communicate with my son; but do that only as a last resort. You must
learn to stand alone.
In my other writing the strain on you was far less, the demand on you
far less, the need of your strength far less. You could not have done
then what you are doing now, nor could I have done then what I am doing
now.
Again I say, hold steady.
The wounds, the tortured faces which you see at night, the pitiful
appeals for help which you try to answer, are only typical of what we
see and try to help, nightly, daily and hourly.
I have used the actual substance of your etheric body to build myself
an optical instrument, through which I can see into the sun-lighted
world--your world. You will suffer no injury in the long run for this
loan that you have made me. Have you not pledged yourself to the
service of mankind? Mankind are out here as well as in there, and the
eyes I have built of your substance have enabled me to do service which
otherwise I could not have done.
Count that with your good karma.
_May 13._
LETTER XL
THE HEIGHT AND THE DEPTH
DO not lose faith in the future of the world.
Have you not studied the Law of Rhythm? Do you not know that the height
is equal to the depth, and that when things are at their worst they are
getting ready to improve?
Life moves rapidly in these Twentieth Century days. A thousand years
ago it would have taken a decade to accomplish the horrors of the last
ten months. Perhaps the reconstruction will be equally rapid.
Do not lose faith in the future of the world.
There are even Germans who repudiate the sinking of the
_Lusitania_! All is not well in that Empire, from the standpoint
of the Empire.
Be poised, and await the issue.
_May 14._
LETTER XLI
A CONCLAVE OF MASTERS
SOME day the races of men will return to the love which they have now
forgotten. Some day German and English, Italian and Austrian, French
and Turkish, will all sit together at the banquet table of life and
drink to the health, not to the death, of one another.
And that day is not so far distant as the present hate and slaughter
would indicate.
There is peace after strife, and love after hate, and sunshine after
the storm.
Love and hate! To know the one you must have seen the other. Surely I
need not tell _you_ this! What did you know of love till you had
been hated?
Love and hate are the twin-born children of emotion.
Some day men will look for their enemies _within themselves_; some
day men will fight the evil in themselves, and then they will not need
to slay their brothers. Some day love will re-establish itself upon
the pedestal of the world, and hate will return to the shades.
I have told you of the evil beings who brought about this war. There
are also loving beings who long to do away with war between brother and
brother.
To-night in the spaces above the world there is a strange quiet. Is it
the quiet before the storm, or the quiet after the storm? It is all
rhythmic. Be poised and wait, trusting in God.
Some storms clear the air. The present thunder and lightning will clear
the air. Yes, the world has been too sultry, and the atmosphere had to
be broken.
Do not cry out, do not weep, do not laugh. Be quiet, and trust in God.
What do I mean by God? Look deep in your heart and see I AM THAT I AM.
In the childhood of the world men believed in a Power beyond
themselves. Now in the maturity of the world men believe in a Power
_within_ and beyond themselves. That is God, I AM THAT I AM!
Seek the high place of the Spirit and prepare yourself for the service
of the world. The Spirit is crucified on the cross of the world.
Christ clothes himself in matter that he may raise it. Love wears the
garment of hate, that love and hate may become one.
What do I mean? Do you not know that love and hate are One Thing--the
eternal opposites that complete each other?
When hate rests, love comes into its own. When love rested, hate came
into its own. This night do hate and love unite. Find out my meaning if
you can. Look in the glass of visions and find the picture there.
The uniting of love and hate! There is a _neutral_ point where the
two join hands.
There is a council held this night among those who serve the world--a
conclave of Masters. At what hour, you ask? Go to sleep, and learn the
hour. If you are still enough, you may listen at the keyhole. If you
are not still enough, you will hear nothing.
Do I seem to write strangely to-night? All things are strange to-night,
if by strange you mean unusual.
Be still, and know that God dwells in the hearts of all men, though in
some He lies asleep. For the God in you will sleep until you awake Him.
“This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”
Love your enemies, even when they smite you; for the God is asleep in
those who smite with hate.
You will never understand your enemy by hating him. You will never
understand the Masters until the love and hate in you unite.
On the declaration of peace your love will flow out again to your
enemy. Can you not anticipate the event, and love your enemy to-night?
The enemy needs love when he shows least of it. Be still, and know that
the world is the footstool of the Spirit.
Hate will not serve you. Hate never serves willingly. Remember the
words of the Man-God, “Forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Go to sleep now, and listen at the keyhole of the Masters’
council-room. You may hear things that you cannot tell the world.
_May 14._
LETTER XLII
A LESSON IN THE KABALA
SHALL I repeat to you what you saw in your vision of last night--the
races of earth as the Sephiroth on the Kabalistic Tree of Life?
You know more of the Kabala than I do; but you would never have known
the Kabalistic correspondences of the nations had they not been pointed
out to you by the Teacher.
It is true that Germany (_Geburah_, _Mars_, _Severity_,
_Pachad_) has become so extremely severe and Martian that the
welfare of the whole Tree is threatened, the balance is upset; and
it is through the strength of the United States, shown by a certain
Yetziratic Path, and through the prudence of the United States in
relation to another Sephira which represents the British Empire, that
justice may be reestablished between Britain and Germany.
The Teacher has been instructing me in the Kabala.
And you also see by that vision the part which the United States has
to take in the future of the world--that of _Chesed_, Mercy. That
is the keynote of the Sixth Race, and Germany thought to establish
it--the Sixth Race--in herself by blood and iron! What folly and
short-sightedness!
You need not tell the world where the other races were on the Tree of
Life in your vision, save that the Three Supernals are not represented
by races on this material plane. That much you may state, on my
authority, lest some German Kabalist should claim for the Teutonic race
the place of _Kether_. No, the Three Supernals are not represented
on the material plane.
Watch and pray that America may be guided aright. So far, she has
been so guided. The great soul of Abraham Lincoln was with President
Wilson during those days of retirement. Did I not tell you that he had
renounced rest that he might watch over the land he died for, _when
the day of her own great trial came_?
I shall tell you no more than my judgment dictates, day by day.
It is well that you were able to rise to the plane of that vision, lest
you should become too warlike.
Now pray that the hands of the President may be upheld, and that his
soul may be strengthened by the living soul of America’s greatest son,
Abraham Lincoln.
The future is on the laps of the gods.
_May 15._
LETTER XLIII
THE SECOND COMING
TO those who have suffered in this war, either from wounds of the body
or wounds of the soul, it has sometimes seemed that the Christ of the
Christian world had turned His back and gone away, perhaps to some
other star where His teaching could be understood and His law of love
become a real influence in the lives and hearts of men.
But the Christ who died to teach men how to live has not left the world
in this its hour of trial.
He is the same Christ of love and compassion; and whoever attempts to
put in His place a Christ of hate and pitilessness, blasphemes His
sacred name, and will one day pay the awful penalty of that blasphemy.
I have seen face to face the Christ who walked the world in Galilee.
Are you startled, you Christians who hope to see Christ when _you_
die? Why should I not see Him? Have I not served, in life and in
death? Am I not serving now, to the best of my individual power? Yes, I
have seen the Christ.
Look for Him to come again “in the clouds of heaven with power and
great glory,” though He may not walk the earth again in material form.
What need is there for Him to walk the earth now in a mortal body, when
more and more men and women are opening their spiritual sight, so that
they can see Him while still held in their robes of flesh?
I have told you of the Beautiful Being on the battlefields, and now I
want to tell you of the Christ on the Battlefields.
He was never afraid of pain, that son of Light, who showed the way of
pain to the shrinking souls of men. The cross of Christ is a living
thing, and its power will be felt more and more as the tired world
recovers itself after its baptism of blood.
When the half-gods go the gods arrive. When Mars, the half-god, the
war-god, is sent back to his place, the god of love and pity can make
Himself seen in the hearts of men and women.
They are wise who hope for the Christian faith a renaissance of life.
It had grown old and indifferent. Thinking itself saved, it had
forgotten to save the world. Feeling itself secure, it let its security
be surprised by Mars, the war-god.
Many a soul in its last hour of agony has seen the Christ; many a
soul in France, in Belgium, in Poland, and on the war-rocked sea has
recognized the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
Many a mother has seen in true vision her dying son held up by the
Christ. Catholic, Protestant, “free-thinker,” they all have called on
the Son of Mary to comfort their sons in the last dread moment and
beyond.
