The Rosicrucian Mystery teaching gives a scientific method
whereby an aspirant to higher life may purge himself continually, and thus be able to
entirely avoid existence in purgatory. Each night after retiring the pupil reviews his life
during the past day in reverse
order. He starts to visualize as clearly as possible the scene which took place
just before retiring. He then endeavors to impartially view his actions in that scene
examining them to see whether he did right or wrong. If the latter, he endeavors to
feel and realize as[pg 171]vividly as possible that wrong. For
instance, if he spoke harshly to someone, and upon later consideration finds it was not
merited, he will endeavor to feel exactly as that one felt whom he wronged and at the
very earliest opportunity to apologize for the hasty expression. Then he will call up the
next scene in backward succession which may perhaps be the supper table. In respect of that
scene he will examine himself as to whether he ate to live, sparingly and of foods prepared
without suffering to other creatures of God, (such as flesh foods that cannot be obtained
without taking life). If he finds that he allowed his appetite to run away with him and that
he ate gluttonously, he will endeavor to overcome these habits, for to live a clean life we
must have a clean body and no one can live to his highest possibilities while making his
stomach a graveyard for the decaying corpses of murdered animals. In this respect there
occurs to the writer a little poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox: