It is a great advance that you hear the bells, which few hear, and
evidence that you are where you can hear them; that is a great deal
indeed. Do not look for the voice of the bells, but regard the _ideas_
which thereupon come into the head, and apply to them the touchstone of
your own Soul, just as you advised B. The fact that you feel "dead" is
something you should not worry about. It is likely that you are under
the operation of a law which prevails in nature, that you will find
referred to in an article in _Path_ Magazine for April, '86, page 14.
It is that the soul goes to a new place or new surroundings and becomes
silent there awhile--what you call "dead"--and draws strength there,
begins to get accustomed to its new surroundings, after which it begins
to move about. This is seen in ordinary life in the bashfulness of a
boy. That is, the bashfulness is the shyness felt in new surroundings,
and is just what happens when the soul goes to a new place or into new
surroundings. There can be no loss or detriment to our efforts. Every
aspiration higher brightens up the road connecting the higher and lower
self. No doubt of that. It is not _what_ is done, but the spirit in
which the least thing is done that is counted. Hear the word of the
Master.
"He who does the best he knows how and that he can do, does enough for
us."
The mere fact that a man appreciates these truths and feels these
aspirations is proof that he is on the right road. It is well to tread
it _now_. We will not always live. Death must come. How much better,
then, to embrace death while thus at work than to swerve off only to
be brought up with suddenness in after lives. Immediate rebirth is for
those who are always working with their hearts on Master's work and
free from self interest.
The one Spirit is in all, is the property of each, therefore It is
always there, always with us, and, by reflecting on that, little room
is left for sorrow or delusion. If we believe that the soul of all is
measured by the whole of Time and not by a part, then we care not for
these moments which relate alone to our body. If we live in our hearts
we soon prove that space and time exist not. Nothing foreign to Master
enters there; our faults are not there. The heart reaches Him always,
and no doubt He replies. He does I know. He helps us while He leaves us
to ourselves. He needs not to stoop to see our devotion, for that is of
a supernal quality and reaches anywhere.
No, I do not say nor have I said that you ought to do something other
than you do. We each do what we can. None of us can be the judge of
any creature existing; so I do not judge you in the least respect.
Your life may in the great sum total be greater than any life I ever
led or that any one has led. Whether you are in America, Europe, or
India makes no difference. This is seeking conditions. I have come
to understand that Masters themselves must have worked themselves up
out of much worse conditions than we are in. No matter where we are,
the same spirit pervades all and is accessible. What need, then, to
change places? We do not change ourselves by moving the body to another
_locus_. We only put it under a different influence. And in order to
change we must have got to dislike the place we moved from. That is
_attachment by opposites_, and that will produce detriment, as does all
that disturbs the equilibrium of the soul. You know the same result is
produced by two exact opposites, and thus extremes meet.
That hot flame you speak of is one of the experiences, as are also the
sounds. There are so many, many of these things. Often they result
from extreme tension or vibration in the aura of an aspirant of pure
devotion. They are himself, and he should be on his guard against
taking them for wonders. Often they are "apparitions in Brahm." They
are like new lights and sights to a mariner on an unfamiliar coast.
They will go on, or alter, or stop. You are only to carefully note
them, and "do not exhibit wonder nor form association."
I cannot say more. All help you extend to any other soul is help to
yourself. It is our duty to help all, and we must begin on those
nearest to us, for to run abroad to souls we might possibly help we
again forsake our present duty. It is better to die in our own duty,
however mean, than to try another one. So lift your head and look
around upon the hulks of past imagined faults. They were means and
teachers. Cast all doubt, all fear, all regret aside, and freely take
of truth what you may contain right on every step. It will thus be
well. Eternal Truth is one and indivisible, and we may get from the
Fathers (Pitris) flashes now and then of what is true.
Words are things. With me and in fact. Upon the lower plane of social
intercourse they are things, but soulless and dead because that
convention in which they have their birth has made abortions of them.
But when we step away from that conventionality they become alive in
proportion to the reality of the thought--and its purity--that is
behind them. So in communication between two students they are things,
and those students must be careful that the ground of intercourse is
fully understood. Let us use with care those living messengers called
words.
Where I see you mistaken I will speak, to warn my Brother who
temporarily knows not. For did I not call on the bugle, perhaps other
things might switch him off to where perhaps for the time he would be
pleased, but would again be sorry, and then when his mistake was plain
he would justly sigh to me across dark centuries of separation that I
had been false to my duty of warning.
As ever,
Z.
* * * * *
The new plane to which the soul may go, referred to in this letter,
is the astral plane. It is the plane next above the material one,
and consists of a subtile order of matter. When a student turns his
attention to the higher life and desires intensely to find the way,
his soul has begun to awaken and to speak. It has heard the voice of
the spirit. Then the inner senses begin to unfold, at first ever so
gently, so tenderly, we scarce hear their report. But the soul has
then turned its attention to the astral plane, that being the next one
to be learned on the way upward; its energy is transferred from the
material plane to this one, and we have an influx of many confused
dreams and strange experiences, awake and asleep. These may or may not
continue; all depends upon the individual soul and upon Karma. It is a
most confusing plane, and, generally speaking, we may say that those
students are more fortunate who make a marked degree of progress in
spiritual things without having any conscious experience of the astral
plane. For then they can later on learn it _from above_, instead of
from below, and with far less danger to themselves. The whole must
be known, but we may progress in various ways, even by discontinuous
degrees, only then we must go back later on, to what we passed by.
Such a going back does not imply detriment or loss of degree, for such
cannot be lost when once gained in reality.
With regard to the astral plane being a more subtile order of matter,
this truth is often denied by clairvoyants and untrained seers. They do
not distinguish between the psychic senses and the spiritual. They can
see through gross matter, such as a wall, the human body, and so forth,
as if it were glass, but they cannot see through astral substance, and
hence they believe its forms and all the pictures and shapes in the
astral light to be real. Only the adept sees through these illusions,
which are far more powerful because composed of a subtile order of
matter: subtile energies, fine forces have a highly increased rate
of power over grosser ones. The adept has at his command the rate of
vibration which dispels them or drives them asunder. In speaking of
the astral plane, I mean the lower soul plane, and not that higher and
purified quality which the author of _Light on the Path_ calls the
"divine astral."
By anxiety we exert the constrictive power of egoism, which densifies
and perturbs our magnetic sphere, rendering us less permeable to the
efflux from above.