Part 7
The Masters enjoy difficulties. They are the acid that tests the gold of their mastership.
And speaking from a lower plane, there is pleasure in doing any difficult thing. Why, in the writing of a big novel there is more actual work, mental and physical, than in overcoming some great misfortune. It is less work to go out and overcome a threatened misfortune than it is to write a short story.
How anybody in good health and with even ordinary ability can yield to melancholy is a question for a philosopher.
I am not talking now of grief for dead friends, or for false friends, which grief is far worse; but of the fear of some imaginary disaster which in all probability will never happen.
The surest way to attract disasters is to imagine them. You can create almost anything if you imagine it strongly enough--even joy and courage.
A Master once told me that the control and exorcism of melancholy was a greater test of power than the control of desire.
Both often come from outside, are suggested to the receptive, passive mind. Now the Master entertains only those suggestions that can strengthen his purposes. If you have a friend who makes you courageous by his very presence, cultivate his society. If you have a friend who makes you melancholy, either teach him better or get rid of him; send him to a doctor.
What is the use in our talking about occult power if we have not power over our moods? Practise on moods. As an exercise, some time when you are active, force yourself to be lazy. When you are lazy and not tired, force yourself to be active. Natural fatigue should not be pressed too far, it is a mere reaction; but indolence is not fatigue. It is in the physical what melancholy is in the mental.
As another exercise, when your mind circles round and round something, switch it off as you would switch off an electric light. Turn and think of something else. You can do it.
And, by the way, one of the best cures for melancholy is an hour of mathematical calculations. I defy anybody to be melancholy in the arms of geometry or trigonometry. Why? You cannot think in mathematical terms and of yourself at the same time. People always think of themselves when they are melancholy.
But you tell me that you became melancholy the other day in thinking about a friend who had lost her job. Think again. By wondering what you could do for this friend and whether you could afford it, you began to fear.... Is it not so?
You may be sad because a friend is in trouble, but you cannot be melancholy for anybody but yourself.
Another can make you melancholy by making you morbid and fearful.
Our thoughts are so chained to our ego that it is difficult for them to escape for long. But are you ever melancholy when creating imaginatively a scene in a book? Could you be melancholy while figuring the “polar elevation” of a planet, or computing one of those converse “primary directions”? I see you smile. When you are engaged with figures you forget yourself. Now take my advice. When auto-suggestion is powerless to conquer melancholy, draw up an astrological figure in a low latitude with that table of oblique ascensions that I saw you using yesterday, and work out the converse primaries and the longitude of Vulcan.
You remind me that when on earth I had small interest in astrology. But I am talking about mathematical calculations.
LETTER XXV
COMPENSATORY PLAY
_February 1, 1918._
I HAVE looked in on you occasionally during the last few weeks, pleased with your resting for a time.
The ambitious and energetic are prone to underestimate the value of occasional idleness. You cannot run even a machine all the time without oil and rest. Neither can the most vigorous engineer-soul run its brain and body too long without letting them cool. The farmer knows when to let a field lie fallow.
“After the war” it is to be hoped that the soldiers who have worked so long at one labor--that of war--may be given a period of compensatory play, doing nothing, before being replaced in the hive of industry. Let them enjoy the breezes and the perfume of idleness for a little time; the reaction from that rest will send them back into the workshops with renewed desire for activity. If the world has to get along with less for a few weeks, that will not hurt the world.
In the years to come there will be more rest and recreation in America. In Europe there is going to be some degree of fatigue after this war, and America can easily hold her own if she carries a lower steam-pressure.
The idle hours are sometimes as valuable as those that are spent in labor. It is in so-called idle hours that we meditate, get acquainted with ourselves, build air castles, which are working-plans for our edifice of the future. Day dreams are good. I had a day dream during my life, and it was really the working-plan for the future I am building now. I wanted to get back something I had lost, and I have got it back. You wonder what it was? I do not mind telling you. In a former life I went far along the road towards mastership. Then once upon a time I slipped back a long way. My day dream was to recover that lost ground, and I have recovered much of it out here.
