beauties. I will not conceal from you the knowledge that many will use
the word chaos during the reconstruction period. But be at peace. The
formless shall take on form. The clairvoyance that is developing in man
will help him to see, where the eyes of his old faith would have been
blind. He will trust the future and trust his brother, and will not be
deceived. The intuition of the soul will point man to the substance
which he needs for his well-being. Behind and within the air is the
ether, which is substance, which is God. And man will take it for
his uses, with the consent of God, who joys in giving Himself to His
children.
As I said before, the Masters urge the world along in the direction
of its destiny; but they are too wise to hurry it. They see the face
of the cosmic clock, and they wake the world at the hour of the new
sunrise. We are blest in being their servants.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: Still far short of the golden age, probably.--E. B.]
[Footnote 4: This does not correspond exactly with the popular Hindoo
reckoning. But automatic writings are what they are. I can cut out
repetitions, etc., but I cannot re-write, add to, or distort.--E. B.]
LETTER XXVII
THE WATCHERS
_February 3, 1918._
I STOOD one day before a great soul that had renounced the rest in
heaven, and questioned him as to the work that called us loudest. What
do you think he said?
“_Labor with those who fear for the future._”
“Are there so many, then, who look forward with apprehension?” I asked.
“All those who think and see and have responsibilities are
apprehensive,” he replied.
Then I wandered here and there about America, looking in upon all sorts
of men and a few women. And I read in their minds a great uncertainty.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” I thought so intensely
_at_ them that many responded with a hopeful smile.
Yes, I can win response from many people when I think strongly enough
in their company.
The faith of one great soul out here has helped many to stand steady
when the winds blew strong against them. He knows that America cannot
fail of her destiny; but that she may not take a wrong tack, he would
guide the hand and brush the mists from before the eye of the skipper.
There are often mists before the path of the “ship of State” in these
grey days. When Wilson took over the railroads, what courage was there!
When all is over there will be many to criticize and blame him; but
criticism and blame are ever the rewards of those who depersonalize
themselves and labor for the good of their country or the world. The
man who is great enough to cast his personality overboard is not hurt
by criticism. It is only the personality that can be hurt. The soul
stands serene and pure above the adverse storms.
I do not advise all men to disregard their personality. Only those who
bear great responsibilities may safely become impersonal. The small
man, the undeveloped man, could not persuade his soul to take the place
of his lesser self. For the soul must be persuaded to descend and
dwell in the personality. Most souls are only partially incarnated.
The higher self of most men dwells above and apart. It is their
Silent Watcher; but it seldom acts save to warn and save. It leaves
the lesser self to acquire experience and learn its lessons through
suffering and joy, through success and failure. But when the man has so
far evolved that his acts become of more than personal significance,
then the soul may descend and truly guide and influence the man, for
the designs of the soul are ever beyond the personal. It is a conscious
part of the great whole, a conscious part of God whom it worships and
serves, however the lower self may be immersed in trivialities and
blasphemies.
In any man who has not lost his soul the Higher Watcher has an
interest. For the Watcher is One and he is many. He is your link with
God, Oh, men! He is your link with immortality.
You do not meet him merely by dying, for you may dwell long in the
astral and lower mental world before meeting him face to face. But if
you can ascend after death to the higher regions, you will find him
there waiting for you. You may bring to him all the fine fruits of your
recent life, and he will enjoy them with you.
I have met my soul face to face; but I am unable to remain in the
higher regions in peaceful contemplation of his beauty while there is
so much work to be done for the races on earth as calls to me now. Bye
and bye I shall re-ascend; but when I go to heaven for a long sojourn
you will hear from me no more.
Yes, I too have seen your soul. But I need not describe its face to
you, who see it better than I. Cling to it. The failure of mortal
friendship has no power to shatter the faith of one who can reach to
his own Silent Watcher. And the soul of the faithless friend is pure
as his own, and understands all things. Friendships, like loves, are
made in heaven, and true friendship cannot die. Its roots are deep in
waters of eternity. It is deathless as the Ygdrasil, and its roots are
also above and its branches below.
But it is better to fail in business than to fail in friendship.
If a man is great and strong enough, he may draw down his soul to dwell
with him wherever he may be. Then the man is a whole man, he is an
adept. Lincoln is such a man, such a soul. He has become one with his
Higher Watcher, and the two that are one can work even in the regions
of the astral. But such a marriage of heaven and earth is uncommon, as
adepts are uncommon.
Your father in heaven is one with the Father, and if you are really one
with your father in heaven he can dwell with you even on earth.
