with mind for mind’s own sake, which I recently described in writing of
a great being, a great Initiator, who serves the world by influencing
_along the line of evolutionary law_ the thoughts of certain men
who are the chosen instruments of evolution.
How little men know of the unseen world surrounding them!
I recently followed you into a lecture room in New York that was even
more crowded with invisible beings than with men and women. Your
restlessness there had cause, as you well knew. The purpose of that
meeting was to form a nucleus of a society of curiosity-seekers for
investigating the unseen, for necromancy and ceremonial magic. Madness
of madness! I heard one man express the determination that the proposed
society should not, like the Society for Psychical Research, close
its doors to the outside world; but that the society should invite
_all_ who were interested in the investigation of the unseen,
including the newspaper reporters. A press agent for the occult!
Let me describe a few of the auditors who were invisible to any in the
room except one person:
A long lean hungry being with the face of a gargoyle and the stomach of
an unfed leech yearned over the gathering. He was almost affectionate
in his interest in one of the speakers.
Another, bloated and lethargic, had already fed himself since entering
the room.
Another, frightened and tortured, was seeking an exit; but could not
get outside the desire-aura of one of the participants in that orgy of
curiosity.
Another, powerful and malignant, moved from place to place, selecting
his future victims. _He_ will be present at the meetings of the
society. He will try to keep it alive, for he knows of a fascinating
possibility which I shall not record here.
Why do you go to such places?
_April 18._
LETTER XXVIII
THE GLORY OF WAR
I HAVE written of the beauty of peace; but I now want to write of the
glory of war, for war has its glories. Anything that arouses man to
the highest pitch of enthusiasm is glorious; for what is glory but a
radiation of light, a burst of that life which is the Sun in man?
I regret this war. The suffering, the agony, the torment that I have
seen and have felt through sympathy, have left their marks upon me; but
had I remained in the safety of the neutral stars I should have missed
the glory of the fight.
Man had grown too tame, without acquiring the virtues of tameness; but
this war has served the purpose of the gods by hurling man into the
primitive, the savage, where life had its roots, but from which the sap
flows that will blossom later in such a faith as the world has never
seen.
Suffering and joy are forever opposite and equal. Man may rest for a
time in the neutral condition of a well-fed half-consciousness; but
when the extremes of suffering and joy come to him, he is no longer
half-conscious, but awake and alive, and glory shines round him.
Could the Masters have prevented this war? They could have retarded
it; but the _causes_ were present in the hearts of men, in the
invisible forces within them as well as outside them, and to have
further delayed the explosion would have served no planetary purpose.
The men who are not dead are more alive than they were twelve months
ago, and even the so-called dead are living-dead.
We pushed back the forces of evil, yes; but that was a part of the
struggle, that was the struggle in our world.
Let me tell you the story of one man whom I knew in the days of peace.
He was well-fed and half-asleep with prosperity, he prattled mild
commonplaces about life, and ethics, and the duties of a citizen; but
what did he really know of life, or of ethics, or of the duties of a
citizen?
We will call him Johnson. He has been in this war some months, a
fighter for England, and the integrity of England; and now when he
speaks of life his speech has meaning, because life to him now is the
opposite and mate of death. He feels enthusiasm for it, the glory of it
shines round him.
Johnson had a son, an only child. Fathers will know what I mean.
In the great retreat in which Johnson was one of the leaders his son
fell before his eyes--wounded but not dead. For one swift heart-beat
the father turned to his boy ... then he went on with his command that
otherwise would have been leaderless, leaving his only child to the
tender mercies of an army drunk with the pitiless glory of conquerors.
Johnson will never again prattle commonplaces about life. He has
learned the meaning of death, and of tortured uncertainty far worse
than death.
_April 20._
(This letter was left unfinished--for no reason apparent to
me.--Editor.)
LETTER XXIX
A FRIEND OF “X”
A MAN died yesterday with your name in his thoughts.
No, he was not a friend of yours, but someone you have never seen. Back
in England last year he read the former book which I wrote through your
hand, and was intensely interested in it. For months he wanted to meet
you, but being a modest man he waited.
