War Letters from the Living Dead Man (18 page)

Look for Him to come again “in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,” though He may not walk the earth again in material form. What need is there for Him to walk the earth now in a mortal body, when more and more men and women are opening their spiritual sight, so that they can see Him while still held in their robes of flesh? I have told you of the Beautiful Being on the battlefields, and now I want to tell you of the Christ on the Battlefields. He was never afraid of pain, that son of Light, who showed the way of pain to the shrinking souls of men. The cross of Christ is a living thing, and its power will be felt more and more as the tired world recovers itself after its baptism of blood. When the half-gods go the gods arrive. When Mars, the half-god, the war god, is sent back to his place, the god of love and pity can make Himself seen in the hearts of men and women.

They are wise who hope for the Christian faith a renaissance of life. It had grown old and indifferent. Thinking itself saved, it had forgotten to save the world. Feeling itself secure, it let its security be surprised by Mars, the war god. Many a soul in its last hour of agony has seen the Christ; many a soul in France, in Belgium, in Poland, and on the war-rocked sea has recognized the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Many a mother has seen in true vision her dying son held up by the Christ. Catholic, Protestant, “freethinker,” they all have called on the Son of Mary to comfort their sons in the last dread moment and beyond. From the shrieking hell in Belgium I yesterday saw a man, a common soldier, go straight from death into the high place beyond even astral turmoil, because in dying he called on the Christ of his mother’s faith to take him away from strife to the heaven of peace above the world. Many have gone that way since this trial by fire began, but more have remained below. Few have faith enough for the great flight.

Whatever religion you work with, let it include the Christ and the cross of Christ! What other comfort is there for the soul that feels its pain and feels the awful sum of the world’s pain at this time? Philosophy is good, I have called myself a philosopher; but love is the highest reach of philosophy, and Christ is the highest reach of love. They talk of a new religion, as if the love of Christ were an old and worn-out love. The love of Christ is reborn whenever a soul in a flash of illumination beholds that mystery in his heart. Worship the Christ in your own heart, for He is there. Worship Him in the heart of your friend, for He is there. Worship Him in the heart of your enemy, for He is also there. Then slay if you can, when you know whom you seek to slay. A new spirit has entered the hearts of the soldiers. They fight on, but they have been told in dreams that they fight their brethren. Murderers on the high seas, pirates under the eagle, they too are your brothers. “Forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Conquer them, because you must; but do not forget that they are your brothers.

The Christ who hovers over the battlefields carries no flag. He is the first of the neutrals, because he loves all, even the pirates under the eagle and the murderers on the high seas. The Roman soldiers on Golgotha were not execrated by Him. When He took upon himself the limitations of the flesh; He understood limitation by transcending it. We can never understand any limitation until we transcend it. Who should know better than He the agony of torn flesh and broken bones and mangled nerves? Can the wounded soldiers teach Him anything? Can the betrayed world give Him advice in settling with its Judas? “That thou doest, do quickly.” The betrayer of the world has hanged himself already in his excess of zeal. When his effigy was burned in Rome, do not think that he did not feel the fire. He felt it. The supreme War Lord has had one moment of sanity. Yesterday I saw his demon go snarling along the battle line. He did not snarl when I met him first, now many months ago.

If I could only make you understand that I speak of facts, not fancies! I have seen what I describe, as clearly as you see the table before you, or the pencil in your hand. When I say that I have talked with demons, I mean that I have talked with demons. When I say that I have seen the Christ, I mean that I have seen the Christ. I am not weaving romances, nor have I come back from my journey among the stars to compete with the spinners of tales. I write to reveal what otherwise would be unrevealed, to show to the world the causes lest the world go wrong with the effects. I want to help even the race that all other races, including its ally the Turk, now execrate. Only the charity of Christ is wide enough to cover this world-betrayal. And I tell you the betrayers were egged on, inspired and themselves betrayed by the personal forces of evil, in their supreme effort to put back the clock of civilization. But the Christ cast out devils and raised the dead. Can He not cast out these devils behind the purpose of war? Can He not raise the dead to the region of peace in the end? Can He not raise you to the level of His charity?

May 16

Letter 44

Poison Gases

Tonight I shall not prate to you of charity. Instead, we will speak of east winds and poison gases, and the demons that ride on poison gases. All hell is again let loose upon the world. It is worse out here than during the month before the war. For eleven days I have not been with you. I have had no time for eleven days to spend even an hour with you. Were you strong enough to hear what I could tell, you would never publish it for the world; but I can tell you much which you are strong enough to hear and which the world is worthy to know. East winds and poison gases! The very idea seems infernal, for men die in indescribable agony from the gases borne on those winds from the German camps over to those camps where rational human beings wage war by human means. But poison gases are demonic, and demons ride on them.

I have seen them come rolling forward in droves, their eyes aflame with hate, their mouths horrible with rancor and triumph. Oh, you safe there as yet in your native land! Could you see behind the trenches of the enemy, could you see what lurks in the air above the camps of the enemy, you would even pity the enemy. I may tell you that many out there are stark raving mad. When human beings, invoking the powers of hate, send such hell-fumes to choke and torture their fellow beings, they have ceased to be quite human. I, who see their souls, am sick with horror. It is perhaps well that you are alone now, for I may tell you things which you can best endure alone. Were it not for the work which you have to do in future, were it not for this work and that which is to follow, I should take you out and away from the world for good, as far as this life is concerned. But you must endure to the end, as I shall endure to the end; for you have work to do.

