above, that the docile German people should not be forever hated by
the world because the arrogant war-party has hurled them at their
neighbors. I am not condoning the unlovely traits in the German
character, or in the character of any other people; but of all the
races engaged in this gigantic struggle, the German race knows least
about the causes that hurled it forward. A spoon-fed press and the
penalties of _lèse majesté_ have kept them from knowing anything
which could have made them less flexible instruments in the hands of
their leaders.
The karma of those whose headstrong and arrogant policy precipitated
this war is an individual karma, and it will have to be worked out
by individual suffering and so-called punishment; but the karma of
the great mass of the German people is a race karma. They have let
themselves be led on to their own defeat. Think how the very law of
reaction will throw the light of popular and democratic investigation
into the darkest nooks and crannies of the German nation and government
_after_ this war. Those who have been deceived to their hurt will
demand to be deceived no more. In twenty years the life of the German
government will be as open as that of the United States. The so-called
“muck-raker” will arise with a lantern on his hat.
Also by the law of reaction England will be shaken out of her
sluggishness that has filled her shops with the wares of other
countries because she was too slack to make her own.
By that same law a demand will arise for an uncorrupt political machine
in France. One or two things have happened in France which she prefers
for the moment to keep to herself.
The great shock of this war will cause each nation to examine itself
more closely, to look into its own motives, to see wherein it fails to
come up to the very exigeant standard demanded by the New Time.
Look also for changes in Russia, and Austria will be but another name
for change.
Justice will advance many paces by reason of the great injustice of
this war. The Law of Opposites again! Most things can be explained by
that law.
In writing about the reign of brotherhood which I hope to see
established in the world, I am not laboring under the delusion that an
impossible Utopia is about to be ushered in with a blare of trumpets. I
am not recording a prophecy that the Kingdom of Heaven is immediately
at hand. The human race is not ready for the Kingdom of Heaven, and
will not be ready for a long time; but if one person in ten can be
made to realize that brotherhood is an ideal to be striven for, they
can leaven the other nine-tenths and make the loaf of human society
much lighter and more palatable than it is at present. The loaf will
not become fruit-cake all at once. That is too much to expect of the
_next_ race; but if you can carry the memory of this prophecy
through a sufficient number of births and deaths, you may see a very
sweet loaf come from the planetary oven when the second race following,
the Seventh, is brought forth into the light of the sun.
_April 17._
LETTER XXV
FOR LOVE’S SAKE
SO serious and philosophical have been my last few letters, that I
should like to revel in romance.
Have you thought of the hard life of the war-nurses and wondered from
whence they gather the strength for their daily and nightly labors?
Love is the source of the almost superhuman endurance of many of the
women who seem to their charges like angels of light and healing.
One nurse whom we will call Mary, for she is a type of the
virgin-mother of hearts, has gone out into heaven a hundred times in
the souls of those she has tended. Will that love not guard her on
earth through the whole course of her life and follow her also into the
heaven world beyond? Be sure it will.
Mary is neither a scholar nor a poet. You would not have dreamed of
inviting her to a reception had her path ever crossed yours; but Mary
is not unfit for the society of angels and gods would not scorn to
have her in their company.
She was just an ordinary nurse before she became a war-nurse, and
before the white fire of love touched her personality and burned it up
as a sacrifice on the altar of her country’s need.
She was a very pretty nurse and in her hours of leisure once wore
stylish hats and revelled in laces and furbelows; for the love of
beauty and daintiness often nests in a heart that is capable of heroism.
When the war broke out Mary was engaged to be married to a soldier.
Mary went to the front and he also went to the front; but neither of
them knew where the other was for many, many days.
Every man who was brought to her severely wounded Mary nursed as if he
had been the absent friend of her heart, and many a life she saved by
her tender care and by the atmosphere of hope which radiated from her
as fragrance from a rose.
“If _he_ should be wounded,” she said to herself, “some of the
girls will care for him as I care for these men.”
