Part 8

One nurse whom we will call Mary, for she is a type of the virgin-mother of hearts, has gone out into heaven a hundred times in the souls of those she has tended. Will that love not guard her on earth through the whole course of her life and follow her also into the heaven world beyond? Be sure it will.

Mary is neither a scholar nor a poet. You would not have dreamed of inviting her to a reception had her path ever crossed yours; but Mary is not unfit for the society of angels and gods would not scorn to have her in their company.

She was just an ordinary nurse before she became a war-nurse, and before the white fire of love touched her personality and burned it up as a sacrifice on the altar of her country’s need.

She was a very pretty nurse and in her hours of leisure once wore stylish hats and revelled in laces and furbelows; for the love of beauty and daintiness often nests in a heart that is capable of heroism.

When the war broke out Mary was engaged to be married to a soldier. Mary went to the front and he also went to the front; but neither of them knew where the other was for many, many days.

Every man who was brought to her severely wounded Mary nursed as if he had been the absent friend of her heart, and many a life she saved by her tender care and by the atmosphere of hope which radiated from her as fragrance from a rose.

“If _he_ should be wounded,” she said to herself, “some of the girls will care for him as I care for these men.”

Mary was not jealous lest another should have the privilege of nursing the man she loved, and lest in his heart should blossom the flower of thankfulness for another than herself. Mary had not much time to think about herself; her thoughts were too busy with others.

It may have been because she was not jealous nor over-watchful for her property in her lover, that when he was wounded he was really brought to the hospital where she served so faithfully. Of course he was given to Mary to nurse--it could not have been otherwise, and he was very seriously wounded. When the operation was performed by which the doctors hoped to save his life, it was Mary who stood by and assisted. She did not faint nor cry out even when they cut his broken arm away, the arm on which she had dreamed she might lean for the rest of her earthly life. Mary was thinking about his mother and was glad that she was not there to see what she herself saw. During many of the hours when Mary might have slept, she was writing to the mother--writing brave letters wherein she sought to veil the fear that was in her own heart.

Tom--we will call him Tom because that was not his name--Tom had never been able to believe in any life beyond the earth life, and as Mary watched his strength grow less she prayed all day and most of the night that something might happen to make Tom believe in heaven and angels. The exigencies of war had left him long on the battlefield after the shell had shattered his right arm, and his wound had been infected before the operation by which the doctors sought to save him for England and for Mary.

Tom knew that he might have to leave the world. Mary would not keep the overwhelming possibility from him, though she still kept it from his mother; for she hoped that in the hours or days which might be all that remained for him in the sunshine of the upper world something might happen, some miracle of thought or of love, which should open his eyes to what she called the Truth.

Each day I spent a little time in the long white room in which Tom lay; but even if he could have seen me, I might not have been much comfort to him, and I cannot speak to any ears except those trained to listen for unusual sounds.

I sympathized with Mary. Having convinced so many souls of the truth of immortality through a former writing of mine, I wanted to convince one more--for Mary’s sake; because I knew that if Tom should go out of life firmly believing that death was the end of him, it might really be the end of him for a long time.

In my perplexity I sought the Beautiful Being for advice. That angel’s knowledge compared to mine is like an arc-light beside a tallow dip.

Together we went back to the hospital where Mary sat talking with Tom about the future life, about God and Christ and angels. She had many soldiers under her charge; but the other nurses worked a little harder to give her more time with Tom, for all the world loves a lover--especially in the horrors of war-time.

“It isn’t that I do not want to believe,” he was saying to Mary, “it’s that I just can’t. If I could see with my own eyes an angel, or someone that I knew was dead, it would be different. But how could I see such a thing?”

The Beautiful Being drew nearer, smiling, and waved its gauzy veil before the eyes of the dying man; but he could not see.

The Beautiful Being wove a glamor of light around him, and sang as only angels can; but Tom could still neither see nor hear.

“I think you will have to ‘materialize’,” the Beautiful Being said to me, with a whimsical smile. “Those eyes are stopped with matter, and cannot see anything finer than matter.”

I was not attracted by the suggestion, but my incomprehensible friend followed it up.

“In that bed yonder,” it said, “is one of those mortals who are called natural mediums, natural materializing mediums, because their tenuous bodies are so loosely held by the physical that they are easily detached and borrowed from. Now materialize yourself and let Tom see something which he will take for an angel.”