Those who say that all is well in Germany lie in their throats, or they are hypnotized by the lie that holds Germany to the belief that she can conquer. Could hell conquer heaven all souls would be destroyed. Should hate conquer now the world would be broken asunder. Hate! You know not the meaning of the word. Hate of England, hate of America, hate of Italy! The race that inspired this war is poisoned to the last molecule with hate. Babes imbibe it with their mothers’ milk and their stomachs turn sour. Children see it in their parents’ eyes, and shrink away in fear of their own source. No, you know not the meaning of hate. On the poison gases born by the east wind there came across to me a demon with no eyes. Where did he come from? From some subterranean hell where no light is, and therefore no need for eyes. Could I draw, I could make you see him; but words were devised to express those things which are known in the experience of the race, and no one who has seen such things has used language to describe them. Groping his way, that astral monster fastened himself upon a human victim, a prisoner in the hands of the French—one who had spit at his keepers in the madness of hate.

No, I must not tell you what followed; but the astral soul of the prisoner went out of his body and remained out. This attempt to tell the world what I know now is like trying to play Beethoven on a penny whistle. I feel as a mathematician would feel should he set himself down to teach addition to small children. I dare not tell you more than I do, for you could not contain it. The world is old, and the world deemed itself wise, and the world has come to this! There are many earnest souls who desire experience in the astral world. I have heard one say in your presence that a certain attack was “only astral.” I listened, and said no word.

Do you know what the astral world is, you who seek knowledge of it? The astral world is the world of feeling, the world of emotion, the world of love and hate. The astral world at this time is so thick with evil passions that one could cut it with a knife. It is often cut with knives now, with bayonets, and the crowding demons suffer from contact with the steel. “Only astral!” The astral world above New York, awful as you know it to be, is nothing to the astral world above those battlefields. Keep away! You can do no good there. If possible, go up among the mountains and seek in the pure breath of the pine trees healing from the poison of the astral world above New York. Go there and stay there until the pressure is exhausted. You can do no good either where you are. I can write better in the pure air of the pine woods. Get away from the poison fumes of unneutral New York, for devils ride on the winds of hate, and you are not to be destroyed by them. You have work to do in the future.

May 27

Letter 45

The Superman

In one of the upper regions of the astral world—not in the region of pure mind but near it—I met a man last night who passed to and fro with his head bowed in thought.

“What troubles you, friend?” I asked, as I stood before him.

He paused in his restless walk and gazed at me.

“Who are you?” he enquired, listlessly.

“I am a Judge,” I answered.

His eyes brightened with interest.

“You must have come at the call of my thought,” he said, “for I have need of a Judge.”

“On whom do you wish me to pass judgment?” I asked, half smiling at his strange words.

“I would like you to pass judgment on me.”

“And your offence?”

“My offence—if it is an offence, and on that you shall give your opinion—is having led a nation to its undoing.”

“With malice aforethought?” I queried.

“With malice, perhaps,” he answered, “but not in the sense of your question. I never believed they had spirit enough to believe me.”

“You pique my curiosity,” I said. “Who are ‘they?’ and in what did they believe you?”

“They are the Germans,” he answered, “the Germans whom I despised, and they believed my theory that man becomes supreme by doing what he wills to do.”

“And the devil take the hindmost?”

“Yes, and the devil take the hindmost.”

He bent on me his somber eyes, and I waited for his words.

“What a folk those Germans are!” he said. “Whatever they do, they do too thoroughly. One cannot trust them with a great truth.”

“They do seem to have systematized you into the ground,” I answered.

“I wanted to make them gods,” he complained, “and I have made them devils.”

“God only can make gods,” I said. “Perhaps you were too ambitious.”

“Humph! Perhaps I was too confiding.”

“Hermeticism is safer,” I suggested. “You told them far too much.”

“Or far too little, maybe.”

“In how many volumes?”

“Go ask the librarians. Not the foreign ones—they bind my works in packages of salable size.”

“And how can I help you?” I asked.

“Judge me.”

“While you prosecute and defend yourself?”

“Who else is fit, either to prosecute or defend me?”

“Go on with the prosecution.”

“I have corrupted a whole people, and led them to their ruin.”

“Elaborate the charge.”

“I thought to remedy their spinelessness, and following me with characteristic thoroughness, they have become all spine; they have neither heart nor bowels.”

“Continue,” I said.

“I preached Beyond Man. They have practiced below man.”

“So far,” I interrupted, “you have prosecuted them, not yourself.”

“How can I charge myself without charging them?” he demanded.

“Then I will step down from the bench,” I said, “and talk with you man to man.”

“I am glad you didn’t say soul to soul.”

“Oh, man is good enough for me! As I said before, you were too ambitious.”

“Yes, too ambitious for man, too sick of man, too much in love with what man might become!”

“We have come already to the defence,” I said.

“The smell of the court is still about you,” he growled.

“You asked me to be your judge.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“I am sorry for you,” I said.

He smiled a sad and searching smile.

“You seem to have both heart and bowels,” he observed.

“And you have been too long alone,” I replied. “You have lost your gift of words. Shall I prosecute, defend and judge you? You can interrupt me whenever you like.”

“Go on,” he assented.

“You were born under a restless star,” I began. “You followed heroes; they disappointed you by being men. Then you made self your hero, and that disappointed you most of all.”

“You seem to know all about me.”

“That is the glory and the shame of your greatness, that one knows all about you.”

“I deny it! You do not know all about me.”

“What is it that we do not know?”

“You do not know how I loved man!”

“You spoke of him with contempt.”

“That he might rise to Beyond Man.”

“Oh! And drown the children on the
Lusitania
, and hack his way through Belgium, and turn every friend against him, and be the curse of the planet!”

He raised an arresting finger.

“You are speaking of the Germans,” he said.

“They are the only ones who have followed your philosophy to its logical conclusion.”

“And you taunt me with that?”

“I taunt you with nothing. I am stating facts. It was you who taunted them—to their undoing.”

“I only preached Beyond Man.”

“So far beyond man that man misunderstood you.”