with all other loyal Americans. So you will help in the process of
melting. To some of them the tragedy will open the doors of initiation.
Their loyalty to a pledge is a finer trial than the fire of a
battlefield. Those who are loyal must not be made pariahs. Of those who
are disloyal I say nothing, but leave them to the Law.
The initiatory process! It has the earth in its grasp. There are those
whom you love that it has in its grasp, too. They suffer, as you have
suffered. But they shall find peace.
LETTER XI
MAKE CLEAN YOUR HOUSE
_May 4, 1917._
DO you know that the human race is being weighed in the balances? Work
and pray that it may not be found wanting.
We who dwell in the clear light of that world which is to you the Other
World, can see the handwriting on the wall.
The world has been too dishonest. In an honest world, could this war
have been? In the world that is to come, nation will not distrust
nation, nor man distrust man. But now distrust is a necessary part of
the human equipment. You may trust--but not too far. You may love your
neighbor--but not too much. You may do to your brother as you would
have him do to you--but not all the time.
America was built on a foundation of ideals; but there is too much of
the mud of personal seeking mixed with the good clay of your bricks.
You washed away with your blood one plague-spot, that of slavery; but
there is another plague-spot you have got to wash away. Will you do it
with the free water of good will, or will you do it again with your
blood? I wait to see.
Do not say that the world’s troubles are over, because America has
come into the war. The world’s troubles are not over. When the war is
over--the greater war--make clean your house, O America!
There is no other civilized country where the premiums upon dishonesty
are so high.
Can you buy a pound of butter and be certain that you get sixteen full
ounces? Can you buy a pound of meat and be sure that the scales are
true?
A new race is being born. Begin with those children, and teach them
honesty before you teach them geography--honesty with the parents,
honesty with each other, honesty with themselves. “As the twig is bent
the tree inclines.”
When I was a little boy I was taught that George Washington could not
tell a lie. I had an ideal of George Washington. I wanted to emulate
him. And so when I was a man I sought truth. I looked for it on the
surface of the ground, and also in deep wells. Once I spent years
in the wilderness trying to find truth in myself. I remained in the
wilderness until I found it. Had I not found it, I should have left my
bones there.
You need a new set of copy-book maxims. If the boy who writes “Honesty
is the best policy” at school in the morning, sees in the afternoon his
father trying to trade a balky horse for a good roadster, he wonders
if his teacher is fooling him. The disillusionment of children is
tragic with menace for the coming State. I would rather see reproach
in the eyes of an Adept Teacher than in the eyes of a child. If I fail
my Teacher I do not hurt him seriously, if I fail my child I hurt him
irreparably.
You must face the fact that the life of America is going to be
reorganized.
You have wondered why I have not written of late. I have been busy,
studying America. I have seen much that I can tell you, and much that
I cannot tell you--yet. For I want you to be quiet. You could not be
quiet if you knew as much as I know.
It has been said that necessity knows no law. Forget it not, you
war-profiteers who would corner the world’s necessities. Remember that
a cornered animal is dangerous, and a cornered necessity has hoofs and
horns.
There is a disease that has no name among the doctors--the disease of
colossal possessions. Its symptoms are a voracious appetite for more
possessions, and a phobia lest possessions should be lost. It is worse
than neuralgia and indigestion combined to disturb the rest of the
victim.
I long to see a hundred million and more people living in peace and
plenty in America.
Fanatics prattle about the confiscation of great fortunes. I do not
care so much what you do with your fortunes. But I care much what you
do with your land and your food, and I care more what you do with your
men and women and little children.
Do not get into a panic, I pray you. A panic is worse than a quicksand
to get into. Keep calm. The country is in no danger, if it does not
lose its head.
LETTER XII
LEVEL HEADS
_May 15, 1917._
DO not get excited, you Americans. If you keep your heads, you will
come through this all right. If you lose your heads, you may lose much
besides--you may lose more than you can win back in a hundred years.
I am not excited. I have not lost my head. (Yes, I still have a head,
and hands and feet. If I should try to live out here without hands
and feet, the adjustment to that unaccustomed condition would have
a reactionary effect upon my head. I am not experimenting in the
elimination of my members.)
You see a country now, Russia, that is making the experiment of living
without its head. No nation can continue as a nation without a head,
and a level one. Even the most extremely republican, democratic,
socialistic, or any other kind of a nation must have a head. A
completely anarchistic aggregation of people could not be called a
nation. Its land would be only a geographical section populated with
units, and such units unrelated to other units might as well be ciphers.
Do not be impatient because I write seldom at present. I am rather
busy. I shall always come when I have something that must be said.
A change is coming in America. Quite a change has already come about,
has it not?[2]
This country is great, this country is strong, this country is
adaptable. It can adjust itself to change. The people of this country
have not been slaves for a long time. The people of Russia have been so
many kinds of slaves that their reaction to freedom is unexpected by a
free world. Wait! Do not lose your heads about this matter.
I do not object to there being a few persons who know that I am writing
with you again. They cannot affect me, save to encourage me with their
interest.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: It was about this time, if I remember rightly, that many
of our wealthy men began working for the government at one dollar a
year.]
LETTER XIII
TREES AND BRICK WALLS
_May 16, 1917._
YOU fear lest the dismal prophecies of world-disaster, of cataclysm,
of the destruction of half the human race which you hear from many
sources, may tend to discourage the world.
Remember that hope springs eternal in the human breast. And if the
minds of men are familiar with the idea of cataclysm, they will more
readily adjust themselves to lesser changes.
Read the Old Testament. The most dismal prophecies were not verified,
but changes came.
Some of the “independent ministers” of America are more violent than
Jeremiah. But they help indirectly--in accustoming the minds of men to
the idea of change.
If panics come--and they may--refuse to be panic-stricken.
If violence comes--and it may--refuse to be violent.
If discouragements come--and they will--refuse to be discouraged.
When your brains become over-heated, look steadily at the trees. They
will quiet you. If there are no trees in your neighborhood--why, look
at a brick wall in moments of excitement. A brick wall is a soothing
spectacle. It stands steady, unless moved from without.
LETTER XIV
INVISIBLE ARMIES
_May 23, 1917._
MANY of the soldiers out here who have become fully awake and
self-conscious are striving to bring about those ends for which they
gave their lives on earth. There are thus soldiers working on both
sides of the war and on this side of the veil. Immediately after the
change many of them fight each other; but they soon learn that they can
do more effective work by giving attention to their comrades in the
flesh. They can soothe and inspire and instruct.
We are forming an army out here. There is no lack of recruits. America
must be saved, and few of you know how much America has to be saved
from. But we know--we who have watched the world for the last two years
and three-quarters.
It is not so terrible to die. It is really far more terrible to be born.
The army that we are recruiting here is made up of men of all ages--all
ages in this life, I mean. Yes, there are women also in our army. There
are some veterans of the Civil War and veterans of the War with Spain.
Over the regiments and divisions of this army there are commanders,
as over the armies of earth. Otherwise the work would lack unity of
purpose. Ours is mostly a volunteer army, though conscription is not
unknown among us.
You wonder what I mean? Do you not suppose that we can call a soul from
a useless occupation and give him useful labor? We can and do, daily.
We have even recruited largely from the old and native Americans, the
red skinned hunters and warriors who remain in such large numbers in
the neighborhood of the earth. There is work which they only can do.
There are many kinds of work and a great variety of workers.
I come and go, from coast to coast. I know what is doing on the shores
of the Pacific, in the Atlantic States, on the Gulf of Mexico, and
the Middle and Rocky Mountain States are familiar ground to me. I am
renewing my youth in this period of activity. I am working for my
country. I am in training, too.
Why do you smile? There is a training of the mind and the will that is
more effective than any training of the physical body--quicker and more
effective. Then too the astral body can be trained to a high degree of
efficiency and elasticity. Surely I need not tell you this.