“I am no angel,” I said, “and the eyes of a dying atheist would never mistake me for one.”

“Try it, and see,” said the Beautiful Being, pointing to a man in a neighboring bed, who was the “medium” in question.

I looked at the man and read around him the story of his life. He was a coarse fellow, a saloon-keeper, and another familiar compound-word would have fitted him like a glove.

“Clothe myself in that man’s etheric body!” I said in disgust. “I would not touch him with a ten-foot pole!”

“How dainty-fingered you are!” said the Beautiful Being. “Did I not know you so well, I could almost believe you self-righteous.”

“Call me what you like,” I replied, “but I will not do phenomena with that body.”

The Beautiful Being laughed.

“It would be so easy,” it said, as if to itself, “so easy and so convincing.”

The angel moved toward the sleeping saloon-keeper (I had almost written the harsher compound), and gradually from his side there issued a vaporous stream. From force of earthly habit I rubbed my eyes, for I could not believe that I saw aright. The pure and exquisite angel was clothing itself in the unhealthy emanations of the sleeping medium, and in the space of twenty ticks of the clock on the wall it passed, fully materialized, with a speaking throat, to the foot of Tom’s bed.

He sat up, in the surprise and shock of the vision.

“What are you?” he asked, hoarsely.

“I am an angel,” said the Beautiful Being, truly, “and I have come to prove to you that miracles can happen, and to assure you that when you leave your body behind on the morrow I shall meet you on the other side of the change.”

Mary could also hear and see, and she fell on her knees with a little sob of joy and wonder; for she had never seen an angel, though her faith was strong enough to remove mountains.

“Then it is really true!” Tom gasped. “I shall not die with my body. And how wonderful you are!”

For the Beautiful Being had performed the transformation so well that it preserved in its borrowed body all the glory and amazing loveliness of that form which charms the hosts of the unseen world.

“I no longer doubt,” said Tom. “I believe, and I die happy.”

“I shall not forget to meet you when you come out,” smiled my friend. “Good-bye now, for a little while. I leave you with Mary, who is also a kind of angel.”

Slowly the borrowed shape retreated towards the body of the sleeping saloon-keeper, and after a moment my friend stood beside me, clothed in its own pure form; but on its shoulders and feet were dark stains that looked like mud.

“They will soon blow away in the fresh air outside,” smiled the Beautiful Being. “And was it not worth while to convince that soul of its own immortality?”

We passed out under the stars, but the scene left an indelible impression on my consciousness. And I shall often remember when I feel self-righteous, how the purest being I ever knew wore the soiled garment of a vulgar saloon-keeper, which left stains on its dainty shoulders and its shining feet--how it dipped itself for the first time in the filth of the world, for love’s sake.

_April 17._

LETTER XXVI

A MASTER OF MIND

TO-NIGHT, the seventeenth of April, nineteen hundred and fifteen, there passed along the battle line of one of the nations at war a great spiritual being, a being whose body is mind and who works through the mind alone.

The hour had come when a certain number of those who had fought bravely for their ill-starred country might know that their cause was hopelessly lost. A few only might know to-night; but their knowledge will spread, and with spreading knowledge will come a change of spirit. It is disheartening to fight on for a lost cause. It takes a peculiar quality of devotion, a rare quality of devotion.

What will come from the visit of that celestial being, you wonder? Wait and see. I rarely permit myself to prophesy. I only figure out the probable result of causes known to me. You can do the same, if you let reason take the place of predilection. To judge clearly of the effects of a given cause, the mind must be unbiased by desire; it must be as cold as a mathematical calculation. It is by this celestial algebra that Masters look ahead.

When you get in symbols or pictures the answers to questions propounded to your Higher Self, it is by this profounder mathematics that the interior one prepares its answer. It knows causes that are unknown to you, and from these causes can foretell effects with a degree of accuracy almost as great as that of an astronomer foretelling an eclipse. _Almost_, I say, not quite; for in dealing with human affairs even the greatest Masters must take into consideration an erratic element, the free will in human beings. That, too, may be guessed; but it is guessing, nevertheless. A sudden uprush of free and erratic will, and a new cause is set up, and the calculation must be made afresh.