The higher souls of men are closer to men now than they have been
for ages. The doors have been opened. Grief and terror and pain and
devotion to ideals of duty have raised the race of men in three and
a half years as it could not have been raised in a hundred years of
peace. If the race falls back now, it will be a lost opportunity. But
the race will not fall back.
LETTER XXVIII
A RITUAL OF FELLOWSHIP
_February 8, 1918._
I HAVE been waiting for you half an hour, as you sat sewing a seam and
thinking of your friends in France. It warms the heart now to think of
France. The tie between the two great republics is being drawn closer
and closer.
Shall I tell you an occult secret? The French mixed their blood with
ours long ago, and we have loved them ever since. We are now mixing our
blood with the blood of France, and France will love us in the days
that are to come.
It is a ritual of fellowship, that mixing of blood. English and French
and Americans and Italians, Irish, Scotch, and all the others. Is
there not a foundation for brotherhood? The blended blood cries from
the ground for love.
I see in the eyes of the French their feeling for our men as they march
by, or help in the little ways to which American boys are accustomed.
Never again will they look upon us as queer people from beyond the sea.
We have travelled in their country and spent our money and swaggered
and talked through our noses; but now we are living and dying with
them, and we are brothers of mixed blood.
Yes, go back to France when you can. They always loved you because you
loved them, but now you will see that they also love your native land.
LETTER XXIX
RECRUITING AGENTS
_February, 1918._
FOR a day or two after America declared that a state of war existed, I
spent most of my time in going about this country, studying conditions
in both worlds. Even before that survey I had a general idea of how
matters stood in those worlds; but I wanted to freshen my memory, for I
had a great idea. Many times during my life on earth I had told myself
that I had a great idea, and sometimes I put it into execution, and
sometimes I failed in doing so. But this time I was determined there
should be no failure.
When I had seen from my survey that the materials were all at hand, I
sought out a great man, spirit, or whatever you choose to call him.
Then together we mapped out our campaign. Here are the main points of
it:
Conservation--where the negative forces should be applied.
Construction--with our positive forces.
Coordination--with the synthetic forces.
We marshalled a group of those strong-minded, strong-willed men and
women who had been out here long enough to know not only their way
about, but how to impress their thoughts upon material-bodied men and
women. These were dispatched here and there, to think, think, think, in
the neighborhood of senators and congressmen, chiefs of industry and
members of the general public. The burden of their impressed thought
was conservation of food, conservation of expenditure, conservation of
all material that would be needed for the activities of war.
Others who were filled with a great love for the land of their latest
birth, America, went about in bands instilling their patriotic
enthusiasm into the hearts and minds of those millions who had too
long taken America as a matter of course. They sang patriotic songs,
and though they could not be heard by the ears of earth, the spirit of
their singing could be felt, and they accomplished much.
Then others, the wisest among old leaders of men, were busy in quelling
disorder, in suppressing discontent with the war. Wherever a group of
wild-eyed, peace-prating “idealists” got together to talk twaddle,
there was one or more of these unseen auditors to put the brakes on
responsive enthusiasm to the dangerous principles enunciated.
I will not bore you by giving all the details of this plan of help
which we labored to make effective. But there were enrolled more than
one million beings out here who have pledged themselves to serve until
their services are no longer required. That may not seem to you a great
number to help invisibly a nation of more than one hundred millions;
but one to every hundred is enough among the active workers, for each
is free to choose assistants among those younger in earth experience.
To the one who acted as our commander-in-chief, the generals of this
auxiliary army made reports, and many were the strange orders he gave
them. But no one questioned his wisdom, and the results have proved it
over and over.
One time when I wanted to go North, he sent me to the South, and in
Mobile I learned why my course was changed.
It is a wonder that the legislators at the various capitols have not
“seen ghosts” during the last months. Perhaps they have. But men are
becoming accustomed to the idea of us now. That is one of the good
results of the war. In looking across the border for their loved ones,
they may encounter the Teachers, even the angels of their loved ones,
and be enlarged in mind.
I had an amusing experience in the city of ----. There is a “pacifist”
there who has a considerable influence among the members of a certain
set, and I found that when he began one of his “philosophic” talks to
one or more persons, for he has not lectured publicly, I could bewilder
him by speaking in his ear and answering his questions in a way that
made him wonder. For, strange to say perhaps, he could hear me. But
not believing in the possibility of communication between the worlds,
he thought he was having “clairaudient hallucinations,” and consulted
a doctor who told him that he had been brooding too much about the
war. The doctor, who was not a pacifist, advised our friend to take up
ornithology.
Yes, he is young--and will be young for many incarnations.
We have also done our share of recruiting. Those who were later called
by the draft were merely encouraged; but there were others who needed
only the dream we sent, or the thought we whispered, to move them in
the right direction; and when a young man’s country is at war, the
right direction is generally towards the nearest recruiting station.
