War Letters from the Living Dead Man (4 page)

The worst in the German heart is very bad—though I tell you not to hate them. The worst in all people is very bad, but the German is the greatest bully on the planet. The cruel Oriental races have a restraint which has grown in them through ages of culture; the German knows only the restraint of the German law, he respects only the restraint of the German law. He has no sense of right and wrong in the abstract, though he is often extremely sensitive as to what is right and wrong for him in his relation to those near him, his kinsmen and fellow citizens. But those outside the race-group are outside his code of honor, however polished he may be. I am speaking now of the race, not of the few who have by long residence abroad absorbed somewhat of world brotherhood and the more delicate sensibilities of international relations. And mark this also: the German can love as thoroughly as he can hate; but he can love only his own, something which is an extension of himself, a secondary ego, the me in another form. A German may love a foreign wife, if he can Germanize her. A German may love a foreign friend, if that friend does not stand in the way of something he wants for himself.

I am not referring to those sudden outpourings of emotion to which those emotional people are subject. I am not referring to their surface kindliness, which is the overflow of emotion. And still I say, love these unlovable people, love them so much that they will be detached from their race-center and will flow out in melting response to everything that is not German. The world can never really soften the German shell by throwing stones against it. When they break down in this war, they will not be any more essentially lovable because they are weaker. Love them by trying to understand them. It will take decades for the arrogant and self-exalting German to see that there is anything outside that may be superior to what is inside his shell. He respects only might. He must be conquered by might. From his enforced respect of a superior might he may be led gradually to see the superior right of that gentleness which does not use its might to coerce him when further coercion is unnecessary.

I have stood in German households since the war began, I have entered into and for the time being have become German men and German women, and I understand them and love them. I even admire them, for their devotion to their own is immense. Once let that strength go out in real brotherhood to all mankind, and these people would be truly great. Is it possible? All things are possible to the human soul, and these people are very human. The defect is in their vaunted education. They teach themselves that they are the chosen people. When they learn that they are not the chosen people in war, the very force of the shock may upset the pillar of egotism that stands upright in the center of the German soul. The world should not let that pillar fall with a crash, but softly ease the blow—not too softly, lest mercy be mistaken for war weariness. The World-Mother has a hard and erring child. It has to be punished, but not refused a seat at the family table.

I have said these things to you because, if you do not shrink, I have things to tell you in my next letter which will need fortitude for you to receive, fortitude and charity, whose other name is love.

March 24

Letter 8

Spectres of the Congo

I have been in Poland and I have been in Serbia; but now I want to write of Belgium and of karma, race karma, karma old and new. With and behind the invading Germans, urging them on to murder, pillage and destruction, rape and burning, were not only the devils from the outer vast, whose time for activity had come; but with and behind the German army was a horde of undeveloped and earthbound spirits who had suffered in the Congo. Karma, always karma! The world knows something about what has been done in Belgium, something of what Germans have done there.

I have seen men, women, and little children murdered in cold blood. I have witnessed the soul of a murdered man tearing at a soldier who was violating the murdered man’s wife. I have seen the soul of a mother wringing her hands as she would have wrung them on earth when her little daughter was being maltreated by brutes who were blind with madness. An old man out here followed a soldier for days until he saw revenge accomplished by means of a Belgian bayonet; then as the German soul came out he grappled with it again, and the two were torn by each other, the soldier not knowing he had left the body and feeling that he was at grips with an enemy still on earth. There was much of what is called Voodoo in the Congo. Its practitioners do not go to sleep for a long time. They go on and on in the invisible world, making their evil preparations and weaving their spells. They gather round spilled blood, they absorb vitality from it, and that vitality they use to bring evil and death upon anything toward which they direct their will. Did you fancy that will was weakened when man lays aside the brain? It is weakened in the sense that there is less freedom of choice; but there is tremendous will in following a choice already set up when the physical base of the brain was attached to the will.

But now all the evil karma of Belgium is lived out, and she stands like a new soul in the face of time. Another race has taken up the load that she laid down. Will that too be expended soon, or late? Germany has woven round herself a shirt of evil causes that will cling to her and chafe her flesh for generations. “It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.” The karma of nations is known to the Masters and Adepts. The karma of England! Have you ever thought about the karma of England? Granting that she has done much wrong, as all old nations have, yet she has allowed herself to be used by the world-will. She, more than all the other old races, has been an instrument in the unifying of the races. Did you fancy that the British Empire was a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Did you think the British Empire merely happened? And now the British Empire may be used further. She may be used in Belgium. And I do not mean the mere presence of her army in Belgium.

It is said that the Masters, the world’s teachers, hold back the awful karma of the world. I am trying to do a little of holding back the awful karma of Germany. She has disgraced the human race in Belgium. Everything that has been believed about German outrages in Belgium is true except one thing. So far as I know, and I have enquired of those who know more than I, German soldiers have not cut off the hands of living Belgian children. But they have murdered women, and outraged women, and mocked and insulted pregnant women, and maltreated the new-made mothers of babes that they have murdered. They have burned men alive, and they have buried men still alive. I say that Germans have done these things. Should I say that the forces of evil, the beings of evil, the superhuman and the once human forces of evil, have done these things, using as their instruments the forms of German soldiers from which they had thrust for the moment the moral soul?

Take it whichever way you may please, for both ways are true. The men who ravaged and destroyed Belgium were not all obsessed, save that evil may be always an obsession. Help to hold back the awful karma that Germany has made in Belgium. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven.”

