Creator, the Destroyer.--Yes, that is the proper order, for Vishnu
preserves from kalpa to kalpa, and Brahma recreates.
Krishna (Vishnu) says in the Bhagavat-Gita, “I am the Self that is
seated in the hearts of all beings.”
He is the One _and_ the Many, for He is in the many and the many
are in Him. You _cannot_ realize Krishna save as you realize Him
as the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings. You cannot
realize the Christ until you can see Him in the hearts of all beings.
Yes, you may struggle with one another and call it hate, or war; that
is separateness.
Separateness is necessary as a stage of evolution, that the ego may
realize itself as distinct; but the time has come when the race should
turn back toward its Source, to Unity, to the Atma that is the same in
everyone.
I have learned much since I last left you two years ago. On earth I did
not talk incessantly of Universal Brotherhood. I wanted to achieve a
“peerless individuality.” Well, I have achieved it. On my two years’
journey among the planets and elsewhere, I found the power I sought;
but I found something else--love, the greatest power of all.
Brotherhood is love and that is why I preach brotherhood. You may
acquire individuality by hating, but not a “peerless individuality.”
Do not be afraid of losing your identity. So long as you can love
something other than yourself you will not lose your individuality. For
to love something _other_ is to posit your individuality.
To love only your separate self is to lose your hold on individuality,
for you are only an individual in relation to other selves. Alone in
the universe, you would have to be nothing or everything, and you
cannot be everything--not just yet, save as you are everything through
unity with everything, and that is love.
Rebel as you will, by that very rebellion against others you assert
their equality with you, you assert their co-existence, and behind
co-existence is Unity, Krishna, “the Self that is seated in the hearts
of all beings.”
Do not be shocked when I say that from our point of view this war seems
very childish, very ignorant.
War was noble a long time ago when mankind was on its way out and
needed to realize separateness; but in course of time war will become
not only unnecessary, but banal.
I am not jesting with serious things. I know far better than you can
know how very serious this war is, for I have watched it on both planes.
The war between the forces of good and evil was not banal. _In the
human heart_ that war will go on for a long time yet, aeons on
aeons; but the day has come when men should war with the evil _in
themselves_, and let other men war with the evil in themselves. The
sword of Mars, the war-god, will not rust so long as the Mars in man
wields it against the powers of darkness in himself.
I have seen the powers of darkness in men exteriorized, have seen them
in objective form, and I assure you they are foemen worthy of your
steel. Each of you has within a foeman worthy of his steel.
Each man has also the Self, the divine, the Christ, the Krishna that is
seated in the hearts of all beings.
I want to tell you something which I saw with my own eyes.
On a battlefield in France, two soldiers killed each other with the
bayonet. The devil in each escaped with the soul. They were not
ordinary men. I saw these two devils, these two “dwellers on the
threshold,” these two “desire-elementals,” call them what you will. Do
you think they fell upon each other to destroy each other? Not at all.
Each fell upon the soul it belonged to. They had no interest in each
other; they had nothing to give or to take away from each other, these
devils, dwellers, elementals.
Do you see what I mean?
Your enemy is within you.
The one you fight outside is your brother. Love him with brotherly love
and your devil will grow weaker as your angel grows stronger.
Your angel is descended from the Atma, the Christ, the Krishna _in
you_. It is similar to the Atma, the Christ, the Krishna in your
brother.
The devils are all very individual. The angels are all very much alike,
though some are stronger than others and older in experience.
Seek the Christ in yourself, that it may arise, with tidings of great
joy unto all men.
That is what I wish to say to the world on this evening before Easter
Day.
_April 3._
LETTER XV
LISTENING IN BRUSSELS
NO, do not expect me to write essays. I am writing letters. Let me be
as discursive as I please. But you will see at the end of my labors
that the building has a frame, and that all the parts are in place.
Having philosophized the last time, I will now tell you a story.
When the German army passed through unresisting Brussels (three
days, if I remember rightly, it was passing through, a long, moving
grey-green river of men, on whose helmetted ripples the sunlight or the
lamplight glittered), I stood for an hour unnoticed upon a balcony,
reading the thoughts of man after man as he passed before my place.