And I am training others. We old fellows can be very useful in a time
like this. I am glad now that I came out _when_ I did, that I went
through my novitiate while the world was still at peace and there was
leisure for many things which now I should not have time for. I had a
delightful holiday. I hunted through the wilds of the invisible, and
fished in the waters of space; but now I am back at my work again.
LETTER XV
THE WEAKEST LINK
_June 2, 1917._
THERE are in the archives of the Masters of Wisdom certain data
relative to the past and future of this country which would make
interesting reading could they be published in the newspapers at this
time of national crisis.
America is aware of her mission of democracy; but she is not aware
of another mission equally potent--that of making the world safe for
spiritual culture. I do not mean religion, as the word is ordinarily
used; but I mean the culture of the spirit of love--such ideas of love
as the world has inadequately grasped from the teachings of Jesus
of Nazareth, grasped and let fall again because those ideas were too
warm to be comfortably held by hands cooled in the material labors of
selfishness.
America has laid up for herself in the regions beyond the physical a
debt--an obligation that is not by any means a treasure in heaven, but
which, when the debt is paid, may be a real spiritual treasure. I refer
to the armies of souls who once occupied this land as free owners, and
who were expelled and disinherited by the expanding civilization which
grew up in the place of wigwam and hunting-ground.
Those souls, many of them, desire to return. Many have already
returned, and unless some way is open for them to live again the free
life to which they were accustomed in the past, they will tend to
become a destructive force. They cannot be eliminated so easily now,
when they wear white bodies and claim citizenship with you. They are
scattered from shore to shore of this wide land. You can tell them
by their eagle eyes and their high cheek bones, by their free gait
and their love of freedom. They are hard to restrain in factory and
counting-house. They are clerks with a difference and laborers with a
dream. Many of them have found entrance into the sun-lighted world as
the children of European immigrants, for they find it easier to enter
the blood of certain other races than the blood of the Anglo-Saxon, for
all the Anglo-Saxon love of freedom.
A time may come when these now foreign-blooded primitive Americans will
instinctively rebel against the restraining influences that have held
them, when they will seek to live over again the old life of nature,
even though they have to take it as the kingdom of heaven is said to
have been taken.
There is coming a time when love will be needed in this land as it has
never been needed before, when “live and let live” must become a law as
well as a phrase. Those who long for freedom with Nature can be given
that freedom. Conditions may be hard in the great cities.
I am not trying to instill fear into the American heart. On the
contrary, I am trying to insure you against fear.
Not long could the wheels of civilization stop turning. But they could
stop--for a wink of the Cosmic Eye.
America is going to be saved, and saved in the hour of her greatest
danger. What will her greatest danger be? You must think that out for
yourself.
Learn to see through the eye of the Planetary Spirit. Your view is too
narrow. Where your library stands on shelves is for you the centre
of things; but the centre of things is in the heart, and hearts are
everywhere. If you think about the race and not about yourself, your
heart will be magnified; you will see with the eyes of the heart, and
he who sees with the eyes of the heart is wiser than historians or
intellectual prophets.
The world must be made safe for love. All men must be provided for in
the scheme of the future, all men and women and little children. It
is not safe to disregard any, for a chain is as strong as its weakest
link, and every link must be made strong.
LETTER XVI
A COUNCIL IN THE FOREST
ONE night, to repose my soul from the labors I had undertaken, I
retired to a pine forest upon the earth, in one of the New England
States. Thinking to be alone, I had sought the place; but no sooner
had I drifted into meditation than a strange sound fell upon my ears.
It was not like the sounds of earth, it was more subtle yet more
penetrating; and I knew that I was listening to a song (if you may call
it a song) by some of my fellow sojourners in the region beyond the
sunlight.
Suddenly with a rush they leaped past me into the clearing, and forming
in a circle, they waited. Then I saw a light that was not of earthly
origin, the light of a campfire, and I knew that I had been surprised
by a band of Indians who were preparing to hold some rite of their old
religion.
Though I had not been invited to their ceremony, neither had I invited
them to intrude upon my contemplation, so I remained and watched them.
(Yes, there is less secrecy out here, for the reason that there is
greater understanding and greater tolerance.)
