earth, so high that the horizons bound one hemi-sphere after another.
The horizons of time are also thus expanded, and I see ahead of and
behind the present hour. I see the causes that have brought the world
to its present _impasse_. You will have to remove the wall that
separates you from the age of enlightened brotherhood.
You have read about the golden age of the past. Did you think it was a
fanciful story, to amuse children in the fire-light? I tell you it will
sometime be realized again, and on this earth--now rent by hatred and
war.
You must retain all you have won from the mines of the earth and from
the activity of your own brains. Inventions and arts, they will all
have their place in the new age that is coming, and hitherto unimagined
art and science will add further to the glory and comfort of life. It
will be the fault of your own folly and blindness if you lose anything
of value to the soul. The soul needs matter as matter needs the soul.
Because we look forward to an age without hatred and wasteful division,
we do not look forward to an age of idleness and inertia. Limitless
will be the opportunities for genius, for talent, for ambition.
The greatest aristocracy of earth is the aristocracy of mind and soul,
and mind and soul will be cultivated. The education of the future will
be not only practical but humanistic; nothing will be thrown away
that makes for beauty or for thought. The treasures of dead languages
will not be thrown into the dust-bin. After the labor necessary to
provide for the material wants of the world, time will be left for
art and beauty and scholarship, for social discussion and religious
exaltation. The mystic also will have his place.
Three years ago I would not have dared to prophesy a _happy_
outcome for this tragic fracas. More than two years ago I told you that
the battle had been won in the regions above the earth--won by the
powers of good, who labor for the welfare of mankind. How _can_
you doubt? If the war had ended two years ago, the world might have
gone on more or less as it went before. But now it can never go back to
the old selfish ways. In the need that will follow the war the races
will help one another; they will turn to one another as brothers and
sisters turn.
Never lose faith that out of this tragedy will come the guerdon of the
world’s desire. I see it, I live for it (for I live more vitally than
you); and that you may see and live for it also I struggle against the
lightness of my present body, that has a tendency to carry me away from
the dense regions where you suffer and pray, you men of earth.
You who have followed me from those early days when I wrote you letters
from the lower astral world, describing as a traveller in a strange
country the things I had seen; you who followed me through the hells
of astral turmoil during the early months of the war, follow me yet a
little further. I will show you the way as it has been shown to me.
And you will walk in that way, though stumbling at first and groping
for the thread of purpose through the labyrinth of reconstruction, in
the days that shall be called days of peace. For perfect peace will
not come at once. You will have to work for it, as you have worked
for triumph in war. But if you have faith, you will ride the stormy
waters into the haven of a new earth. And a new heaven will spread
above the earth, for heaven is largely peopled from below; it recruits
its population from below. No new angels are being created now. The
outgoing Breath rests, and the indrawing Breath is about to begin.
You who have practised “yogi breathing” know how difficult it is to
hold the breath _out_ for more than a short time. It can only be
done by force of will. The tendency is to return, as the tendency in
the race is to return towards the Source from which it came. It is
therefore I say that you cannot retard, save for a little while, the
flow of the race-breath towards harmony and peace and love.
This struggle of men with each other in the selfishness of separation
is like the struggle of the yogi not to inbreathe--the young and
inexperienced yogi; for the wise one breathes at stated intervals, and
knows when the period is full.
The race knows. It will follow the law of the outflow and inflow. You
cannot prevent it. So yield yourselves to the current that would carry
you back to God.
It will not be a hurried journey, for the inflowing breath is measured
too. There will be time for labor and for rest, and to gather flowers
by the way.
Do you fear the return to God, however slow it may be? I who have
tasted death know there is nothing to fear; and I who have tasted the
new life tell you there is everything to hope.
