War Letters from the Living Dead Man (6 page)

A-U-M
—the One, the Many, and the Union between them: the Self, the Not-Self, and the negation of separateness.
Aum
, the seed, the plant and the perfume. What do you fancy that you are in the world for?

You have heard of
Mulaprakriti
, you Theosophists:
Mulaprakriti
, root-nature. You have heard of the three
gunas
, or qualities of
Mulaprakriti
,
satwa
,
rajas
,
tamas
:
satwa
, light, being, peace;
rajas
, action, passion, assertion;
tamas
, darkness, inertia, denial.

Some of you have heard of Christ, Lucifer, Ahriman.
Satwa
,
rajas
, and
tamas
, again, under other names.

You Kabalists have heard of Neshamah, Ruach, Nephesh: aspiration, individual intelligence, materiality.

You have all heard of Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva: the Preserver, the Creator, the Destroyer. Yes, that is the proper order, for Vishnu preserves from
kalpa
to
kalpa
, and Brahma recreates.

Krishna (Vishnu) says in the
Bhagavad Gita
, “I am the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings.”

He is the One and the Many, for He is in the many and the many are in Him. You cannot realize Krishna save as you realize Him as the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings. You cannot realize the Christ until you can see Him in the hearts of all beings.

Yes, you may struggle with one another and call it hate, or war; that is separateness.

Separateness is necessary as a stage of evolution, that the ego may realize itself as distinct; but the time has come when the race should turn back toward its Source, to Unity, to the
Atma
that is the same in everyone.

I have learned much since I last left you two years ago. On earth I did not talk incessantly of Universal Brotherhood. I wanted to achieve a “peerless individuality.” Well, I have achieved it. On my two years’ journey among the planets and elsewhere, I found the power I sought; but I found something else—love, the greatest power of all.

Brotherhood is love and that is why I preach brotherhood. You may acquire individuality by hating, but not a “peerless individuality.”

Do not be afraid of losing your identity. So long as you can love something other than yourself you will not lose your individuality. For to love something other is to posit your individuality.

To love only your separate self is to lose your hold on individuality, for you are only an individual in relation to other selves. Alone in the universe, you would have to be nothing or everything, and you cannot be everything—not just yet, save as you are everything through unity with everything, and that is love.

Rebel as you will; by that very rebellion against others you assert their equality with you, you assert their coexistence, and behind coexistence is Unity, Krishna—“the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings.”

Do not be shocked when I say that from our point of view this war seems very childish, very ignorant.

War was noble a long time ago when mankind was on its way out and needed to realize separateness; but in course of time war will become not only unnecessary, but banal.

I am not jesting with serious things. I know far better than you can know how very serious this war is, for I have watched it on both planes.

The war between the forces of good and evil was not banal. In the human heart that war will go on for a long time yet, aeons on aeons; but the day has come when men should war with the evil in themselves, and let other men war with the evil in themselves. The sword of Mars, the war god, will not rust so long as the Mars in man wields it against the powers of darkness within himself.

I have seen the powers of darkness in men exteriorized, have seen them in objective form, and I assure you they are foeman worthy of your steel. Each of you has within a foeman worthy of his steel.

Each man has also the Self, the divine, the Christ, the Krishna that is seated in the hearts of all beings.

I want to tell you something which I saw with my own eyes.

On the battlefield in France, two soldiers killed each other with the bayonet. The devil in each escaped with the soul. They were not ordinary men. I saw these two devils, these two “dwellers on the threshold,” these two “desire-elementals,” call them what you will. Do you think they fell upon each other to destroy each other? Not at all. Each fell upon the soul it belonged to. They had no interest in each other; they had nothing to give or to take away from each other, these devils, dwellers, elementals.

Do you see what I mean?

Your enemy is within you.

The one you fight outside is your brother. Love him with brotherly love and your devil will grow weaker as your angel grows stronger.

Your angel is descended from the
Atma
, the Christ, the Krishna in you. It is similar to the
Atma
, the Christ, the Krishna in your brother.

The devils are all very individual. The angels are all very much alike, though some are stronger than others and older in experience.

Seek the Christ in yourself, that it may arise, with tidings of great joy unto all men. That is what I wish to say to the world on this evening before Easter Day.

April 3

Letter 15

Listening in Brussels

No, do not expect me to write essays. I am writing letters. Let me be as discursive as I please. But you will see at the end of my labors that the building has a frame, and that all the parts are in place. Having philosophized the last time, I will now tell you a story.

When the German army passed through unresisting Brussels (three days, if I remember rightly, it was passing through, a long, moving grey-green river of men, on whose helmeted ripples the sunlight or the lamplight glittered), I stood for an hour unnoticed upon a balcony, reading the thoughts of man after man as he passed before my place. As I have explained to you before, I have no difficulty in reading the thoughts of the Germans; it is only in trying to make them understand me that I often fail. The river of men and the river of thoughts, each man a ripple, each thought a ripple!

Here are a few ripples of thought which caught the light of my attention:

“What a beautiful city Brussels is!”

“My feet are tired. My shoes hurt me.”

“That tree yonder is like the one beside the door at home.”

“Mother will be making coffee at this hour.”

“What a pretty girl—the one with the bread in her basket!”

“I wonder if Gretchen will talk much with Hans now I am gone.”

“That gate on the left is the one that Marie sent me on a picture postcard last year.”

“My feet are tired. My shoes hurt me.”

“So this is Brussels! I always wanted to see it.”

“My head aches.”

“
Deutschland über Alles! Deutschland über Alles!
”

“I wonder if the Lieutenant paid his tailor.”

“How warm it is!”

“What is father doing now?”

“I wish I had a glass of beer!”