As I have explained to you before, I have no difficulty in reading the
thoughts of the Germans; it is only in trying to make them understand
me that I often fail.
The river of men and the river of thoughts, each man a ripple, each
thought a ripple!
Here are a few ripples of thought which caught the light of my
attention:
“What a beautiful city Brussels is!”
“My feet are tired. My shoes hurt me.”
“That tree yonder is like the one beside the door at home.”
“Mother will be making coffee at this hour.”
“What a pretty girl--the one with the bread in her basket!”
“I wonder if Gretchen will talk much with Hans now I am gone.”
“That gate on the left is the one that Marie sent me on a picture
postcard last year.”
“My feet are tired. My shoes hurt me.”
“So this is Brussels! I always wanted to see it.”
“My head aches.”
“Deutschland über Alles! Deutschland über Alles!”
“I wonder if the Lieutenant paid his tailor.”
“How warm it is!”
“What is father doing now?”
“I wish I had a glass of beer!”
“I am glad we don’t destroy Brussels!”
“What is all this war about, anyway?”
“The Fatherland! The Fatherland!”
“What will they give us for supper?”
“I wonder where we are going?”
“This isn’t so fine as the Unter dem Linden.”
“When we get to Paris I must see the Venus of Milo.”
“My head aches.”
“Our baby has a tooth!”
“Will it ever be supper-time!”
And so on and on and on, as the long grey-green river flowed through
the city of Brussels.
And these were the men that in a little while would murder and rob and
burn and rape, and murder and rob and burn! Many of them had done so
already--these tired men with their aimless, unwarlike thoughts, their
commonplace soldier thoughts, of home and food and aching feet and of
postcards Marie sent last year and the hour for mother’s coffee!
What power transformed them into devils? What demon dehumanized them
till they forgot their weariness? Was it the raucous cry of the
war-trumpet? Was it the devil behind the devil who blew the trumpet?
Was it the evil spirit of a nation, or merely the spirit of war?
It was all of these things.
Perhaps when they began their marching they thought of glory and hate
and life and death and honor; but they had been marching long and their
thoughts had become simple as the thoughts of weary old men.
What was it all about? What power was driving them on?
Some of these men killed unresisting civilians, struck down helpless
children, maltreated nuns and other virgins, drove old men and women
before them as a shield against the fire of the opposing forces.
What roused the devil in them? Your friend is right in saying that
the war-trumpet is an instrument that can rouse the demon that sleeps
in the human breast. He says that the demonic forces outside can make
their entry into our world and our personalities riding on the tones of
the trumpet-horn. He is right.
He says that it brings the element of fire into the soul. Profoundly
true! Fire, the element of destruction, that purifies by destroying
what cannot resist it. Fire in the soul and fire in the nerves and fire
at the end of the rifle--and death by fire to all that gets in its way!
I have listened for days to the ear-splitting noise by which Germany
seeks to put hell into the hearts of her soldiers. My ears rang with it
yesterday.
Why do you start? Have you not yet accustomed yourself to the thought
that I can go back and forth, from the hell of Europe to the purgatory
of New York? Yes, the Germans in New York are in purgatory, for they
know that their cause is lost. Purgatory is for purgation. Let us hope
that it may accomplish its purpose in their hearts. And I do not say
this to be unkind, but rather as a blessing. I love the Germans, and
all other races. So also do you--in your heart of hearts.
Yes, it was I who, through an easy instrument, directed you to the
German doctor. I wanted you to see how good a German can be. There are
many such in that hell-racked nation.
You should understand that hell comes into a man--he does not go into
hell. Have you not heard that man is the Microcosm of the Macrocosm?
Those tired grey-green soldiers that I watched in their march through
Brussels were each of them large enough to contain hell and heaven and
a world of spirits. All of them had contained heaven many a time, when
listening to the strains of their master-musicians. It was when the
war-trumpet sounded, and the war-hate and the war-lust awoke in them,
that they contained hell.
