I have your letter, Comrade, in which you say how much you wish there
were some Adepts sent to the United States to help all true students.
Yet you know well They do not need to come here in person, in order
to help. By going carefully over your letter there appears to be the
possibility of the seed of doubt in your heart as to the wise ordering
of all things, for all are under the Law, and Masters first of all.
Mind, I only say the "_possibility of the seed of doubt_." For I judge
from my own experience. Well do I remember when I thought as you say,
how much better 'twould be if some one were there.
If that is allowed to remain it will metamorphose itself into a seed
and afterward a plant of doubt. Cast it right out! It does not now
show as seed of doubt, but it will be a case of metamorphosis, and the
change would be so great as to deceive you into thinking it were never
from the same root. The best stand to take is that it is all right
as it is now, and when the time comes for it to be better it will be
so. Meanwhile we have a duty to see that we do all we can _in our own
place_ as we see best, undisturbed and undismayed by aught.
How much I have in years gone away said and thought those very words of
yours and to no profit! Why do you care what becomes of a million human
beings? Are not millions going to death daily with no one to tell them
of all this? But did you suppose that all this was not provided for?
"And heavenly death itself is also well provided for." Now, then, you
and I must learn to look on the deaths or the famishing of millions of
beings with unfaltering heart. Else we had better give it all up now.
Consider that at this moment are so many persons in various far distant
places who cannot ever hear these truths. Do you grieve for them? Do
you realize their state? No; you realize only partially the same thing
among those with whom it was your present lot to be born--I mean the
nation. Do you want to do more than your best? Do you covet the work of
another? No; you do not. You will sit calmly where you are, then, and,
with an unaffected heart, picture to yourself the moral and physical
deaths and famines which are now without the possibility of prevention
or amelioration. Your faith will know that _all_ is provided for.
I do not say that you must attain to that calm _now_ or give up seeking
the Way; but I do say that you must admit that such an attainment must
be absolutely tried for. For of such is the trial, and why should we
care? _We must some day be able to stand any shock_, and to get ready
for that time we must be now triumphant over some smaller things. Among
others is the very position you and I are now in; that is, standing
our ground and feeling ourselves so much and so awfully alone. But
we know that They have left us a commandment. That we keep, although
now and then objects, senses, men, and time conspire to show us that
Masters laugh at us. It is all a delusion. It is only one consequence
of our past Karma now burning itself out before our eyes. The whole
phantasmagoria is only a picture thrown up against the Screen of Time
by the mighty magic of Prakriti (Nature). But you and I are superior
to Nature. Why, then, mind these pictures? Part of that very screen,
however, being our own mortal bodies, we can't help the _sensation_
derived therefrom through our connection with the body. It is only
another form of cold or heat; and what are they? They are vibrations;
they are _felt_; they do not really exist in themselves. So we can
calmly look on the picture as it passes fragmentarily through those
few square feet contained within the superficial boundaries of our
elementary frame. We _must_ do so, for it is a copy of the greater, of
the universal form. For we otherwise will never be able to understand
the greater picture. Now, then, is there not many a cubic inch of your
own body which is entitled to know and to be the Truth in greater
measure than now? And yet you grieve for the ignorance of so many other
human beings! Grieve on; and I grieve too. Do not imagine that I _am_
what is there written. Not so. I am grieving just the same outwardly,
but inwardly trying what I have just told you. And what a dream all
this is. Here I am writing you so seriously, and now I see that you
know it all quite well and much better than I do.
Yet, my dear Jasper, now and then I feel--not Doubt of Masters who
hear any heartbeat in the right direction, but--a terrible Despair of
these people. Oh, my God! The age is black as hell, hard as iron. It
is iron, it is Kali Yuga. Kali is always painted black. Yet Kali Yuga
by its very nature, and terrible, swift momentum, permits one to do
more with his energies in a shorter time than in any other Yuga. But
heavens, what a combat! Demons from all the spheres; waving clouds of
smoky Karma; dreadful shapes; stupefying exhalations from every side.
Exposed at each turn to new dangers. Imagine a friend walking with you
who you see is in the same road, but all at once he is permeated by
these things of death and shows a disposition to obstruct your path,
the path of himself. Yes; the gods are asleep for awhile. But noble
hearts still walk here, fighting over again the ancient fight. They
seek each other, so as to be of mutual help. We will not fail them. To
fail would be nothing, but to stop working for Humanity and Brotherhood
would be awful. We cannot: we will not. Yet we have not a clear road.
No, it is not clear. I am content if I can see the next step in advance
only. You seek _The Warrior_. He is here, somewhere. No one can find
him for you. You must do that. Still He fights on. No doubt He sees you
and tries to make you see Him. Still He fights on and on.
