I was talking to a group of young artists in Chicago. There was a boy
there who seemed disturbed because the others dared to be natural in
my presence, and talk about themselves. I was quite at ease, enjoying
myself, and getting altogether as much respect as I deserved.... This
lad walked with me to the train. I wanted to take him home. I liked his
voice and his hand and his mind. I thought at first that he could not
mean all he said, but I was wrong about that. Reverence is sometimes
very hard to take, but the one who brings it has the pure surface of
receptivity. The boy said, as my train pulled out:
"No, I can't come now. There's a month to be spent at home in Michigan,
and a season's playing with an orchestra up in the lake resorts, but
after that--say October, I'll come to Stonestudy."
That was exactly what he did. He had it all planned months ahead. It's
Shuk's[18] way--a mathematical mind, a crystal mind. The theosophists
would say that he belonged to the intellectual ray.... We are always
better with Shuk in the room. He comes half way to meet our process
of lighting up, which is the devotional process; in fact, Shuk
incorporated himself in our ideals in exchange for a year or two of
living the life at Stonestudy.... These things never die.
[18] Herman S. Schuchert.
A raincoat, a black bag--these are Shuk's possessions, all weight and
measure minimised, even to the kind of white paper which wears best and
packs best. Shuk means order. A page of his "copy" is a rest to the
eye. There is a finished quality to his sentences. My tendency is to
rush into a mental clean-up when he enters the room. I'm not impressing
these details as his virtues. Shuk's virtues are cosmic. He will
presently be telling the big tales, and telling them fast.
As a group, we are learning to come and go from each other. We have
learned well not to lean--rather to anticipate the Law and leave the
beloved when the tendency to cling becomes too keen.... There is a time
to come and a time to go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving
His disciples--saying that they would not find the Comforter within, if
He remained with them always.
Shuk had much to do in bringing home to us this valuable concept.
We had a way of thinking the world would come to us on the Lake Erie
bluff. It would. It did. But we were getting fat and baronial; a bit
fat of brain, perhaps.... Better than that, the gaunt, lean face
forever at the window-panes of civilisation.... Comrades are always
together. Big meetings, easy partings. One does not know how close
he is to another, until their thoughts spark warm over a lot of
mileage--the immortality of it all stealing in through the soft airs of
night, perhaps.
I teach the young ones to stand alone at every chance. The idea is
to make them penetrate for themselves, as swiftly as possible, the
main tricks and illusions of matter; to make them see past any doubt
that to be worldly-minded is to be inferior. Still they must see this
for themselves. I formally renounced parentage in the case of the
Little Girl. I take all my authority from the younger boys at frequent
intervals--especially when they have been real mates:
"Don't advise with me," I tell them. "Show what you know about
living.... Do it your way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and
be a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you loose."
These matters come out naturally in relation to Shuk. He'll be
surprised to read this. None of the young ones ever adequately credit
the fact that I do a lot of sitting at their feet.... We could see the
world as one piece better with Shuk in the room. His intense listening
pulled my eyes constantly. He wanted to know about stories--about
writing stories. His presence made us all better workmen because he
was so zealous to become one. I had long been absorbed in the romantic
side of world-politics, but Shuk decorated the subject with a new
romance.... The farther away a country is, the more we know about it
from a fiction standpoint. His mental forms are very strong. Shuk and
I have practically covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's
work--our machines a mile apart--no prearrangement. But this has worked
out so often as to cease to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters
have often crossed with mine, carrying the same spiritual unfoldment--a
four days' journey distant....
Another realisation related with Shuk's coming, is that I do not belong
as the master of a school in the economic sense. There was much detail
at Stonestudy, much householder's management required. I wouldn't have
given it up, if I had been unable to do that part, but it was a waste
of force--wretched economy for me to take charge of such affairs. We
plan to support ourselves, but I cannot run a school, apportion tasks,
or puzzle devotedly among the meshes of finance. This part of the work
in California will doubtless be taken care of by those who do it well
and profitably. There have been moments when I wanted to go among all
the schools--happen in, stay an hour or a week--until the children and
teachers forgot me, so I could find my own among the many.... But again
it occurs to me that wiser plans than mine are behind it all. Those
who are ready, come; numbers will take care of themselves; all we need
to do is to make the most of the nearest, and keep up our song in such
accord as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial madness--many
girls' voices now, for the war has plucked the boys....
