man--just enough to catch a fitful glimpse now and then of the
horror of its own state. It had no desire to escape, but the very
consciousness of the impossibility of escape was an added torment. And
dread was in the eyes of the thing--dread of the future into which it
could not look, but which it felt waiting to drag it into that state of
even greater suffering than its present, when the astral particles of
its form, unable longer to hold together because of the absence of the
unifying soul, would begin to rend and tear what was left of the mind
and astral nerves--rending and tearing asunder, in terror and pain,
that shape whose end was at hand.
For only the soul endures, and that which the soul deserts must perish
and disintegrate.
And the young man who leaned on the bar in that gilded palace of gin
was filled with a nameless horror and sought to leave the place; but
the arms of the thing that was now his master clutched him tighter
and tighter, the sodden, vaporous cheek was pressed closer to his,
the desire of the vampire creature aroused an answering desire in its
victim, and the young man demanded another glass.
Verily, earth and hell are neighbouring states, and the frontier has
never been charted.
I have seen hells of lust and hells of hatred; hells of
untruthfulness, where every object which the wretched dweller tried
to grasp turned into something else which was a denial of the thing
desired, where truth was mocked eternally and nothing was real, but
everything--changing and uncertain as untruthfulness--became its own
antithesis.
I have seen the anguished faces of those not yet resigned to lies, have
seen their frantic efforts to clutch reality, which melted in their
grasp. For the habit of untruthfulness, when carried into this world
of shifting shapes, surrounds the untruthful person with ever-changing
images which mock him and elude.
Would he see the faces of his loved ones? The promise is given, and
as the faces appear they turn into grinning furies. Would he grasp in
memory the prizes of ambition? They are shown to be but disgrace in
another form, and pride becomes weak shame. Would he clasp the hand of
friendship? The hand is extended--but in its clutch is a knife which
pierces the vitals of the liar without destroying him, and the futile
attempt begins again, over and over, until the uneasy conscience is
exhausted.
Beware of deathbed repentance and its after-harvest of morbid memories.
It is better to go into eternity with one’s karmic burdens bravely
carried upon the back, rather than to slink through the back door of
hell in the stockinged-feet of a sorry cowardice.
If you have sinned, accept the fact with courage and resolve to sin no
more; but he who dwells upon his sins in his last hour will live them
over and over again in the state beyond the tomb.
Every act is followed by its inevitable reaction; every cause is
accompanied by its own effect, which nothing--save the powerful
dynamics of Will itself--can modify; and when Will modifies the effect
of an antecedent cause, it is always by setting up a counteracting
and more powerful cause than the first--a cause so strong that the
other is irresistibly carried along with it, as a great flood can
sweep a trickling stream of water from an open hose-pipe, carrying the
hose-pipe cause and its trickling effect along with the rushing torrent
of its own flood.
If you recognise the fact that you have sinned, set up good actions
more powerful than your sins, and reap the reward for those.
There is much more to be said about hells, but this is enough for
to-night. At another time I may return to the subject.
LETTER XXXVII
AN EMPTY CHINA CUP
IT is no wonder that children, no matter how old and experienced their
souls, have to be retaught in each life the relative values of all
things according to the artificial standards of the world; for out here
those values lose their meaning.
That a soul had houses, lands, and honours among men does not increase
his value in our eyes. We cannot hope to profit by his discarded
riches. The soul in the “hereafter” builds its own house, and the
materials thereof are free as air. If I use the house which another has
built, I miss the enjoyment of creating my own.
There is nothing worth stealing out here, so no one trembles for fear
of burglars in the night. Even bores can be escaped by retiring to the
very centre of oneself, for a bore is himself too self-centred ever to
pierce to the centre of anyone else.
On earth you value titles, inherited or acquired; here a man’s name is
not of much importance even to himself, and a visiting-card would be
lost through the cracks in the floor of heaven. No footman angel would
ever deliver it to his Lord and Master.
One day I met a lady recently arrived. She had not been here long
enough to have lost her assurance of superiority over ordinary men
and angels. That morning I had on my best Roman toga, for I had been
reliving the past; and the lady, mistaking me for Cæsar or some other
ancient aristocrat, asked me to direct her to a place where gentlewomen
congregated.
