Part 4
_Then as I sat gazing into the nothingness of my own faith, I heard a voice that seemed to come from the centre of all things and the voice said_:
“_Take your pen and write, for to him who has lost everything the treasures of the Self are opened._
“_I am that Self that you had forgotten when you looked outside for love. I am the Self that the nations had forgotten when they went out to destroy one another. I am the One Self, and my house is in all these hearts that throb with hate and love. When they wound each other they wound me; when they doubt each other they doubt me; when they love each other they love me. There is no other way of realizing me save by love and hate and faith and doubt. For love and hate are two poles of the one magnet, and doubt and faith are my twin-born children._
“_He who has never doubted all, knows not the meaning of faith; and he who has never been hated, knows not the meaning of love._
“_When the heart is empty of joy I fill it with myself. When my own destroy each other on earth they rush together in heaven. Freed from the blindness of the body they see each other true._
“_Two soldiers went forth to war, and the bullet of each pierced the heart of the other. Their hate was hot as love. Then in the sudden darkness of death they reached for each other’s hand; their hate had found its other pole and they melted together in love._
“_Two friends went forth to war against each other, and with every wound they drew nearer together--the soul of each grieved for the other’s pain, and neither in death nor life can one escape the other._
“_Would you avoid a loved one, then never dare to hate him. The soul has pity when the brain is pitiless; the faith of the soul may be strongest when the mind is weak with doubt._
“_The soul of the brain that hates you keeps watch when the brain is still, it wipes with its vapory hand the tear-drops from your eyes._
“_When you weep in dreams, know that your soul is weeping for the tears you have caused your enemy. When you wake with wet eyes, you are paying the debt of love._
“_Be kind to him who loves you, for love is a helpless waif; if you drive it from the heart it can only wander alone._
“_Be kind to him who hates you, for his waif is wandering alone._
“_When you go to sleep, send love to the one who wounds you by day. If you go to sleep in hate you will wake with wet eyes._
“_I am the go-between. I am the Self whose house is in every heart. I take messages in the darkness. I am too great to be proud. I run errands for my own._
“_How well you have tried to hate I know by your heart’s sadness. That you have failed to hate is because your soul is sleepless._
“_I am the go-between and I keep my lantern lit._”
_April 1._
LETTER XIII
THE BODY OF HUMANITY
I HAVE said that as twenty of us stood in the palace at Potsdam and in the Wilhelmstrasse, the greatest of the Teachers was not with us.
You do not know the name by which we know him, nor do you need to know. He is one who has left so far behind him the personal limitations of life as you know it that he can look upon that life somewhat as the Planetary Logos may look upon it. He can look at the restless and warring beings on earth as you would look at micro-organisms through a lens. Amœba, fat-cell, pus-cell, he sees them all as parts of the great Whole, and their wars do not make him partisan.
The assertions, the reiterations, the bombastic prayers of the German Emperor, who goes on the assumption that God must be on his side because it _is_ his side, do not move this Master even to smiles. Absurdity and tragedy are one to him, except as they further or retard the growth of the organism of Humanity.
If you get into your consciousness a _realization_, not a mere philosophic theory, of the One and the many, you will understand that the One is in all the many, whether some of them be your friends or your enemies.
Another thing remember: To posit is to create. Posit and thus create brotherhood. But do not posit it too violently, lest you climax your rhythm too soon and produce by reaction the opposite of brotherhood.[2]
The greatest of the Masters seemed to us to posit no new thing when the war-cloud gathered.
We whose knowledge is not infinite tried to serve as physicians, tried to cool the fever that was burning the cells of the Great Man, Humanity. We may be said to have given him mental treatment, to have urged on the curative process.
The astral forces with which we struggled were like germs of disease in the air. From the view-point of the great Master they were no more than infusoria which you could see through a lens.
Adjust your view to eternity as well as to time, if you would understand him and help him in his work. But do not regard your own work as unimportant because it is in time, because from the greater point of view you fancy that it may appear small.
How does a man become a Master save by doing his work as if the health of the whole planetary organism depended on it? The perfect health of the organism does depend on the work of every cell.
Now let me tell you why this war had to be. The time had come when humanity must realize brotherhood in preparation for the new race that had to be born. Instead of that, there was greater and greater separation in feeling, though the material discoveries and organizations of the last hundred years were making brotherhood possible in the material world.
The rhythm of separateness was climaxed by this war of separation. Without it the brotherhood of man would have been retarded by man’s refusal to work emotionally with the law that had already been demonstrated to him in the physical world.
In other words, the body had grown faster than the soul and the soul had to suffer with the body; the soul had to be torn in order that it might heal itself by its own power, the power of love.
I spoke of not climaxing too violently the rhythm of brotherhood. That applies to all rhythmic waves. The Germans desired to be the ruling race of the world. They posited their own superiority so violently that they are producing the opposite of superiority. Posit with calmness.
They might have been the leaders in the new spirit of unity. They have failed and have lost their opportunity. The mass of Germans in the United States might have been a unifying force between the United States and Germany. See what they are now!
The reason why Germany was not permitted by the Masters to have large colonies of her own was so that her surplus population might scatter over the earth and mix with other races. The German blood needed mixing. Her efficiency in material ways might thus have leavened the world.
Instead, she became drunk with her own greatness. She climaxed the rhythm that might have carried her steadily forward. It is a karmic failure she has made.
The races are like organs in the body of Humanity. If one race refuses to work with and for the body of Humanity as well as for itself, it becomes diseased.
If Germany would even now turn to the Supreme Unity and worship the One of the System instead of her little racial god, she could recover the ground she has lost, after a time of suffering and initiation. Will she do it? That remains to be seen. Help with the Masters to hold back the bad karma of that race.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: I have been somewhat troubled by the unusual expression, “climax a rhythm.” But as there are many rhythmic ripples in every great wave, and as the highest reach of a wave may be said to be its climax, I assume that “X” is using words with the same judicial precision which he used on earth, and that the climax of a rhythmic wave may be called the climax of a rhythm.--_Editor._]
LETTER XIV
THE FOEMAN WITHIN
YOU have something more to do than simply to write down what I say about brotherhood. With selfless devotion you must help the world to realize it, pointing out the way to individuals and aggregates of individuals.
Universal Brotherhood! It has a pretty sound, and mouths have repeated it for the sake of its music, when the meaning of it was neither in the heart nor in the brain.
Universal Brotherhood is not only the brotherly relation between the units of the Many, but Universal Brotherhood is also their unity, conscious and real, in the One Self. Universal Brotherhood is the return of the Many to the One, as well as their enjoyment of the journey itself.
You have repeated the old Hindoo word, formula, mantra, AUM, repeated it like a parrot; but if you had realized AUM I should not have to preach brotherhood to you, and by “you” I mean all men and women who have prattled of Universal Brotherhood.
A-U-M--the One, the Many, and the Union between them: the Self, the Not-Self, and the Negation of separateness. AUM, the seed, the plant and the perfume.
What do you fancy that you are in the world for?
You have heard of Mulaprakriti, you Theosophists: Mulaprakriti, root-nature. You have heard of the three gunas, or qualities of Mulaprakriti, satwa, rajas, tamas: _satwa_, light, being, peace; _rajas_, action, passion, assertion; _tamas_, darkness, inertia, denial.
Some of you have also heard of Christ, Lucifer, Ahriman.--Satwa, rajas and tamas, again, under other names.
You Kabalists have heard of Neshamah, Ruach, Nephesh: aspiration, individual intelligence, materiality.
You have all heard of Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva: the Preserver, the Creator, the Destroyer.--Yes, that is the proper order, for Vishnu preserves from kalpa to kalpa, and Brahma recreates.
Krishna (Vishnu) says in the Bhagavat-Gita, “I am the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings.”
He is the One _and_ the Many, for He is in the many and the many are in Him. You _cannot_ realize Krishna save as you realize Him as the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings. You cannot realize the Christ until you can see Him in the hearts of all beings.
Yes, you may struggle with one another and call it hate, or war; that is separateness.
Separateness is necessary as a stage of evolution, that the ego may realize itself as distinct; but the time has come when the race should turn back toward its Source, to Unity, to the Atma that is the same in everyone.
I have learned much since I last left you two years ago. On earth I did not talk incessantly of Universal Brotherhood. I wanted to achieve a “peerless individuality.” Well, I have achieved it. On my two years’ journey among the planets and elsewhere, I found the power I sought; but I found something else--love, the greatest power of all.
Brotherhood is love and that is why I preach brotherhood. You may acquire individuality by hating, but not a “peerless individuality.”
Do not be afraid of losing your identity. So long as you can love something other than yourself you will not lose your individuality. For to love something _other_ is to posit your individuality.
To love only your separate self is to lose your hold on individuality, for you are only an individual in relation to other selves. Alone in the universe, you would have to be nothing or everything, and you cannot be everything--not just yet, save as you are everything through unity with everything, and that is love.
Rebel as you will, by that very rebellion against others you assert their equality with you, you assert their co-existence, and behind co-existence is Unity, Krishna, “the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings.”
Do not be shocked when I say that from our point of view this war seems very childish, very ignorant.
War was noble a long time ago when mankind was on its way out and needed to realize separateness; but in course of time war will become not only unnecessary, but banal.
I am not jesting with serious things. I know far better than you can know how very serious this war is, for I have watched it on both planes.
The war between the forces of good and evil was not banal. _In the human heart_ that war will go on for a long time yet, aeons on aeons; but the day has come when men should war with the evil _in themselves_, and let other men war with the evil in themselves. The sword of Mars, the war-god, will not rust so long as the Mars in man wields it against the powers of darkness in himself.
I have seen the powers of darkness in men exteriorized, have seen them in objective form, and I assure you they are foemen worthy of your steel. Each of you has within a foeman worthy of his steel.
Each man has also the Self, the divine, the Christ, the Krishna that is seated in the hearts of all beings.
I want to tell you something which I saw with my own eyes.
On a battlefield in France, two soldiers killed each other with the bayonet. The devil in each escaped with the soul. They were not ordinary men. I saw these two devils, these two “dwellers on the threshold,” these two “desire-elementals,” call them what you will. Do you think they fell upon each other to destroy each other? Not at all. Each fell upon the soul it belonged to. They had no interest in each other; they had nothing to give or to take away from each other, these devils, dwellers, elementals.
Do you see what I mean?
Your enemy is within you.
The one you fight outside is your brother. Love him with brotherly love and your devil will grow weaker as your angel grows stronger.
Your angel is descended from the Atma, the Christ, the Krishna _in you_. It is similar to the Atma, the Christ, the Krishna in your brother.
The devils are all very individual. The angels are all very much alike, though some are stronger than others and older in experience.
Seek the Christ in yourself, that it may arise, with tidings of great joy unto all men.
That is what I wish to say to the world on this evening before Easter Day.
_April 3._
LETTER XV
LISTENING IN BRUSSELS
NO, do not expect me to write essays. I am writing letters. Let me be as discursive as I please. But you will see at the end of my labors that the building has a frame, and that all the parts are in place.
Having philosophized the last time, I will now tell you a story.
When the German army passed through unresisting Brussels (three days, if I remember rightly, it was passing through, a long, moving grey-green river of men, on whose helmetted ripples the sunlight or the lamplight glittered), I stood for an hour unnoticed upon a balcony, reading the thoughts of man after man as he passed before my place.
As I have explained to you before, I have no difficulty in reading the thoughts of the Germans; it is only in trying to make them understand me that I often fail.
The river of men and the river of thoughts, each man a ripple, each thought a ripple!
Here are a few ripples of thought which caught the light of my attention:
“What a beautiful city Brussels is!”
“My feet are tired. My shoes hurt me.”
“That tree yonder is like the one beside the door at home.”
“Mother will be making coffee at this hour.”
“What a pretty girl--the one with the bread in her basket!”
“I wonder if Gretchen will talk much with Hans now I am gone.”
“That gate on the left is the one that Marie sent me on a picture postcard last year.”
“My feet are tired. My shoes hurt me.”
“So this is Brussels! I always wanted to see it.”
“My head aches.”
“Deutschland über Alles! Deutschland über Alles!”
“I wonder if the Lieutenant paid his tailor.”
“How warm it is!”
“What is father doing now?”
“I wish I had a glass of beer!”
“I am glad we don’t destroy Brussels!”
“What is all this war about, anyway?”
“The Fatherland! The Fatherland!”
“What will they give us for supper?”
“I wonder where we are going?”
“This isn’t so fine as the Unter dem Linden.”
“When we get to Paris I must see the Venus of Milo.”
“My head aches.”
“Our baby has a tooth!”
“Will it ever be supper-time!”
And so on and on and on, as the long grey-green river flowed through the city of Brussels.
