War Letters from the Living Dead Man (5 page)

But from some you only part for a few hours, from noon to sunset, and meet again in the evening in the intimacy of home. Those who have left you now in the midday of life will perhaps come home to you at the sunset; which is only another way of saying that they may meet you at the end of this day of the soul, the end of this life, and be with you in the twilight period of the astral life and in the sweet dream of heaven beyond. Do not grieve. Love waits for its own. Some friends you may meet again two, four or seven lifetimes away; but those who are really your intimates, your lovers, your own, you will meet again at the sunset, or at the latest tomorrow—the next day of the soul on earth. How will you prepare for the meeting? Will you not work cheerfully all day, knowing that at dusk Love will come back to you? As sunset approaches, will you not robe yourself in the white garment of faith, the evening garment, and watch for Love at the window? Love will come. Can you not in anticipation hear his footstep on the gravel? Can you not hear the click of the lifted latch? Will you not go forward with a smile to greet Love? Surely, one day shall be as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

I took counsel with the soul of an English officer who died in leading a charge. His death was quick and painless. A shot through the heart and he found himself—after a period of unconsciousness—still, as he supposed, leading a charge. But there was no enemy before him, nothing but the tranquil fields above the tumult; for so great was his exaltation of spirit—he had died with the thought of his Love in his heart—that he had gone up and up to the region where Love may have room. Seeing nothing before him he paused, looked round and saw me. “Brother,” I said, “you have left the war behind you.” He understood. Those who have lived for weeks in the tents of Death are not slow in recognizing Death when he lifts the curtain. “And what of the charge?” he asked eagerly. “Was the charge won?” “Yes,” I replied, “the force of your spirit won it.” “Then all is well,” was his answer. “Rest a little,” I said. “Rest and talk with me.”

“Have we met before?” he asked. “For your face is familiar to me.” “My face is familiar to many on the battlefields,” I said. “When did you come—out here?” “Three years ago.” “Then you can teach me much.” “Perhaps I can teach you something. What do you want to know?” “I would know how to comfort one to whom my death will bring great grief.” “Where is she?” I asked. He named the place. “Then come,” I said, “I will go with you.” We found a beautiful woman in a little room in England, a little room that contained a little bed. And in the bed was a boy four or five years old. We could hear the voices of the mother and child as they talked together. “And when will father come home?” the little one asked. “I do not know,” said the mother. “Father will come home, won’t he? Are you sure that he will come home?” “I pray that he comes home soon,” was all the mother said.

The eyes of children, as they pass into the twilight world, the world between waking and sleeping, are sometimes very clear. “Why, father has come home!” the child cried, and he stretched out his arms to the father with a glad cry. And the mother knew and was very still. But her grief was softened by knowing that he whom she loved had come home and that her child had seen him. I think he will remain with her until she can join him here. The delay will not retard the progress of his soul. Love is the fulfilling of the law. There is time in eternity for love and the delays of love. In love a thousand years are as one day.

March 29

Letter 11

Many Tongues

Learn Languages. My work in this war has been hampered by my knowing so little of German. With the souls of those long here I can hold converse by pure thought; but the souls of the newly come speak the language they spoke on earth and often that language is but a patois. That is one reason why I have had best success among the English armies. I can read the thoughts of the Germans and the French, but they cannot always understand me. The father and mother of the two women in Belgium had been so long out here that we could understand each other’s thoughts. Learn languages. When you come to work in this world you may want them even more than on earth, for distances here are short as thought, and one goes from place to place in the twinkling of an eye.

March 30

Letter 12

The Beautiful Being

The angel we call the Beautiful Being, who guided me on my journey among the planets, would like to insert here a few words on Love and Hate. They seem to be an expression of the mortal and the Immortal Self, in the early days of the war.

Love and hate

One whom I loved made war on me, and the nations of the earth made war on one another. The green fields were stained with blood and the hum of the harvest crickets was drowned with cries of pain and rage, as men rushed on to wreak their hate upon their human kindred. My heart was sadder than the skies of the London winter. No joy there seemed in all the earth; for love was dying and peace was dead, and men were going everywhere to death.
Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin*
was written on the walls of the human temple.

And I said to my heart:

“Where have we drifted in the midday of our life? And why do we wait for the sunset? For love has failed, and the world has failed, and have we not failed, too?”

Then as I sat gazing into the nothingness of my own faith, I heard a voice that seemed to come from the center 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 inside 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 out 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 it is still, it wipes with its vapory hand the teardrops 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

*
[ed. note] Quote from Daniel 5:25 interpreted in Daniel 5:26–28

25: And this is the writing that was written,
Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin
.

26: This is the interpretation of the thing:
Mene
: God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.

27:
Tekel
: Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

28:
Peres
: Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

Letter 13

The Body of Humanity

I have said that as twenty of us stood in the palace at Potsdam and in the Wilhemstrasse, 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. Amoeba, 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. 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 forms 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 the 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.

Letter 14

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 Hindu 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.