“I am glad we don’t destroy Brussels!”

“What is all this war about, anyway?”

“The Fatherland! The Fatherland!”

“What will they give us for supper?”

“I wonder where we are going?”

“This isn’t so fine as the
Unter dem Linden
.”

“When we get to Paris I must see the Venus of Milo.”

“My head aches.”

“Our baby has a tooth!”

“Will it ever be suppertime!”

And so on and on and on, as the long grey-green river flowed through the city of Brussels. And these were the men that in a little while would murder and rob and burn and rape, and murder and rob and burn! Many of them had done so already—these tired men with their aimless, unwarlike thoughts, their commonplace soldier thoughts, of home and food and aching feet and of postcards Marie sent last year and the hour for mother’s coffee! What power transformed them into devils? What demon dehumanized them till they forgot their weariness? Was it the raucous cry of the war trumpet? Was it the devil behind the devil who blew the trumpet? Was it the evil spirit of a nation, or merely the spirit of war?

It was all of these things. Perhaps when they began their marching they thought of glory and hate and life and death and honor; but they had been marching long and their thoughts had become simple as the thoughts of weary old men. What was it all about? What power was driving them on? Some of these men killed unresisting civilians, struck down helpless children, maltreated nuns and other virgins, drove old men and women before them as a shield against the fire of the opposing forces. What roused the devil in them? Your friend is right in saying that the war trumpet is an instrument that can rouse the demon that sleeps in the human breast. He says that the demonic forces outside can make their entry into our world and our personalities riding on the tones of the trumpet-horn. He is right. He says that it brings the element of fire into the soul. Profoundly true! Fire, the element of destruction, that purifies by destroying what cannot resist it. Fire in the soul and fire in the nerves and fire at the end of a rifle—and death by fire to all that gets in its way!

I have listened for days to the ear-splitting noise by which Germany seeks to put hell into the hearts of her soldiers. My ears rang with it yesterday. Why do you start? Have you not yet accustomed yourself to the thought that I can go back and forth, from the hell of Europe to the purgatory of New York? Yes, the Germans in New York are in purgatory, for they know that their cause is lost. Purgatory is for purgation. Let us hope that it may accomplish its purpose in their hearts. And I do not say this to be unkind, but rather as a blessing. I love the Germans, and all other races. So also do you—in your heart of hearts. Yes, it was I who, through an easy instrument, directed you to the German doctor. I wanted you to see how good a German can be. There are many such in that hell-racked nation.

You should understand that hell comes into a man—he does not go into hell. Have you not heard that man is the Microcosm of the Macrocosm? Those tired grey-green soldiers that I watched in their march through Brussels were each of them large enough to contain hell and heaven and a world of spirits. All of them had contained heaven many a time, when listening to the strains of their master musicians. It was when the war trumpet sounded, and the war-hate and the war-lust awoke in them, that they contained hell. Many a time have I clutched with my too-tenuous hands a German soldier who was about to disgrace himself. Once, at Namur, I kept a young man from doing something that would have darkened his judgment of himself while his life lasted—and it lasted only twenty-one days thereafter. He was a good boy; but the devil awoke in him as it awoke in others. It was because he was more sensitive than some others that I could make him feel my restraining hands. He thought they were the hands of his dead grandfather, who had left him only a year before. What matter? He let his victim escape. (Yes, look up Namur on the map, if you wish to! You will find it in the right place. Your uncertainty as to Belgian geography does not trouble me; but your return to the world of your own thoughts has broken the thread of mine.)

Letter 16

The Sixth Race

Have you thought about the United States after this war? A new race is being prepared for in the United States. That is why you had to be born there—you through whom I write. That is why I am trying to use you in my work for Universal Brotherhood. No; you need not remain in the United States. It is better that you should continue to mingle with other races in their old habitations. The Theosophical Society could not have been born anywhere else. Spiritualism could not have been born anywhere else. In the United States is a readiness for new things, a reaching out for the untried, a welcome for things because they are new. Of course this tendency may be and is abused. Almost any faker can find followers in the United States; but without that hospitable spirit towards the New, the great new race could not come into existence there.

This race is not made of new souls, but of the oldest and most experienced souls, experienced in other lives of the past. The ingenuousness and the childlike quality of Americans are the results of spiritual maturity. The race, as a race, is in its youth; but the souls are old as time. After they have taken a much needed rest, many or most of the souls that go out by death in this war will find rebirth in the United States. Oh, that land will be a very wonderful place in seventy-five or a hundred years! You will not be here then, unless you discover the fountain of immortal youth, or unless you come back soon, renouncing the rest in heaven. Ponce de Leon was inspired when he sought the fountain in the New World. It is there if anywhere; but Australia and Russia will run you a keen race for the future. No, I shall not tell you about the Seventh Race. It will come in good time; but now I want to talk to you about the Sixth, one of whose pioneers you are.

Do not cut this out of my book because an enemy once said that you were egotistical. Our enemies always see and hate their own qualities in us. Develop some quality an enemy has not, and he (or she) will love you for it. The horseman is not jealous of the musician in his quality as musician. It is the musician who is jealous of the musician, the egotist who sees and hates another’s egotism. If Germany were a weak nation she could not so hate England for her greater power. When the Sixth Race is fully incarnate, all men and women of real development will be able to see in the astral world, and to hear unspoken words, and to read the thoughts of others. Of course there will be people of all grades of development in that new race. Equality of development is a pretty dream, you Socialists. Have you not also your superior ones, your leaders? The less developed souls who come into incarnation with the Sixth race are those who have earned in the past the right to be open to the quickening influences of that race. How have they earned that right? By their willingness to change and to grow.