I was forced to admit that I did not know of any such resort; but as
the visitor seemed lonely and bewildered, I invited her to rest beside
me for a time and to question me if she wished.
“I have been here several months,” I said, “and have gained
considerable experience.”
It was plain to see that she was puzzled by my remark. She glanced at
my classical garment, and I could feel her thinking that there was
something incongruous between it and my assertion that I had been here
only a few months.
“Perhaps you are an actor,” she said.
“We are all actors here,” I replied.
This seemed to puzzle her more than ever, and she said that she did
not understand. Poor lady! I felt sorry for her, and I tried my best to
explain to her the conditions under which we live.
“You must know in the first place,” I said, “that this is the land of
realised ideals. Now a man who has always desired to be a king can
play the part up here if he wishes to, and no one will laugh at him;
for each spirit has some favourite dream which he acts out to his own
satisfaction.
“We have, madam,” I continued, “reacquired the tolerance and the
courtesy of children who never ridicule one another’s play.”
“Is heaven merely a play-room?” she asked, in a shocked tone.
“Not at all,” I answered; “but you are not in heaven.”
Her look of apprehension caused me immediately to add:
“Nor are you in hell, either. What was your religion upon the earth?”
“Why, I professed the usual religion of my country and station; but I
never gave it much thought.”
“Perhaps the idea of purgatory is not unfamiliar to you.”
“I am not a papist,” she said, with some warmth.
“Nevertheless, a papist in your position would conceive himself to be
in purgatory.”
“I am certainly not happy,” she admitted, “because everything is so
strange.”
“Have you no friends here?” I inquired.
“I must have many acquaintances,” she said; “but I never cared for
intimate friendships. I used to entertain a good deal; my husband’s
political position demanded it.”
“Perhaps there is someone on this side to whom you were specially kind
at some time or other, someone whose grief you helped to bear, whose
poverty you eased.”
“I patronised our organised charities.”
“I fear that sort of help is too impersonal to be remembered here. Have
you no children?”
“No.”
“No brothers or sisters on this side?”
“I quarrelled with my only brother for marrying beneath him.”
“But surely,” I said, “you must have had a mother. Was she not waiting
for you when you came over?”
“No.”
This surprised me, for I had been told that all mother spirits who
have not gone back to the world know by a peculiar thrill when a child
to which they have given birth is about to be reborn into the spiritual
world--a sort of sympathetic after-pain, the final and sweetest reward
of motherhood.
“Then she must have reincarnated,” I said.
“Do you hold to that pagan belief?” the lady inquired, with just a
touch of superiority. “I thought that only queer people, Theosophists
and such, believed in reincarnation.”
“I was always queer,” I admitted. “But you know, of course, dear madam,
that about three-quarters of the earth’s inhabitants are familiar with
that theory in some form or other.”
We continued our talk for a little time, and meanwhile I was puzzling
my heart as to what I could do to help this poor lonely woman, for
whom no one was waiting. I passed in mental review this and that
ministering angel of my acquaintance, and wondered which of them would
be considered most correct from the conventional earthly point of view.
The noblest of them was usually at the side of some newly arrived
unfortunate woman--to use a euphemism of that polite society which my
latest _protégée_ had frequented. The others were here, there, and
everywhere, but generally with those souls who needed them most; while
the need of my present companion was more real than urgent. If Lionel
had been here, he might have entertained her for a while.
I wished that I had cultivated the acquaintance of some of those ladies
who crochet and gossip in this world as they crocheted and gossiped in
yours. Do not be shocked. Did you fancy that a lifelong habit could
be laid aside in a moment? As women on earth dream often of their
knitting, so they do here. It is as easy to knit in this world as it is
to dream in yours.
Understand that the world in which I now live is no more essentially
sacred than is the world in which you live, nor is it any more
mysterious to those who dwell in it. To the serious soul all conditions
are sacred--except those that are profane, and both are found out here
as well as on the earth.
But to return to the lonely woman. I was still wondering what I should
do with her when, looking up, I saw the Teacher approaching. He had
with him another woman, as like the first as one empty china cup is
like another empty china cup. Then he and I went away and left the two
together.