Mary was not jealous lest another should have the privilege of nursing
the man she loved, and lest in his heart should blossom the flower of
thankfulness for another than herself. Mary had not much time to think
about herself; her thoughts were too busy with others.
It may have been because she was not jealous nor over-watchful for her
property in her lover, that when he was wounded he was really brought
to the hospital where she served so faithfully. Of course he was
given to Mary to nurse--it could not have been otherwise, and he was
very seriously wounded. When the operation was performed by which the
doctors hoped to save his life, it was Mary who stood by and assisted.
She did not faint nor cry out even when they cut his broken arm away,
the arm on which she had dreamed she might lean for the rest of her
earthly life. Mary was thinking about his mother and was glad that she
was not there to see what she herself saw. During many of the hours
when Mary might have slept, she was writing to the mother--writing
brave letters wherein she sought to veil the fear that was in her own
heart.
Tom--we will call him Tom because that was not his name--Tom had never
been able to believe in any life beyond the earth life, and as Mary
watched his strength grow less she prayed all day and most of the night
that something might happen to make Tom believe in heaven and angels.
The exigencies of war had left him long on the battlefield after the
shell had shattered his right arm, and his wound had been infected
before the operation by which the doctors sought to save him for
England and for Mary.
Tom knew that he might have to leave the world. Mary would not keep the
overwhelming possibility from him, though she still kept it from his
mother; for she hoped that in the hours or days which might be all that
remained for him in the sunshine of the upper world something might
happen, some miracle of thought or of love, which should open his eyes
to what she called the Truth.
Each day I spent a little time in the long white room in which Tom lay;
but even if he could have seen me, I might not have been much comfort
to him, and I cannot speak to any ears except those trained to listen
for unusual sounds.
I sympathized with Mary. Having convinced so many souls of the truth of
immortality through a former writing of mine, I wanted to convince one
more--for Mary’s sake; because I knew that if Tom should go out of life
firmly believing that death was the end of him, it might really be the
end of him for a long time.
In my perplexity I sought the Beautiful Being for advice. That angel’s
knowledge compared to mine is like an arc-light beside a tallow dip.
Together we went back to the hospital where Mary sat talking with
Tom about the future life, about God and Christ and angels. She had
many soldiers under her charge; but the other nurses worked a little
harder to give her more time with Tom, for all the world loves a
lover--especially in the horrors of war-time.
“It isn’t that I do not want to believe,” he was saying to Mary, “it’s
that I just can’t. If I could see with my own eyes an angel, or someone
that I knew was dead, it would be different. But how could I see such a
thing?”
The Beautiful Being drew nearer, smiling, and waved its gauzy veil
before the eyes of the dying man; but he could not see.
The Beautiful Being wove a glamor of light around him, and sang as only
angels can; but Tom could still neither see nor hear.
“I think you will have to ‘materialize’,” the Beautiful Being said to
me, with a whimsical smile. “Those eyes are stopped with matter, and
cannot see anything finer than matter.”
I was not attracted by the suggestion, but my incomprehensible friend
followed it up.
“In that bed yonder,” it said, “is one of those mortals who are called
natural mediums, natural materializing mediums, because their tenuous
bodies are so loosely held by the physical that they are easily
detached and borrowed from. Now materialize yourself and let Tom see
something which he will take for an angel.”
“I am no angel,” I said, “and the eyes of a dying atheist would never
mistake me for one.”
“Try it, and see,” said the Beautiful Being, pointing to a man in a
neighboring bed, who was the “medium” in question.
I looked at the man and read around him the story of his life. He was
a coarse fellow, a saloon-keeper, and another familiar compound-word
would have fitted him like a glove.
“Clothe myself in that man’s etheric body!” I said in disgust. “I would
not touch him with a ten-foot pole!”
“How dainty-fingered you are!” said the Beautiful Being. “Did I not
know you so well, I could almost believe you self-righteous.”
“Call me what you like,” I replied, “but I will not do phenomena with
that body.”
The Beautiful Being laughed.
“It would be so easy,” it said, as if to itself, “so easy and so
convincing.”