From the shrieking hell in Belgium I yesterday saw a man, a common
soldier, go straight from death into the high place beyond even astral
turmoil, because in dying he called on the Christ of his mother’s faith
to take him away from strife to the heaven of peace above the world.
Many have gone that way since this trial by fire began, but more have
remained below. Few have faith enough for the great flight.
Whatever religion you work with, let it include the Christ and the
cross of Christ! What other comfort is there for the soul that
_feels_ its pain and feels the awful sum of the world’s pain at
this time? Philosophy is good, I have called myself a philosopher; but
love is the highest reach of philosophy, and Christ is the highest
reach of love.
They talk of a new religion, as if the love of Christ were an old and
worn-out love. The love of Christ is reborn whenever a soul in a flash
of illumination beholds that mystery in his heart.
Worship the Christ in your own heart, for He is there. Worship Him in
the heart of your friend, for He is there. Worship Him in the heart of
your enemy, for He is also there. Then slay if you can, when you know
_whom_ you seek to slay.
A new spirit has entered the hearts of the soldiers. They fight on, but
they have been told in dreams that they fight their brethren.
Murderers on the high seas, pirates under the eagle, they too are your
brothers. “Forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Conquer them,
because you must; but do not forget that they are your brothers.
The Christ who hovers over the battlefields carries no flag. He is the
first of the neutrals, because he loves all, even the pirates under
the eagle and the murderers on the high seas. The Roman soldiers on
Golgotha were not execrated by Him.
When He took upon himself the limitations of the flesh, He understood
limitation by transcending it. We can never understand any limitation
until we transcend it.
Who should know better than He the agony of torn flesh and broken bones
and mangled nerves? Can the wounded soldiers teach Him anything? Can
the betrayed world give Him advice in settling with its Judas? “That
thou doest, do quickly.”
The betrayer of the world has hanged himself already in his excess of
zeal. When his effigy was burned in Rome, do not think that he did not
feel the fire. He felt it. The supreme War Lord has had one moment of
sanity. Yesterday I saw his demon go snarling along the battle line. He
did not snarl when I met him first, now many months ago.
If I could only make you understand that I speak of facts, not fancies!
I have seen what I describe, as clearly as you see the table before
you, or the pencil in your hand. When I say that I have talked with
demons, I mean that I have talked with demons. When I say that I have
seen the Christ, I mean that I have seen the Christ. I am not weaving
romances, nor have I come back from my journey among the stars to
compete with the spinners of tales. I write to reveal what otherwise
would be unrevealed, to show to the world the causes lest the world go
wrong with the effects. I want to help even the race that all other
races, including its ally the Turk, now execrate.
Only the charity of Christ is wide enough to cover this world-betrayal.
And I tell you the betrayers were egged on, inspired and themselves
betrayed by the _personal_ forces of evil, in their supreme effort
to put back the clock of civilization.
But the Christ cast out devils and raised the dead. Can He not cast
out these devils behind the purpose of war? Can He not raise the dead
to the region of peace in the end? Can He not raise _you_ to the
level of His charity?
_May 16._
LETTER XLIV
POISON GASES
TO-NIGHT I shall not prate to you of charity. Instead, we will speak of
east winds and poison gases, and the demons that ride on poison gases.
All hell is again let loose upon the world. It is worse out here than
during the month before the war.
For eleven days I have not been with you. I have had no time for eleven
days to spend even an hour with you.
Were you strong enough to hear what I _could_ tell, you would
never publish it for the world; but I can tell you much which you are
strong enough to hear and which the world is worthy to know.
East winds and poison gases! The very idea seems infernal, for men die
in indescribable agony from the gases borne on those winds from the
German camps over to those camps where rational human beings wage war
by human means. But poison gases are demonic, and demons ride on them.
I have seen them come rolling forward in droves, their eyes aflame with
hate, their mouths horrible with rancor and triumph.
Oh, you safe there as yet in your native land! could you see behind the
trenches of the enemy, could you see what lurks in the air above the
camps of the enemy, you would even pity the enemy. I may tell you that
many out there are stark raving mad.
When human beings, invoking the powers of hate, send such hell-fumes
to choke and torture their fellow-beings, they have ceased to be quite
human.