“I did not know,” I said to the Teacher, “that you troubled yourself
with any souls but those of considerable development.”
He smiled:
“It was your perplexity which I came to relieve, not that of those poor
ladies.”
Then he began to talk to me about relative values.
“In a sense,” he said, “one soul is as much worth helping as another;
in a deeper sense, perhaps it is not. Do not think that I am
indifferent to the sufferings of the weakest ones because I give my
time and attention to the strong. Like the ministering angels, I go
where I am most needed. Only the strong ones can learn what I have
to teach. The weak ones are the charges of the Messiahs and their
followers. But, nevertheless, between us and the Messiahs there is
brotherhood and there is mutual understanding. Each works in his own
field. The Messiahs help the many; we help the few. Their reward in
love is greater than ours; but we do not work for reward any more than
they do. Each follows the law of his being.
“To be loved by all men a teacher must be known to all men, and we
reveal ourselves only to a few chosen ones. Why do we not go the way of
the Messiahs? Because the balance must be maintained. For every great
worker in the sight of men there is another worker out of sight. Which
kind of teacher is of greater value? The question is out of order. The
North and the South are interdependent, and there are two poles to
every magnet.”
LETTER XXXVIII
WHERE TIME IS NOT
I THINK you now understand from what I have said that not all the souls
who have passed the airy frontier are either in heaven or hell. Few
reach an extreme, and most live out their allotted period here as they
lived out their allotted period on earth, without realising either the
possibilities or the significance of their condition.
Wisdom is a tree of slow growth; the rings around its trunk are earthly
lives, and the grooves between are the periods between the lives.
Who grieves that an acorn is slow in becoming an oak? It is equally
unphilosophical to feel that the truth which I have endeavoured to make
you understand--the truth of the soul’s great leisure--is necessarily
sad. If a man were to become an archangel in a few years’ time, he
would suffer terribly from growing-pains. The Law is implacable, but it
often seems to be kind.
Nevertheless there are many souls in heaven, and there are many
heavens, of which I have seen a few.
But do not fancy that most people go from place to place and from
state to state as I do. The things which I describe to you are not
exceptional; but that one man should be able to see and describe so
many things is exceptional indeed. I owe it largely to the Teacher.
Without his guidance I could not have acquired so rich an experience.
Yes, there are many heavens. Last night I felt the yearning for beauty
which sometimes came to me on earth. One of the strangest phenomena
of this ethereal world is the tremendous attraction by sympathy--the
attraction of events, I mean. Desire a thing intensely enough, and you
are on the way to it. A body of a feather’s weight moves swiftly when
propelled by a free will.
I felt a yearning for beauty, which is a synonym for heaven. Did I
really move from my place, or did heaven come to me? I cannot say,
_space means so little here_. For every vale without there is a
vale within. We desire a place, and we are there. Perhaps the Teacher
could give you a scientific explanation of this, but I cannot at the
moment. And then, I want to tell you about that heaven where I was last
night. It was so beautiful that the charm of it is over me still.
I saw a double row of dark-topped trees, like cypresses, and at the end
of this long avenue down which I passed was a softly diffused light.
Somewhere I have read of a heaven lighted by a thousand suns, but my
heaven was not like that. The light as I approached it was softer than
moonlight, though clearer. Perhaps the light of the sun would shine as
softly if seen through many veils of alabaster. Yet this light seemed
to come from nowhere. It simply was.
As I approached I saw two beings walking towards me, hand in hand.
There was such a look of happiness on their faces as one never sees on
the faces of earth. Only a spirit unconscious of time could look like
that.
I should say that these two were man and woman, save that they seemed
so different from what you understand by man and woman. They did not
even look at each other as they walked; the touch of the hand seemed to
make them so much one, that the realisation of the eye could have added
nothing to their content. Like the light which came from nowhere, they
simply were.
A little farther on I saw a group of bright-robed children dancing
among flowers. Hand in hand in a ring they danced, and their garments,
which were like the petals of flowers, moved with the rhythm of their
dancing limbs. A great joy filled my heart. They, too, were unconscious
of time, and might have been dancing there from eternity, for all I
knew. But whether their gladness was of the moment or of the ages had
no significance for me or for them. Like the light, and like the lovers
who had passed me hand in hand, they were, and that was enough.