The angel moved toward the sleeping saloon-keeper (I had almost written
the harsher compound), and gradually from his side there issued a
vaporous stream. From force of earthly habit I rubbed my eyes, for I
could not believe that I saw aright. The pure and exquisite angel was
clothing itself in the unhealthy emanations of the sleeping medium, and
in the space of twenty ticks of the clock on the wall it passed, fully
materialized, with a speaking throat, to the foot of Tom’s bed.
He sat up, in the surprise and shock of the vision.
“What are you?” he asked, hoarsely.
“I am an angel,” said the Beautiful Being, truly, “and I have come to
prove to you that miracles can happen, and to assure you that when you
leave your body behind on the morrow I shall meet you on the other side
of the change.”
Mary could also hear and see, and she fell on her knees with a little
sob of joy and wonder; for she had never seen an angel, though her
faith was strong enough to remove mountains.
“Then it is really true!” Tom gasped. “I shall not die with my body.
And how wonderful you are!”
For the Beautiful Being had performed the transformation so well that
it preserved in its borrowed body all the glory and amazing loveliness
of that form which charms the hosts of the unseen world.
“I no longer doubt,” said Tom. “I believe, and I die happy.”
“I shall not forget to meet you when you come out,” smiled my friend.
“Good-bye now, for a little while. I leave you with Mary, who is also a
kind of angel.”
Slowly the borrowed shape retreated towards the body of the sleeping
saloon-keeper, and after a moment my friend stood beside me, clothed in
its own pure form; but on its shoulders and feet were dark stains that
looked like mud.
“They will soon blow away in the fresh air outside,” smiled the
Beautiful Being. “And was it not worth while to convince that soul of
its own immortality?”
We passed out under the stars, but the scene left an indelible
impression on my consciousness. And I shall often remember when I
feel self-righteous, how the purest being I ever knew wore the soiled
garment of a vulgar saloon-keeper, which left stains on its dainty
shoulders and its shining feet--how it dipped itself for the first time
in the filth of the world, for love’s sake.
_April 17._
LETTER XXVI
A MASTER OF MIND
TO-NIGHT, the seventeenth of April, nineteen hundred and fifteen, there
passed along the battle line of one of the nations at war a great
spiritual being, a being whose body is mind and who works through the
mind alone.
The hour had come when a certain number of those who had fought
bravely for their ill-starred country might know that their cause was
hopelessly lost. A few only might know to-night; but their knowledge
will spread, and with spreading knowledge will come a change of spirit.
It is disheartening to fight on for a lost cause. It takes a peculiar
quality of devotion, a rare quality of devotion.
What will come from the visit of that celestial being, you wonder? Wait
and see. I rarely permit myself to prophesy. I only figure out the
probable result of causes known to me. You can do the same, if you let
reason take the place of predilection. To judge clearly of the effects
of a given cause, the mind must be unbiased by desire; it must be as
cold as a mathematical calculation. It is by this celestial algebra
that Masters look ahead.
When you get in symbols or pictures the answers to questions propounded
to your Higher Self, it is by this profounder mathematics that the
interior one prepares its answer. It knows causes that are unknown
to you, and from these causes can foretell effects with a degree of
accuracy almost as great as that of an astronomer foretelling an
eclipse. _Almost_, I say, not quite; for in dealing with human
affairs even the greatest Masters must take into consideration an
erratic element, the free will in human beings. That, too, may be
guessed; but it is guessing, nevertheless. A sudden uprush of free and
erratic will, and a new cause is set up, and the calculation must be
made afresh.
There is a certain charm in dealing with the erratic element of will.
Perhaps that is why some persons find cats more fascinating than dogs.
A cat is a wilful erratic animal; so are many men.
The great being who passed this night along the battle line has been
watching the course of earthly events for a considerable time. He is
one of those who serve the planetary spirit of the earth by carrying
certain ideas around the earth when the time has come for them to play
their part in history. I cannot tell you many details about the life of
this being, for I know only a few facts concerning him. He is so far
superior to me that my possible comprehension of him is limited. He may
once have been man, I think so; but of that I am not even sure.