Many a time have I clutched with my too-tenuous hands a German soldier
who was about to disgrace himself.
Once, at Namur, I kept a young man from doing something that would have
darkened his judgment of himself while his life lasted--and it lasted
only twenty-one days thereafter. He was a good boy; but the devil awoke
in him as it awoke in others. It was because he was more sensitive than
some others that I could make him feel my restraining hands. He thought
they were the hands of his dead grandfather, who had left him only a
year before. What matter? He let his victim escape.
(Yes, look up Namur on the map, if you wish to! You will find it in the
right place. Your uncertainty as to Belgian geography does not trouble
me; but your return to the world of your own thoughts has broken the
thread of mine.)
LETTER XVI
THE SIXTH RACE
HAVE you thought about the United States after this war? A new race is
being prepared for in the United States. That is why you had to be born
there--you through whom I write. That is why I am trying to use you in
my work for Universal Brotherhood.
No, you need not remain in the United States. It is better that you
should continue to mingle with other races in their old habitations.
The Theosophical Society could not have been born anywhere else.
Spiritualism could not have been born anywhere else. In the United
States is a readiness for new things, a reaching out for the untried, a
welcome for things because they are new.
Of course this tendency may be and is abused. Almost any faker can find
followers in the United States; but without that hospitable spirit
towards the New, the great new race could not come into existence there.
This race is not made of new souls, but of the oldest and most
experienced souls, experienced in other lives of the past. The
ingenuousness and the childlike quality of Americans are the results of
spiritual maturity. The race, as a race, is in its youth; but the souls
are old as time.
After they have taken a much needed rest, many or most of the souls
that go out by death in this war will find rebirth in the United
States. Oh, that land will be a very wonderful place in seventy-five or
a hundred years!
You will not be here then, unless you discover the fountain of immortal
youth, or unless you come back soon, renouncing the rest in heaven.
Ponce de Leon was inspired when he sought the fountain in the New
World. It is there if anywhere; but Australia and Russia will run you a
keen race for the future.
No, I shall not tell you about the Seventh Race. It will come in good
time; but now I want to talk to you about the Sixth, one of whose
pioneers you are.
Do not cut this out of my book because an enemy once said that you were
egotistical. Our enemies always see and hate their own qualities in
us. Develop some quality an enemy has not, and he (or she) will love
you for it. The horseman is not jealous of the musician in his quality
as musician. It is the musician who is jealous of the musician, the
egotist who sees and hates another’s egotism. If Germany were a weak
nation she could not so hate England for her greater power.
When the Sixth Race is fully incarnate, all men and women of real
development will be able to see in the astral world, and to hear
unspoken words, and to read the thoughts of others. Of course there
will be people of all grades of development in that new race. Equality
of development is a pretty dream, you Socialists. Have you not also
your superior ones, your leaders? The less developed souls who come
into incarnation with the Sixth Race are those who have earned in the
past the right to be open to the quickening influences of that race.
How have they earned that right? By their willingness to change and to
grow.
Go out on the hillside and watch the growing things. Take a leaf from
the book of Nature.
You wonder about the future of England. Old England is provided for.
Has she not given birth to the civilization you enjoy? Other races were
present, of course; but language tells the story.
As I said before, England has been an instrument in the hands of these
Great Ones who wished to make possible the fraternity of races. She has
carried the torch round the world. She has tied continents together,
and woven the chain which will bind men to each other in days that are
to come. Honor her, for she deserves honor.
Honor all nations, as aggregates of souls, your brother-souls; but
honor most those nations that have worked with the Law and not against
it.
Those who aspired to see Germany the cradle of the new race should
have made less noise in the birth-chamber. They have scared the angel
visitor away.
There are four races in Europe that are cruel races. They cannot rock
the cradle of the divine infant. They would not remove the pin that
stuck in its back, lest if it did not suffer and cry its lungs would
lack air. I need not name these races.