Then the war broke out, and he went with the army to Belgium.
Day and night since the first fighting he has been meditating the facts
and possibilities of that book. Is there a future life continuous with
that of earth? Can a man return as I claimed to return, and can he give
to a woman still in the land of the living a record of his experiences
among the dead? Had I really seen the things I reported, and did I go
to the pattern world and the heaven world, where I saw the Saviour of
men with a lamb on his arm, etc., etc.?
One thing this man never questioned, and that was the sincerity of
the scribe. Of that he was convinced by instinct and by a kind of
Anglo-Saxon chivalry difficult for the men of some races to understand.
He was always talking to his trench-mates about the future life. He
would sit smoking his pipe in silence and gazing off into space, and
when other soldiers asked him what he was thinking of so busily, he
would often say: “I am thinking of a book I read last summer, and
wondering if it was true.” When they asked him what book he referred
to, he would tell them about the Letters of a Living Dead Man, and
quote to them whole sentences from it, and give them the outlines
of its stories, and explain to them the philosophical propositions
scattered through the book. Whole evenings have been taken up with
these discussions.
You have not been to the wars, either as a soldier or as a nurse; but
you have been to the wars.
It was a curious coincidence that that book should have been published
only a few months before the greatest taking-off of human souls in the
history of the world. Had you thought of that? I had not, until the
Teacher pointed it out to me.
There was one question which particularly interested our friend who
died yesterday with your name in his thoughts: the question whether, if
he should go out of life at the hands of the enemy, he could prepare
such a “little home in heaven” as we wrote about, for a girl whom he
loved back in England; and if he should prepare it and wait for her,
whether she would be true to him after his death, and meet him there in
a few years, and dwell with him in the little home.
This young man had read certain writings of an American mystic on the
theory of counterpartal souls, and he believed that in the girl back in
England he had found his counterpartal soul, as I hinted of the man in
my story who built the little home in heaven.
But no word of this did he speak to his trench-mates. To them he
spoke about the other stories in the book, not about that one. It is
curious that we never mention to others the favorite subject of our
thoughts--that is, most of us do not.
Another thing in the book which interested our friend was the story
of the woman in the invisible who made a journey into Egypt with her
still-living husband. He used to wonder whether, if he should die, he
could go in the spirit, as he said, to the little place in North Wales
which he had once visited with his sweet-heart, and which they had
selected as the future scene of their wedding journey.
One night he wrote her a long letter asking her, in case of his death,
to go there this summer, and saying he would try to meet her there.
Then after reflection he destroyed the letter, fearing it might make
her sad.
When I saw about him a peculiar light which the indwelling spirit
throws round its vehicle when that vehicle is about to be destroyed, I
waited, knowing there would soon be work to do.
Suddenly I saw his body fall to the ground, and saw the tenuous bodies
exuding themselves. I waited but a moment, then went forward and
lifted the spirit out of the sleep into which it would have drifted. I
breathed on the forehead of the astral--for astrals have foreheads,
make no mistake about that--I breathed on the astral forehead of the
man who had paid our book the compliment of thinking about it and about
us in the last moment of his life.
He opened his eyes on my face.
“Hello, ‘X’!” he said. “I hoped you would meet me here. You’re a good
fellow not to disappoint me.”
“Oh, I was always a good fellow!” I answered. “How did you know so
quickly that you had come out?”
“Because I saw you.”
“And how did you know me?”
“By your photograph, which I saw in a magazine.”
“But do I still look like that old hulk?” I asked; for I rather pride
myself on the recovery of a certain part of my original youth and
beauty.
“Why,” he said, “you _do_ look like the photograph.”
“That is strange,” I replied. Then I remembered that my very knowledge
of the man’s thoughts of me, as being the old Judge of the story,
might have made my body transform itself to meet the demands of his
recognition, even without the intervention of my will.
“Do you want to take a nap?” I asked, though there was no sleepiness in
his eyes.