I had left the avenue of cypresses and stood in a wide plain, encircled
by a forest of blossoming trees. The odours of spring were on the
air, and birds sang. In the centre of the plain a great circular
fountain played with the waters, tossing them in the air, whence they
descended in feathery spray. An atmosphere of inexpressible charm was
over everything. Here and there in this circular flower-scented heaven
walked angelic beings, many or most of whom must some time have been
human. Two by two they walked, or in groups, smiling to themselves or
at one another.
On earth you often use the word “peace”; but compared with the peace
of that place the greatest peace of earth is only turmoil. I realised
that I was in one of the fairest heavens, but that I was alone there.
No sooner had this thought of solitude found lodgment in my heart than
I saw standing before me the Beautiful Being about whom I wrote you a
little time ago. It smiled, and said to me:
“He who is sadly conscious of his solitude is no longer in heaven. So I
have come to hold you here yet a little while.”
“Is this the particular heaven where you dwell?” I asked.
“Oh, I dwell nowhere and everywhere,” the Beautiful Being answered. “I
am one of the voluntary wanderers, who find the charm of home in every
heavenly or earthly place.”
“So you sometimes visit earth?”
“Yes, even the remotest hells I go to, but I never stay there long. My
purpose is to know all things, and yet to remain unattached.”
“And do you love the earth?”
“The earth is one of my playgrounds. I sing to the children of earth
sometimes; and when I sing to the poets, they believe that their muse
is with them. Here is a song which I sang one night to a soul which
dwells among men:
“My sister, I am often with you when you realise it not.
For me a poet soul is a well of water in whose deeps I
can see myself reflected.
I live in a glamour of light and colour, which you mortal
poets vainly try to express in magic words.
I am in the sunset and in the star; I watched the moon
grow old and you grow young.
In childhood you sought for me in the swiftly moving
cloud; in maturity you fancied you had caught me
in the gleam of a lover’s eye; but I am the eluder
of men.
I beckon and I fly, and the touch of my feet does not
press down the heads of the blossoming daisies.
You can find me and lose me again, for mortal cannot
hold me.
I am nearest to those who seek beauty--whether in
thought or in form; I fly from those who seek to imprison me.
You can come each day to the region where I dwell.
Sometimes you will meet me, sometimes not; for my will
is the wind’s will, and I answer no beckoning finger:
But when I beckon, the souls come flying from the four
corners of heaven.
Your soul comes flying, too; for you are one of those I
have called by the spell of my magic.
I have use for you, and you have meaning for me; I like
to see your soul in its hours of dream and ecstasy.
Whenever one of my own dreams a dream of Paradise,
the light grows brighter for me, to whom all things
are bright.
Oh, forget not the charm of the moment, forget not the
lure of the mood!
For the mood is wiser than all the magi of earth, and
the treasures of the moment are richer and rarer
than the hoarded wealth of the ages.
The moment is real, while the age is only a delusion, a
memory, and a shadow.
Be sure that each moment is all, and the moment is more
than time.
Time carries an hour-glass, and his step is slow; his hair
is white with the rime of years, and his scythe is
dull with unwearied mowing;
But he never yet has caught the moment in its flight.
He has grown old in casting nets for it.
Ah, the magic of life and of the endless combination of
living things!
I was young when the sun was formed, and I shall be
young when the moon falls dead in the arms of her
daughter the earth.
Will you not be young with me? The dust is as nothing:
the soul is all.
Like a crescent moon on the surface of a lake of water
is the moment of love’s awakening;
Like a faded flower in the lap of the tired world is the
moment of love’s death.
But there is love and Love, and the love of the light for
its radiance is the love of souls for each other.
There is no death where the inner light shines, irradiating
the fields of the within--the beyond--the unattainable
attainment.
You know where to find me.”
LETTER XXXIX
THE DOCTRINE OF DEATH
MANY times during the months in which I have been here have I seen men
and women lying in a state of unconsciousness more profound than the
deepest sleep, their faces expressionless and uninteresting. At first,
before I understood the nature of their sleep, I tried as an experiment
to awaken one or two of them, and was not successful. In certain cases
where my curiosity was aroused, I have returned later, day after day,
and found them still lying in the same lethargy.