The Sixth Race is a sensitive infant and learns more through love than
through discipline. The Sixth Race will apply the discipline to itself
when it feels the need of it. Its schoolmaster will be curiosity, and
its play will be the sciences and arts of peace. Its cradle-song will
be a chant of brotherhood. No, it could not be rocked in a German
cradle; but many a German-American will help to rock it. They make
lovely cradle-songs, the Germans, when they forget the superiority
of being grown-ups and go back to the fancies of childhood, the
myth-making fancies.
We want to see more and more Frenchmen in the United States, for France
has more to teach the new race than has any other nation--France, the
inspired prophet, and most of all France the critic. Americans are not
critical enough, not analytical enough, not subtle enough. America
needs France, and the men and women of France. You have heard the old
saying, “Every man has two countries, his own and France.” I may be
misquoting, but the idea is there.
You wonder how anyone born to the glory and charm of France should ever
come to the New World? But many will come, and more will follow, both
by the path of the ocean and by the path of rebirth. You came that way
yourself, if you but knew it.
Recover the memory of past births, you pioneers of the Sixth Race! You
can do it. It is part of the heritage of that race.
America, the “melting-pot” of nations! You were not made to rule an
outside empire. When the time comes make over the Philippine Islands
to a nation that can be trusted with them. Your empire is within your
own body, you race of a score of races, you inheritor of a score of
fathers, you mother of the one new race!
Increase your army and navy so long as you are nervous. Put
lightning-rods on your house and burglar-alarms on the doors and
windows. Feel secure. Then dream about brotherhood--when you can trust
in it.
Sit by the fire of your own coal dug from the ground by Dutchmen, as it
burns in a chimney of your own bricks made by the hands of Irishmen,
read your own newspaper printed in the language of Englishmen, by the
light of your own lamp made by a German, on your own hearth-rug made
by a Turk or an Armenian, enjoy the feel of your own muscles trained
by a Swede, in your own linen washed by a Chinaman, listen to your
daughter playing on your own piano the music of a Russian, an Italian,
a Pole or a Frenchman, see all over your own room things made by the
sons of a dozen other races, your neighbors, your fellow-citizens, your
fellow-Americans, then tell me whether you dare _not_ to believe
in Universal Brotherhood, and in the new race, the synthesis of all
races!
_April 8._
LETTER XVII
AN AMERICAN ON GUARD
I WANT to speak more of France, and of what she can do for America, the
land of the coming new race.
I have spoken before of her love, which is so great that even her
enemies cannot hate her. I have praised her critical genius, which
analyses all things and compares one with another. But now I want to
speak of her charm and her courtesy.
You have said yourself that good-manners are the imitation of
kind-heartedness. To imitate is to emulate. A race that has charming
manners has a heart. A race that is brusque needs to cultivate heart.
Employ French teachers in your schools, you Americans. A French teacher
or a French mother tells her children not to do a certain thing because
it is not pretty, another word for charming, for kind-hearted. If you
imitate kind-heartedness in this way, perhaps you will some day feel
it, you American children.
By setting up the standard of beauty in deportment you need have no
fear of forgetting the ethical. You all drank Puritan ethics with your
mother’s milk; there is no danger that those precepts will be lost if
you practise charm a little by way of variety.
Every face in France was once a smiling face. It was not so this
afternoon when I passed through France on my way to you. But the faces
are still brave, because it is not pretty to make a parade of sorrow. I
know the excess of French mourning-apparel might be called a parade of
sorrow, but the black is worn as a mark of respect for all the dead of
France.
Taste! There is a race which has it. And in advising America to learn
from the French, I am naturally selecting the good qualities of that
nation. We all have faults of our own.
The taste of the French in the United States at this time! Do they
print journals in English attacking their enemy? Do they support a
lobby in Washington and a press-bureau in New York? If so I have not
heard of them, and we hear of most things out here--we who keep our
ears to the ground. If they grieve for their stricken country, they
do not drop their tears on America’s freshly ironed shirt-bosom. If
they hate their enemy, they hate him with a quiet, well-bred hate. If
France wins a victory in the field, they do not bluster about it. If
France loses in the field, they do not call their enemy a rattlesnake
or some other kind of reptile. It would not be pretty. It might not be
unethical, but it would be bad taste.
