Part 10

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!”

“The soul of man is immortal,” declared the Teacher, looking fixedly into the shrinking eyes of the awakened man and holding them by his will.

“The soul of man is immortal,” he repeated. Then in a tone of command:

“Stand up!”

The man struggled to his feet. Though his body was light as a feather, as are all our bodies here, I could see that his slumbering energy was still almost too dormant to permit of that really slight exertion.

“You live,” declared the Teacher. “You have passed through death, and you live. Do not dare to deny that you live. You cannot deny it.”

“But I do not believe----” began the man, his stubborn materialism still challenging the truth of his own existence, his memory surviving the ordeal through which he had passed. This last surprised me more than anything else. But after a moment’s stupefaction I understood that it was the power of the Teacher’s mental picture of the astral records round this soul which had forced those memories to awaken.

“Sit down between us two,” said the Teacher to the newly aroused man, “and let us reason together. You thought yourself a great reasoner, did you not, when you walked the earth as So-and-so?”

“I did.”

“You see that you were mistaken in your reasoning,” the Teacher went on, “for you certainly passed through death, and you are now alive.”

“But where am I?” He looked about him in a bewildered way. “Where am I, and who are you?”

“You are in eternity,” replied the Teacher, “where you always have been and always will be.”

“And you?”

“I am one who knows the workings of the Law.”

“What law?”

“The law of rhythm, which drives the soul into and out of gross matter, as it drives the tides of the ocean into flood and ebb, and the consciousness of man into sleeping and waking.”

“And it was you who awakened me? Are you, then, this law of rhythm?”

The Teacher smiled.

“I am not the law,” he said, “but I am bound by it, even as you, save as I am temporarily able to transcend it by my will--again, even as you.”

I caught my breath at the profundity of this simple answer, but the man seemed not to observe its significance. Even as he! Why, this man by his misdirected will had been able temporarily to transcend the law of immortality, even as the Teacher by his wisely directed will transcended the mortal in himself! My soul sang within me at this glimpse of the godlike possibilities of the human mind.

“How long have I been asleep?” demanded the man.

“In what year did you die?” the Teacher asked.

“In the year 1817.”

“And the present year is known, according to the Christian calendar, as the year 1912. You have lain in a death-like sleep for ninety-five years.”

“And was it really you who awakened me?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because it suited my good pleasure,” was the Teacher’s rather stern reply. “It was not because you deserved to be awakened.”

“And how long would I have slept if you had not aroused me?”

“I cannot say. Probably until those who had started even with you had left you far behind on the road of evolving life. Perhaps for centuries, perhaps for ages.”

“You have taken a responsibility upon yourself,” said the man.

“You do not need to remind me of that,” replied the Teacher. “I weighed in my own mind the full responsibility and decided to assume it for a purpose of my own. For will is free.”

“Yet you overpowered my will.”

“I did; but by my own more potent will, more potent because wisely directed and backed by a greater energy.”

“And what are you going to do with me?”

“I am going to assume the responsibility of your training.”

“My training?”

“Yes.”

“And you will make things easy for me?”

“On the contrary, I shall make things very hard for you; but you cannot escape my teaching.”

“Shall you instruct me personally?”

“Personally in the sense that I shall place you under the instruction of an advanced pupil of my own.”

“Who? This man here?” He pointed to me.

“No. He is better occupied. I will take you to your teacher presently.”

“And what will he show me?”

“The panorama of immortality. And when you have learned the lesson so that you can never forget nor escape it, you will have to go back to the earth and teach it to others; you will have to convert as many men to the truth of immortality as you have in the past deluded and misled by your false doctrines of materialism and death.”

“And what if I refuse? You have said that will is free.”

“_Do_ you refuse?”

“No, but what if I had?”

“Then, instead of growing and developing under the law of action and reaction, which in the East they call karma, you would have been its victim.”

“I do not understand you.”

“He is indeed a wise man,” said the Teacher, “who understands the law of karma, which is also the law of cause and effect. But come. I will now take you to your new instructor.”

Then, leaving me alone, the Teacher and his charge disappeared in the grey distance.

I remained there a long time, pondering what I had seen and heard.

LETTER XL

THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY

I AM about to say something which may shock certain persons; but those who are too fond of their own ideas, without being willing to grant others their ideas in turn, should not seek to open the jealously guarded doors which separate the land of the so-called living from the land of the certainly not dead.

This is the statement which I have to make: that there are many gods, and that the One God is the sum-total of all of them. All gods exist in God. Do what you like with that statement, dear world, for truth is more vital than anybody’s dream, even yours or mine.

Have I seen God? I have seen Him who has been called the Son of God, and you may remember that He said that whoever had seen the Son had seen the Father.

But what of the other gods? you ask; for there are many in the world’s pantheons. Well, the realities exist out here.

What! you say again, can man create the gods of his imagination and give them a place in the invisible? No. They existed here first, and man became aware of them long ago through his own psychic and spiritual perception of them. Man did not create them, and the materialists who say that he did know little of the laws of being. Man, primitive man, perceived them through his own spiritual affinities with and nearness to them.