If I had not left the world with that day dream vivid in my consciousness, I should not have made the progress and the recovery I have made.
I was talking the other day with an old friend--a very dear old friend--who came out here a year or two ago, and she and I agreed that the day dreams we had dreamed together were among the most valuable products of our recent life.
She is revelling in the recovery of her own lost ground, and she will run me a good race as the years go on. Yes, one can race across recovered ground of adeptship.
My friend said laughingly the other day that she had made more plans since coming out here than she could execute in a long while.
“Take your time,” I advised, “in the execution. You have all eternity.”
She looked at me in the old way I remember so well, and said:
“Time may be made for slaves, but eternity is made for masters.”
She too is glad that she came out. She had done one kind of work long enough, and is now enjoying another.
Is she helping me, you wonder? Well, no, unless you count the pleasure of our renewed association as a help. Why should she help me, or I her? Our work is our own.
You in the world should help each other when you can; but out here we of equal stature help each other by _being_. That is a good help, though, the being together sometimes.
What a wonderful expression, by the way, “being together”! What poetry! Not working together, nor playing together, but simply being. You must often have felt that joy when with a loved friend. Words are not necessary for that enjoyment. Words often lessen the enjoyment by the very effort of uttering them. Effortless being! Even the birds enjoy it, and the rose could give you valuable secrets of that joy.
In the world I have heard busybodies say of a beautiful woman that she did nothing. What of it? A rose does not run a sewing-machine, or write books.
Joy is coming back to the world. It has been long absent. Being for its own sake has taken on new meanings in the minds of those who are glad to be still alive.
To have passed through all the perils of a long war and still to “be” a living man is something to make the soul wonder.
The men who have fought in this war from the beginning should not be crowded too hard when at last they can stretch their limbs in the hammocks of peace. They have earned the right. As they spin their soldier yarns, gaze at them with respect. They passed through the shadow of death for you. That God has retained them among the active cells of His body is because He has need of them still; but it does not mean that they should go on working for you every minute. Suppose you work for them for a while. When they are rested they will join you in your labor.
Last night I listened to two soldiers talking, and this is what they said to each other:
“What will you do, John, when it’s all over?”
“I’ll lie in the bath tub an hour every morning, in the warm, soft, soapy water; and in the afternoon I’ll call on one dear girl after another, and drink tea, and listen to their talk. And what will you do?”
“Oh, I’ll just look at my wife and hold her hand.”
Idle talk, you think? That depends upon what you mean by idle talk. To me that talk was immensely significant.
Soon after our little skirmish with Spain I remember hearing an active woman say of her husband that he had never been good for anything since he came back from Cuba.
“Well,” I said, “he was good for a lot in Cuba.”
The Spanish-American war! A fly beside an elephant, as compared with this war.
And the German is tired, too. You may not have to overwork yourself to keep up with him after the war.
LETTER XXVI
THE AQUARIAN AGE
_February 2, 1918._
YOU have wondered why the Masters speak now of the interests of the common man, while in former times they said little about them. But do you not know that when the need for a thing is come, the work of the Masters with the world is to urge the world in the direction of its destiny?
You have read of the iron age, the golden age, etc., and that the golden age follows the iron. You may have wondered how two states so utterly dissimilar could be juxtaposed. Now between the iron age and the golden age there is a period of transition, a period short as compared with one of the great ages, for example the longest one, the golden, which is given as one million, seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand years.
I have not visited you this evening to announce that the golden age is immediately at hand. Oh, no! But we approach the termination of a minor cycle, and the period of transition from the present state of the world to the next[3] will be of about one thousand years. That is to say, this period of one thousand years will bring us to the middle of what is called the Aquarian age, for the half of one of these lesser Zodiacal periods is approximately of that length.[4]
What is the Aquarian age? You know the humanitarian nature of Aquarius. You also know the characteristics of the planet Uranus, to which Aquarius is now attributed. Well, the inference is obvious. We shall have an Aquarian world, and a world where things will go after the manner of that strange and abrupt planet Uranus.
