Part 13
I know an angel who has done more, perhaps, than many prophets have done to keep that idea alight in the world. Until I met the one whom we know as the Beautiful Being I had not revelled in the triumph of immortality. There is one who plays with immortality as a child plays with marbles.
When the Beautiful Being says, “I am,” you know that you are, too. When the Beautiful Being says, “I pluck the centuries as a child pulls the petals of a daisy, and I throw away the seed-bearing heart to grow more century-bearing daisies,” you feel--but words are weak to express what the Beautiful Being’s joy in endless life can make one feel.
You forget the thing of flesh and bones which you used to call yourself when this sliver of conscious immortality exults in its own existence.
When the Beautiful Being takes you for a walk in what it calls the “clover meadows of the sky,” you are quite sure that you are one of the co-heirs of the whole eternal estate.
The Beautiful Being knows well the Christ of the Christians. I think the Beautiful Being knows all the great Masters, embodied or disembodied. They all taught immortality in some form or other, if only in essence.
The Beautiful Being went with me last night to the highest heaven of the Christians. Should I tell you all that I saw, you might be in too great a hurry to go out there and view it for yourself, and you must not leave the earth for a long time yet. You must realise immortality while still in the flesh, and make others realise it.
I have told you about the minor heavens, where merely good people go; but the passionately devout lovers of God reach heights of contemplation and ecstasy which the words of the world’s languages were not designed to describe. With the Beautiful Being at my side I felt those ecstasies last night, while you were locked in sleep.
Where shall I be next Christmas Eve? I shall be somewhere in the universe; for we could not get out of the universe if we should try. The universe could not get on without us; it would be incomplete. Take that thought with you into the happy New Year.
LETTER XLIX
THE GREATER DREAMLAND
I HAVE not been to see you for some time, for I have been trying an experiment.
Since coming to this country I have so often seen men and women lying in a state of subjective enjoyment, of dream, if I may use the word, that I have long wanted to spend a few days alone with my interior self, in that same state. My reason for hesitating was that I feared to dream too long, and thus to lose valuable time--both yours and mine.
But when I expressed to the Teacher one day my desire to visit the greater dreamland lying within my own brain, also my fear that I might be slow in waking, he promised that he would come and wake me in exactly seven days of earthly time if I had not already aroused myself.
“For,” he said, “you can set an alarm-clock in your own brain, which can always be relied upon.”
This I knew from old experience; but I had feared that the psychic sleep might be deeper than the ordinary earthly sleep, and that the alarm-clock might not go off at the appointed time.
I have heard much comment, so doubtless have you, on the fact that spirits, when they return to communicate with their friends, say, as a rule, so little about their celestial life. The reason is, I fancy, that they despair of making themselves understood should they attempt to describe their existence, which is so different from that of earth.
Now, most souls, when they have been out some time, fall into that state of reverie, or dream, which I had so long desired to experience for myself. Some souls awake at intervals, and show an occasional interest in the things and people of the earth; but if the sleep is deep, and if the soul is willing or desirous to leave the things of the earth behind, the subconscious state may last uninterruptedly for years, or even centuries. But a soul that could stay asleep for centuries would probably be one that was living according to long rhythm, the normal rhythm of humanity.
So, when I went into the deep sleep, I went into it with a spell upon myself not to remain too long.
Oh, it was wonderful, that dream-country in my own self! The Theosophists would perhaps say that I had taken a rest in the bliss of devachan. No matter what one calls it. It was an experience worth remembering.
I closed my eyes and went in--in--deeper than thought, where the restless waves of life are still, and the soul is face to face with itself and with all the wonders of its own past. There is nothing but loveliness in that sleep. If one can bring back the dreams, as I did, the sojourn there is an adventure beyond comparison.
I went in to enjoy, and I enjoyed. I found there the simulacrum of everyone whom I had ever loved. They smiled at me, and I understood the mystery of them, and why we had been drawn together.
I refound, too, my old dreams of ambition, and enjoyed the fruit of all my labour on earth. It is a rosy world, that inner world of the soul, and the heart’s desire is always found there. No wonder that the strenuous life of earth is oftener than not a pain and a travail, for the dream-life which follows is so beautiful that the balance must be preserved.
Rest! On earth you know not the meaning of the word. I rested only seven days; but so refreshed was I that, had I not other worlds to conquer, I should almost have had the courage to return to earth.
Do not neglect rest--you who still live the toilsome life in the sunshine. For every added hour of true rest your working capacity is increased. Have no fear. You are not wasting time when you lie down and dream. As I have said before, eternity is long. There is room for rest in the wayside inns which dot the path which the cycles tread.
If you want to take a long and devachanic rest--why, take it. Take it even on earth, if it seems desirable. Do not be always grubbing, even at literature. Go out and play with the squirrels, or lie by the fire and dream with the household cat. The cat that enjoys the drowsy fireside also enjoys catching mice when the mood is on her. She cannot be always hunting, neither can you.
Just take a dip in devachan some day, and see how refreshed you will be when you come out. Perhaps I am misusing that word “devachan,” for I was never very deeply learned in the lore of Theosophy.
I have even heard nirvana described as a state of intense motion, so rapid that it seems motionless, like a spinning-top, or the wing of a humming-bird. But nirvana is not for all men--not yet.
I have hinted at the wonders of my seven days of blissful rest, but I have not described them. How can I? A great poet once declared that there was no thought or feeling which could not be expressed in words. Perhaps he has changed his mind by this time, after being out here some sixty years.
As I went to rest, I commanded my soul to bring back every dream. Of course I cannot say whether some may not have escaped, any more than you can say on waking that you have or have not forgotten the deeper experiences of the night. But when I came back into the normal life of this plane that is called astral, I felt like an explorer who returns from a strange journey with wonder-tales to tell. Only I did not tell them. To whom should I relate those dreams and visions? I would not be a bore, even to “disembodied” associates. Had Lionel been here, I might have entertained him many an hour with my stories; but he is lost to me for the present.
And, by the way, he seems to have taken little or no devachanic rest. Is that because he was so young on coming out that he had not exhausted the normal rhythm? Probably. Had he remained out here and grown up, perhaps he also would have sought the deeper interior world. But I will not speculate, for this is a record of experiences, not of speculations. You can speculate as well as I, if you think it worth while.
I found in my own dreamland a fair, fair face. No, I am not going to tell you about that; it is my little secret. Of course I found many faces, but one was lovelier than all the others, and it was not the face of the Beautiful Being, either. The Beautiful Being I meet when I am wide awake. I did not encounter her as an actual presence in sleep, only the simulacrum of her. In the deeper dreamland we see only what is in our brains. _Things_ do not exist there, only the memories of things and the imagination of them.
Imagination creates in this world, as in yours: it actually moulds the tenuous substance; but in the greater dreamland I do not think that we mould in substance. It is a world of light and shadow pictures, too subtle to be described.
Even before this experience I had gone into the memories of my own past; but I had not revelled in them, had not indulged myself to the extent of conjuring with light and shade. But, oh! what’s the use? There are no words to describe it. Can you describe the perfume of a rose, as you once said yourself? Can you tell how a kiss feels? Could you even describe the emotion of fear so that one who had not felt it, by former experience in this life or some other, would know what you meant? No more can I describe the process of spiritual dreaming.
Revel to your heart’s content in fancy, in memory, while you are still in the body, and yet I think that you will have only the shadow of a shadow of what I experienced in those seven days, the reflection of a reflection of the real dream. The reflection of a reflection! I like that phrase. It suggests a clear picture, though not a direct impression. Try dreaming, then, even on earth, and maybe you will get a reflection of a reflection of the pictured joys of the spiritual dreamland.
LETTER L
A SERMON AND A PROMISE
AS I have been coming to you every few days for several months, and have told stories for your amusement, may I come now and preach a sermon? I promise it shall not be long.
You live in a land where church spires pierce the blue of heaven, looking from the viewpoint of the clouds like the uplifted spears of an invading army--which in intent they are; so surely you have the habit of listening to sermons. The average sermon is made up mostly of advice, and mine will not differ from others in that particular. I wish to advise you, and as many other persons as you can make listen to my advice.
You will grant that, for one who offers counsel, I have had unusual opportunities for fitting myself to give it. In order to help you to live, I would show you the point of view of a serious and thoughtful--however imperfect--observer of the after effects of causes set in motion by dwellers upon the earth. It has been said that cause and effect are opposite and equal. Very good. Now I want to draw your attention to certain illustrations of that axiom which have come to my mind during the last few months. If I repeat one or two things which I have already said, that is no serious matter. You may have forgotten them, or missed their application to the business of preparing for the future life on this side of the gulf of death. That is a moss-grown figure of speech, “the gulf of death”; but I am writing a sermon, not a poem, and well-worn tropes are expected from the pulpit.
The preachers remind you every few Sundays that you have got to die some day. Do you realise it? Does your consciousness take in the fact that at any moment--to-morrow or fifty years hence--you may suddenly find yourself _outside_ that body whose cohesive force you have become accustomed to; that you may find yourself, either alone or accompanied, in a very tenuous and light and at first not easily manageable body, with no certain power of communicating with those friends and relations whom you may see in the very room with you?
You have not realised it? Then get it through your consciousness. Grasp it with both hemispheres of your brain. Clutch it with the talons of your mind. _You are going to die._
Oh, do not be alarmed! I do not mean you personally, nor that you, or any particular person, will die to-morrow, or next year; but die you must some day; and if you remind yourself of it occasionally, it will lessen the shock of the actual happening when it comes.
Do not brood over the thought of death. God forbid that you should read such a morbid meaning into my blunt words! But be prepared. You insure your life for so much money that your family may be provided for; but you do nothing to insure your own future peace of mind regarding your own self.
Remember this always: however minute are the instructions you leave for the management of your affairs after death, should you be able to look back to the earth you will find that someone has mismanaged them. So expect just that, take it as a matter of course, and learn to say, “What difference does it make?” Learn to feel that the past _is_ past, that the future alone has possibilities for you, and that the sooner you leave other persons to manage your discarded earthly affairs the better it will be for your own tranquillity. Be prepared to _let go_. That is the first point I wish to make.
Do not go out into the new life with only one eye open to the celestial planes, and the other inverted towards the images of earth. You will not get far if you do. Let go. Get away from the world just as soon as you can.
This may sound to some people like heartless advice, for there is no doubt that a wise spirit, looking down from the higher sphere, can, by his subtly instilled telepathic suggestions, influence for good the men and women of the earth. But there are always thousands of those who are eager to do that. The heavens above your head now are literally swarming with souls who long to take a hand in the business of earth, souls who cannot let go, who find the habit of managing other people’s affairs a fascinating habit, as enthralling as that of tobacco, or opium. Again, do not call me heartless. I am blunt of speech, but I love you, men of earth. If I hurt you, it is for your good.
Now comes another and a most interesting point. Forget, if you can, the sins you have committed in the flesh. You cannot escape the effects of those causes; but you can avoid strengthening the tie with sin, you can avoid going back to earth self-hypnotised with the idea that you are a sinner.
Do not brood over sin. It is true that you can exhaust the impulse to sin by dwelling on it until your soul is disgusted; but that is a slow and an unpleasant process. The short-cut of forgetfulness is better.
Now I want to express an idea very difficult to express, for the reason that it will be quite new to most of you. It is this: The power of the creative imagination is stronger in men wearing their earthly bodies than it is in men (spirits) who have laid off their bodies. Not that most persons know how to use that power: they do not; the point I wish to make is that they _can_ use it. A solid body is a resistive base, a powerful lever, from which the will can project those things conjured by the imagination. That is, I believe, the real reason why Masters retain their physical bodies. The trained mind, robed in the tenuous matter of our world, is stronger than the untrained mind robed in dense matter; but the Masters still robed in flesh can command a legion of angels.[3]
This is by way of preface to the assertion that as you on earth picture your future life to be, so it will be, limited always by the power with which you back your will, and by the possibility of subtle matter to take the mould you give it, and that possibility is almost unlimited.
Will to progress after death, and you will progress; will to learn, and you will learn; will to return to the earth after a time to take up a special work, and you will return and take up that work.
Karma is an iron law, yes; but you are the creator of karma.
Above all things, do not expect--which is to demand--unconsciousness and annihilation. You cannot annihilate the unit of force which you are, but you can by self-suggestion put it to sleep for ages. Go out of life with the determination to retain consciousness, and you will retain it.
When the time comes for you to enter that rest which a certain school of thought has called devachan, you will enter it; but that time will not be immediately after you go out.
On finally reaching that state you will, as a matter of course, relive in dream your former earthly life and assimilate its experiences; but by that time you will have got rid of the desire personally to take part, as a spirit, in the lives of those you have left behind.
Do not, while still on earth, invoke the spirits of the dead. They may be busy elsewhere, and you may be strong enough to call them away from their own business to attend to yours unwillingly.
You who write for me, I want to thank you for never calling me. You let me come always at my own time, and let me say what I wish to say without confusing my thought by either questions or comments.
You of the earth who are still upon the earth may find your departed friends when you come out here, if they have not already put on another body. Meantime, let them perform the work of the state in which they are.
You who write for me will remember that the first time I came you did not even know that I had left the earth. I found you in a passive mood, and wrote a message signed by a symbol whose special meaning was unknown to you, but which I knew would be immediately recognised by those in whom you were likely to confide. That was a most fortunate beginning, for it gave you confidence in the genuineness of my communications.
But I said that I would write only a sermon to-night, so I will now pronounce the blessing and depart. I shall return, however. This is not the last meeting of the season.
_Later._
One word more before I go to my other work.
If you had urgently called me during that week which I spent in rest, you might have had the power to cut short a most interesting and valuable experience. So the final word, after the benediction of this sermon, is: Do not be too egotistically insistent, even with the so-called dead.
If your need is great, the souls who love you may feel it and come to you of their own accord. This is often illustrated in the earth life, among those whose psychic pores are open.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: He has said that they build freely in that world through the creative imagination; but we must remember how tenuous and easily handled is the matter which they use.--ED.]
LETTER LI
THE APRIL OF THE WORLD
HAVING told you last week that you must die, according to the jargon of the earth, I now want to assure you that you can never really die at all; that you are as immortal as the angels, as immortal as God Himself.
No, that is not a contradiction.
I have spoken before of immortality: it was always a favourite theme of mine; but since my association with the Beautiful Being it has become for me an exultant consciousness.
The Beautiful Being lives in eternity, as we fancy that we live in time. Will you write down here another of that angel’s chants?
When you see me in the green trees and in the green light under trees, know that you are near to me:
When you hear my voice in the silence, know that I speak for you.
The immortal loves to speak to the immortal in the mortal, and there is joy in calling to the joy which dozes in the heart of a soul of earth.
When joy is awake, the soul is awake.
You look for God in the forms of men and women, and sometimes you find Him there;
But you look for me in your own soul; the deeper the gaze, the fairer the vision.
Yes, I am in Nature, and I am in you, when you look for me there;
For Nature is dual, and the half you carry within you.
All things are one and dual--even I, and that is why you may find me.
Oh, the charm of being free, to wander at will round the earth and heaven, and through the souls of men!
I am lighter than the thistle-down, but more enduring than the stars:
The permanent is impalpable, and only the impalpable endures.
The road is not long which leads to the castle of dreams; the far-away is nearer than next-door, but only the dreamer finds it.
When labour is light, the pay is sure; when the days are hard, their reward is tardy.
Be glad, and I will repay you.
I would write my name on the leaves of your heart, but only the angels can read the writing.
Who bears my unknown name on the petals of his heart is accepted among the angels for the flower he is; his perfume reaches heaven.
There is pollen in the heart, child of earth, and it fructifies the flowers of faith;
There is faith in the soul, child of time, and it bears the seeds of all things.
The seasons come and the seasons go, but the spring-time is eternal.
I can find that in you which was lost in the April of the world.
LETTER LII
A HAPPY WIDOWER
I MET a charming woman the other night, quite different from anyone else I have met heretofore. She was no less a woman because she weighed perhaps a milligramme instead of one hundred and thirty pounds.