Remember the book I wrote about called “True Esoteric Traditions”? I wanted to give you some more from that book. The Introduction was written by a long-time friend of the book’s author, M. Dale Palmer, Albert Hugh T. Doss, M.D. 

Dr. Doss, who was born in 1909, described himself as a Coptic Christian medical doctor and psychiatrist, and a native Egyptian living in the U.S. After telling the reader that the book is provocative and that a fact is not a fact until you believe it is, he described the work as “one person’s search for truth.” And that truth is “perceived and accepted by each individual,” is “limitless and exists now and will exist throughout eternity,” and is “subjective, and cannot ever really be revealed or shared with another.” And then he introduced the Rosicrucian Order, which throughout its history has aimed to “reveal to man, for his guidance, the laws that connect the material man to the spiritual man.” That philosophical organization featured prominently in both Dr. Doss’s introduction and the book itself.

Dr. Doss’s introduction includes with an extensive autobiography, and for me that was probably the best part of this 348-page tome. In telling us about his family and personal history, he first discussed Egyptian Pharaonic and Christian religions, mystery schools, the Egyptian Brotherhood, mysticism, and Rosicrucianism. As a child, he was raised by English governesses and English was his first language. He was taught Arabic on Sundays by a Muslim sheikh who traveled from house to house teaching the children, who called him Sheikh Bicyclette. 

He wrote about his father, who was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Egyptian Hotels, which included the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor and the Cataract Hotel in Aswan. His father’s business and political careers meant extensive luxury travel throughout Europe, homes that were grand enough to later become embassies for Saudi Arabia and China, and the many servants who cared for the family and their properties. His father was a cabinet minister to King Fouad and King Farouk. The first long-distance phone call from Egypt to England was made from the Doss’s study. When the British occupation of Egypt ended, his father was on the commission to write the new Egyptian Constitution. When Italy invaded Ethiopia in World War 2, Emperor Haile Selassie and his family stayed with the Doss family in Cairo. His father also successfully represented the Constitutional Party in Egypt against the government when the government shut down the Party’s political newspaper publishing operation. 

Dr. Doss became a Rosicrucian to find answers to his “many questions about the human mind and body that had not been answered in a satisfying way to me during my medical and surgical training.” He moved up in the international organization and by 1956 was the chairman of the International Rosicrucian Convention. Rosicrucians, he tells us, teach that “your thoughts are things and that they actually create electrons in your body and your environment. The entire body is constantly sending forth sparks of light or electricity.” 

Those electrons, he stated, are “mere points in space with no extent and no structure.” But, they “live forever, and they learn, think, love, and act. The entire universe is filled with intelligent, vibratory electrons of light. They are spirit.” Dr. Doss wrote that “when you die (or pass through transition, to be more accurate), the electrons in your body are slowly released to mingle with all other electrons in the universe, without losing their individual identity or experiences. With the first breath, a baby breathes in electrons, which then become a part of his or her evolving soul personality. Your electrons are always in communication with all of the electrons of the universe, and there is a mind in every electron!”

Dr. Doss goes on to say that the author spoke of cycles, polarity, and duality, within and beyond our bodies. While Mr. Palmer wrote of change in religion, government, thoughts, and consciousness, Dr. Doss reminded us that “everything in the universe vibrates. A vibration is a movement – a change.” If we agree with Mr. Palmer and Dr. Doss, then we can accept that if we wish to grow and evolve, we cannot always have the same thoughts or attitudes. If we resist change, we cannot make progress or be creative. “With our God-given free will, we can choose to reach out for a greater awareness; we can see the mistakes that have been made in history, mistakes we ourselves have made, and then work for a better world of peace, beauty, cooperation, and harmony.”