be with you till we meet again.
We now commit this robe of flesh which
has been worn by and has become too small for the spirit who was known to
us as........................, to the elements from which it came. Our
friend has not gone away, he (or she) has not left us; he (or she) is in
our midst although unseen by those whom he (or she) loved. He (or she) is
free and clothed in the Body best fitted for the higher life unto which he
(or she) has gone, so let us wish him (or her) Godspeed to that new
environment.
There is no death. The stars go down
To rise upon another shore,
And bright in heaven's jeweled crown
They shine forevermore.
There is no death. The forest leaves
Convert to life the viewless air;
The rocks disorganize to feed
The hungry moss they bear.
There is no death. The dust we tread
Shall change beneath the summer showers
To golden grain or mellow fruit,
Or rainbow tinted flowers.
There is no death. The leaves may fall,
The flowers may fade and pass away--
They only wait through wintry hours
The warm, sweet breath of May.
There is no death, although we grieve
When beautiful familiar forms
That we have learned to love are torn
From our embracing arms.
Although with bowed and breaking heart.
With sable garb and silent tread,
We bear their senseless dust to rest,
And say that they are dead--
They are not dead. They have but passed
Beyond the mists that blind us here,
Into the new and larger life
Of that serener sphere.
They have but dropped their robe of clay
To put a shining raiment on;
They have not wandered far away,
They are not "lost" or "gone."
Though unseen to the mortal eye,
They still are here and love us yet;
The dear ones they have left behind
They never do forget.
Sometimes upon our fevered brow
We feel their touch, a breath of balm:
Our spirit sees them, and our hearts
Grow comforted and calm.
Yes, ever near us, though unseen,
Our dear, immortal spirits tread--
For all God's boundless Universe
Is Life--there are no dead.
(By John McCreery)
During life in the physical world the
human Ego works through its four vehicles, namely, the physical, vital,
desire, and mental bodies, all of which are connected to one another by
the silver cord. At night the Ego withdraws into the inner worlds taking
with it the mental and desire bodies, leaving the physical and vital
bodies lying on the bed.
The Ego first brings about harmonious rhythm of
the mind and desire body, which, in turn, work upon the vital body. The
vital body then commences to restore the tired and worn-out physical atoms
to health and vitality. This restoration can only be done during the time
the desire body and mind are removed, for it is their activities which use
up the physical energy during the day, and in order that the vital body
may be free to rebuild the broken down physical vehicle, the Ego separates
itself with the two higher vehicles (the desire and mental bodies) from
the two lower vehicles but remains tied by the silver cord.
At death when
the physical body can no longer hold on to its higher vehicles, when
disintegration must ensue, the Ego is forced to vacate its house, made of
clay, which it has built and used for an allotted length of time, and in
which it has learned many helpful and soul-building lessons. It has now
reached a period on the path of evolution where it must take time for the
assimilation of the lessons which were learned while functioning in the
world of matter. Death is to the soul what sleep is to the physical body,
a time of rest and recuperation so that the spirit may draw from these
experiences greater soul power.
At death the Ego leaves the physical
body by way of the parietal-occipital sutures, but instead of the vital
body remaining with the physical body as is the case during sleep, it also
leaves the physical body, together with the desire and the mental bodies,
for the spirit's work in the physical body is finished for this earth
life. The vital body now has a different work to do; it is no longer
called upon to keep the physical atoms in health.
At death the vital, desire, and mental
bodies are seen to leave the physical body through the head, and the
spirit, which is leaving its earthly prison house to decay, takes with it
its most cherished belonging, the only part of the physical which cannot
die and which it brings back with it at each earth life. During earth life
there is a tiny atom in the apex of the left ventricle of the heart which
is called the permanent seed atom. This seed atom of the physical vehicle
has been used as a nucleus for a physical body ever since the spirit
possessed a physical vehicle.
When we speak of a permanent seed atom we do
not mean that the physical atom is used, but the forces which flow through
it. These forces remain with the Ego through rebirth after rebirth, or
until this particular spirit has finished its evolution in the physical
world at the close of this period. Then these forces will be transferred
to the seed atom of the vital body which will become the permanent seed
atom of the next period.
Going back to our discussion of the Ego
as it leaves its physical body at what is termed death, we find that the
spirit is passing through a very vital and extremely important period;
friends and relatives should be most careful that their loved one is left
free from excitement, grief, and disturbances of any kind. The body should
not be mutilated and embalming fluids should not be used until 84 hours
after the spirit has ceased functioning in the body. The reason for this
is as follows:
There is a snapping of the silver cord
at death which the Bible speaks of in the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes.
This cord holds the higher and lower vehicles together and at death the
rupture takes place in the heart which causes this organ to cease beating.
When this occurs the Ego with its three bodies, namely, the vital, desire,
and mental bodies, is seen by the clairvoyant floating above the head of
the physical body for three and one- half days. During this period the
spirit is engaged in reviewing the scenes of its past life which have been
impressed on the permanent seed atom in the heart. These impressions have
been left on this seed atom by the blood. We are again taught from the
Bible that the spirit is in the blood; and the blood is the direct vehicle
of the spirit.
The heart and lungs are the only organs
through which all the blood in man's body passes, and the heart is the
stronghold of the human ego; as the blood courses through the heart the
scenes of every passing moment are carried through the blood to the heart
and engraved on the tiny seed atom. This seed atom is also impregnated
with the experiences of all past lives, and from it many impressions come
to man. These teach him the differences between good and evil, and they
become the voice of conscience.
Now the reason we hold it is necessary
that quietness reign in the house of death is as follows: The vital body
is the vehicle used immediately after death to transfer the impressions of
the seed atom in the heart onto the seed atom of the desire body; during
this work the silver cord is not yet broken and the Ego is still conscious
of its vehicles, it still feels and suffers to some extent when mutilation
of its body takes place.
When the spirit is disturbed during this etching,
the impressions are very dim and the spirit as it returns to rebirth in
the next embodiment does not bring with it a keen sense of conscience
because it did not feel the remorse for wrong doings nor the joy of good
actions as keenly as it should in the after-death life.
When the panorama has been fully etched
into the desire body the silver cord breaks and the Ego is free of its
earthly house. The body should then be cremated. Cremation is very helpful
to the spirit, for it is attracted to, and often hovers over, its decaying
body, while burning frees it; this method is also more sanitary.
Let us hope that humanity will soon
awake to the proper care of its dead, and that we will have a science of
death as well as a science of birth.
THE METHOD
The body is to be placed in an ice pack
for preservation during a period of 3 1/2 days or 84 hours after death.
Embalming is absolutely not to be performed before the end of this time.
The body is to be left in perfect quiet, away from all disturbing noises
during this period--no postmortem operations are to be performed previous
to the expiration of the 84 hours.
At the end of this period the body is
to be cremated. Particular care is to be exercised that cremation is not
performed previous to 84 hours after death for the reason that during this
time the spirit still maintains connection with the body and pain from
burning is felt to some extent if cremation is carried out before the end
of the 84 hours.
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