Part 5
Do not cut this out of my book because an enemy once said that you were egotistical. Our enemies always see and hate their own qualities in us. Develop some quality an enemy has not, and he (or she) will love you for it. The horseman is not jealous of the musician in his quality as musician. It is the musician who is jealous of the musician, the egotist who sees and hates another’s egotism. If Germany were a weak nation she could not so hate England for her greater power.
When the Sixth Race is fully incarnate, all men and women of real development will be able to see in the astral world, and to hear unspoken words, and to read the thoughts of others. Of course there will be people of all grades of development in that new race. Equality of development is a pretty dream, you Socialists. Have you not also your superior ones, your leaders? The less developed souls who come into incarnation with the Sixth Race are those who have earned in the past the right to be open to the quickening influences of that race. How have they earned that right? By their willingness to change and to grow.
Go out on the hillside and watch the growing things. Take a leaf from the book of Nature.
You wonder about the future of England. Old England is provided for. Has she not given birth to the civilization you enjoy? Other races were present, of course; but language tells the story.
As I said before, England has been an instrument in the hands of these Great Ones who wished to make possible the fraternity of races. She has carried the torch round the world. She has tied continents together, and woven the chain which will bind men to each other in days that are to come. Honor her, for she deserves honor.
Honor all nations, as aggregates of souls, your brother-souls; but honor most those nations that have worked with the Law and not against it.
Those who aspired to see Germany the cradle of the new race should have made less noise in the birth-chamber. They have scared the angel visitor away.
There are four races in Europe that are cruel races. They cannot rock the cradle of the divine infant. They would not remove the pin that stuck in its back, lest if it did not suffer and cry its lungs would lack air. I need not name these races.
The Sixth Race is a sensitive infant and learns more through love than through discipline. The Sixth Race will apply the discipline to itself when it feels the need of it. Its schoolmaster will be curiosity, and its play will be the sciences and arts of peace. Its cradle-song will be a chant of brotherhood. No, it could not be rocked in a German cradle; but many a German-American will help to rock it. They make lovely cradle-songs, the Germans, when they forget the superiority of being grown-ups and go back to the fancies of childhood, the myth-making fancies.
We want to see more and more Frenchmen in the United States, for France has more to teach the new race than has any other nation--France, the inspired prophet, and most of all France the critic. Americans are not critical enough, not analytical enough, not subtle enough. America needs France, and the men and women of France. You have heard the old saying, “Every man has two countries, his own and France.” I may be misquoting, but the idea is there.
You wonder how anyone born to the glory and charm of France should ever come to the New World? But many will come, and more will follow, both by the path of the ocean and by the path of rebirth. You came that way yourself, if you but knew it.
Recover the memory of past births, you pioneers of the Sixth Race! You can do it. It is part of the heritage of that race.
America, the “melting-pot” of nations! You were not made to rule an outside empire. When the time comes make over the Philippine Islands to a nation that can be trusted with them. Your empire is within your own body, you race of a score of races, you inheritor of a score of fathers, you mother of the one new race!
Increase your army and navy so long as you are nervous. Put lightning-rods on your house and burglar-alarms on the doors and windows. Feel secure. Then dream about brotherhood--when you can trust in it.
Sit by the fire of your own coal dug from the ground by Dutchmen, as it burns in a chimney of your own bricks made by the hands of Irishmen, read your own newspaper printed in the language of Englishmen, by the light of your own lamp made by a German, on your own hearth-rug made by a Turk or an Armenian, enjoy the feel of your own muscles trained by a Swede, in your own linen washed by a Chinaman, listen to your daughter playing on your own piano the music of a Russian, an Italian, a Pole or a Frenchman, see all over your own room things made by the sons of a dozen other races, your neighbors, your fellow-citizens, your fellow-Americans, then tell me whether you dare _not_ to believe in Universal Brotherhood, and in the new race, the synthesis of all races!
_April 8._
LETTER XVII
AN AMERICAN ON GUARD
I WANT to speak more of France, and of what she can do for America, the land of the coming new race.
I have spoken before of her love, which is so great that even her enemies cannot hate her. I have praised her critical genius, which analyses all things and compares one with another. But now I want to speak of her charm and her courtesy.
