War Letters from the Living Dead Man (11 page)

It is the hope of those Teachers who can watch from the outside and above, that the docile German people should not be forever hated by the world because the arrogant war party has hurled them at their neighbors. I am not condoning the unlovely traits in the German character, or in the character of any other people; but of all the races engaged in this gigantic struggle, the German race knows least about the causes that hurled it forward. A spoon-fed press and the penalties of
lèse majesté
have kept them from knowing anything which could have made them less flexible instruments in the hands of their leaders. The karma of those whose headstrong and arrogant policy precipitated this war is an individual karma, and it will have to be worked out by individual suffering and so-called punishment; but the karma of the great mass of the German people is a race karma. They have let themselves be led on to their own defeat. Think how the very law of reaction will throw the light of popular and democratic investigation into the darkest nooks and crannies of the German nation and government after this war. Those who have been deceived to their hurt will demand to be deceived no more. In twenty years the life of the German government will be as open as that of the United States. The so-called “muckraker” will arise with a lantern on his hat.

Also by the law of reaction England will be shaken out of her sluggishness that has filled her shops with the wares of other countries because she was too slack to make her own. By that same law a demand will arise for an uncorrupt political machine in France. One or two things have happened in France which she prefers for the moment to keep to herself. The great shock of this war will cause each nation to examine itself more closely, to look into its own motives, to see wherein it fails to come up to the very exigeant standard demanded by the New Time. Look also for changes in Russia, and Austria will be but another name for change. Justice will advance many paces by reason of the great injustice of this war. The Law of Opposites again! Most things can be explained by that law.

In writing about the reign of brotherhood which I hope to see established in the world, I am not laboring under the delusion that an impossible Utopia is about to be ushered in with a blare of trumpets. I am not recording a prophecy that the Kingdom of Heaven is immediately at hand. The human race is not ready for the Kingdom of Heaven, and will not be ready for a long time; but if one person in ten can be made to realize that brotherhood is an ideal to be striven for, they can leaven the other nine-tenths and make the loaf of human society much lighter and more palatable than it is at present. The loaf will not become fruitcake all at once. That is too much to expect of the next race; but if you can carry the memory of this prophecy through a sufficient number of births and deaths, you may see a very sweet loaf come from the planetary oven when the second race following, the Seventh, is brought forth into the light of the sun.

April 17

Letter 25

For Love’s Sake 

So serious and philosophical have been my last few letters, that I should like to revel in romance. Have you thought of the hard life of the war nurses and wondered from whence they gather the strength for their daily and nightly labors? Love is the source of the almost superhuman endurance of many of the women who seem to their charges like angels of light and healing. 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 alter of her country’s need. She was a very pretty nurse and in her hours of leisure once wore stylish hats and reveled 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 wartime. “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. “Goodbye 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 26

A Master of Mind

Tonight, 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 tonight; 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 by 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 willful 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 a 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 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.