The Rose Chamber

This is a remarkable chronicle of a profound spiritual journey leading the author into a deep understanding of the hidden patterns of transformation operating at many levels in our lives. In the midst of the challenges of everyday life over a period of years, the author is guided by a wise teacher to enter into the spiritual worlds through meditation. The path is hard and involves much letting go and integrating of the past, both in terms of experiences and the qualities these have developed. At a certain point she enters into a place she calls the Rose Chamber, from where she engages in work helping those who have just arrived in the halls of the dead and are struggling to orient themselves. Throughout the book, colours play an important healing role as well as representing the qualities of certain beings - blue gold for example. She is initiated into a special healing group bound by threads of love and is given a new spiritual name, Miriam. Together with the others, she takes a solemn oath pledging herself to the service of the All-Being of love. All the time, she is struggling with negativity and self-doubt, as also reflected in the life experiences she describes. However, she understands directly that we are all protected by an angelic being.

She learns that she was a Cathar in a previous incarnation (I now live in this region) and that she now needs to learn to love the Earth and the physical body. Psychospiritually, she has to be released from hatred for her oppressors and arrive at a place of forgiveness and trust. Two significant people from that time reappear in the present life where further opportunities for love and forgiveness are presented. More profoundly, a group calling themselves the Manichaeans is training to transform evil into love and have had to experience perpetrating evil themselves and subsequently transforming their own negativity. Caroline belongs to this group and has had an opportunity in this life to transcend the feeling of hatred that she had at the Cathar time. She revisits the scene when she was burned at the stake and was so consumed by hatred for her oppressors that she was unable to rise out of the body.

Working with the shadow is a critical part of this transformative process; we must learn to love and accept those parts of ourselves. She also manages to work through hostile feelings for her mother and they both reach a space of mutual recognition and love. Her sister, Sarah, dies when she is very young but reappears in the spiritual realm as part of the unfolding narrative, and is also there to welcome her mother when she makes her transition. Given the widespread ignorance of subtle spiritual realities, it takes a great deal of courage to publish such a book so full of important insights. I myself take it absolutely seriously, perhaps partly because of my reading of Swedenborg. As I wrote in another review about Rudolf Steiner and Peter Deunov, the overcoming of evil with love is one of the ultimate human tests and will continue to present itself as a challenge well into the future. Anyone treading a similar path will find invaluable guidance and inspiration as well as deep insight in this book.