You have said yourself that good-manners are the imitation of kind-heartedness. To imitate is to emulate. A race that has charming manners has a heart. A race that is brusque needs to cultivate heart.
Employ French teachers in your schools, you Americans. A French teacher or a French mother tells her children not to do a certain thing because it is not pretty, another word for charming, for kind-hearted. If you imitate kind-heartedness in this way, perhaps you will some day feel it, you American children.
By setting up the standard of beauty in deportment you need have no fear of forgetting the ethical. You all drank Puritan ethics with your mother’s milk; there is no danger that those precepts will be lost if you practise charm a little by way of variety.
Every face in France was once a smiling face. It was not so this afternoon when I passed through France on my way to you. But the faces are still brave, because it is not pretty to make a parade of sorrow. I know the excess of French mourning-apparel might be called a parade of sorrow, but the black is worn as a mark of respect for all the dead of France.
Taste! There is a race which has it. And in advising America to learn from the French, I am naturally selecting the good qualities of that nation. We all have faults of our own.
The taste of the French in the United States at this time! Do they print journals in English attacking their enemy? Do they support a lobby in Washington and a press-bureau in New York? If so I have not heard of them, and we hear of most things out here--we who keep our ears to the ground. If they grieve for their stricken country, they do not drop their tears on America’s freshly ironed shirt-bosom. If they hate their enemy, they hate him with a quiet, well-bred hate. If France wins a victory in the field, they do not bluster about it. If France loses in the field, they do not call their enemy a rattlesnake or some other kind of reptile. It would not be pretty. It might not be unethical, but it would be bad taste.
Americans bluster too much. I said that when I was myself an American, before I was uprooted and became a citizen of the world invisible and universal, and I have not changed my mind by association with angels, adepts and masters. They never bluster, but the devils often do.
In advising America to learn from France those things in which France is supreme, I am not depreciating other races. Each nation can learn something from every other nation. The Chinese and the Japanese have points where they rise above their neighbors. So have the Americans.
This war has brought out the dominant traits in all the warring peoples, and their complementary traits. Have you ever thought of the “turbaned Turk” (or, to be less Shakespearean, the fezzed Turk) as being gullible? Treacherous races are always gullible, as cruel races are apt to be sentimental--in all that touches themselves. “Free America” must beware of too many laws. England, too conscious of her virtue, will one day yield to temptation. Germany, “over all,” has got the whole world on top of her. Italy, the excitable, is now deliberating to a degree that would be dangerous for any other land. “Neutral America” is so unneutral that her right hand threatens her left, and both the whole body.
Do not be impatient with President Wilson. He is dealing with the problems of the present war as if they were dated 500 B.C., and the long view is apt to be the clear view. The professor in him is safer than the politician in him. He is not happy just now. Why? Oh, that is an affair of State, and I am writing for publication! I know so many secrets that I am discreet as the family doctor.
But there is an “American on guard to-night.” Who is he? Old Abraham Lincoln, who renounced heaven that he might watch over the land he lived and died for.
No, I shall not tell you any more about him. There is something sacred in a soul’s renouncing rest. He will not go too far away _until America passes through her next great trial_. When will that be? As the Beautiful Being says, “Nay, Child, you ask too much.”
And still you are eager to know about Abraham Lincoln! I was eager to know about him myself a few short years ago; but I did not ask too many questions. It would not have been pretty, as the French mothers say.
_April 8._
LETTER XVIII
A MASTER OF COMPASSION
IN my former book I reminded you that your friends who had passed into the astral world did not know everything; that though their sight was longer than before and their eyes less clouded by matter, they yet could not always prophesy as glibly as fortune-tellers--or at least that they were wiser not to attempt it. Now I have in mind an illustration of that very point, only the subjects are much more exalted than the ordinary dwellers on the astral plane.
There is, for instance, not perfect unanimity in our minds as to all the details of the end of this war. There are two of us who often discuss ways and means, who, while desiring the same result of peace, have slightly varying views as to the best possible way to bring that result to pass.
One of our Brothers, who is still occupying his physical body most of the time, has a great desire to soften so far as possible the blow that is to fall upon one of the nations in this war. We all want to soften so far as possible the blow for that nation; but he has in his mind a plan which would, if put into effect, very materially soften it. He knows that he could perhaps bring it about in the way he wishes; yet he is far too wise to force the issue. He will not force the issue. He tries softly to inspire those who have it in their power to suggest the beginnings of peace according to his ideas. We do nothing to deflect the current of his loving thoughts, for he is the only one among us--and by us I mean the Brothers of a certain development--he is the only one among us who has a greater tenderness for one race than for all the others. He is not so old as some of us, but he is one of the greatest.
He may be able to do what he wishes, but I personally am not sure. In one way he is wiser than I am; but my judgment is not at all influenced by tenderness for my own native land, which is not yet directly concerned, and so I may be a safer judge than he.
Do not take this as an admission of weakness in my Brother. Love is not a weakness.
This Brother wrote a prediction through the hand of a pupil of his not long ago. Perhaps it will be verified. Nothing will be thrown by any of us in the way of its verification. In fact, if it is the best way it will have the support of all.
Even a Master does not know everything, though to the blind eyes of lesser men he seems to know everything. And a Master is too wise to attempt to force his individual will upon the world. The black magician is willing to bring things to pass by the power of his will, and often he can do it; but he does not always count on the reaction. The White Master always counts on the reaction. He works _with_ the Law.
There is arising now in America a school of magic, for it is a form of magic that they practise, and the teachers of this school instruct their followers how to bring events to pass, how to demonstrate in the material world the material desires of their hearts. They can do it, the strong ones can, if their desires are not against the great stream of desire that carries the race forward. But often these material desires are not in strict accord with the karma of the person desiring; that is, the balance of karma being worked out now may be so violently drawn upon in one direction, that for the following life there will be left only a lot of unhappy karma, weak karma, which has not been wisely distributed over that time in which they have been operating with this new plaything, this magic power which they are using to make their present lives one glad sweet song.
The way to get what you want is to will what the great Law decides. That is what the Masters do. And I am not denying the greatness of my Brother whom I mentioned a few pages back. He wills the will of the great Law, the same as all of us do; and if his tenderness for his native land has inspired him to devise a plan which seems in harmony with the great Law, he would not put the plan into effect if he could, should he realize that it was not in accordance with that law.
There is always danger for the man who is not a Master in pitting his judgment against the law of karma. If a poor man wants to be rich, and if he wills hard enough, he can become rich; but he may miss by the way other things that his soul needs far more than it needs riches.
One of the greatest dangers that face America in the future is the danger of black magic. Among a hundred men or women who take up New Thought, Christian Science, ceremonial magic, and certain philosophies with even loftier verbal aims, there may be _one_ whose desire is perfectly pure and unselfish.
There is great power in America. The untrodden hills and mountains are full of fresh new forces that man may draw upon. Also the astral world above America--that layer of the astral which lies immediately outside the physical continent, as the aura of man extends beyond his body--that layer of the astral world above America is full of forces, elemental and astral forces, which can be used consciously by those who know how to use them, and which are used unconsciously by those whose personal desires are so strong that the more or less impersonal forces are obliged to follow them--swung into line by the power of desire or will.
Great danger lies that way for those who use such forces for evil, and between selfish desire and evil the veil is very thin.
There are seeking incarnation in this new race many of those whose magical work along dark lines was interrupted in the old days of Atlantis. Yes, that story of Atlantis is true. Many of these souls are now coming in, some here and some in other countries; but their main course is in the direction of the New World. More and more the forces of magic will be used in the New World. It is for you and for others who know that magic used for selfish purposes is always black magic, to warn those who are too much fascinated by the idea that they can be the makers of their own fortunes at the expense of others.
This warning is much needed. And I want to say to those whose only desire for occult knowledge is that they may use it for their own selfish ends, that if they stand in the way of the Law that works for unselfishness in the new race, _they will be destroyed again_ as they were destroyed in ancient Atlantis. And I do not mean that their souls will be destroyed, but that their lives will be cut short and their influence for evil nullified.
Do not be shocked when I tell you that there have been working in Europe during and before the present war “artificial elementals” that were created in the time of Atlantis. Those beings, for they have a force and a pseudo-individuality, have been used in this war by those (now reincarnated) who created them ages ago. They have drifted to their creators by the power of attraction.
One such creature was destroyed last July, and I assisted in its destruction.
At the time of the birth of a new race, will has great dynamics. Use your will _with_ the Law, not against it.
Do you realize, you who put your desires above all things, that each of you is but a drop in the stream of souls? The drop that would isolate itself from the stream may be sucked up by the sun in the form of vapor and wait a long time before entering the stream again.
Now do not take any of this as applying to my Brother who wants to soften the blow for his native land. I want to soften the future of my native land, and that is why I am writing about the new race that is going to be born in America. But if I should learn, through counsel with my Brothers or through individual inspiration, that it was best that the new race should be born elsewhere, I would work with the same devotion to bring it into being in that other place. And so would my Brother. We who work with the Law put the welfare of the human race above our own individual loves. All races are one race--the human race--and we work together as one.
_April 10._
LETTER XIX
THE ROSE-VEILED STRANGER
ONE day the angel whom we call the Beautiful Being came to me leading another angel by the hand. Long association with this extraordinary being has taught me never to be surprised by anything it does. I accept its vagaries as expressions of a state of consciousness above and beyond my own, and much that I have learned during the last three years I owe to its whimsical but tender friendship for me.
As I explained in my former writing, the Beautiful Being--whom we call an angel for want of a better term--has never shared the physical life of earth. It is a being of another evolution than the human, and for that reason its views of human life are uniquely valuable.
It smiled as it came to me, leading by the hand another similar to itself but far less like mankind.
Introductions in the celestial regions are often very unconventional; but the Beautiful Being, who has observed the life of men, sometimes amuses me by delicious mimicry of the ways of mortals.
“Rose-veiled one,” it now said to its angelic companion, “permit me to present to you my friend ‘X’, a Judge recently arrived from the planet Earth, who will consent I am sure to act as your cicerone over a section of territory where history is in the making. Ask him anything you will and he will answer you--if he can. He is still unlearned in the language of your distant star; but he can converse in thoughts with you whose coarsest vesture is a body of thought.”
I expressed my pleasure at meeting the stranger, and asked if I should show it a battlefield.
“I do not understand the idea--battlefield,” it answered; “but I should like to see it.”
“You will understand far less when you have seen it,” smiled the Beautiful Being.
It chanced that day that the opposing forces in France and Belgium were unusually active in the beginning of the Spring campaign, and I led my two friends to a point where they could watch the combat.
“What are those beings down there sending back and forth?” asked the rose-veiled stranger.
“Those objects are known as shells,” I replied.
“Shells?” the stranger returned in bewilderment.
The Beautiful Being answered for me.
“Shells are elaborately convoluted houses in which our brothers of the great deep live and disport themselves.”
The look of bewilderment increased on the face of the stranger.
“My friend forgets,” I said, “that you know not the language of earth, where a word, an arbitrary symbol for an idea, may stand for two ideas very dissimilar.”
“What are those objects that the beings down there are sending back and forth?” the stranger repeated.
I have to translate its form of speech into ordinary English to make it intelligible. Literally, its communication would stand like this: “? Objects beings sending reciprocally?”
From my long association with angels, both those with astral bodies and those without, such a form of speech is intelligible to me; and I answered, translating my cumbrous native idiom into the simpler language of ideas:
“The objects that are hurled back and forth between those beings on the plain below us are explosive shells, with a marvelous power to shatter the forms of other objects and to scatter them in all directions.”
“Is it a form of play?” asked the rose-veiled stranger.
“It is not,” I answered. “It is war.”
“War?”
All the horror that in my mind is associated with the word war was conveyed by my thought to the mind of the angelic visitor, and its rosy veil grew pale with pain.
“What is this strange emotion that I feel?” it asked. “Truly, were it not for your presence here, my friends, I should desire to go away.”
“The emotion that you feel,” I said, “is a sympathetic reflection of the emotions of war.”
“And what is war?”
“A horrible passion felt mutually and indulged by two opposing aggregates of souls, by which they are enabled to overcome their natural pity and to destroy each other’s bodies in vast numbers.”
The veil of the stranger grew almost white.