Americans bluster too much. I said that when I was myself an American,
before I was uprooted and became a citizen of the world invisible and
universal, and I have not changed my mind by association with angels,
adepts and masters. They never bluster, but the devils often do.
In advising America to learn from France those things in which France
is supreme, I am not depreciating other races. Each nation can learn
something from every other nation. The Chinese and the Japanese have
points where they rise above their neighbors. So have the Americans.
This war has brought out the dominant traits in all the warring
peoples, and their complementary traits. Have you ever thought of
the “turbaned Turk” (or, to be less Shakespearean, the fezzed Turk)
as being gullible? Treacherous races are always gullible, as cruel
races are apt to be sentimental--in all that touches themselves.
“Free America” must beware of too many laws. England, too conscious
of her virtue, will one day yield to temptation. Germany, “over all,”
has got the whole world on top of her. Italy, the excitable, is now
deliberating to a degree that would be dangerous for any other land.
“Neutral America” is so unneutral that her right hand threatens her
left, and both the whole body.
Do not be impatient with President Wilson. He is dealing with the
problems of the present war as if they were dated 500 B.C., and the
long view is apt to be the clear view. The professor in him is safer
than the politician in him. He is not happy just now. Why? Oh, that is
an affair of State, and I am writing for publication! I know so many
secrets that I am discreet as the family doctor.
But there is an “American on guard to-night.” Who is he? Old Abraham
Lincoln, who renounced heaven that he might watch over the land he
lived and died for.
No, I shall not tell you any more about him. There is something sacred
in a soul’s renouncing rest. He will not go too far away _until
America passes through her next great trial_. When will that be? As
the Beautiful Being says, “Nay, Child, you ask too much.”
And still you are eager to know about Abraham Lincoln! I was eager to
know about him myself a few short years ago; but I did not ask too many
questions. It would not have been pretty, as the French mothers say.
_April 8._
LETTER XVIII
A MASTER OF COMPASSION
IN my former book I reminded you that your friends who had passed
into the astral world did not know everything; that though their
sight was longer than before and their eyes less clouded by matter,
they yet could not always prophesy as glibly as fortune-tellers--or
at least that they were wiser not to attempt it. Now I have in mind
an illustration of that very point, only the subjects are much more
exalted than the ordinary dwellers on the astral plane.
There is, for instance, not perfect unanimity in our minds as to all
the details of the end of this war. There are two of us who often
discuss ways and means, who, while desiring the same result of peace,
have slightly varying views as to the best possible way to bring that
result to pass.
One of our Brothers, who is still occupying his physical body most of
the time, has a great desire to soften so far as possible the blow
that is to fall upon one of the nations in this war. We all want to
soften so far as possible the blow for that nation; but he has in his
mind a plan which would, if put into effect, very materially soften it.
He knows that he could perhaps bring it about in the way he wishes; yet
he is far too wise to force the issue. He will not force the issue. He
tries softly to inspire those who have it in their power to suggest the
beginnings of peace according to his ideas. We do nothing to deflect
the current of his loving thoughts, for he is the only one among
us--and by us I mean the Brothers of a certain development--he is the
only one among us who has a greater tenderness for one race than for
all the others. He is not so old as some of us, but he is one of the
greatest.
He may be able to do what he wishes, but I personally am not sure. In
one way he is wiser than I am; but my judgment is not at all influenced
by tenderness for my own native land, which is not yet directly
concerned, and so I may be a safer judge than he.
Do not take this as an admission of weakness in my Brother. Love is not
a weakness.
This Brother wrote a prediction through the hand of a pupil of his not
long ago. Perhaps it will be verified. Nothing will be thrown by any of
us in the way of its verification. In fact, if it is the best way it
will have the support of all.
Even a Master does not know everything, though to the blind eyes of
lesser men he seems to know everything. And a Master is too wise to
attempt to force his individual will upon the world. The black magician
is willing to bring things to pass by the power of his will, and often
he can do it; but he does not always count on the reaction. The White
Master always counts on the reaction. He works _with_ the Law.