The old-fashioned world is passing away, the Jupiterian world, and we are entering upon a period of change, political, social, religious and personal. There is going to be an attempt at a federation of states, a federation of souls. Nothing but this war could have effected it--with the suddenness characteristic of that mysterious planet Uranus.
In the later Aquarian age the creative will of man will have such scope as the world has not dreamed of. It will be set free from the limitations which have held it. When all men are assured of a means of livelihood, how free they will be in _mind_! The freedom of the past in a free country like America is nothing like the freedom which the new age will usher in.
When education is really universal, the moral as well as the mental will be trained, and new ideas will have room to develop in the developing brain.
Be not afraid, O world! Three years ago, even we who see far out here had grave doubts for the future of your planet. But the great Masters always told us that the world would pass through its period of trial, still poised on its old axis, and that the _forces which make for order would triumph over the forces which make for disorder_. Have you not noticed in the psychic world a lessening of strain? Have you not noticed an absence of the hostile and adverse beings that in the early months of the war seemed to threaten the earth and you and all men with a triumphant malice? That is a straw which shows the way of “the winds that blow between the worlds.”
I am glad you are a keen observer of psychic states. That faculty of observation will be of use to you in the years that are to come. Those who cannot adjust to new conditions will pass out for a time and return later with the fresh outlook of children, to take up their experience in the new age.
There will be much rebellion in the beginning. Things are not so stable as they _seemed_ four years ago. The war has proved that they were not really stable.
The wave of psychic research that is now sweeping across the world will wear thin the veil between the visible and the invisible. More and more men and women will live in two worlds at the same time; for the two worlds occupy the same space, and their differences are differences of consciousness, of vibration, the latter including a difference in states of matter.
Men will grow more magnetic under the influences that will play upon them. They will affect each other more and more, and that is one reason why greater freedom will be necessary. With the greater sensitiveness which the new time will bring, it will be more difficult for large families to live together a common life. While the tendency is for all mankind to be one family in sympathy, more and more it will be recognized that each man requires privacy for his best development. The tyranny of the family will give place to freedom _in_ the family. Strip family life of its tyranny and it may be very charming.
The sensitive and highly charged beings of the new age would explode if they should be obliged to sit every evening round the family “centre-table,” listening to the maunderings of the least progressive among them, who by reason of greater age assumed the right to lay down the law. This does not mean that children will not honor their parents; but under the new dispensation parents will honor their children’s need for the individual life, and will give it to them--thereby securing their own freedom.
The freedom of the later Aquarian age will be manifest in the mind. “Heresy” will cease to exist; the word will become obsolete.
The sin against the Holy Ghost will be understood as the attempt to enchain the will of another.
Great friendliness will result from this mutual tolerance. We hate only those whom we fear, and in a tolerant world there will be few seeds of hatred.
All men will study; the school is only the first stage of study. When man becomes his own schoolmaster he makes great strides.
What you know of art, music and literature can give you but a vague idea of what these arts will become in the age that is to follow. Take the catchwords of the immediate past, impressionism, for example. It will be applied to all the arts.
Science is only in its swaddling-clothes. Aquarius is a sign of air, the old books tell us, and the air holds many secrets which you must take for your own, not only secrets of transportation but psychological secrets. The airplane and psychical research grew up together.
You have not taken the last redoubt of electricity. That also has treasures for you. When you can draw _that_ from the air where it hides from you and laughs, you will have little need of coal, and the miners can leave the bowels of the earth and play in the sunshine of the heights.
Inventions! I see in the “pattern world” I told you about in my first book many things that would puzzle you down here. New fabrics will be worn before many years, and the patient silkworm will not be the aristocrat it now is.
The human ego is coming into its own. When it loses selfishness it will find itself. That is not a paradox for its own sake, but the statement of a psychological fact.
The seeming chaos will take form, and in it you will find new 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.