“No, thank you, ‘X.’ I should like to go to England. But perhaps you
have something to do besides indulging my wants and wishes.”
I laughed.
“Your wants and wishes are just as important as mine,” I said. “I’ll go
to England with you.”
We went.
Crossing the Channel we passed a transport laden with troops.
“I wish all those fellows knew as much as I do,” my friend said. “Maybe
they would fight with renewed vigor if they could see what a good
companion I have found out here.”
Do not be startled, you clergymen who say, “Ashes to ashes, dust
to dust,” and draw solemn faces as you preside over the passing of
souls! Do not be startled or shocked by the jolly conversation of my
newly-arrived soldier-boy. He knew that he was with an old friend, and
he knew also that death is no more sacred than life, and need not be
any more solemn.
We went to call on a girl. I often went courting in my youth, but never
did I feel more interest in such a visit than when I went with this
soldier to see _his_ girl. The fact that she could not see us made
no difference. I am used to that now.
She was combing her hair when we arrived, beautiful long hair, and
on the mantel before her and under the mirror was a photograph of my
friend. As her eyes rested on it lovingly, suddenly he passed between
her and the photograph, and she cried out:
“Why, the eyes are alive!” and dropped the comb on the floor.
Then, as the truth flashed through her mind, she said, very solemnly:
“My dear, if it is really you, and if you have come to me in this
strange way, know that I love you and shall always love you, and that I
will meet you in heaven.”
Then she sat down in a little chair and began to cry.
I left him with her; but I shall return occasionally to see how my
charge is getting along, and by and by I shall teach him some of the
lessons on which his future welfare depends. I do not wish him to
return to the neighborhood of the battlefields. Why should he? He has
served, and has earned his reward.
Perhaps later I may tell you something more about the man who died with
your name--and mine--in his thoughts.
_April 24._
LETTER XXX
THE ROSE AND THE CROSS
MORE and more I am charmed and amazed by that one whom we call the
Beautiful Being. I shall never understand it, for its ways are not our
ways.
Yesterday it passed over the battlefield again, and I should have
written when I came to you a few hours afterward had I not pitied your
weariness. Do not be discouraged. Sometimes the Masters of Compassion
may seem to their servants to have no compassion; but they know, as
the servants cannot know, that the hardest road leads up the highest
mountain, and that there is rest at the top.
The Beautiful Being passed over the battlefield. Imagine a rose in a
cannon’s mouth, a bird singing in the heart of an earthquake, a pearl
in a landslide, an angel in hell.
You know not the meaning of the word battlefield. Yesterday thousands
died in the awful uproar. Noise! noise! noise!--till the nerves
shrieked with pain and despair seized the soul. To go out of life in
that seething maelstrom is generally to pass into another seething
maelstrom, hotter and noisier than the one left behind.
How can I write of war so as to spare your feelings? The great Teachers
are not trying to spare your feelings. They want you to feel and feel,
till the very force of the wave of feeling carries you high on the
shore of Adeptship. And they want you to think and think, till the
irresistible cold of logic freezes _self_ out of you. Ice and fire!
If you shrink from knowing what the soldiers of the nations have
suffered that you may be free, you are unworthy of that freedom. Do not
shrink from suffering. The husk of the seed must be broken before the
sprout can appear.
In dying for their country, those souls in the hell of battle are
giving birth to the new time. In suffering with them, your souls are
giving birth to the new in yourselves. Do not look for joy while
humanity is in travail, unless you can find the joy in suffering. Yes,
I know the time when first, and through whom, that grand idea found
lodgment in your consciousness. It is the secret of great souls in this
hour of the world’s pain.
If you suffer till you can suffer no more--then the poles shift, and
the _joy_ of suffering illuminates the soul. Then the beautiful
being in yourself hovers over the battlefield where the lesser self has
been slain.
There is a beautiful being in every one of you, the bird that sings in
the heart of the earthquake, the rose that nestles in the hot mouth
of the cannon, the pearl that cannot be crushed by the landslide, the
angel that illumines hell.