March 27

Letter 9 

Unseen Guardians

In the devastated region of Belgium—and most of Belgium is devastated—there stands a little house unharmed and tranquil as before the war. Round about it are ruined walls, standing black with smoke or grey with the powder of shellfire. Two women live there, middle-aged women. They did not flee their home when the war-tide washed over them. They were frightened—yes, but they did not flee. They saw neighboring houses in flames, they heard the detonation of shells bursting; but they remained between their four thin walls, and waited and prayed. Four gods they prayed to, God the Father and God the Son, and two others—their father and mother, who had passed on some years before into the other world, their Belgian father and their German mother! So great was their faith that they believed they would be unharmed, and they were not harmed. Incredible as it may seem, that little house stands there secure in the midst of desolation.

Love is a protective force. The father and mother of those two middle-aged women had loved each other tenderly. Race was no barrier to their love. The German woman and the Belgian man had taught their children that Germany was their mother and Belgium was their father. Their bones lie together in the village churchyard, and their souls kept watch when the armies passed over. They guarded the children they loved. Does this seem an impossible story? I know it to be a fact. I have spoken with that father and mother, and I shall speak with them again. Their faith is rare, and their love is rare, and their reward has been rare. It is easier to guard a little house than to move a mountain, and it has been said that faith like a grain of mustard-seed could move a mountain. Those two souls had not yet passed away from the neighborhood of the earth; they waited for their children. When the war-tide rolled over, they stood guard at the door stone of their home. The spirits of the peaceful dead do not like the sound of shells, but these two did not fly away. Had they been frightened from their vigil, the little house might now be like its neighbors.

Am I over-credulous? Do you remember me telling you one day years ago that you were not credulous enough? I see that you remember. These two—the Belgian father and the German mother—were also credulous, as the world uses the word, and their children were credulous, too. Had the nations been equally credulous of the power of love, there would have been no war; for there would have been no armies to make war. I am not preaching against armies. I am only preaching love and faith. When love and faith grow greater, armies will grow smaller, and war will be at an end. I asked the Belgian father how he felt about the war, and he looked toward his German wife; I asked the German mother how she felt about the war, and she looked toward her Belgian husband. Neither would speak for fear of wounding the other.

How should I feel now if my nation were at war, you wonder? But since the eyes of my memory opened and I saw my past lives, I realize that I have had so many nations, have fought in so many armies, have lain in the lap of so many mothers of mine in so many lands, that my spirit is uprooted. I have joined the great White Brotherhood, to which all men are brothers and all women sisters. It would be difficult for you to see with my eyes. I watch and wait, like the parents of the two old maids in Belgium, and so far the house of my faith stands untouched by the fires of war. In the great White Brotherhood there are members from many races, there are members from the races now at war. Do you fancy that they looked askance at one another when the world went mad? They did not look askance at one another. Each stood guard where he could do the most good. Each sought to soften the blow to the brethren of his brother, each sought to soften the hearts of his own blood brethren. But as this war was written in the stars, the Teachers of the world could not prevent it when the hour struck.

Do you know what it means to be a member of the great White Brotherhood? It means to work for the welfare of the human race, for the good of the planet as a whole. And there is another thing I want to tell you. You have heard of a Black Brotherhood. It is a misnomer. Brotherhood is never black. There is no Black Brotherhood. There are many Black Masters, for Mastership, like a garment, may be either white or black. In this war the black forces who have inspired hatred in men have worked for one end, and that very fact will weaken their power to do evil for a long time, when the results of their present labors are over. Do you get my meaning? A combination of evil forces, in the very act of combining, weakens the individual power of its members; for evil is strongest when individual. Two who are full of love may work together with the power of four; but two who work together for evil have only the power of—shall I say one and a half? And one and a half against four! If you love power, use power for good and increase it.

It is because of the multitude of elementary evil forces, all hurling their malice at the world, not because of their combination, that this madness was made possible. Hate is a disintegrating force. Those who hate after this war will disintegrate themselves. Those who love after this war will grow strong. France especially will grow strong, because there is more love than hate in France. France loves so much that even her enemies do not hate her. It is not merely because she is not so brutally strong as her great enemy. Love your enemies. That is the surest way to overcome them. 

March 29

Letter 10

One Day as a Thousand Years

As I am writing about war, I wish to talk to those who have lost their loved ones in this war. You who grieve for the untimely dead, have you not read that one day shall be as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day? We must start on the basis of rebirth, whose other name is rhythm, and whose course is immortality. Immortality presupposes no beginning and looks forward to no end. The spirit always was and always will be. In the life of the spirit one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day. Birth is the morning of a new day, and death is the evening of that day, and the period between lives is the period of sleeping and dreaming. Or you may turn it the other way and say that life is a dream and death the awakening to reality. But the rhythm is sure.

Falling asleep is a passing through the astral world, much as a soul passes through it after death. You who write for me, and a few others, pass through it in full consciousness. Some day all men will pass through it consciously and will bring back the memory. You who grieve for the dead, remember that a lifetime is but a day to the immortal spirit. Often have you parted from a loved one for a day and felt no grief thereat. The loved one left home to perform a duty and you felt sure that the next day you would see him again. Can you not feel that in the next day of the soul, the next lifetime (it is all the same in eternity), you will greet your loved one again? Friends do not meet in every life unless they are very intimate. As you do not see one friend or another oftener than once a week, so in the greater days of the soul you may not meet all your friends every day. You part from one on Monday with a definite engagement to meet on Friday. Four days, four lifetimes, it is all the same in eternity.