How plainly the lines are drawn, how easily the bands are seen. Some
want a certificate, or an uttered pledge, or a secret meeting, or
a declaration, but without any of that I see those who--up to this
hour--I find are my "companions." They need no such folly. They are
there; they hear and understand the battle-cry, they recognize the
sign. Now where are the rest? Many have I halted, and spoken the exact
words to them, have exposed to them my real heart, and they heard
nothing: they thought that heart was something else. I sigh to think
how many. Perhaps I overlooked some; perhaps some did not belong to me.
There are some who partly understood the words and the sign, but they
are not sure of themselves; they know that they partake of the nature,
but are still held back.
Do you not see, Jasper, that your place in the ranks is well known? You
need no assurances because they are _within_ you. Now what a dreadful
letter; but it is all true.
A student of occultism after a while gets into what we may call a
psychic whirl, or a vortex of occultism. At first he is affected by the
feelings and influences of those about him. That begins to be pushed
off and he passes into the whirl caused by the mighty effort of his
Higher Self to make him remember his past lives. Then those past lives
affect him. They become like clouds throwing shadows on his path. Now
they seem tangible and then fade away, only a cloud. Then they begin to
affect his impulse to action in many various ways. To-day he has vague
calling longings to do something, and, critically regarding himself,
he cannot see in this life any cause. It is the bugle note of a past
life blown almost in his face. It startles him; it may throw him down.
Then it starts before him, a phantom, or, like a person behind you
as you look at a mirror, it looks over his shoulder. Although dead
and past they yet have a power. He gets too a power and a choice. If
all his previous past lives were full of good, then irresistible is
the force for his benefit. But all alike marshal up in front, and he
hastens their coming by his effort. Into this vortex about him others
are drawn, and their germs for good or ill ripen with activity. This is
a phase of the operation of Karmic stamina. The choice is this. These
events arrive one after the other and, as it were, offer themselves.
If he chooses wrong, then hard is the fight. The one chosen attracts
old ones like itself perhaps, for all have a life of their own. Do you
wonder that sometimes in the case of those who rush unprepared into the
"circle of ascetics" and before the ripe moment, insanity sometimes
results? But then that insanity is their safety for the next life, or
for their return to sanity.
Receive my brotherly assurances, my constant desire to help you.
* * * * *
In respect to Karmic action it is well to recall the statement of
Patanjali that "works exist only in the shape of mental deposits."
(Book 2, Aph. 12, A.) By "works" is here meant Karma, the stock of
works, or Action. Its results remain as mental deposits or potential
energies in the higher part of the fifth principle, and when it
reïncarnates those seeds are there to "ripen on the tablets of the
mind" whenever they are exposed to favoring circumstances. Sometimes
they remain dormant for want of something to arouse them, as in the
case of children. "The mental deposits of works, collected from time
without beginning in the ground of the mind, as they by degrees arrive
at maturation, so do they, existing in lesser or greater measure (the
sum of merit being less than that of demerit, or conversely) lead
to their effects in the shape of rank, raised or lowered, ... or
experience of good or ill." (Book 2, Aph. 13, B.) The mind energizes
and impels us to fresh action. The impulse lies within, in germ, and
may be ripened by interior or exterior suggestion. Can we, then, be
too careful to guard the ground of the mind, to keep close watch over
our thoughts? These thoughts are dynamic. Each one as it leaves the
mind has a _vis viva_ of its own, proportionate to the intensity with
which it was propelled. As the force or work done, of a moving body, is
proportionate to the square of its velocity, so we may say that the
force of thoughts is to be measured by the square or quadrupled power
of their spirituality, so greatly do these finer forces increase by
activity. The spiritual force, being impersonal, fluidic, not bound to
any constricting center, acts with unimaginable swiftness. A thought,
on its departure from the mind, is said to associate itself with an
elemental; it is attracted wherever there is a similar vibration, or,
let us say, a suitable soil, just as the winged thistle-seed floats
off and sows itself in this spot and not in that, in the soil of its
natural selection. Thus the man of virtue, by admitting a material or
sensual thought into his mind, even though he expel it, sends it forth
to swell the evil impulses of the man of vice from whom he imagines
himself separated by a wide gulf, and to whom he may have just given a
fresh impulse to sin. Many men are like sponges, porous and bibulous,
ready to suck up every element of the order preferred by their nature.
We all have more or less of this quality: we attract what we love, and
we may derive a greater strength from the vitality of thoughts infused
from without than from those self-reproduced within us at a time when
our nervous vitality is exhausted. It is a solemn thought, this, of our
responsibility for the impulse of another. We live in one another, and
our widely different deeds have often a common source. The occultist
cannot go far upon his way without realizing to what a great extent he
is "his brother's keeper." Our affinities are ourselves, in whatever
ground they may live and ripen.