Today is the Fourth of July 1997. Americans all over the world are celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia two hundred and twenty-one years ago. This is being written forty miles north of where this premier document of human rights was first announced. As I drove down the main street of our little village, Quakertown, yesterday, it was reminded of its part in the struggle that produced the great experiment in human accomplishment that we call America. During the siege of Philadelphia, it was feared that the English might capture the Liberty Bell and thus destroy this symbol of the freedom that was anticipated once the occupying army was beaten. To prevent this calamity, the Liberty Bell was sequestered for a short time in the little hamlet of Quakertown, a good day's ride north of Philadelphia. The Colonists assumed the English would never guess they would secure such an important item in such an unassuming place. This assumption proved correct since the English obviously deemed it unnecessary to investigate Quakertown during the war, and the home still stands today on the main street of this hamlet where the Liberty Bell was secreted.

Even though this is a book on Health and Happiness, not a history book, there is in the words of Thomas Jefferson much that is applicable to our subject. After all, is he not the first writer of any political document of similar magnitude to use the word "happiness" in a place of prominence? While there have been, before and since, many great and important declarations of human rights and freedoms, I doubt that any of them found it practical to include such an "up front" admonition for happiness. Surely, the stress on this possibility as a right is one of the main reasons the Declaration of Independence is so loved and revered the world over. Take out the phrase "Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" and this Declaration becomes only an ordinary political document.

In recent biographies of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and other founders of our country, much has bee made of the "mystery" surrounding some of their ways and philosophies. The reason for this "mystery" is simple; All of these men were members of an Arcane Mystery School, and in the case of those men mentioned above this school was the Rosicrucian Fraternity formed in Germany in 1614. The Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution were not formed out of thin air, but were a secular political statement of the principles of human rights and freedom long taught by the Arcane fraternity to which these framers belonged. Jefferson had only to look to the teachings of his Spiritual Philosophy to find the inspiration to pen, "We hold these truth to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," It was, and is, the teaching of the philosophy he and his compatriots espoused that all individuals must be free to seek their own health and happiness and that no government should have the power to interfere with that right and liberty unless their exercise of that right should interfere with the same rights others possess. Today we think of this concept as, to use Jefferson's words, "self-evident," but in his time it was not self-evident. It was treason or heresy in most of the nations of the Earth. Therefore, it was with great and glorious chutzpah that Jefferson put down these words without compromise to the political correctness of his day. He was not writing a political statement; he was writing a statement of the Divine Law and in the statement outlined the "unalienable Rights" that all men must have if they are to be free to follow the Divine Law and seek to walk the Path of the Great Work. The Declaration of Independence set the stage so that the teaching of the Divine Law and the availability of the Great Work to all men and women, not just the elite and aristocracy, could become a reality. This is the real and lasting contribution of Jefferson and his compatriots to mankind. In essence, he was the Prometheus of his day. He did indeed bring the Fire from Heaven to all men both high and low.

The importance of this contribution by Jefferson cannot be too strongly stressed. Prior to this time only the elite and wealthy had an opportunity to discover the Great Work and the benefits it can bring to those who follow the Path in harmony with the Divine Law. The masses were under the domination of the few and even when, as happened occasionally, their leader was knowledgeable in the Divine Law, they were still not allowed into the inner "Mysteries." Jefferson changed all this forever. Since his contribution was as much, or more, spiritual in nature than temporal, he is difficult for historians to understand or appreciate. When he established the University of Virginia, he again hammered another nail in the coffin of special interests and the elite by first al all making the edifice of higher learning in America one that was not managed by a religious sect, and second, by making it free to all who desired to attend and learn. He was a true liberator, not of this new nation as was Washington, but of the human spirit, a much more difficult task. While others created the physical country where man could be free to follow the Divine Law and accomplish the Great Work, Jefferson gave us the philosophy and inspiration to make such accomplishments possible and even practical.

In one simple sentence Jefferson rang the death knell for permanent oppression on this Earth: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Each word and phrase in this sentence has helped to shape human thought since the document first was published. We must admit, though, today fewer and fewer Americans believe the philosophy so eloquently stated is really true. If you think not, let us examine the words and phrases one by one.

The first controversial word is "We." Who are "We"? "We" are not the government, not the King or Parliament, nor are "We" the Church. "We" are the people of the United States of America. It is "We" who "hold these truths to be self-evident," not an elected or monarchial power. This was the first time such power to determine their own fate was taken by a people as a whole. This was a brave and rather presumptuous liberty taken by Jefferson since it is doubtful if he, the great defender of democracy, had really taken a poll to see if this was what the people (the "We") of that day thought was self-evident - but aren't we glad he took that liberty?

The next important word is "truths." Jefferson did not quibble. He did not attempt to be politically correct. He could have used "concepts" "opinions," "philosophy," etc., to be self-evident but he did not. He spoke of "truths." The power of such terminology is that if someone desired to oppose it, they would be opposing Truth unless they could first prove that the tenets laid down by Jefferson were not truths, not an easy task given the thought of the day and the universality of the Jeffersonian language.