There was a boy in ---- who had been reading about France and the
fighting in France with a tightening at the heart, a tightening of
horror. He feared the draft. He was not a husky fellow. His labors as
bookkeeper in a bank had not developed his leg muscles, and he had a
capricious digestion. So he told himself that he would be a failure as
a soldier.
But one time when in sleep he came out into our world, I met him and
invited him to take a stroll with me. Do you think I took him to a
battlefield? Oh, not! I took him to an exercise ground. You may wonder
how I could do that at night; but it chanced that he had fallen asleep
in the daytime. And I made it easy for him to see down into the world
he had temporarily left--to see the exercise ground. It interested him.
And next day the labor over the ledger seemed duller and more
monotonous than usual. And he overheard a girl say to a friend at the
paying teller’s window, that a sallow faced clerk was not her ideal of
a man, that she liked the soldier boys.
When he went for a walk after banking hours, I went along with him, and
drew his attention to some marching soldiers who had a good band. The
boy went home and looked at himself in the mirror and found that he was
sallow, and he reminded himself that he was a clerk.
So he enlisted.
You may wonder why I took so much trouble to gather one uninteresting
young man into the fold of Uncle Sam’s army, when we had so many
subordinate workers at that business. But I had known the boy’s father
twenty years before, and something he had said influenced _me_
towards a decision that enlightened my whole after life.
When that boy returns he will be no longer sallow-faced, and he will be
a hero--not a clerk.
I like to pay my debts.
LETTER XXX
THE VIRUS OF DISRUPTION
_February 16, 1918._
“FREEDOM with self-restraint and social responsibility” would be a good
motto for Americans in the years that are before them.
The underground and overground propaganda of Bolshevism, Anarchism,
etc., inspired and fed by the forces of destruction, can be
successfully combated by the spirit of order, of restraint, of
responsibility to the body politic.
The end of this war will not be the end of confusion. The world-soul
has been inoculated with the virus of disruption, and it will need
the wills of millions working together for a common end to expel the
poison and restore the body of humanity to health and security.
America as we know it was born of protest against oppression, and the
love of liberty, father and mother, positive and negative, in the
old days. If now the protest against oppression degenerates into the
protest against all restraint, and if the love of liberty degenerates
into the love of license, then I may tell you that those who cannot
govern themselves have to be governed from outside.
The human race is passing through a period of initiation. The morally
weak and the weak of will are always in danger of being carried away.
The spirit of destruction finds them ready tools with which to work its
will.
The kingdom of heaven is not immediately at hand, and full seven years
will be needed to _settle the consciousness_ of mankind after the
shaking-up it has received. The dregs, as usual in such cases, have
risen and diffused themselves throughout the fluid of the cup.
If there were only a dozen people in the United States who understood
or could be made to understand the _occult forces_ behind the
present universal unrest, and if those twelve could work together with
unity of purpose, some here, some there, with the pen, the voice and
the will, under a leader, those twelve might lead the people out of the
wilderness. But where are they? Every leader knows that in unity is
strength.
And I may mention the opposite law, that in disunity is disintegration.
Bolshevist and anarchist! Finding the world not to their liking, and
being unable to adjust to environment so as to satisfy their love of
power, or their love of ease, these people have devoted themselves to
destroying the society in which they are unsuccessful. They believe
themselves right. There is so much of the divine in almost the worst
man, that he has to believe he is working for the right even when he
is working evil. It is necessary for a murderer to justify his act in
order to do it, unless he is swept away by blind passion, and then he
seeks to justify passion itself.
The heart of man is superior to the brain of man. Almost anyone can
feel a good impulse; but the man who can think independently of his
passions is rare and isolate. Popular education does not mean universal
reasoning power. But popular education is the beginning; it is the seed
out of which will grow the tree of world-intellect.
I have told you of the reign of love that is at length to comfort the
hearts of mankind; but I have not told you that it is coming to-morrow
or the next day.
If you can get away from the personal and the temporary, and see life
and the movements of cycles in perspective, you will see how temporary
unrest is only a stage by the way.
He who adjusts to environment adjusts even to unrest. Remember that.
The supple tree feels the wind, but its roots cling tight to the soil
and the rock of individuality.
Be like the supple tree, America. In the wind that sweeps across the
world, cling tight to the soil of freedom and the rock of _social
responsibility_. You can save the world if you do not lose your hold
on the soil and the rock that have steadied and sustained you.
The anxious eyes of a Europe in conflagration are turned in your
direction, your friends with hope, your enemies with dread. When you
threw the weight of your strong young body into the scales of justice,
you changed the destiny of the world. Yes, it was your destiny to do it.