And these were the men that in a little while would murder and rob and burn and rape, and murder and rob and burn! Many of them had done so already--these tired men with their aimless, unwarlike thoughts, their commonplace soldier thoughts, of home and food and aching feet and of postcards Marie sent last year and the hour for mother’s coffee!
What power transformed them into devils? What demon dehumanized them till they forgot their weariness? Was it the raucous cry of the war-trumpet? Was it the devil behind the devil who blew the trumpet? Was it the evil spirit of a nation, or merely the spirit of war?
It was all of these things.
Perhaps when they began their marching they thought of glory and hate and life and death and honor; but they had been marching long and their thoughts had become simple as the thoughts of weary old men.
What was it all about? What power was driving them on?
Some of these men killed unresisting civilians, struck down helpless children, maltreated nuns and other virgins, drove old men and women before them as a shield against the fire of the opposing forces.
What roused the devil in them? Your friend is right in saying that the war-trumpet is an instrument that can rouse the demon that sleeps in the human breast. He says that the demonic forces outside can make their entry into our world and our personalities riding on the tones of the trumpet-horn. He is right.
He says that it brings the element of fire into the soul. Profoundly true! Fire, the element of destruction, that purifies by destroying what cannot resist it. Fire in the soul and fire in the nerves and fire at the end of the rifle--and death by fire to all that gets in its way!
I have listened for days to the ear-splitting noise by which Germany seeks to put hell into the hearts of her soldiers. My ears rang with it yesterday.
Why do you start? Have you not yet accustomed yourself to the thought that I can go back and forth, from the hell of Europe to the purgatory of New York? Yes, the Germans in New York are in purgatory, for they know that their cause is lost. Purgatory is for purgation. Let us hope that it may accomplish its purpose in their hearts. And I do not say this to be unkind, but rather as a blessing. I love the Germans, and all other races. So also do you--in your heart of hearts.
Yes, it was I who, through an easy instrument, directed you to the German doctor. I wanted you to see how good a German can be. There are many such in that hell-racked nation.
You should understand that hell comes into a man--he does not go into hell. Have you not heard that man is the Microcosm of the Macrocosm? Those tired grey-green soldiers that I watched in their march through Brussels were each of them large enough to contain hell and heaven and a world of spirits. All of them had contained heaven many a time, when listening to the strains of their master-musicians. It was when the war-trumpet sounded, and the war-hate and the war-lust awoke in them, that they contained hell.
Many a time have I clutched with my too-tenuous hands a German soldier who was about to disgrace himself.
Once, at Namur, I kept a young man from doing something that would have darkened his judgment of himself while his life lasted--and it lasted only twenty-one days thereafter. He was a good boy; but the devil awoke in him as it awoke in others. It was because he was more sensitive than some others that I could make him feel my restraining hands. He thought they were the hands of his dead grandfather, who had left him only a year before. What matter? He let his victim escape.
(Yes, look up Namur on the map, if you wish to! You will find it in the right place. Your uncertainty as to Belgian geography does not trouble me; but your return to the world of your own thoughts has broken the thread of mine.)
LETTER XVI
THE SIXTH RACE
HAVE you thought about the United States after this war? A new race is being prepared for in the United States. That is why you had to be born there--you through whom I write. That is why I am trying to use you in my work for Universal Brotherhood.
No, you need not remain in the United States. It is better that you should continue to mingle with other races in their old habitations.
The Theosophical Society could not have been born anywhere else. Spiritualism could not have been born anywhere else. In the United States is a readiness for new things, a reaching out for the untried, a welcome for things because they are new.
Of course this tendency may be and is abused. Almost any faker can find followers in the United States; but without that hospitable spirit towards the New, the great new race could not come into existence there.
This race is not made of new souls, but of the oldest and most experienced souls, experienced in other lives of the past. The ingenuousness and the childlike quality of Americans are the results of spiritual maturity. The race, as a race, is in its youth; but the souls are old as time.
After they have taken a much needed rest, many or most of the souls that go out by death in this war will find rebirth in the United States. Oh, that land will be a very wonderful place in seventy-five or a hundred years!
You will not be here then, unless you discover the fountain of immortal youth, or unless you come back soon, renouncing the rest in heaven.
Ponce de Leon was inspired when he sought the fountain in the New World. It is there if anywhere; but Australia and Russia will run you a keen race for the future.
No, I shall not tell you about the Seventh Race. It will come in good time; but now I want to talk to you about the Sixth, one of whose pioneers you are.