"Self-evident." That is a marvelous term. If something is self-evident, than no proof is required. It just is. That certainly ends debate quickly. Again, like "truths," it is not easy to prove that something is not "self-evident." At the least the Colonists could day that while these "truths" might not be "self-evident" to the British, they certainly were to them. No one can fairly argue what is "self-evident" to another.

The most controversial phrase in this sentence - both then and now - is "that all men are created equal." Certain modern political factions hold, frequently for their own aggrandizement, that it is the obligation of government to "level life's playing field' by taking from the rich to give to the poor, hobbling the ambitious to allow the slacker to catch up, and forcing by legislation all those things what instill mediocrity in the lives of our citizens. Jefferson certainly held a different view of this phrase. Notice, for obvious reasons he did no say "born equal" but rather "created equal." No two men are born equal, and Jefferson knew this all to well. Being a student of the Great Work, he knew that when we are born into this life we are only continuing a journey that was begun long ago. He also knew that while in the beginning "all men [and women] were created equal," this ceased to be true with their first incarnation on Earth. From the moment man began to think, plan and execute those plans, he also began to build a Karma ( good and evil impressions on his Divine Spark) and since this Karma was his uniquely his alone, it made him different from every other person on the planet. With each ensuing incarnation these differences grew greater and greater, until today there are wide differences in humans. Yes, all humans were created equal, but since that moment of creation they have made themselves unequal. In fact this is the warp and woof of life, to make ourselves as unequal as possible from our fellow earthlings. Think about it for a moment and you will come to understand that all human progress is made by the efforts of some to become as unequal as possible. We might paraphrase Karl Marx and say, "Equality is the opium of the indolent."

Another form of equality, of course, must be addressed, equality before the law and in the marketplace. This is an equality Jefferson championed and one all students of the Great Work have always fought for. This equality, however, means just that: equal treatment for all. Today there is a tendency in some quarters to "adjust" equality to compensate for what are considered inequalities of the past. Nowhere is the old saw, "Two wrongs do not make a right," more applicable than here. The student of the Great Work knows that under the Divine Law, all reap only that which they have sown, and if a true inequality has taken place in the life of an individual, the Divine Law will make the proper amends far more justly and far more generously than any human agency can do. Therefore, when men and their governments attempt to "correct" old inequalities they do the objects of their attention a greater disservice than any can comprehend.

Next we come to a phrase that most governments, our own not excluded, have hoped mankind would overlook. This is, "that they [men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Please notice that these Rights do not come from the government, King, potentate or even the Church, as was the former concept, but directly from the Creator Himself. America is still the shining light on the hill as long as we keep these words in our consciousness. No other nation dare use such language. In all other nations, even the most democratic, Rights come from the State, and as long as they do so, they, the nation, cannot be in harmony with the Divine Law.

We mentioned democracy. This is the catchword today; we feel that we have truly accomplished something if we can convert a nation to democracy. Democracy is nothing but the rule of those who can best manipulate the people to vote for them. Unless such democracies will acknowledge that certain Rights of the people are "unalienable" and "endowed by their Creator,' as do we, they have only a tyranny of the majority.

And what are these unalienable rights? Jefferson listed only three but stated clearly "the among these [rights] are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The word "among" shows that there are many other rights of the people of the United States of America that come not from the government but from the Creator, and under the action of the Divine Law, woe to man or government who attempts to usurp them for personal gain.

The first-mentioned right is "Life." Life can mean many things. Should a law passed by a government hinder a man from making an honest living, it is in essence depriving him of some portion of his "Life." Likewise, could we not argue that the confiscatory taxes we now are forced to pay to a bloated bureaucracy have exactly the same effect in that hey hinder and jeopardize a goodly portion of a man's life? When the average citizen is required to work nearly half his productive year to pay taxes imposed upon him, does not that mean that the government is taking away from him one-half of his life to use for its own nefarious and enigmatic purposes?

Many nations of the world contend that their citizens have liberty, but is this the same as Jefferson's "Liberty"? To Jefferson, liberty meant the freedom to live one's life in peace as long as one did not interfere with the same right of all other citizens. This is not, as too often assumed today, license to do what one will, but a freedom assuming personal responsibility for all actions. To Thomas Jefferson it also meant that he would be free from interference from both Church and State. It was, after all, he who wrote the first religions freedom act.