“Why,” I asked myself, “should any man sleep like that--a sleep so deep
that neither the spoken word nor the physical touch could arouse him?”
One day when the Teacher was with me we passed one of those unconscious
men whom I had seen before, had watched, and had striven unsuccessfully
to arouse.
“Who are these people who sleep like that?” I asked the Teacher; and he
replied:
“They are those who in their earth life denied the immortality of the
soul after death.”
“How terrible!” I said. “And will they never awaken?”
“Yes, perhaps centuries, perhaps ages hence, when the irresistible law
of rhythm shall draw them out of their sleep into incarnation. For the
law of rebirth is one with the law of rhythm.”
“Would it not be possible to awaken one of them, this man, for
instance?”
“You have attempted it, have you not?” the Teacher inquired, with a
keen look into my face.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“And you failed?”
“Yes.”
We looked at each other for a moment, then I said:
“Perhaps you, with your greater power and knowledge, could succeed
where I have failed.”
He made no answer. His silence fired my interest still farther, and I
said eagerly:
“Will you not try? Will you not awaken this man?”
“You know not what you ask,” he replied.
“But tell me this,” I demanded: “could you awaken him?”
“Perhaps. But in order to counteract the law which holds him in sleep,
the law of the spell he laid upon his own soul when he went out of life
demanding unconsciousness and annihilation--in order to counteract that
law, I should have to put in operation a law still stronger.”
“And that is?” I asked.
“Will,” he answered, “the potency of will.”
“Could you?”
“As I said before--perhaps.”
“And will you?”
“Again I say that you know not what you ask.”
“Will you please explain?” I persisted, “for indeed this seems to me to
be one of the most marvellous things which I have seen.”
The face of the Teacher was very grave, as he answered:
“What good has this man done in the past that I should place myself
between him and the law of cause and effect which he has wilfully set
in operation?”
“I do not know his past,” I said.
“Then,” the Teacher demanded, “will you tell me your reason for asking
me to do this thing?”
“My reason?”
“Yes. Is it pity for this man’s unfortunate condition, or is it
scientific curiosity on your part?”
I should gladly have been able to say that it was pity for the man’s
sad state which moved me so; but one does not juggle with truth or with
motives when speaking to such a Teacher, so I admitted that it was
scientific curiosity.
“In that case,” he said, “I am justified in using him as a
demonstration of the power of the trained will.”
“It will not harm him, will it?”
“On the contrary. And though he may suffer shock, it will probably be
the means of so impressing his mind that never again, even in future
lives on earth, can he believe himself, or teach others to believe,
that death ends everything. As far as he is concerned, he does not
deserve that I should waste upon him so great an amount of energy as
will be necessary to arouse him from this sleep, this spell which he
laid upon himself ages ago. But if I awaken him, it will be for your
sake, ‘that you may believe.’”
I wish I could describe the scene which took place, so that you could
see it with the eyes of your imagination. There lay the man at our
feet, his face colourless and expressionless, and above him towered the
splendid form of the Teacher, his face beautiful with power, his eyes
brilliant with thought.
“Can you not see,” asked the Teacher, “a faint light surrounding this
seemingly lifeless figure?”
“Yes, but the light is very faint indeed.”
“Nevertheless,” said the Teacher, “that light is far less faint than is
this weak soul’s hold upon the eternal truth. But where you see only a
pale light around the recumbent form, I see in that light many pictures
of the soul’s past. I see that he not only denied the immortality of
the soul’s consciousness, but that he taught his doctrine of death to
other men and made them even as himself. Truly he does not deserve that
I should try to awaken him!”
“Yet you will do it?”
“Yes, I will do it.”
I regret that I am not permitted to tell you by what form of words and
by what acts my Teacher succeeded, after a mighty effort, in arousing
that man from his self-imposed imitation of annihilation. I realised
as never before--not only the personal power of the Teacher, but the
irresistible power of a trained and directed will.
I thought of that scene recorded in the New Testament, where Jesus said
to the dead man in the tomb, “Lazarus, come forth!”