War Letters from the Living Dead Man (13 page)

One thing this man never questioned, and that was the sincerity of the scribe. Of that he was convinced by instinct and by a kind of Anglo-Saxon chivalry difficult for the men of some races to understand. He was always talking to his trench-mates about the future life. He would sit smoking his pipe in silence and gazing off into space, and when other soldiers asked him what he was thinking of so busily, he would often say: “I am thinking of a book I read last summer, and wondering if it was true.” When they asked him what book he referred to, he would tell them about the Letters of a Living Dead Man, and quote to them whole sentences from it, and give them the outlines of its stories, and explain to them the philosophical propositions scattered through the book. Whole evenings have been taken up with these discussions. You have not been to the wars, either as a soldier or as a nurse; but you have been to the wars. It was a curious coincidence that that book should have been published only a few months before the greatest taking-off of human souls in the history of the world. Had you thought of that? I had not, until the Teacher pointed it out to me.

There was one question which particularly interested our friend who died yesterday with your name in his thoughts: the question whether, if he should go out of life at the hands of the enemy, he could prepare such a ”little home in heaven” as we wrote about, for a girl whom he loved back in England; and if he should prepare it and wait for her, whether she would be true to him after his death, and meet him there in a few years, and dwell with him in the little home. This young man had read certain writings of an American mystic on the theory of counterpartal souls, and he believed that in the girl back in England he had found his counterpartal soul, as I hinted of the man in my story who built the little home in heaven. But no word of this did he speak to his trench-mates. To them he spoke about the other stories in the book, not about that one. It is curious that we never mention to others the favorite subject of our thoughts—that is, most of us do not.

Another thing in the book which interested our friend was the story of the woman in the invisible who made a journey into Egypt with her still living husband. He used to wonder whether, if he should die, he could go in the spirit, as he said, to the little place in North Wales which he had once visited with his sweetheart, and which they had selected as the future scene of their wedding journey. One night he wrote her a long letter asking her, in case of his death, to go there this summer, and saying he would try to meet her there. Then after reflection he destroyed the letter, fearing it might make her sad. When I saw about him a peculiar light which the indwelling spirit throws round its vehicle when that vehicle is about to be destroyed, I waited, knowing there would soon be work to do. Suddenly I saw his body fall to the ground, and saw the tenuous bodies exuding themselves. I waited but a moment, then went forward and lifted the spirit out of the sleep into which it would have drifted. I breathed on the forehead of the astral—for astrals have foreheads, make no mistake about that—I breathed on the astral forehead of the man who had paid our book the compliment of thinking about it and about us in the last moment of his life.

He opened his eyes on my face. “Hello, ‘X’!” he said. “I hoped you would meet me here. You’re a good fellow not to disappoint me.” “Oh, I was always a good fellow!” I answered. “How did you know so quickly that you had come out?” “Because I saw you.” “And how did you know me?” “By your photograph which I saw in a magazine.” “But do I still look like that old hulk?” I asked; for I rather prided myself on the recovery of a certain part of my original youth and beauty. “Why,” he said, “you do look like the photograph.” “That is strange,” I replied. Then I remembered that my very knowledge of the man’s thoughts of me, as being the old Judge of the story, might have made my body transform itself to meet the demands of his recognition, even without the intervention of my will.

“Do you want to take a nap?” I asked, though there was no sleepiness in his eyes. “No, thank you, ‘X.’ I should like to go to England. But perhaps you have something to do besides indulging my wants and wishes. I laughed. “Your wants and wishes are just as important as mine,” I said. “I’ll go to England with you.” We went. Crossing the Channel we passed a transport laden with troops. “I wish all those fellows knew as much as I do,” my friend said. “Maybe they would fight with renewed vigor if they could see what a good companion I have found out here.” Do not be startled, you clergymen who say, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and draw solemn faces as you preside over the passing of souls! Do not be startled or shocked by the jolly conversation of my newly arrived soldier-boy. He knew that he was with an old friend, and he knew also that death is no more sacred than life, and need not be any more solemn.

We went to call on a girl. I often went courting in my youth, but never did I feel more interest in such a visit than when I went with this soldier to see his girl. The fact that she could not see us made no difference. I am used to that now. She was combing her hair when we arrived, beautiful long hair, and on the mantel before her and under the mirror was a photograph of my friend. As her eyes rested on it lovingly, suddenly he passed between her and the photograph, and she cried out: “Why, the eyes are alive!” and dropped the comb on the floor. Then, as the truth flashed through her mind, she said, very solemnly: “My dear, if it is really you, and if you have come to me in this strange way, know that I love you and shall always love you, and that I will meet you in heaven.” Then she sat down in a little chair and began to cry. I left him with her; but I shall return occasionally to see how my charge is getting along, and by and by I shall teach him some of the lessons on which his future welfare depends. I do not wish him to return to the neighborhood of the battlefields. Why should he? He has served, and has earned his reward. Perhaps later I may tell you something more about the man who died with your name—and mine—in his thoughts.

April 24

Letter 30

The Rose and the Cross

More and more I am charmed and amazed by that one whom we call the Beautiful Being. I shall never understand it, for its ways are not our ways. Yesterday it passed over the battlefield again, and I should have written when I came to you a few hours afterward had I not pitied your weariness. Do not be discouraged. Sometimes the Masters of Compassion may seem to their servants to have no compassion; but they know, as the servants cannot know, that the hardest road leads up the highest mountain, and that there is rest at the top. The Beautiful Being passed over the battlefield. Imagine a rose in a cannon’s mouth, a bird singing in the heart of an earthquake, a pearl in a landslide, an angel in hell.

You know not the meaning of the word battlefield. Yesterday thousands died in the awful uproar. Noise! Noise! Noise!—till the nerves shrieked with pain and despair seized the soul. To go out of life in that seething maelstrom is generally to pass into another seething maelstrom, hotter and noisier than the one left behind. How can I write of war so as to spare your feelings? The great Teachers are not trying to spare your feelings. They want you to feel and feel, till the very force of the wave of feeling carries you high on the shore of Adeptship. And they want you to think and think, till the irresistible cold of logic freezes self out of you. Ice and fire! If you shrink from knowing what the soldiers of the nations have suffered that you may be free, you are unworthy of that freedom. Do not shrink from suffering. The husk of the seed must be broken before the sprout can appear. In dying for their country, those souls in the hell of battle are giving birth to the new time. In suffering with them, your souls are giving birth to the new in yourselves. Do not look for joy while humanity is in travail, unless you can find the joy in suffering. Yes, I know the time when first, and through whom, that grand idea found lodgment in your consciousness. It is the secret of great souls in this hour of the world’s pain.

If you suffer till you can suffer no more—then the poles shift, and the joy of suffering illuminates the soul. Then the beautiful being in yourself hovers over the battlefield where the lesser self has been slain. There is a beautiful being in every one of you, the bird that sings in the heart of the earthquake, the rose that nestles in the hot mouth of the cannon, the pearl that cannot be crushed by the landslide, the angel that illumines hell. All the normal feelings of the human heart are intensified at this time. No one is the same as before the war burst—no one, anywhere in the world. The soul of humanity is in travail. This incarnation of humanity is turned against itself, and rends itself. The heart of humanity is an abyss, into which humanity had grown too blind to look, so the blazing torches of the guardians of good and evil have been thrust into the abyss, and all the drowsing dwellers therein have been suddenly, rudely awakened. Oh, hearts of earth, do not fall asleep again! Pity and love one another, for the pain of one is the pain of each, and over the battlefield of the suffering race the Beautiful Being hovers.

