the parts. America is a whole, and as a whole she must work. To fuse
these many races together is the mission of the present hour. Do not
lend your hearts to division.
I see a great leader of men who shall arise in this land. His mission
will be the union of races. He will be a teacher and a prophet.
LETTER IV
THE DIET OF GOLD
_March 10, 1917._
THE very influences that now tend to disrupt this country will later
draw it together. The many will find their meeting-point in the One.
That idea of national unity must be fostered, even to the extent of
patient tolerance of racial temperaments. Those who are in the process
of being separated from their old race and amalgamated with the new
race, feel the strain of the change. It irritates them and their
blood protests, even when their wills bid them forge new bonds for
themselves. Few “hyphenated Americans” would be willing to go bodily
back to their old allegiance.
America is the most interesting of all countries, and we who see it
from this side of the airy frontier see it in historical perspective.
The view that is nearest to our point of view is that of your present
Chief Executive. His eyes are far-seeing. He anticipates the clearer
sight that will one day be his, when he has finished his work.
Our country is suffering at this moment, in March, of the year of our
Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen, from an indigestion of gold. You
have swallowed more gold than you can assimilate, and your organs are
congested. If to restore the equilibrium, some of this gold should be
regurgitated, by war or by other means, do not in the weariness that
follows fancy that the nation is going to die.
Do not be shocked by my figures of speech. I want to get into your
consciousness an understanding of facts and conditions as they exist.
You cannot feed on gold. “Gold is a medium of exchange.” When it is
merely hoarded it has lost its relation to life. A miser nation is a
sadder subject for contemplation than a miser man, with his long claws
and his gloating eyes. He may think, the miser man, to secure himself
from the dangers of the future by amassing gold for its own sake. A
miser nation may think that by amassing gold for its own sake it can
save itself from the financial dangers threatening the world after
these years of war.
But the miser, known as such, is in danger of being robbed and
murdered. And the miser nation is in danger of being attacked and
looted by other nations.
You Americans want to be generous to the homeless and foodless people
of Europe; but your generosity has not yet deprived of one square meal
the hundred-million-headed being that is America.
I do not care so much what you do with your gold. But I care much what
you do with your food. You are not alchemists that you can make gold
potable. You are humans with delicate stomachs. Even a hen will not lay
eggs for you unless she is well fed. If she protests, you can punish
her by eating her; but the luckiest break of her wish-bone will not
produce for you another hen. Better conserve her labor power by gifts
of grain, and have your eggs for breakfast and for hatching. She has
periods of laziness when she wants to sit still; but put a few of her
own eggs under her, and watch for results. Later I shall tell you of
other but no less practical ways of ensuring a supply of breakfasts.
LETTER V
CONTINGENT FEES
_March 10, 1917._
TO-DAY I heard that a certain rich man (unmindful of the camel and the
needle’s eye), supposing that the letters from this Living Dead Man had
been profitable to you, that there was “money in them,” was considering
the question of whether he should financially back a medium who
stood ready to declare that she was in communication with me, that I
repudiated the books written through you, and stood sponsor for certain
manuscripts written “through” her, as my only genuine messenger to the
world.
I join in your laughter, at your supposed “profitable” investment in
the securities of the other world, and at the eagerness to get aboard
a sea-of-ether-worthy ship exhibited by people who have not paid their
fare.
I may as well tell you now that this country and some others are
scattered over with supposed “communications” from me. It would seem
that my writing arms are as numerous as the feet of a centipede. It
would also seem by the style of some of these supposed communications,
by their contents and their contradictions, that I have as many minds
as Indra has eyes.
Even the elementals of the ouija board do not contradict themselves so
frequently as these amanuenses make me contradict myself. I think you
will have to trademark me.
After the serious nature of my recent letters, it relaxes me to jest.
If you include this letter in the book, please head it “Contingent
Fees.”
LETTER VI
THE THREE APPEALS
_March 11, 1917._
I STAND outside the world and look inside the hearts of men. I see more
than I saw when I was a man among them. Had I then looked as deep into
my own heart as I now look into theirs, I should have seen the hearts
of my fellow beings reflected in my own, for we differ from one another
as one insect differs from another. There are differences between
insects.
I look into your hearts, O men! and this is what I see: Ideals and
hypocrisy, self-interest and altruism, hunger and satiety.
Shall I, in offering advice, appeal to your ideals, your
self-interest, or your hunger? The opposite three would never spur you
to action along the lines I would have you spurred.
LETTER VII
THE BUILDERS
_March 22, 1917._
I HAVE promised to offer you advice as to how you may restore your
equilibrium. Use much of this superfluity of gold in rebuilding
devastated Europe. Give her credits and give her food. You who can work
in the fields, raise food to feed Europe. You who can build, give the
labor of your hands wherever it is needed. You who are discontented
here, go back to that Europe which gave you birth. By so doing you will
give yourselves a new point of view, and you will give yourselves a new
interest. A new interest is a new lease of life.
Make sacrifices. In saying that, I have two objects in view, the
effect on the world and the effect on yourselves.
To work for the ideal is sometimes more practical than to work for what
is called the real.
When I tell you to rebuild Europe, you can take it as ideal advice
or practical advice, depending on your point of view. It is ideal
because Europe needs rebuilding; it is practical because just now
and for a time to come America needs to get her mind on something
outside herself. We give that advice to individuals when they are too
self-centred. There is so much discontent and so much uncertainty that
anything which can catch and hold the attention of masses of men, which
can make them forget themselves, may enable them to be used by the
Genius of the race, which works for the welfare of the race as a whole.
Lend your money to Europe, and do not ask usurious interest. Yes, you
can take interest, for money has earning power, and the laborer--even
the laborer Gold--is worthy of his hire. But help by your generous
lendings at low interest to lessen the awful burden of taxation for the
people of Europe, which makes also for discontent and discouragement.
Go to Europe, many of you, that you may see what war does to a country,
what it might do to your country should you selfishly expose yourselves
to a desire on the part of outsiders to take from you by force that
which you have so skilfully acquired.
Go, that you may see and feel, as you can only see and feel face to
face, the spirit of self-sacrifice and national devotion which has
animated the people of Europe in this long war. They have found their
souls, but you have not yet found your soul.
There are engineers in this country who are less needed here than they
will be needed in Europe. There are specialists in all the branches
of science who are more needed there than here. We have specialists
enough. We can spare a few of them.
Build ships. Build more ships. Keep the men occupied. Give them
an objective. Do not let them brood. An idle brain is the devil’s
workshop. If you have not work enough, make work. There are things
enough to be done. Build ships.
Now in regard to your management of railroads and other public
utilities. The day for government control was heralded when the threat
of a strike came that would have, if put into effect, blocked the
wheels of the nation. All those public utilities whose blocked wheels
could threaten the national life and the movements of men should
be managed by the government. This is not socialism, or any other
_ism_. You who have stock in them, do not take alarm. A way can be
found that will satisfy you.
Think of the good of the whole, for you who are a part cannot prosper
without the welfare of the whole. This is not cant. It is a sort of
race biology. I look down and see you as a great being, and I prescribe
for you as a being, a race-unity, not as a few individuals here and
there. The cells in the body of the race-being must all be working
together. Get a unit of consciousness, as a race. Yield yourselves to
the consciousness of the race-unit. Be as individual as you please, but
be individual parts. Get into balance with other individuals, positive
and negative.
Make the rebuilding of Europe an objective point. Make it possible for
many discontented workers to go to work in Europe. You may say that the
armies of Europe, when released from military service, will furnish
workers enough; but there cannot be too many. There is a double object
in this: the object of getting work done, and that of the psychological
effect upon the worker.
I wish I could get into your minds by infusion the state of
consciousness that is mine. I wish I could make you see that separation
is death and that unity is life.
I have spoken of government control of railroads, but that is only
the beginning. There should be governmental handling of food. Begin
gradually, one thing after another. It is the destiny of the world to
go in that direction. You cannot block the wheels of that chariot.
_Serve if you hope to survive_ would be a good motto. You cannot
survive if you do not serve--all of you. I like that figure of the cell
which is a part of the race-being. It is the way I see you.
Just a word about nervous diseases. Yes, it is related to what I have
been saying. When at last the let-up comes after the unnatural strain
of war, the minds of men in going back, or in attempting to go back to
their normal state, may find themselves unable immediately to adjust
to the changed conditions. For a long time the brains of men and women
have been stimulated by the coffee of concerted action; when they are
thrown back on themselves they may relax too much.
Or, on the other hand, an unnatural excitement may drive them into
all kinds of excesses. Have you ever seen victims of mania who could
not rest, who had lost the ability to rest? They walk up and down,
and drum with their feet, and clench their hands. So many men and
women may be, after this war. There is certain to be an excess of love
excitement, and work is a good panacea for that complaint.
Then again, after years of war, years in which many have not known in
the morning whether they would be alive at night, they may retain the
habit of dread. They may fear to rest and fear to relax. Thus they may
welcome any excitement, as a substitute for the stimulus to which they
have been accustomed.
That is another reason why I would send Americans to labor with the
laborers of Europe. Not that the American working man is phlegmatic,
far from it; but with his mind unaccustomed to fear anything, except
the loss of his job and consequent hunger, he will have an effect
of confidence and hope on those around him. The American likes to
feel that he is leading, and in what better way can he indulge that
propensity than in leading his associates to hope?
You have no idea--you cannot have an idea--of the great depression that
will follow this war for a short while. It will be the relaxation,
the letting go. Always after war the ebb-tide is followed by great
activity; but it is that ebb-tide which we have to consider.
You in America will feel it. You have become accustomed to seeing gold
flow towards these shores. When the stream lessens, you will have to
combat the tendency to fear that lessening. Panics are like personal
fear, intensified by mass.
The world is drawing close together, and what influences a part
influences the whole.
After the war will also come an opening of the psychic senses of men,
everywhere. This, while good in itself, may become an added danger.
Prophets, true and false, will arise everywhere, with many remedies for
the diseases of souls and of bodies.
If I may make another suggestion, it would be that those who have
psychic awakening should think twice before proclaiming the fact. It
is a new sense that is coming into manifestation; but as the opening
of the eyes in an early stage of evolution probably revealed as many
dangers as blessings, so the new sense will reveal dangers. Do not try
to close the new sense, but do not be carried away by it. Remember that
it will be practically general, and like every new sense it will be
defective for a long time. It will reveal false things as well as true.
If a man opened his eyes for the first time upon a harmless tree, he
might mistake it for a monster.
Restraint in all things, moderation in all things, even in the
laudable desire to action. Weigh and measure. Prove before accepting
anything--prove by reason and by intuition if you cannot wait for proof
by practice. Weigh and measure what I say, as well as what the wildest
new prognosticator says. Discourage hysteria. A wave of hysteria is
likely to sweep over the world.
As revolution follows revolution, the startled inhabitants of the world
may tell themselves that nothing in the universe is stable, that all is
going to destruction, and that as they cannot save themselves from what
seems to be universal chaos, they may as well get all the pleasurable
excitement possible out of the passing moment. Restraint, restraint!
I see women afraid to bear children because of the uncertainty of
the morrow. I see men afraid to marry because of the uncertainty of
domesticity. I see farmers hesitate to plant because of the uncertainty
of the harvest. Again I say, be not afraid.
If you sow, you shall reap. If you marry, you shall build a home. If
you have children, the race will protect them--and you are a part of
the race.
Restraint! Fearlessness!
LETTER VIII
THE WORLD OF MIND
_March 24, 1917._
I WISH that more people of sane, sound mind would experiment in
telepathic communication. I know there is any amount of uncoordinated
and half-serious playing with phenomena; but with scientific accuracy
of observation and scientific precision in recording data, not only
the body of _sensible_ literature on these subjects would be
increased, but the habits of careful observation and precision in
reporting supernormal facts would be developed in the experimentalists.
You who write for me, continue to make and to record experiments. You
are almost too cautious, but most persons are not cautious enough.
Explain the necessary conditions of passivity and activity between
those working together. Though the best results are often obtained
by you alone, yet the testimony of one person is not so convincing
as the testimony of several who have witnessed and taken part in the
same phenomena. But you are right in hesitating to take on the psychic
conditions of insincere and merely curious people who would like to
work with you.
The great difficulty with most persons is that they cannot make
themselves sufficiently negative _for the time being_. When the
experiments are over they can and should become equally positive. They
can shift from one pole to the other, and they must do so if they wish
to preserve their physical health and balance.
But bear in mind that the influences from this side are good and bad,
even as the influences in the world are; and if you feel that any
“presence” is hostile, at once banish it and become positive. After any
approach by an undesirable influence, you should not for some hours let
yourself become negative. Go for a walk, or attack some difficult piece
of work, or read a book that demands mental activity in order to grasp
its meaning.
You live in a sea of mind, as well as in a psychic sea; they
interpenetrate, and they interpenetrate with the physical; but in
working through and with them, keep them as distinct as possible.
I work more and more in the mental world, and less and less in the
astral; but the majority of my readers will not know exactly what I
mean by that statement. There is a greater difference between the
astral and the mental than there is between the astral and the physical.
Do not despise the astral. Its dynamics are of colossal import. But
cultivate more and more the purely mental, because the astral in all of
you is developed beyond the mental.
In my former writings I have told you something of the dangers of the
astral. Now I want to tell you some of the more obvious dangers of the
mental.
Those who learn that they can create in mind need to develop a sense
of responsibility. They are too reckless in demonstrating their
power. Remember that as you go up in the planes of being you get into
subtler and subtler regions, and strength increases with the degree of
subtlety--not the reverse, as you would naturally suppose.
One of the greatest temptations of the mental world is that of the
creation of falsehoods. By stating that which is not true, you project
into the realm of mind a picture that has a certain permanency. It may
deceive others, but in time it will deceive you, its creator. Those who
speak falsely cannot perceive truth. Those who create false pictures
in the mental world will be deceived by those very pictures; they will
reap the effects of the causes they have set up.
Have you not known people who were always being deceived by their
“friends”? They are generally those who have left deceiving pictures
behind themselves. There are people who cannot discriminate between the
false and the true. They deceive and are deceived. Those who deceive
are always deceived, whatever their supposed intellect may be.
And I would say to those to whom I now suggest experiments with
clairvoyance and telepathy, that if they have planted the seeds of
falsehood they will reap a harvest of deceptive appearances. Test
yourselves in that way, you who believe yourselves to be sincere. You
may learn something of value regarding your own karma. (Yes, I will
use Theosophic or Indian terms when they express my meaning. Those
who re-write the Oriental philosophies in western terms can pass for
original only with the ignorant.)
What the new race needs most of all is truth. Modern science is
preparing the world for the fearless facing of truth. The man who toils
over a microscope that he may observe and record some _fact_ in
nature, is more the servant of God than the man who with sanctimonious
face tells his fellow creatures what they must _not_ do; for his
work at least is positive in its results.
There are too many “thou shalt nots”; too few “I shalls.”
The new race will develop a wide tolerance. It will discourage
undesirable things more by ignoring them than by attacking them. By
attacking a thing we give it power.
Work more and more in the world of mind. The results in the physical
will be immense.
LETTER IX
AMERICA’S GOOD FRIDAY
_April 6, 1917._
IT is past midnight. It is Good Friday. Momentous decisions for the
world and for all time are heavy in the souls of men.
On the day that this day stands for, in the long ago, a man (who
was also a god) stood forth alone for the ideas of love and human
brotherhood. At last, after all these years, the thing for which he
died may be realized. But there was a crucifixion on that Friday,
centuries ago.
I have brought you from a far-away shore that you might witness a great
struggle in the souls of men. You have arrived at a centre.[1]
To-day, in thousands of churches throughout Christendom, prayers will
be offered to the god-man who died that the god in man might live.
To-day in millions of hearts the cross will be set up.
It is so still here at midnight, at a few minutes past midnight on this
day of days.
Christianity has arisen, and presses forward to Golgotha to witness an
event.
Pray! Prayer is the affirmation by the soul of its unity with the One.
War is the affirmation of the soul of its separateness from many.
Love your enemies. It is the only way that you can conquer them.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: I had arrived in New York a few hours before after a long
sojourn in California.]
LETTER X
THE CRUCIBLE
_April 12, 1917._
LET us speak a little of this initiation through which the race is
passing. Always the trials precede the attainment.
When these wars are over there will be a new world, for the souls
of men will have been baptized with the fire and the blood. America
must have her part in it. To her also must come the trials and the
attainment. Watch and pray.
Some day I will send you back to commune with the soul of the Old
World--some day _we_ will send you back. It is another Europe you
will find, a Europe tried by fire, and some of it will be fine steel,
and some of it will be clinkers in the furnace, for the fire proves the
metal, and separates the metal from the slag.
From before the war to this day, the battles of the earth have been
enacted also in your soul, the blood and the fire, the pain and the
travail. You too have passed through the fiery furnace.
Long ago, when you identified your soul with the soul of the world,
you took upon yourself the trials of the world, the initiatory trials.
You also called down upon yourself the weight of your old karma, the
effects of the causes you had set up through the ages. That you are at
rest for a time means only that you have worked yourself free from a
little of the load. Had you not done it now, you would have had to do
it in the future. Rejoice for every trial that brings you nearer to the
goal. And this I say for all men.
If I speak of the world now, instead of that part only that we call
America, it is to identify the part with the whole. If I speak of you
personally, it is to identify you with the whole.
Back in that Europe to which you will go, you will find two classes,
those who have become fine steel, and those who have become refuse. You
will know the one from the other.
They will welcome you back, for you have passed through the fire with
them. They will welcome your country, too, for it now turns its face to
the fire.
Be not discouraged by dismal prophecies. Man does not live by bread
alone. If you have less to eat, your bodies will grow finer. If you
have more to do, your minds and spirits will expand. Few of you work to
your full capacity. The unit of force that is man may generate much
energy, drawing it up from the deeps of himself at the call of need or
of will.
Work harder now. Once I told you to rest more, but the laborers are
called to the vineyard. The hour of rest will come again, when the day
draws near its close.
In entering into the war, my country, put away all rancor, and fight
for the right in which there is no rancor. Hate not. The hour for hate
is past. (I say this, knowing that Hate and Fear, the mother of Hate,
will come and challenge your souls.)
I do not hate, and I do not fear, and I shall stay with you until the
day draws to its close. Are you sorry now that you let me speak again?
When fear comes to your house, I will speak to you of courage. When
hate shall menace you, I will turn it into love. I have found the
Philosopher’s Stone that can transmute base metals into gold.
Hate will be turned to love in this land where the Eagle cries. Listen
to the cry of the Eagle. It is a free bird, and it flies high. Its
message has only been hinted at, in the years that have yet been
numbered. The Eagle will teach freedom. They will listen--across the
sea.
America is indeed the melting-pot of nations. I can find no better
figure of speech. The German-American who is loyal to America now,
who hides the tragedy in his heart behind a brave face, may also come
through the furnace fine steel.