travel – Rosicrucians In Oregon

(A True Story by Fratre Gary Romans)

In 2002 I was proudly driving my new Saab 9-5 on the Sunset Highway on my way to Vancouver. This was my first luxury car: heated leather seats, a powerful sound system, and a sporty turbocharged engine. Saabs were also considered one of the safest cars made in 2002. What’s more, I enjoyed the quirkiness of Saabs, their relative rareness, and a wedge-shaped design that stood out from 2002 mainstream brands. It was always fun to watch someone not familiar with driving a Saab fumble around trying to find where to put the key. Saab was the first to put it in the center console between the front seats.

It was rush hour, and I was in no hurry. KMHD Jazz was playing Miles Davis, and I was humming along. I often use car travel as a moving meditation, and I was thinking about my last AMORC lesson.

AMORC lesson? In 1991 I was depressed, looking for direction and something to believe in. Religion would be nice, but my thirteen years of Catholic school starting in the early 1950s taught me to fear God, not love him. That experience made me skeptical of any organization that deals with religion, spirituality, or ways of thinking or living. I was in San Jose, CA, on a business trip, and I had an afternoon free. I knew about the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and remembered seeing Rosicrucian ads in old magazines at my uncle’s farm in Michigan. I was intrigued and decided to check the museum out. It was an excellent museum, so I looked for information about the Rosicrucians, expecting a hard sell. There was nothing about joining in the museum! That was attractive to me. I figured that any organization that didn’t care if I wanted to join or not was something worth investigating. I quickly found that The Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) would welcome me as a member, so I joined with some skepticism. I started getting weekly lessons studying mysticism that slowly moved me along the path to developing mastery of life.

I don’t usually disclose my membership in AMORC. I wear a unique AMORC ring and respond if asked, but I’ve found that few people understand mysticism and often respond by asking me to show them a magic trick. No! We study the philosophy that explores the fundamental nature of reality and the metaphysical laws that govern the universe. There is no magic or supernatural woo-woo stuff at all.

So I continued my drive, paying attention to traffic but also pondering the meaning of life. I was making the turn from the Sunset Highway to I-405 when traffic got much heavier, and I came to a dead stop in the middle lane of I-405 near Yamhill Street. After only a few seconds, an unusual movement in my rearview mirror caught my eye. A car in the left lane, moving at what appeared to be a high rate of speed, was heading toward the middle lane and looking like it had no intention of stopping. Luckily for me, my reflexes kicked in. I had just enough time to brace myself against the seat and turn my wheels enough so that when that car plowed into the left rear of my Saab, I was pushed into the Lexus SUV in front of me at an angle, enough so that my airbag did not explode, unlike the airbag of the car that hit me.

I imagine that many of you reading this have been involved in a serious auto accident and remember that your first impulse was to check for injuries. I did, and I’m relieved to say that my Saab performed perfectly, and I felt no pain and saw no blood. The well-engineered seat of the Saab absorbed all the stress of the accident and protected me completely.

But I did hear a deep male voice that asked me, “Are you all right?” I came very close to having my first out-of-body experience and wetting myself!

I admit that I took LSD a few times in the 1960s, and before I stopped drinking, I had a few alcohol-induced hallucinations. I understand the difference between actuality and delusions, and this was no delusion. This was a real, physical voice talking to me. God?

It is amazing how long two seconds can seem after a trauma. In the first quarter second I thought, “My God, it’s God!” In the next three-quarters of a second, I reviewed all the Rosicrucian teachings for something that told me how to talk to God. Nothing there. The next half-second was a review of the thirteen years of indoctrination I had in Catholic schools. Nope. The final half-second was spent coming up with something pithy to say that would be the most important thing I’ve ever said in my life, and then I mumbled in a high, squeaky voice, “I’m OK,” hoping God would say more.

Then the voice spoke again, “This is OnStar. We know where you are and where the damage is. Stay inside the car. We’ve already called the police and an ambulance.”

OnStar was still new in 2002. It is a connected vehicle service that provides automatic crash response and optional other features; optional other features that I didn’t buy, so I forgot about the free automatic crash response. I am pleased that my complaint to OnStar was listened to after the accident. They now reverse the order of the sentences that they use to respond to an accident, and they say, “This is OnStar. Are you all right?” It is my contribution to the safety and mental health of drivers. My 2002 Saab was totaled, and I received a brand-new 2003 Saab 9-5 with OnStar, and still without the options. I eventually gave that car to my grandson on his 16^th birthday, and he is still driving the twenty-two-year-old car in 2025.

I’ve now been a Rosicrucian student for over 33 years, and I still haven’t found anything to be skeptical about. I continue to receive and study weekly lessons. There is still no magic and nothing supernatural, but what is included has been life-changing for me. I fully plan to meet God when I die, listen to some Miles Davis with him (maybe with the real Miles!), and share this story for a good laugh together.

Friends and members visited Vietnamese Chau Nam-Quang Buddhist temple. This temple complex has been in the works since 1996, and the community has built a symbolic garden around Buddha’s Birth, Enlightenment, Teaching and Death. The extensive grounds have four comfy meditation gazebos, a mausoleum, a library, a practice hall, a lunch hall, and many other buildings. What you see in these photos are a few of the people who attended the tour, standing in front of the statue group representing the birth of the Buddha. Elsewhere on the grounds, the community is using huge logs, cut into disks, as pathways between gardens in a side yard about two acres in size. Buddhist community host Master Kevin took us into the library and gifted many of us with books his Master had written explaining the sutras, in both Vietnamese and English. In English, Master Kevin informed us that one of the most important lessons the Buddha imparted was to NOT believe anything he said until we did the practice he (the Buddha) recommended, and proved for ourselves that he was right. That is So Much like the Rosicrucian teachings that say, read the monographs, do the exercises and meditations, but do NOT believe anything we teach until you prove it for your self.

The man wearing the yellow and green top is being reverent in the courtyard that has statue deities rejoicing at Buddha’s enlightenment. Behind him is another member who is contemplating something different. The woman with long thin braids is looking over at the statue of Kwan Yin, who represents compassion, healing and the essence of female energy. The man in the meeting hall with red carpeting is examining the decorations on the huge bell that a person may ring, after composing a prayer in their mind as to what negativity they want removed from their life. The sound of the bell, whose name is “Meditation”, is supposed to fragment and break up the negativity for you. This hall also has huge drums that will be beaten in a ceremony in May to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday. Look on the Temple website: https://namquangtemple.org and for most of their events, the public is welcome. The man and woman posing for photos in the entry for the meditation hall. This Temple is the location of next month’s Sound Healing Workshop, for member’s only. (For more information on that, see https://sites.google.com/amorc.rosicrucian.org/rosicruciansinoregon/ and look for events on May 3rd and 4th.) The last photo is of the sculpture representing the Death of the Buddha. I took this close-up first, because there is a stripe of darker marble under the Buddha’s chin that goes down the length of its clothed body and I wondered why the sculptors chose to leave in this Yin to the glittering white marble Yang. Also, there was a very small flower, blown from a nearby tree, in the palm of the Buddha sculpture’s hand.