All the normal feelings of the human heart are intensified at this
time. No one is the same as before the war burst--no one, anywhere
in the world. The soul of humanity is in travail. This incarnation
of humanity is turned against itself, and rends itself. The heart of
humanity is an abyss, into which humanity had grown too blind to look,
so the blazing torches of the guardians of good and evil have been
thrust into the abyss, and all the drowsing dwellers therein have been
suddenly, rudely awakened.
Oh, hearts of earth, do not fall asleep again! Pity and love one
another, for the pain of one is the pain of each, and over the
battlefield of the suffering race the Beautiful Being hovers.
Humanity is the One, and humanity is the many, and all together you may
come into the inheritance of your Father which is in heaven.
You are familiar with the symbol of the Rose-Cross. Not until the hard
wood is driven through your four limbs, in the pain of your shocked
and wounded nerves, can the great red rose of love unfold its perfumed
petals upon your breast, between the arms of the cross.
The human in you is the pain of the cross, the divine in you is the
perfume of the rose, and you yourself, you human _and_ divine, are
the Rose-Cross.
If you shrink from the splintering pain of the wood as it claims you
for its own, you cannot smell the perfume of the rose which also claims
you for its own.
Do not refuse the great initiation, O humanity of the races! Do not
hide yourself in the dungeon of fear when the great Initiator comes!
On the awful cross of war shall blossom the red rose of the new race.
On the cross of each mortal form _may_ blossom _its_ red
rose.
The rose marks the balance between the East and the West, between the
rising and the setting sun, between the human and the divine. The arms
of the cross extend to infinity, its feet are buried in the substance
of eternity, its head is among the angels and the gods, and the heart
of the rose is everywhere. It is in every heart of all these myriads
who shrink at the touch of the hard wood.
I hear every day the shrieks of those who are making the vicarious
atonement for the race. When they lie mangled on the battlefield, the
arms of the cross are being driven through their quivering flesh, and
the petals of the rose are unfolding in their hearts.
They are dying for love at the hands of hate, for love and hate are
opposite and omnipresent. Their love for their country is their call to
the atonement, their at-one-ment with the God who established the law
of the East and the West, the Height and the Depth, the opposing forces
of Love and Hate. They have accepted the sacrifice. For them shall be
the resurrection and the life, after their sojourn among the dead,
their sojourn in hell.
They shall appear to the Magdalen at the door of the sepulchre, the one
whose sins were forgiven because she loved much, and who shall call the
disciples to give them the tidings of great joy.
The soul of the world is the risen Christ, and the disciples rejoice at
the tidings.
How can I withhold from you the great event which Time has ushered in?
For thirty pieces of silver the soul of the world was sold, and the
Judas of the world has given the kiss of betrayal with the name of God
on his lips, and the Roman soldiers are already dividing the garments.
Pontius Pilate has washed his hands of the issue, and his wife weeps
in her chamber at the disregarding of her dream. The priests of the
Sanhedrim are wagging their heads with satisfaction, but the veil of
the Temple of Humanity is rent from top to bottom.
How could you receive the message if you had not suffered, O listener
at the door of Time? Who would believe you, had you not grasped the
truth of the atonement? Until the wood of the cross had been driven
through your limbs, the rose could not blossom, O world in travail at
this hour!
Be still, and know that God is God. In the stillness of perception the
petals begin to open, and joy steals over the heart, and the heart
swells with the expanding joy, till every fibre of the cross is alive
and tingling with the joy at the heart of the rose, and the fragrance
sweetens the world.
And the Beautiful Being, a ray of the Holy Spirit, hovers over the
Calvary of the battlefield.
_April 25._
LETTER XXXI
A SERBIAN MAGICIAN
IT is a long road from the sacrifice of the Rose-Cross to
plague-stricken Serbia, but that is the road you take with me this
morning.
There is a reason why that country has been most susceptible to the
astral germs of disease, that a loathesome being of which I wrote you
in a former letter spewed forth into the upper world.