Some of the things of Shuk's which I chose for this book were about
the big war and are not profitable discussions now, but with his paper
included in an earlier chapter, and one or two small things here, his
quality can be seen. This is a letter to the Old Man:
... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big one inside. Tremendous
flights, dizzy careenings, impossible falls. Am tramping noisily
through the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming more and more
vividly aware of Life, above actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to
joy. Vital and thrilling peace to all your endeavours.... Enclosed
a paragraph or two on tallying off the world-war within, with the
world-war without:
Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in-harmony. Evil is
simply ignorance. Ignorance does not fade away, but must be worked
out, worn down. War is evil in this process. Man's higher nature
is naturally at war with ignorance, manifesting in his lower
nature. If man had always kept at this war against the domination
of the lower self, he would never have needed another war to jar
and jog him along. But man decided, in ignorance, that he had no
cause for war with the lower self. This was his first illusion.
The next mistake was natural. Man thought he would get rid of evil
by killing off the lower selves of other men. All due to his first
error in looking outside instead of in.
It's all wrong to think we must leave our own houses in order to
fight the greatest battles conceivable. If we do not accept the
fight within ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight,
once or twice removed, forced upon us....
Whatever portion of humankind is chastened and quickened by this big
field-war and sea-war, is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has
had countless and continuous opportunities of doing this purifying
process to himself in privacy and peace; instead, he has consistently,
with rarest exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, or deal
with the lesser selves of other men. Now, in these years, every man who
failed, will learn the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. If
our wisdom is not so great and old as we hope, if we have in the long
past thrown away our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare as
the others fare now--in exactly the right proportion.
Killing another doesn't work as a means of self-correction. Hereafter,
I'm interested in correcting myself. There is very little outside work
left to do. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it reminds me that
the highest wisdom is something grandly simple and easy. Murder is an
aggravated waste of both time and opportunity.
Yet I am at peace with nobody, not even myself. Peace ought to be more
intense than war, and until it is, we shall have to go through many
wars to arrive at any kind of peace. Many slaveries is the price of
freedom.
One who fears will be brought up facing monster fears, until he learns
next time that his personal fears were too petty to mention. One who
has greed and envy will surely be made a pawn in a game of greed so
colossal that perhaps, in a future time, he will have no interest in
neighbourhood greeds, but will have learned to see and to desire the
whole world. His greed has been stretched into a passion for dominion;
and the most fascinating field for empire he will discover within
himself.
So wherever we stand, we can't lose out. We can choose to do good,
better, best--but without choosing, nothing less than all right can
happen.
The brighter facts are that all these warring energies, whether of
men or ordnance, are the force of one God, energies working out of
the muddles men made. Man has disturbed the balance. Man now makes a
sacrifice in order to restore equilibrium, to release the powers he
misused.
The greatest conceivable struggle must sooner or later come between the
higher and lower nature of every living thing. Man is now preparing
himself, collectively and individually, for this final conquest. His
prime illusion seized him when he turned away from his own faults, to
correct the faults of his brother. The secondary illusion is that the
brother will not be able to care for his own faults. The third is that
we must help our brother correct himself. The fourth is that if he
won't do it himself, in the way we say, we will do it for him.
The world (and this means me) is just learning the rudiments of
war, just finding out how much vitality man has, how much courage,
the stupidity of all fear, the size of the globe, the depth and
possibilities of the elements, including the human soul; is perceiving
more of life and accepting intenser vibrations than ever before on this
terra. All this knowledge will go into the True Peace some day. But in
these nearby years, men are prayerfully eager to get back "home," where
all these godly lessons may be forgotten.
Real War will positively show man that he must remember what he is
taught. When he comes "home," he will enlist immediately in the
interior struggle with his lower self. His war with other men will
train him to fight with the greatest enemy on earth, his own ignorance.
I have already enlisted in this big war. My first victory was in
seizing the fact that the world is me and I am the world and nothing to
the contrary. The universe rises and falls with me, subjectively. The
goal is to make it--objectively.