There is a certain charm in dealing with the erratic element of will. Perhaps that is why some persons find cats more fascinating than dogs. A cat is a wilful erratic animal; so are many men.

The great being who passed this night along the battle line has been watching the course of earthly events for a considerable time. He is one of those who serve the planetary spirit of the earth by carrying certain ideas around the earth when the time has come for them to play their part in history. I cannot tell you many details about the life of this being, for I know only a few facts concerning him. He is so far superior to me that my possible comprehension of him is limited. He may once have been man, I think so; but of that I am not even sure.

I have been told that it was he who first impressed upon a small but courageous section of the American people the conviction that the time had come when human slavery in America should cease; that it was he who inspired Columbus with the idea that he could find land by sailing west, though in the latter case he was not able to force through into the mind of his instrument the great fact that an immense and independent continent lay off there beyond the western sea, and between it and another sea whose waters washed the eastern shores of Asia. Again, I have been told that it was this being who was instrumental in revealing the knowledge of electricity to mankind.

Can you imagine the life of such a being? Can you extend your consciousness so as to touch his? I am frank enough to say that it is difficult even for me, who have been able to remember so much of my own long past, and to work out so many of the probable effects of the causes which I myself set up in the far past, effects which will shape my future lives on earth.

Imagine an independent entity of vivid life, yet without a physical or even an astral body, a being of thought whose lowest medium is thought, who influences his chosen instruments by contact with their naked minds. What _personal_ wishes can such a being have? What ambitions can he have? The lower and limiting word ambition seems grotesque as characterizing the motive force of such a being.

He has a name among us, but I am not permitted to tell you the name. It has a great mantramic value, that name, and if you should repeat it too often it might raise your own consciousness, and the vibration of yourself, to a height which would make it extremely difficult for you to keep your hold on that physical body, without which you cannot do certain work that it is your privilege and duty to perform at this stage of your evolution.

There is a certain initiation which the pupils of the great Masters take under the guidance of this being; but those who take that initiation retire permanently from the everyday life of men. They get into the centre of causes, which makes them so dynamic--which makes their personality and their thoughts so forceful--that for the sake of the world itself they must not come too close to it; because all things work by cyclic law, and to hasten too much the evolution of humanity would be dangerous to humanity. It can only go safely at a certain rate of speed. Above that speed it is likely to meet with accident.

I know exactly the stage that I myself must reach before I can take the initiation which is presided over by this being. When I have reached that stage I shall not be able to come and write through your hand, unless you raise yourself a corresponding degree above your present consciousness, because to do so might dangerously accelerate your own rate of growth.

Since coming out here I have learned much about those beings who have in charge the higher evolution of mankind. Their development would be quite incomprehensible to the mass of even enlightened men at the present time.

They are and must be very lonely beings, though they too have their peers and fellow-workers. Can you imagine remaining alone a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand years, yet all the time extremely active in mind, following with your thought the course of an evolution which you yourself have long left behind in your own growth, following it with the mind alone, because the emotional nature you have also left behind, and doing all this not for any personal reward but because it is a labor in accordance with the great law of a Being still above and beyond yourself?

Obedience is taught in certain schools, not in an effort to control the pupil in the interest of the Master, but that the pupil may thus take his first steps on the path which leads to obedience to the Cosmic Will. On that path he will have to go an immense distance before he can be trusted to do such work as is being done by the being who passed this night along the battle-line of one of the opposing armies, shedding the light of his thought and the certainty of his purpose into a few minds whose receptivity made possible their grasping what he gave.

Do not weary on the path, you who are taking the first and easiest steps of the journey that shall one day lead you to the Masters! The path is indeed steep, and as one inspired writer said, it leads uphill all the way; but there are stages at which the traveller may pause and enjoy the prospect. I seem to have reached such a stage myself, and though I am always working now, yet I enjoy my work.

The awful battle that some of us fought with the elemental beings is now over. The worst calamity that could have befallen mankind is happily averted. The labor of the present is light compared with the labor of _that_ struggle. If the world could realize what it owes to the Masters whom most men regard as myths! But such Teachers do not work for gratitude nor for reward.