Soon I was looking on at a strange dance. All in a circle they swung
round and round the blazing fire, singing and leaping. I did not know
the meaning of the words they sang; but I could read their minds by the
thought-images they formed, and I knew that they were celebrating the
date--reached by what lunar reckoning I knew not--of some great Indian
massacre in which they had taken part a hundred or two hundred years
ago.
And the impulse of their dance, the motive power of it, was hatred of
the white man who had scattered them and driven them away from their
old hunting grounds.
Shocked, yet fascinated by this inner glimpse at the souls of the
American aborigines, I watched them.
Though I am not skilled in magic rituals, I soon perceived that there
was form and method in this dance, method and form and a hostile
purpose.
They were, by exciting themselves and by fixity of thought, trying to
excite a scattered company of men in these United States--men of a low
grade of intellect but of psychic temperament--to deeds of violence and
destruction.
“So that is the way they do it!” I thought.
Then I drew a veil around my thoughts, that they might not be perceived
by the beings before me. Yes, I can do that, and so can many men upon
the earth.
I could smell the keen fresh odors of the pine grove, and I could feel
the rising wind as it swept across the clearing; for the wind seemed to
respond to their call and to offer its forces to them. You must know
that the elements are impersonal, though semi-personalities inhabit
them, and that the elements _and_ these semi-personalities can be
used and guided, for purposes good or evil, by any being who has gained
that peculiar power in one or many lives.
And looking off in the distance, I could see that the wind as it swept
along carried the thoughts and passions of these long dead men, these
souls that by reason of their downward tendencies had not broken away
from the attraction of matter, the astral gravitation that makes so
many souls earth-bound.
Still looking off and projecting my consciousness in a way I have
learned to do, I saw the influence of this magic ritual of revenge
and menace as it touched the minds of men far scattered. I saw
their thoughts take on suddenly the tinge of hatred, hatred for the
civilization in which they had failed to realize their personal desires.
And I knew that on that night and on the morrow, and at intervals for
many days, deeds of violence would be committed, that property would be
destroyed, and men of order threatened.
My heart was sad, for I had not understood before how real was the
danger to my country in these times of crisis from the karma the old
settlers had made. Of course they believed they were doing right in
ridding themselves and their adopted land from the simple but complex
natives, whose civilization was older than the civilization of Europe,
and who had loved this land as only those can love a land who have
known the freedom of its spaces.
When the magic dance was over, and one by one and two by two the
communicants slipped away among the shadows, I strode forward into
the circle to have speech with any who should willingly respond to my
desire for acquaintanceship.
Suddenly I found myself face to face with a majestic chieftain, wearing
one of those long feather bonnets whose every feather marks some deed
of daring or achievement. (What a splendid custom was that! What an
incentive to action! Truly among the red men, deeds won a feather in
the cap.)
His face was like that of a hawk, and his eyes were bright with an
inner fire, that intensity of feeling and thought commingled which
marks the leader and master of men and him alone.
And I said to him in the forms of thought, for I knew no word of his
old language:
“I have been an unintentional witness to your ceremony this evening.
Will you enlighten me further as to its purpose? for I see that it was
directed towards the land of breathing men.”
With a sweep of his authoritative arm he dismissed the few of his
companions who had not already moved away among the trees, and we two
were alone together.
“I come as a friend,” I said, seeing that he hesitated.
And the word was true; for I saw that whatever harm he mistakenly
sought to accomplish, in his soul was the consciousness of justice,
that fundamental balance between right and wrong, that proposition
of law, which when native in the mind gives it dignity and attracts
respect. This was no dabbler in aboriginal and nasty sorcery, but a
kind of priest of retribution, a tribal demi-god who might perhaps some
day be made constructive and not destructive, an instrument of the
great Genius of America of which I have spoken in a former letter, the
Weaver of Destiny who has our land in charge.
We measured each other with the eyes, and I cast aside the veil that I
had before drawn around my thoughts, that he might see me mind to mind
and realize that I respected and to a degree understood him.
“You have seen what you have seen,” he observed.
“And you do not resent my presence?”
“No.”