LETTER XXIII
THE STARS OF MAN’S DESTINY
_November 24, 1917._
HAS it occurred to you that the powers that have in charge the progress
of the world may be obliged to use methods repugnant to your desires,
in order to accomplish inevitable purposes at the time when they are
due? Man, by rebelling against the tendencies of cosmic progress, may
retard it--for a time; but when the wave rises high enough it will
carry him along against his will, and inevitable effects are produced
in spite of his rebellion.
Take this war. The hour had struck on the world clock when races of
men should work together for a common purpose. They rebelled in their
fear that each would not get his share of world benefits; so the world
was attacked by a common enemy, and the races have _had_ to
unite for a common purpose, that of preserving civilization from the
destruction that threatens it.
Could this war have been prevented? By prevision, yes. But no one with
influence enough to be heard respectfully had that prevision. Those who
stand high in the world’s regard have generally so concentrated upon
their individual work and their individual ambitions, that they have
lost the ability to see impersonally and to see the world as a whole.
Some can see as a whole the tendencies of their own country; few can
see the world tendency.
And I tell you now that if, when this universal war is ended, the
races do not recognize the necessity to unite in a federation for the
good of all, there will be after forty years little left of all that
has been accomplished during that marvellous nineteenth century which
saw material progress equalling that of the preceding two thousand
years.
Can man not see the stars of his destiny without being struck on the
head with a hammer? If man will not work for the good of the whole,
then the whole has to be threatened. It is so threatened now, if you
could see it.
LETTER XXIV
MELANCHOLY
_December 23, 1917._
I WANT to write about melancholy, not the depression produced by bad
digestion or pressure on the nerves, but that cloud of darkness that
sometimes descends upon the most brilliant mind and the stoutest heart,
making them for a while useless for any purpose--except that of drawing
knowledge from the experience of melancholy itself.
Not all sadness originates in the heart that is sad, and fear, the
basis of melancholy, may be suggested to a soul on earth by a soul
beyond the earth. You do not realize what a cloud of dissatisfied and
fearful souls this holocaust has let loose in the invisible regions;
they flock round the sensitive souls upon the earth, longing to “tell
their troubles,” longing for sympathy and help. They are no more
self-reliant than many in your world whose very presence depresses a
stronger fellow being.
Now whenever you feel that cloud of melancholy, stop and ascertain
the cause. You have observed the workings of suggestion. If you
find nothing in your environment or circumstances to fill you
with hopelessness, would it not be safe to assume--unless you are
bilious--that the cloud gathered elsewhere and merely descended upon
you?
The student who hopes some day--though maybe many lives in the
future--to achieve adeptship, may as well begin now to control and
direct his thoughts and feelings.
You need not be melancholy unless you want to be. There are texts,
mantras, adages, even copy-book maxims you can recall and meditate
upon, that will drive away the worst fit of the blues. Here are a few:
Pleasure and pain are opposite expressions of one force.
I am a part of God, and no harm can overtake God.
What is the truth hidden in this well of discontent?
If I go deep enough into this midnight earth, I shall come out on the
other side where the sun shines.
I was happy yesterday, and I am still I.
A frightened dog will never scare away a robber.
If all these ills befall me, it will be an exercise of power to conquer
them.
--Not very profound, perhaps; but you can write better ones if you
wish. I am merely illustrating one process of shaking off the burden of
dread.
Why should you men dread anything? Even death is only dreadful when you
are afraid of it.
The Masters enjoy difficulties. They are the acid that tests the gold
of their mastership.
And speaking from a lower plane, there is pleasure in doing any
difficult thing. Why, in the writing of a big novel there is more
actual work, mental and physical, than in overcoming some great
misfortune. It is less work to go out and overcome a threatened
misfortune than it is to write a short story.
How anybody in good health and with even ordinary ability can yield to
melancholy is a question for a philosopher.
I am not talking now of grief for dead friends, or for false friends,
which grief is far worse; but of the fear of some imaginary disaster
which in all probability will never happen.
The surest way to attract disasters is to imagine them. You can create
almost anything if you imagine it strongly enough--even joy and courage.