This style of liberty is still unique today. Almost every country in the world since Jefferson's time likes to talk of liberty, but in most cases they mean the freedom to obey the arbitrary laws created by the leaders as well as the freedom to agree with the opinion of that leadership. That kind of "freedom" has been with mankind for thousands of years and was as active in Nazi Germany as it is in Communist China today. This is not what Jefferson had in mind when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Finally we come to the crowning phrase in this historic sentence, "and the pursuit of Happiness." As mentioned before, the word "happiness" is not commonly found in political papers. After all, most politicians are wary of promising happiness to their constituents, knowing that their usual activities cause a rather different end result. But then, of course, Jefferson did not fall into the trap of promising happiness. He only promised the "pursuit of Happiness." What did he mean by this? He meant that all persons on this planet have the God-given right to seek happiness in any way they desire all long as that search does no interfere with the same right of any other person. As simple and basic a right as this may seem, we should not forget that in Jefferson's day it was not accepted as a right of the people by the vast majority of governments or societies. The people had only the right to serve the State in the manner the State found most beneficial. This is still the underlying principle in the majority of nations today, although it must be admitted that most governments have been able to put a beneficent "spin" on this principle to allow the people to feel they have more than a modicum of free will in regard to their "pursuit of Happiness."

The underlying principle of Jefferson's "pursuit of Happiness" was to allow any person in the new America to have the right to seek an understanding of the Divine Law and be able to follow the Path of the Great Work if he so desired. Jefferson knew, as did other founders, that a government designed to allow every citizen the same rights as every other citizen to learn and obey the Divine Law would as a natural consequence allow all other good and productive things to follow. And so they did.

However, many of our citizens have forgotten the principles Jefferson laid down in his Declaration. We have followed the path of the Roman Emperors and too few the path placed before them by Jefferson. They attempted to placate the people with the modern equivalent of the Circus Maximus rather than lead them to the Vision of Jefferson. Almost without exception today's leaders have little or no knowledge of the Divine Law or the Great Work and therefore are, all too often, only the blind attempting to lead the blind. Most modern attempts to examine the lives of the framers of our nation fall woefully short of the mark for the same reason. Without an understanding of the nature of the Rosicrucian Fraternal philosophy that motivated these men, such investigations must by their very nature miss their mark.

Because of this, we are in great jeopardy of losing the few Jeffersonian "Rights' that still remain. It is the nature of all men not on the Path of the Great Work to desire advantage over their fellowman. This trait will lead all governments to excess and corruption if not controlled by an abiding understanding of, and willingness to follow, the Divine Law. So it has with ours. The time is drawing near when the Modern Circus Maximus will no longer divert the attention of the people, and the third phase of the Vision of Washington at Valley forge will begin. (See Chapter Thirteen.)

We are now anticipating this third and most terrible of the challenges to those principles laid down by Thomas Jefferson so long ago. Then and now, only idealists are able to help inspire man to learn of and then to follow the Divine Law and to seek the Great Work. Mankind will never advance further than the dreams of our idealists. What a sad world this would be if the idealists did not always hold out to man concepts that he presently finds impossible or impractical to live up to. We need idealists today more than ever because modern man finds himself in a state very much as John wrote in Revelations 3:15-22.

"I know thy works, that thou are neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

"I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and while raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

"As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and an set down with my Father in his throne.

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

At present we in America are in a state much as described above. We can truly say, "I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." Our nation now seems to be in a state of perpetual prosperity. This is only a chimera. For, as the Bible continues, "knowest not that thou are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." In earthly goods we now excel, but much of this is on borrowed money and spiritual indebtedness. Some day in the not too distant future both our temporal and spiritual debts will be called and we will have little with which to pay them.

If Jefferson were alive today, he would know exactly what to say to reinspire in all the spirit he and his fellow compatriots instilled into the first free American. He would know how to appeal to the best qualities deeply hidden in your Higher Self. But since he is not here, at least not in his precious well-known body, we will do the best we can with our humble abilities to help reinspire that spirit.

The world cannot now be turned away from the reaction of its past destructive actions nor, can America sidestep its Karmic debt. The die has been cast and the numbers are not favorable for us as a nation; we have been judged by our actions and found wanting. If the American Dream is to live on, we must do all we can individually to survive the coming retribution for America's blindness in rejecting the warnings of our Founding Fathers.

As General Washington makes abundantly clear in Chapter Thirteen, great destruction is in store for our nation. A remnant will be saved, however, and in the forefront of this remnant will be those who have made an effort to understand the Divine Law and to live in harmony with it. By the very nature of this harmony they not only will be protected by the Law, but also will be set into places by the Law where they can best teach the Divine Law to those who are left after this third and final challenge to America is completed.

In the New Renaissance, the words of Thomas Jefferson will take on a renewed meaning, since those who will be in a position to lead and teach will be of the same philosophical understanding as were our Founding Fathers.

At present those who would live in harmony with the Divine Law and follow the Path of the Great Work must learn to be "in the world, but not of the world." As was shown in Chapter Five on the Kingdom of Heaven, we are to accomplish the Great Work in - and in conjunction with - the world of men and women. This is our destiny, but we are not to lower ourselves to the level of the world's carnality. This is what is meant by being "in the world" but not "of the world." This is exactly what the man from Nazareth did. He spent much of his time with the lower and more degenerate people of his day, yet at no time did he lower himself to their level; rather he attempted to draw them up to his level. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me..'___John 12:32. This, too, is the destiny of all who would walk the Path today. It is the ultimate way to Health and Happiness.
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