The fresh odor of the pine grove was keen in my senses, and my
new-found companion threw back his head with a splendid motion as if to
drink it in.
“Freedom is good,” he said, “and the land was ours.”
So I perceived that by excusing himself and his associates he had
perceived that I accused them. Then I knew that I could really commune
with him mind to mind, and I was glad; for I ever seek to extend the
range of my knowledge and to form acquaintance with those of sturdy
will.
“But the land is free to all the world,” I said, “to you and to me, and
to those of both our races.”
“We do not see it so,” was his reply.
“But,” I insisted, “are we not now, you and I, enjoying it in freedom?”
It is difficult to translate in words the rapid give and take of our
thoughts, the pictures that flashed back and forth between us, as I
strove with kindliness and will to make him understand that the welfare
of his race did not call for the destruction of mine.
I told him--and the idea was so new to him that, lacking words, I had
to draw my story on the canvas of thought in the minutest detail--how
the soul that leaves the earth for a time returns to it in another
form. And I explained how hundreds upon hundreds of his people, and the
most advanced among them, had already come back in material form to
that America they had loved before, that they wore white bodies, and
could only be distinguished from other white men by the keenness of
their eyes, their gait, and certain peculiarities of speech and manner.
He followed my story with astonished, almost painful, intensity; for he
knew, with that inner knowledge which on this side of life is almost
impossible to deceive, that I spoke honestly and believed that which I
told him.
“And do you not deceive yourself?” was his inevitable question.
Then I told him of those recent and former lives of my own which I most
vividly remember, and cited proofs that I did not deceive myself.
“But what a life is that of the white man for one of my people?” he
demanded.
Then he flashed me picture after picture of the simple white man’s
life in America, the schoolhouse with the choking-hot stove and the
bad air, the house and home with closed doors and windows, the
“meeting-house” where a droning or a noisy preacher prated of things he
did not understand, to others who believed or did not believe that they
believed him. He held up before me as for ridicule the clothing of the
white man in the lower walks of life, the confining and uncomfortable
shoes, the binding trousers, the ugly hat that makes bald the head, and
the collar. The one he pictured was a paper collar, soiled and wilted
at the edges.
Then he showed me--as if to prove the breadth of his observations--an
office in a city, with the clerks seated upon stools and bent with
aching backs over ledgers that contained figures, figures, long lines
of figures that were the symbols of the white man’s wampum, which
seemed so trivial when made the principal occupation of a soul that
had rejoiced in the red man’s forest.
“And is it for this that they come back to their native land?” he asked.
“But the soul must gain all experience,” I said.
The idea seemed new to him, and he pondered it with knitted brows.
“Why should the soul gain all experience?” he asked.
“That it may return to its God rich in knowledge,” I replied.
“Its God.” At that thought the strange eyes of him lighted, though his
face remained immobile.
“Yes,” I said, “for your God and my God are both God.”
“There are many gods,” he replied. “There is the Great Spirit, and
there are the others.”
“In the centre of each of them,” I assured him, “there is a spot, a
core of the heart that is the same in all, that exists everywhere, and
in every heart is one, that knows no division; and that centre is also
in your heart and mine and in that of our respective Gods.”
“Did you learn that in one of those hot schoolhouses?” he asked.
“No. I did not learn it even when I was an old man upon the earth,
but after I came out here. On earth I rather prided myself on my
separateness.”
“Then one can learn new religions out here?” he asked, in surprise.
“If one finds a teacher,” I replied.
“But what need is there of _new_ religions?”
“There is,” I said, “in the core of every religion also that central
spot where all are one. And there is in all races,” I pursued, for I
saw that he watched with half-belief, “there is in all races a core
of unity. The red man is the brother and not the permanent enemy of
the white man. So why should you injure the descendants of those who
followed what they believed to be right in extending their holdings in
this land long ago?”
“But I was not seeking to injure them for injury’s sake.”
“Then I misunderstood the purpose of your magic song.”
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “You caught the feeling of my children, who cannot
see beyond feeling. My purpose is only to destroy the present to make
way for the old life.”