I, who see their souls, am sick with horror. It is perhaps well that
you are alone now, for I may tell you things which you can best endure
alone.
Were it not for the work which you have to do in future, were it not
for this work and that which is to follow, I should take you out and
away from the world for good, as far as this life is concerned. * * *
But you must endure to the end, as I shall endure to the end; for you
have work to do.
Those who say that all is well in Germany lie in their throats, or they
are hypnotized by the lie that holds Germany to the belief that she can
conquer.
Could hell conquer heaven all souls would be destroyed. Should hate
conquer now the world would be broken asunder.
Hate! You know not the meaning of the word. Hate of England, hate of
America, hate of Italy! The race that inspired this war is poisoned
to the last molecule with hate. Babes imbibe it with their mothers’
milk and their stomachs turn sour. Children see it in their parents’
eyes, and shrink away in fear of their own source. No, you know not the
meaning of hate.
On the poison gases borne by the east wind there came across to me a
demon with no eyes. Where did he come from? From some subterranean hell
where no light is, and therefore no need for eyes. Could I draw, I
could make you see him; but words were devised to express those things
which are known in the experience of the race, and no one who has seen
such things has used language to describe them. Groping his way, that
astral monster fastened himself upon a human victim, a prisoner in the
hands of the French--one who had spit at his keepers in the madness of
hate.
No, I must not tell you what followed; but the astral soul of the
prisoner went out of his body and remained out.
This attempt to tell the world what I know now is like trying to play
Beethoven on a penny whistle. I feel as a mathematician would feel
should he set himself down to teach addition to small children. I dare
not tell you more than I do, for you could not contain it.
The world is old, and the world deemed itself wise, and the world has
come to this!
There are many earnest souls who desire experience in the astral world.
I have heard one say in your presence that a certain attack was “only
astral.” I listened, and said no word.
Do you know what the astral world is, you who seek knowledge of it?
The astral world is the world of _feeling_, the world of emotion,
the world of love and hate. The astral world at this time is so thick
with evil passions that one could cut it with a knife. It is often cut
with knives now, with bayonets, and the crowding demons suffer from
contact with the steel. “Only astral!” The astral world above New
York, awful as you know it to be, is nothing to the astral world above
those battlefields. Keep away! You can do no good there. If possible,
go up among the mountains and seek in the pure breath of the pine-trees
healing from the poison of the astral world above New York. Go there
and stay there until the pressure is exhausted. You can do no good
either where you are.
I can write better in the pure air of the pine woods. Get away from the
poison fumes of unneutral New York, for devils ride on the winds of
hate, and you are not to be destroyed by them.
You have work to do in the future.
_May 27._
LETTER XLV
THE SUPERMAN
IN one of the upper regions of the astral world--not in the region of
pure mind but near it--I met a man last night who passed to and fro
with his head bowed in thought.
“What troubles you, friend?” I asked, as I stood before him.
He paused in his restless walk and gazed at me.
“Who are you?” he enquired, listlessly.
“I am a Judge,” I answered.
His eyes brightened with interest.
“You must have come at the call of my thought,” he said, “for I have
need of a Judge.”
“On whom do you wish me to pass judgment?” I asked, half smiling at his
strange words.
“I would like you to pass judgment on me.”
“And your offence?”
“My offence--if it is an offence, and on that you shall give your
opinion--is having led a nation to its undoing.”
“With malice aforethought?” I queried.
“With malice, perhaps,” he answered, “but not in the sense of your
question. I never believed they had spirit enough to believe me.”
“You pique my curiosity,” I said. “Who are ‘they?’ and in what did they
believe you?”
“They are the Germans,” he answered, “the Germans whom I despised, and
they believed my theory that man becomes supreme by doing what he wills
to do.”
“And the devil take the hindmost?”
“Yes, and the devil take the hindmost.”
He bent on me his sombre eyes, and I waited for his words.
“What a folk those Germans are!” he said. “Whatever they do, they do
_too_ thoroughly. One cannot trust them with a great truth.”
“They do seem to have systematized you into the ground,” I answered.
“I wanted to make them gods,” he complained, “and I have made them
devils.”
“God only can make gods,” I said. “Perhaps you were too ambitious.”
“Humph! Perhaps I was too confiding.”