I have been told that it was he who first impressed upon a small but
courageous section of the American people the conviction that the time
had come when human slavery in America should cease; that it was he
who inspired Columbus with the idea that he could find land by sailing
west, though in the latter case he was not able to force through
into the mind of his instrument the great fact that an immense and
independent continent lay off there beyond the western sea, and between
it and another sea whose waters washed the eastern shores of Asia.
Again, I have been told that it was this being who was instrumental in
revealing the knowledge of electricity to mankind.
Can you imagine the life of such a being? Can you extend your
consciousness so as to touch his? I am frank enough to say that it is
difficult even for me, who have been able to remember so much of my
own long past, and to work out so many of the probable effects of the
causes which I myself set up in the far past, effects which will shape
my future lives on earth.
Imagine an independent entity of vivid life, yet without a physical
or even an astral body, a being of thought whose lowest medium is
thought, who influences his chosen instruments by contact with their
naked minds. What _personal_ wishes can such a being have? What
ambitions can he have? The lower and limiting word ambition seems
grotesque as characterizing the motive force of such a being.
He has a name among us, but I am not permitted to tell you the name.
It has a great mantramic value, that name, and if you should repeat
it too often it might raise your own consciousness, and the vibration
of yourself, to a height which would make it extremely difficult for
you to keep your hold on that physical body, without which you cannot
do certain work that it is your privilege and duty to perform at this
stage of your evolution.
There is a certain initiation which the pupils of the great Masters
take under the guidance of this being; but those who take that
initiation retire permanently from the everyday life of men. They get
into the centre of causes, which makes them so dynamic--which makes
their personality and their thoughts so forceful--that for the sake of
the world itself they must not come too close to it; because all things
work by cyclic law, and to hasten too much the evolution of humanity
would be dangerous to humanity. It can only go safely at a certain rate
of speed. Above that speed it is likely to meet with accident.
I know exactly the stage that I myself must reach before I can take the
initiation which is presided over by this being. When I have reached
that stage I shall not be able to come and write through your hand,
unless you raise yourself a corresponding degree above your present
consciousness, because to do so might dangerously accelerate your own
rate of growth.
Since coming out here I have learned much about those beings who have
in charge the higher evolution of mankind. Their development would
be quite incomprehensible to the mass of even enlightened men at the
present time.
They are and must be very lonely beings, though they too have their
peers and fellow-workers. Can you imagine remaining alone a hundred or
a thousand or ten thousand years, yet all the time extremely active
in mind, following with your thought the course of an evolution which
you yourself have long left behind in your own growth, following it
with the mind alone, because the emotional nature you have also left
behind, and doing all this not for any personal reward but because it
is a labor in accordance with the great law of a Being still above and
beyond yourself?
Obedience is taught in certain schools, not in an effort to control
the pupil in the interest of the Master, but that the pupil may thus
take his first steps on the path which leads to obedience to the Cosmic
Will. On that path he will have to go an immense distance before
he can be trusted to do such work as is being done by the being who
passed this night along the battle-line of one of the opposing armies,
shedding the light of his thought and the certainty of his purpose into
a few minds whose receptivity made possible their grasping what he gave.
Do not weary on the path, you who are taking the first and easiest
steps of the journey that shall one day lead you to the Masters! The
path is indeed steep, and as one inspired writer said, it leads uphill
all the way; but there are stages at which the traveller may pause and
enjoy the prospect. I seem to have reached such a stage myself, and
though I am always working now, yet I enjoy my work.
The awful battle that some of us fought with the elemental beings
is now over. The worst calamity that could have befallen mankind is
happily averted. The labor of the present is light compared with the
labor of _that_ struggle. If the world could realize what it owes
to the Masters whom most men regard as myths! But such Teachers do not
work for gratitude nor for reward.
Follow you in their footsteps, for it is the only road that can lead
mankind above the awful calamities that threatened recently to engulf
mankind. (_I am not referring to a mere German victory._)
It is wise to keep from the knowledge of men in general the great
evolutionary facts which govern the life of the planet. A mind must be
lifted above the small circle of everyday interests before it could
endure such knowledge.
You all use words without realizing their meaning. You talk of guardian
angels; you talk of hell and purgatory, and of vicarious atonement,
and of sacraments. Sacraments! I could tell you of a sacrament that is
verily an eating of the body and a drinking of the blood of God; but
I refrain lest you should tell the world, and if you should tell the
world the evil forces of the world would destroy you.
But I am coming now perilously near the things that may not be spoken,
so I will wish you a good-night--a good-night indeed--and go back to
my labors, in the rear of that being of light who passed along the
battlefields this evening.
_April 17._
LETTER XXVII
INVISIBLE ENEMIES
YOU may have wondered why the elemental beings that as I have told you
precipitated the great war were so malicious at this time, why they
hurled themselves upon mankind with such overwhelming force. There is
no reason why you should not know something of these causes, having
seen so much of their effects.
The saying that man has made more material progress in the last hundred
years than in the preceding two thousand, has become a mere newspaper
commonplace. It is because he has not made a corresponding moral
progress that the evil elemental beings, who fear for their rule in
their own kingdom, _could_ come so near to succeeding in their
attacks upon the human race.
It is not merely in material ways that man has progressed with such
amazing rapidity, for some of his inventions and discoveries touch
the invisible regions. The doors of man’s mind are opening on the
untracked spaces of aether in which these beings live. Man is chaining
the elements, and to chain the elements _may_ be to chain the
elementals. One man in America has come so near to a great and
dangerous secret that his eyes have had to be veiled by those who fear
for man’s too rapid progress.
Occult societies dot the world. In other days these societies were
really secret, and no one had access to their knowledge until after
tests were passed which proved fitness for further study and further
secrets. But the doors of the unseen have been besieged by an army of
intellectual enthusiasts who have not passed those tests. Curiosity
demands to know that which only the nobility of the spirit was once
trusted with. Democracy has spread even into the occult orders, and
sacred mysteries have been published broadcast by those who put no
curb upon their personal ambitions. The hosts of the unseen world have
themselves suffered invasion.
Now the hosts of the unseen will obey a great soul that they know to be
more powerful than themselves. They run like docile children at his
call, and they go at his command as a dog goes. But the unseen hosts
are very jealous of their freedom, and they will yield it only to one
whose superiority is manifest to them. Many--yes, most--of those who
are now seeking to open the doors of that region are unfit to command
there; because he only can command the unseen forces outside who can
command the unseen forces _inside_ himself.
In a former letter I spoke of the danger of black magic in America; but
the danger is everywhere. And what is black magic? It may be briefly
defined as a use for selfish purposes of those very forces of the
unseen world. Not until a man has advanced beyond himself will the
invisible forces serve him long without rebellion.
Pick up a common newspaper, and you will see the advertisements of men
and women who promise _for a fee_ to bring about results which
can only be brought about by using those invisibles. What blasphemy!
What presumption! If these advertisers could make good their claims,
they would be more dangerous than typhus fever. Such advertisements
arouse all the curiosity and ambition and fiery selfishness latent in
the heart of the ignorant. These untrained dabblers in the mysteries
attempt to do things which an Adept would never dream of doing, for
most of their efforts have for purpose some attack upon the free will
of others; they seek to influence the desires and the judgment of
others in the narrow and personal interest of those who pay them to set
the forces in operation. Would you let a child loose in a gunpowder
factory with a box of matches in his hand? That is what has been done
in the last few years all over the western world.
No wonder the invisible beings have rebelled. They will follow a
Master, but they resent the interference of a fool.
It is not the fools they fear, however. The men they fear are the great
scientists. Man’s progress in science has been such that he _must_
purify his motives, or he will be destroyed.
That is one reason why I am preaching brotherhood, in an attempt to
save men from their own folly. Once let the feeling for brotherhood
become general, and these experiments with unknown forces would be
less dangerous. Mankind as a mass might work with the power of a White
Master, whose motives are always unselfish.