A Master once told me that the control and exorcism of melancholy was a
greater test of power than the control of desire.
Both often come from outside, are suggested to the receptive, passive
mind. Now the Master entertains only those suggestions that can
strengthen his purposes. If you have a friend who makes you courageous
by his very presence, cultivate his society. If you have a friend who
makes you melancholy, either teach him better or get rid of him; send
him to a doctor.
What is the use in our talking about occult power if we have not power
over our moods? Practise on moods. As an exercise, some time when you
are active, force yourself to be lazy. When you are lazy and not tired,
force yourself to be active. Natural fatigue should not be pressed too
far, it is a mere reaction; but indolence is not fatigue. It is in the
physical what melancholy is in the mental.
As another exercise, when your mind circles round and round something,
switch it off as you would switch off an electric light. Turn and think
of something else. You can do it.
And, by the way, one of the best cures for melancholy is an hour of
mathematical calculations. I defy anybody to be melancholy in the arms
of geometry or trigonometry. Why? You cannot think in mathematical
terms and of yourself at the same time. People always think of
themselves when they are melancholy.
But you tell me that you became melancholy the other day in thinking
about a friend who had lost her job. Think again. By wondering what you
could do for this friend and whether you could afford it, you began to
fear.... Is it not so?
You may be sad because a friend is in trouble, but you cannot be
melancholy for anybody but yourself.
Another can make you melancholy by making you morbid and fearful.
Our thoughts are so chained to our ego that it is difficult for
them to escape for long. But are you ever melancholy when creating
imaginatively a scene in a book? Could you be melancholy while figuring
the “polar elevation” of a planet, or computing one of those converse
“primary directions”? I see you smile. When you are engaged with
figures you forget yourself. Now take my advice. When auto-suggestion
is powerless to conquer melancholy, draw up an astrological figure in a
low latitude with that table of oblique ascensions that I saw you using
yesterday, and work out the converse primaries and the longitude of
Vulcan.
You remind me that when on earth I had small interest in astrology. But
I am talking about mathematical calculations.
LETTER XXV
COMPENSATORY PLAY
_February 1, 1918._
I HAVE looked in on you occasionally during the last few weeks, pleased
with your resting for a time.
The ambitious and energetic are prone to underestimate the value of
occasional idleness. You cannot run even a machine all the time without
oil and rest. Neither can the most vigorous engineer-soul run its brain
and body too long without letting them cool. The farmer knows when to
let a field lie fallow.
“After the war” it is to be hoped that the soldiers who have worked so
long at one labor--that of war--may be given a period of compensatory
play, doing nothing, before being replaced in the hive of industry. Let
them enjoy the breezes and the perfume of idleness for a little time;
the reaction from that rest will send them back into the workshops with
renewed desire for activity. If the world has to get along with less
for a few weeks, that will not hurt the world.
In the years to come there will be more rest and recreation in
America. In Europe there is going to be some degree of fatigue after
this war, and America can easily hold her own if she carries a lower
steam-pressure.
The idle hours are sometimes as valuable as those that are spent in
labor. It is in so-called idle hours that we meditate, get acquainted
with ourselves, build air castles, which are working-plans for our
edifice of the future. Day dreams are good. I had a day dream during
my life, and it was really the working-plan for the future I am
building now. I wanted to get back something I had lost, and I have got
it back. You wonder what it was? I do not mind telling you. In a former
life I went far along the road towards mastership. Then once upon a
time I slipped back a long way. My day dream was to recover that lost
ground, and I have recovered much of it out here.
If I had not left the world with that day dream vivid in my
consciousness, I should not have made the progress and the recovery I
have made.
I was talking the other day with an old friend--a very dear old
friend--who came out here a year or two ago, and she and I agreed that
the day dreams we had dreamed together were among the most valuable
products of our recent life.
She is revelling in the recovery of her own lost ground, and she
will run me a good race as the years go on. Yes, one can race across
recovered ground of adeptship.
My friend said laughingly the other day that she had made more plans
since coming out here than she could execute in a long while.
“Take your time,” I advised, “in the execution. You have all eternity.”
She looked at me in the old way I remember so well, and said:
“Time may be made for slaves, but eternity is made for masters.”
She too is glad that she came out. She had done one kind of work long
enough, and is now enjoying another.
Is she helping me, you wonder? Well, no, unless you count the pleasure
of our renewed association as a help. Why should she help me, or I
her? Our work is our own.
You in the world should help each other when you can; but out here we
of equal stature help each other by _being_. That is a good help,
though, the being together sometimes.
What a wonderful expression, by the way, “being together”! What poetry!
Not working together, nor playing together, but simply being. You
must often have felt that joy when with a loved friend. Words are not
necessary for that enjoyment. Words often lessen the enjoyment by the
very effort of uttering them. Effortless being! Even the birds enjoy
it, and the rose could give you valuable secrets of that joy.
In the world I have heard busybodies say of a beautiful woman that she
did nothing. What of it? A rose does not run a sewing-machine, or
write books.
Joy is coming back to the world. It has been long absent. Being for its
own sake has taken on new meanings in the minds of those who are glad
to be still alive.
To have passed through all the perils of a long war and still to “be” a
living man is something to make the soul wonder.
The men who have fought in this war from the beginning should not be
crowded too hard when at last they can stretch their limbs in the
hammocks of peace. They have earned the right. As they spin their
soldier yarns, gaze at them with respect. They passed through the
shadow of death for you. That God has retained them among the active
cells of His body is because He has need of them still; but it does not
mean that they should go on working for you every minute. Suppose you
work for them for a while. When they are rested they will join you in
your labor.
Last night I listened to two soldiers talking, and this is what they
said to each other:
“What will you do, John, when it’s all over?”
“I’ll lie in the bath tub an hour every morning, in the warm, soft,
soapy water; and in the afternoon I’ll call on one dear girl after
another, and drink tea, and listen to their talk. And what will you do?”
“Oh, I’ll just look at my wife and hold her hand.”
Idle talk, you think? That depends upon what you mean by idle talk. To
me that talk was immensely significant.
Soon after our little skirmish with Spain I remember hearing an active
woman say of her husband that he had never been good for anything since
he came back from Cuba.
“Well,” I said, “he was good for a lot in Cuba.”
The Spanish-American war! A fly beside an elephant, as compared with
this war.
And the German is tired, too. You may not have to overwork yourself to
keep up with him after the war.
LETTER XXVI
THE AQUARIAN AGE
_February 2, 1918._
YOU have wondered why the Masters speak now of the interests of the
common man, while in former times they said little about them. But do
you not know that when the need for a thing is come, the work of the
Masters with the world is to urge the world in the direction of its
destiny?
You have read of the iron age, the golden age, etc., and that the
golden age follows the iron. You may have wondered how two states so
utterly dissimilar could be juxtaposed. Now between the iron age and
the golden age there is a period of transition, a period short as
compared with one of the great ages, for example the longest one, the
golden, which is given as one million, seven hundred and twenty-eight
thousand years.
I have not visited you this evening to announce that the golden age
is immediately at hand. Oh, no! But we approach the termination of a
minor cycle, and the period of transition from the present state of the
world to the next[3] will be of about one thousand years. That is to
say, this period of one thousand years will bring us to the middle of
what is called the Aquarian age, for the half of one of these lesser
Zodiacal periods is approximately of that length.[4]
What is the Aquarian age? You know the humanitarian nature of Aquarius.
You also know the characteristics of the planet Uranus, to which
Aquarius is now attributed. Well, the inference is obvious. We shall
have an Aquarian world, and a world where things will go after the
manner of that strange and abrupt planet Uranus.