All you who have studied “occultism,” which merely means knowledge too
profound to be understood by the material-minded,--you who have studied
occultism know that to the candidate for initiation come trials and
tests, and that without them he cannot go on. Think of the human race
as a candidate for initiation. If your mind is developed beyond the
minds of your fellows--you, and you, and you--do not forget that you
are united to them by an indissoluble bond. You cannot break away from
the race. You may rise above it as the Master does, or sink beneath
it as the lost souls do; but the link between you and those other
fragments of God can only be broken at your peril.
The Master works for the race, knowing well that he cannot safely
ignore it. Even if he made himself equal with the gods and desired to
build a world of his own, he would have to take the substance for it
from the common reservoir of substance. If like a spider he could spin
his world-web from himself, he would have to eat the common substance
to sustain himself in his power.
You may as well love the race, for you cannot escape it altogether.
Even if you rise and dwell in the thin air of the kingdom of the mind,
you will feel the wind-currents from your fellows above and below. Some
will deny this, but I have made the test.
I recently sought a high place for rest. But the needs of the world
pulled me back.
The greatest need of the world for the next few years will be the
knowledge of the law of conservation. Retain, O world! the treasures
you have labored for throughout the centuries, and discard only the
worn-out garments and utensils. The wooden plough and the wooden shoe
are no longer needed in a wisely ordered world; but the sciences and
the arts you will need, and the Gothic cathedrals you destroy can never
be replaced.
LETTER XXXI
THE ALTAR FIRE
_February 18, 1918._
ALWAYS the pull of the opposites! In all the talk of internationalism,
let us not forget nationalism. The enemy of the present hour made
great use of it, but he did not reckon with its opposite. It is not
true internationalism to support spies as commercial agents in all the
countries of earth.
America of all nations is best fitted to carry on her standards: Each
for all, and all for each.
But in her love for other races, for other nationalities, let her not
forget to strengthen and uphold her own.
“My Country, ’tis of Thee!” As that sentiment grows ever stronger in
your heart, so will your justice to other nations make you recognize
that their countries are of them. For your country was not built upon
the idea of world domination, but of freedom--for yourselves and for
all men.
Your president has been called a maker of phrases. That is good. A man
who can make phrases that shall carry themselves around the world can
influence the thought of the world.
“To make the world safe for democracy.” Those words will go down the
centuries.
You Americans who love the storied lands of Europe, do not
underestimate this land that gave you birth. It is great as the
greatest now, and its clock has not yet struck twelve noonday. It is
still morning in America. The present day American is the ancestor of
the man of the Sixth Race. From many stocks he will spring, and his
blood will be blended from that of all the races which have preceded
him. He will be unique in his qualities. No man of the older races can
imitate him, for his consciousness will be his own.
A man is not, as you have so often said, so many pounds of flesh and
bone and blood and sinew, but a man is a state of consciousness. It is
because you recognize their state of consciousness as being themselves,
that men and women reveal themselves to you.
If--or when--you go back to Europe to live, do not forget your country.
Do not remain too long away from it, lest you lose touch with that
unique consciousness which shall flower in the Sixth Race.
Yes, a great art will grow up in America. After another fifty years it
will be ripe. Let us hope it will not begin to rot thereafter, but like
a sound American apple preserve its solidity for a long time.
This war is good for America. It is not well for a race to have so
great a material success without some pain and struggle. It is pain
that mellows the heart.
America has not yet found her soul, but she will find it. Those
Americans who are now broken-hearted are finding their souls.
France found her soul a long time ago, and she is now finding her
divinity. Would she have found it but for suffering? The Christ upon
the cross is greater than the Christ at the marriage supper in Cana of
Galilee.
If I had not wanted you to write this book, I should have sent you
back to London, that you might experience the strain of air raids and
insufficient food. I should have sent you back to France, that you
might see and touch and minister to the wounded.
Though you have endured the strain of the astral world at war, you have
not yet seen and touched and tasted the agony of physical suffering
that the women of France have seen and touched and tasted. But you
cannot live and suffer in too many worlds at once.
Do you not think that our American boys who are fighting now in France
will be greater for the experience--whether they live or die? Life
in material form is not the only life, and those who make the great
sacrifice will gain more than they lose. It is sublime to die for an
ideal. “To make the world safe for democracy.”
America is better known to Europeans now than she has been before. Many
of you will go and come, as you have done in the past; and a few of
you will vitalize the mutual understanding between America and Europe.
But you can do that only by glorifying your own nationality in your
hearts. I do not mean flaunting it. Let it burn as an altar fire, in
the secret temple of your being.
THE END
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.