“Hermeticism is safer,” I suggested. “You told them far too much.”
“Or far too little, maybe.”
“In how many volumes?”
“Go ask the librarians. Not the foreign ones--they bind my works in
packages of salable size.”
“And how can I help you?” I asked.
“Judge me.”
“While you prosecute and defend yourself?”
“Who else is fit, either to prosecute or defend me?”
“Go on with the prosecution.”
“I have corrupted a whole people, and led them to their ruin.”
“Elaborate the charge.”
“I thought to remedy their spinelessness, and following me with
characteristic thoroughness, they have become _all spine_; they
have neither heart nor bowels.”
“Continue,” I said.
“I preached Beyond Man. They have practised below man.”
“So far,” I interrupted, “you have prosecuted them, not yourself.”
“How can I charge myself without charging them?” he demanded.
“Then I will step down from the bench,” I said, “and talk with you man
to man.”
“I am glad you didn’t say soul to soul.”
“Oh, man is good enough for me! As I said before, you were too
ambitious.”
“Yes, too ambitious for man, too sick of man, too much in love with
what man might become!”
“We have come already to the defence,” I said.
“The smell of the court is still about you,” he growled.
“You asked me to be your judge.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“I am sorry for you,” I said.
He smiled a sad and searching smile.
“You seem to have both heart and bowels,” he observed.
“And you have been too long alone,” I replied. “You have lost your
gift of words. Shall I prosecute, defend _and_ judge you? You can
interrupt me whenever you like.”
“Go on,” he assented.
“You were born under a restless star,” I began. “You followed heroes;
they disappointed you by being men. Then you made self your hero, and
that disappointed you most of all.”
“You seem to know all about me.”
“That is the glory and the shame of your greatness, that one knows all
about you.”
“I deny it! You do _not_ know all about me.”
“What is it that we do not know?”
“You do not know how I loved man!”
“You spoke of him with contempt.”
“That he might rise to Beyond Man.”
“Oh! And drown the children on the _Lusitania_, and hack his way
through Belgium, and turn every friend against him, and be the curse of
the planet!”
He raised an arresting finger.
“You are speaking of the Germans,” he said.
“They are the only ones who have followed your philosophy to its
logical conclusion.”
“And you taunt me with that?”
“I taunt you with nothing. I am stating facts. It was you who taunted
them--to their undoing.”
“I only preached Beyond Man.”
“So far beyond man that man misunderstood you.”
“Is that my fault?”
“Whose else?”
“Not theirs?”
“Not altogether theirs. You hated too much. You taught them to hate
man.”
“I taught them to hate all that was not Beyond Man.”
“But man is not Beyond Man, and so you taught them to hate man.”
“But they themselves are not Beyond Man!”
“They aspire to be. You taught them to aspire to be. They believed
themselves Beyond Man, beyond good and evil. You taught chemistry to
babes and sucklings, and they have blown up the nursery of the world.”
“I wanted only to teach them.”
“You should have begun with the a-b-c.”
“And what do you think is the a-b-c of Beyond Man?” he asked.
“The a is love, the b is humility, the c is truth,” I answered.
“And why did I not teach them love, humility and truth?”
“You knew not love, humility and truth.”
“I knew not love?”
“You knew not love.”
“And I knew not humility?”
“Your arrogance is a by-word.”
“And I knew not truth?”
“You knew but half the truth, and half the truth is not truth, as half
an apple is not an apple.”
“Do you think I taught them falsehood?”
“The supreme falsehood, that _they_ could be Beyond Man. They are
not ready for Beyond Man.”
“But man must be surpassed!”
“Man must surpass himself,” I answered. “You see, there is a
difference.”
“What should I have taught them?”
“That Beyond Man is the servant of man, not the bully and the tyrant.”
“But they would not have understood.”
“Be not too sure of that. Some few have understood the Son of Man.”
“Oh, him!”
“Whom you repudiated.”
“But he taught men to be slaves!”
“A good servant maketh a good master, and he that is greatest among you
let him be the servant of all.”
“Oh, if you are going to quote Scripture--”
“I quote _the_ Beyond Man.”
“And you believe----”
“I believe that you repudiated the only _well-known_ example of
your own ideal.”
“And you also believe----”