The old-fashioned world is passing away, the Jupiterian world, and we
are entering upon a period of change, political, social, religious and
personal. There is going to be an attempt at a federation of states, a
federation of souls. Nothing but this war could have effected it--with
the suddenness characteristic of that mysterious planet Uranus.
In the later Aquarian age the creative will of man will have such
scope as the world has not dreamed of. It will be set free from the
limitations which have held it. When all men are assured of a means of
livelihood, how free they will be in _mind_! The freedom of the
past in a free country like America is nothing like the freedom which
the new age will usher in.
When education is really universal, the moral as well as the mental
will be trained, and new ideas will have room to develop in the
developing brain.
Be not afraid, O world! Three years ago, even we who see far out here
had grave doubts for the future of your planet. But the great Masters
always told us that the world would pass through its period of trial,
still poised on its old axis, and that the _forces which make for
order would triumph over the forces which make for disorder_. Have
you not noticed in the psychic world a lessening of strain? Have you
not noticed an absence of the hostile and adverse beings that in the
early months of the war seemed to threaten the earth and you and all
men with a triumphant malice? That is a straw which shows the way of
“the winds that blow between the worlds.”
I am glad you are a keen observer of psychic states. That faculty of
observation will be of use to you in the years that are to come. Those
who cannot adjust to new conditions will pass out for a time and return
later with the fresh outlook of children, to take up their experience
in the new age.
There will be much rebellion in the beginning. Things are not so stable
as they _seemed_ four years ago. The war has proved that they were
not really stable.
The wave of psychic research that is now sweeping across the world will
wear thin the veil between the visible and the invisible. More and
more men and women will live in two worlds at the same time; for the
two worlds occupy the same space, and their differences are differences
of consciousness, of vibration, the latter including a difference in
states of matter.
Men will grow more magnetic under the influences that will play upon
them. They will affect each other more and more, and that is one reason
why greater freedom will be necessary. With the greater sensitiveness
which the new time will bring, it will be more difficult for large
families to live together a common life. While the tendency is for
all mankind to be one family in sympathy, more and more it will be
recognized that each man requires privacy for his best development. The
tyranny of the family will give place to freedom _in_ the family.
Strip family life of its tyranny and it may be very charming.
The sensitive and highly charged beings of the new age would explode
if they should be obliged to sit every evening round the family
“centre-table,” listening to the maunderings of the least progressive
among them, who by reason of greater age assumed the right to lay down
the law. This does not mean that children will not honor their parents;
but under the new dispensation parents will honor their children’s need
for the individual life, and will give it to them--thereby securing
their own freedom.
The freedom of the later Aquarian age will be manifest in the mind.
“Heresy” will cease to exist; the word will become obsolete.
The sin against the Holy Ghost will be understood as the attempt to
enchain the will of another.
Great friendliness will result from this mutual tolerance. We hate only
those whom we fear, and in a tolerant world there will be few seeds of
hatred.
All men will study; the school is only the first stage of study. When
man becomes his own schoolmaster he makes great strides.
What you know of art, music and literature can give you but a vague
idea of what these arts will become in the age that is to follow. Take
the catchwords of the immediate past, impressionism, for example. It
will be applied to all the arts.
Science is only in its swaddling-clothes. Aquarius is a sign of
air, the old books tell us, and the air holds many secrets which
you must take for your own, not only secrets of transportation but
psychological secrets. The airplane and psychical research grew up
together.
You have not taken the last redoubt of electricity. That also has
treasures for you. When you can draw _that_ from the air where it
hides from you and laughs, you will have little need of coal, and the
miners can leave the bowels of the earth and play in the sunshine of
the heights.
Inventions! I see in the “pattern world” I told you about in my first
book many things that would puzzle you down here. New fabrics will
be worn before many years, and the patient silkworm will not be the
aristocrat it now is.
The human ego is coming into its own. When it loses selfishness it will
find itself. That is not a paradox for its own sake, but the statement
of a psychological fact.