Humanity is the One, and humanity is the many, and all together you may come into the inheritance of your Father which is in heaven. You are familiar with the symbol of the Rose Cross. Not until the hard wood is driven through your four limbs, in the pain of your shocked and wounded nerves, can the great red rose of love unfold its perfumed petals upon your breast, between the arms of the cross. The human in you is the pain of the cross, the divine in you is the perfume of the rose, and you yourself, you human and divine, are the Rose Cross. If you shrink from the splintering pain of the wood as it claims you for its own, you cannot smell the perfume of the rose which also claims you for its own. Do not refuse the great initiation, O humanity of the races! Do not hide yourself in the dungeon of fear when the great Initiator comes! On the awful cross of war shall blossom the red rose of the new race. On the cross of each mortal form may blossom its red rose.

The rose marks the balance between the East and the West, between the rising and the setting sun, between the human and the divine. The arms of the cross extend to infinity, its feet are buried in the substance of eternity, its head is among the angels and the gods, and the heart of the rose is everywhere. It is in every heart of all these myriads who shrink at the touch of the hard wood. I hear every day the shrieks of those who are making the vicarious atonement for the race. When they lie mangled on the battlefield, the arms of the cross are being driven through their quivering flesh, and the petals of the rose are unfolding in their hearts. They are dying for love at the hands of hate, for love and hate are opposite and omnipresent. Their love for their country is their call to the atonement, their at-one-ment with the God who established the law of the East and the West, the Height and the Depth, the opposing forces of Love and Hate. They have accepted the sacrifice. For them shall be the resurrection and the life, after their sojourn among the dead, their sojourn in hell.

They shall appear to the Magdalen at the door of the sepulchre, the one whose sins were forgiven because she loved much, and who shall call the disciples to give them the tidings of great joy. The soul of the world is the risen Christ, and the disciples rejoice at the tidings. How can I withhold from you the great event which Time has ushered in? For thirty pieces of silver the soul of the world was sold, and the Judas of the world has given the kiss of betrayal with the name of God on his lips, and the Roman soldiers are already dividing the garments. Pontius Pilate has washed his hands of the issue, and his wife weeps in her chamber at the disregarding of her dream. The priests of the Sanhedrim are wagging their heads with satisfaction, but the veil of the Temple of Humanity is rent from top to bottom. How could you receive the message if you had not suffered, O listener at the door of Time? Who would believe you, had you not grasped the truth of the atonement? Until the wood of the cross had been driven through your limbs, the rose could not blossom, O world in travail at this hour!

Be still, and know that God is God. In the stillness of perception the petals begin to open, and joy steals over the heart, and the heart swells with the expanding joy, till every fiber of the cross is alive and tingling with the joy at the heart of the rose, and the fragrance sweetens the world. And the Beautiful Being, a ray of the Holy Spirit, hovers over the Calvary of the battlefield.

April 25

Letter 31

A Serbian Magician

It is a long road from the sacrifice of the Rose Cross to plague-stricken Serbia, but that is the road you take with me this morning. There is a reason why that country has been most susceptible to the astral germs of disease, that a loathsome being of which I wrote you in a former letter spewed forth into the upper world. Long ago in the mountains of Serbia there dwelt an evil magician, a man whose studies in the deeper sciences were undertaken solely for the intellectual and selfish pleasure which he found in them. He had progressed so far beyond the normal human consciousness that he had no worldly ambitions. To him the world was but a despicable place to escape from, and the people of the world were insects beneath his notice, save only as he could use them for his purposes.

He considered himself a kind of god, and so diligent were his selfish labors that had he devoted his knowledge to the good of the human race from which he sprang, he might really have become a kind of god. But selfish and evil beings need never aspire to godship. At most they can take but a step beyond the human. The grub may become a butterfly, but if it hates the sunlight and the air of the higher regions, its wings had better not have grown. This man, this selfish magician, had learned that by certain magical formulæ he could call to himself beings of the elements, and that by the aid of these invisibles he could create astral beings which, while themselves soulless, he could energize with his own force. Now the turn for real and active evil which marked a certain stage in his life, came about in this way: He had found what seemed to him a secure retreat among the mountains, he had prepared and magnetized the neighborhood of his hut so that it was a center of astral force, and his right to the undivided possession of that spot was one of the ideas which he energized for his own protection.