Follow you in their footsteps, for it is the only road that can lead mankind above the awful calamities that threatened recently to engulf mankind. (_I am not referring to a mere German victory._)

It is wise to keep from the knowledge of men in general the great evolutionary facts which govern the life of the planet. A mind must be lifted above the small circle of everyday interests before it could endure such knowledge.

You all use words without realizing their meaning. You talk of guardian angels; you talk of hell and purgatory, and of vicarious atonement, and of sacraments. Sacraments! I could tell you of a sacrament that is verily an eating of the body and a drinking of the blood of God; but I refrain lest you should tell the world, and if you should tell the world the evil forces of the world would destroy you.

But I am coming now perilously near the things that may not be spoken, so I will wish you a good-night--a good-night indeed--and go back to my labors, in the rear of that being of light who passed along the battlefields this evening.

_April 17._

LETTER XXVII

INVISIBLE ENEMIES

YOU may have wondered why the elemental beings that as I have told you precipitated the great war were so malicious at this time, why they hurled themselves upon mankind with such overwhelming force. There is no reason why you should not know something of these causes, having seen so much of their effects.

The saying that man has made more material progress in the last hundred years than in the preceding two thousand, has become a mere newspaper commonplace. It is because he has not made a corresponding moral progress that the evil elemental beings, who fear for their rule in their own kingdom, _could_ come so near to succeeding in their attacks upon the human race.

It is not merely in material ways that man has progressed with such amazing rapidity, for some of his inventions and discoveries touch the invisible regions. The doors of man’s mind are opening on the untracked spaces of aether in which these beings live. Man is chaining the elements, and to chain the elements _may_ be to chain the elementals. One man in America has come so near to a great and dangerous secret that his eyes have had to be veiled by those who fear for man’s too rapid progress.

Occult societies dot the world. In other days these societies were really secret, and no one had access to their knowledge until after tests were passed which proved fitness for further study and further secrets. But the doors of the unseen have been besieged by an army of intellectual enthusiasts who have not passed those tests. Curiosity demands to know that which only the nobility of the spirit was once trusted with. Democracy has spread even into the occult orders, and sacred mysteries have been published broadcast by those who put no curb upon their personal ambitions. The hosts of the unseen world have themselves suffered invasion.

Now the hosts of the unseen will obey a great soul that they know to be more powerful than themselves. They run like docile children at his call, and they go at his command as a dog goes. But the unseen hosts are very jealous of their freedom, and they will yield it only to one whose superiority is manifest to them. Many--yes, most--of those who are now seeking to open the doors of that region are unfit to command there; because he only can command the unseen forces outside who can command the unseen forces _inside_ himself.

In a former letter I spoke of the danger of black magic in America; but the danger is everywhere. And what is black magic? It may be briefly defined as a use for selfish purposes of those very forces of the unseen world. Not until a man has advanced beyond himself will the invisible forces serve him long without rebellion.

Pick up a common newspaper, and you will see the advertisements of men and women who promise _for a fee_ to bring about results which can only be brought about by using those invisibles. What blasphemy! What presumption! If these advertisers could make good their claims, they would be more dangerous than typhus fever. Such advertisements arouse all the curiosity and ambition and fiery selfishness latent in the heart of the ignorant. These untrained dabblers in the mysteries attempt to do things which an Adept would never dream of doing, for most of their efforts have for purpose some attack upon the free will of others; they seek to influence the desires and the judgment of others in the narrow and personal interest of those who pay them to set the forces in operation. Would you let a child loose in a gunpowder factory with a box of matches in his hand? That is what has been done in the last few years all over the western world.

No wonder the invisible beings have rebelled. They will follow a Master, but they resent the interference of a fool.

It is not the fools they fear, however. The men they fear are the great scientists. Man’s progress in science has been such that he _must_ purify his motives, or he will be destroyed.

That is one reason why I am preaching brotherhood, in an attempt to save men from their own folly. Once let the feeling for brotherhood become general, and these experiments with unknown forces would be less dangerous. Mankind as a mass might work with the power of a White Master, whose motives are always unselfish.

The great scientists come nearer than anybody else to that pure working with mind for mind’s own sake, which I recently described in writing of a great being, a great Initiator, who serves the world by influencing _along the line of evolutionary law_ the thoughts of certain men who are the chosen instruments of evolution.