Long ago in the mountains of Serbia there dwelt an evil magician, a
man whose studies in the deeper sciences were undertaken solely for
the intellectual and selfish pleasure which he found in them. He had
progressed so far beyond the normal human consciousness that he had
no worldly ambitions. To him the world was but a despicable place to
escape from, and the people of the world were insects beneath his
notice, save only as he could use them for his purposes.
He considered himself a kind of god, and so diligent were his selfish
labors that had he devoted his knowledge to the good of the human race
from which he sprang, he might really have become a kind of god. But
selfish and evil beings need never aspire to godship. At most they can
take but a step beyond the human. The grub may become a butterfly, but
if it hates the sunlight and the air of the higher regions, its wings
had better not have grown.
This man, this selfish magician, had learned that by certain magical
formulæ he could call to himself beings of the elements, and that by
the aid of these invisibles he could create astral beings which, while
themselves soulless, he could energize with his own force.
Now the turn for real and active evil which marked a certain stage in
his life, came about in this way:
He had found what seemed to him a secure retreat among the mountains,
he had prepared and magnetized the neighborhood of his hut so that it
was a centre of astral force, and his right to the undivided possession
of that spot was one of the ideas which he energized for his own
protection.
Now the owner of the mountain where the magician lived discovered that
the neighborhood of his hut was a good place for hunting the wild
animals of that region, and soon the quiet of the magician’s studies
was broken by the reports of the guns of the hunters, who even crossed
with their despised bodies the very circle which the magician had
prepared for his own use.
This proved that he was not a very high magician, for had he made that
centre for a work having as object the benefit of humanity, members of
that humanity could not have profaned it. The retreats of the Masters
of Compassion are secure against intrusion.
In his rage and disappointment he called down curses upon the hunters
and upon all the region roundabout, and by his evil magic he created
beings who should execute his curses. He created them upon the earth
and in the air above and in the region below the surface of the earth,
and to each he allotted a task with fearful penalties for disobedience.
His use of the power he had gained was a use _positively
forbidden_ by the Law under which the real Masters work.
It really caused the hunters to go away from that neighborhood, but the
beings he had called and the beings he had created remained there; for
he had not sufficient knowledge, or maybe not a sufficient sense of
responsibility for his nefarious work, to make him destroy or banish
them himself.
And when he died, at the ripe age of one hundred and twelve years,
and his will was removed from them, they still remained in a state of
semi-animation in the lower regions of the astral world.
Then, a century or more afterwards, when the great war wave broke over
Europe, and the evil hosts of the unseen came clamoring for their
prey and their satisfaction, these old astral monsters awoke out of
their sleep and joined themselves to them, and the whole neighborhood
which the evil magician had cursed became an infected place, from the
exhalations of those beings whose _raison d’être_ had been a man’s
hatred of the people who had disturbed him in his selfish labors.
I am not going to describe the process by which he had created them and
laid an evil spell upon a whole neighborhood, for I am determined not
to bestow upon a selfish world any knowledge that it can use to make
more trouble in future. But I want you to realize that Serbia is really
a dangerous place. That is why it was chosen as the focusing point for
the evil onslaught of war.
The people of Serbia are brave and innocent of all this astral evil
which has come upon them. They were used because the evil forces
_could get at them_ through this region already under a curse from
of old.
The time has come when the men of the new race must know that there are
things to be avoided in the astral world. If certain teachers had told
less, this warning might not be necessary; but the world has acquired
already so clear a perception that there is another world within and
outside their own, that their natural curiosity must be protected by
warnings not to fool with the unseen, until they have acquired such
a selfless devotion to their fellow-beings that they may explore it
without being themselves infected by the poison of the snake that
nestles there among the flowers.
The old magician has passed on into that sphere where selfish scholars
pursue their investigations unhampered by the limitations of gross
matter; but the full responsibility for his actions in those Serbian
hills when he was last on earth will wait for him at the door of
rebirth. When he comes to the world again it will be in a body which
is itself a victim of all the plagues which he let loose there, in the
determined effort to protect _himself_ against others who had as
good a right there as he had.