When you have read folk-tales of this god and that, you have perhaps spoken patronisingly of the old myth-makers and thanked your lucky stars that you lived in a more enlightened age. But those old story-tellers were the really enlightened ones, for they saw into the other world and recorded what they saw.

Many of the world’s favourite gods are said to have lived upon the earth as men. They have so lived. Does that idea startle you?

How does a man become a god, and how does a god become a man? Have you ever wondered? A man becomes a god by developing god-consciousness, which is not the same as developing his own thought _about_ God. During recent years you have heard and read much of so-called Masters, men of superhuman attainments, who have forgone the small pleasures and recognitions of the world in order to achieve something greater.

Man’s ideas of the gods change as the gods themselves change, for “everything is becoming,” as Heraclitus said about twenty-four centuries ago. Did you fancy that the gods stood still, and that only you progressed? In that case you might some day outstrip your god, and fall to worshipping yourself, having nothing to look up to as superior.

Accompanied by the Teacher, I have stood face to face with some of the older gods. Had I come out here with a superior contempt for all gods save my own, I should hardly have been granted that privilege; for the gods are as exclusive as they are inclusive, and they only reveal themselves to those who can see them as they are.

Does this open the door to polytheism, pantheism, or other dreaded _isms_? An _ism_ is only a word. Facts are. The day is past when men were burned at the stake for having had a vision of the wrong god. But even now I would hesitate to tell all that I have learned about the gods, though I can tell you much.

Take, for instance, the god whom the Romans called Neptune. Did you fancy that he was only a poetic creation of the old myth-makers? He was something more than that. He was supposed to rule the ocean. Now, what could be more orderly and inevitable than that the work of controlling the elements and the floods should be assumed by, and the work parcelled out among those able to perform it? We hear much of the laws of Nature. Who enforces them? The term “natural law” is in every man’s mouth, but the Law has executors in heaven as on earth.

I have been told that there are also planetary beings, planetary gods, though I have never had the honour of conscious communion with one of them. If a planetary being is so far beyond the daring of my approach, how should I comport myself in approaching the God of gods?

O paradoxical mind of man, which stands in awe and trembling before the servant, yet approaches the master without fear!

I have been told that the guardian spirit of this planet Earth evolved himself into a god of tremendous power and responsibility in bygone cycles of existence. To him who has ever used a microscope the idea need not be appalling. The infinitely small and the infinitely great are the tail and the head of the Eternal Serpent.

Who do you fancy will be the gods of the future cycles of existence? Will they not be those who in this cycle of planetary life have raised themselves above the mortal? Will they not be the strongest and most sublime among the present spirits of men? Even the gods must have their resting period, and those in office now would doubtless wish to be supplanted.

To those men who are ambitious for growth, the doors of development are always open.

LETTER XLI

THE DARLING OF THE UNSEEN

I HAVE written you before of one whom I call the Beautiful Being, one whose province seems to be the universe, whose chosen companions are all men and angelkind, whose play-things are days and ages.

For some reason, the Beautiful Being has lately been so gracious as to take an interest in my efforts to acquire knowledge, and has shown me many things which otherwise I should never have seen.

When a tour of the planet is personally conducted by an angel, the traveller is specially favoured. Letters of introduction to the great and powerful of earth are nothing compared with this introduction, for by its means I see into the souls of all beings, and my visits to their houses are not limited to the drawing-rooms. The Beautiful Being has access everywhere.

Did you ever fancy when you had had a lovely dream that maybe an angel had kissed you in your sleep? I have seen such things.

Oh, do not be afraid of giving rein to your imagination! It is the wonderful things which are really true; the commonplace things are nearly all false. When a great thought lifts you by the hair, do not cling hold of the solid earth. Let go. He whom an inspiration seizes might even--if he dared to trust his vision--behold the Beautiful Being face to face, as I have. When flying through the air one’s sight is keen. If one goes fast and high enough, one may behold the inconceivable.

The other night I was meditating on a flower-seed, for there is nothing so small that it may not contain a world. I was meditating on a flower-seed, and amusing myself by tracing its history, generation by generation, back to the dawn of time. I smile as I use that figure, “the dawn of time,” for time has had so many dawns and so many sunsets, and still it is unwearied.

I had traced the genealogy of the seed back to the time when the cave-man forgot his fighting in the strangely disturbing pleasure of smelling the fragrance of its parent flower, when I heard a low musical laugh in my left ear, and something as light as a butterfly’s wing brushed my cheek on that side.

I turned to look, and, quick as a flash, I heard the laughter in the other ear, while another butterfly touch came on my right cheek. Then something like a veil was blown across my eyes, and a clear voice said:

“Guess who it is!”

I was all a-thrill with the pleasure of this divine play, and I answered:

“Perhaps you are the fairy that makes blind children dream of daisy fields.”

“However did you know me?” laughed the Beautiful Being, unwinding the veil from my eyes. “I am indeed that fairy. But you must have been peeping through cracks in the door when I touched the eyes of the blind babies.”

“I am always peeping through cracks in the door of the earth people’s chamber,” I replied.

The Beautiful Being laughed again: