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LETTER XXX
THE VIRUS OF DISRUPTION
February 16, 1918.
“Freedom
with self-restraint and social responsibility” would be a good motto for
Americans in the years that are before them.
The underground and overground propaganda of Bolshevism,
Anarchism, etc., inspired and fed by the forces of destruction, can be
successfully combated by the spirit of order, of restraint, of
responsibility to the body politic.
The end of this war will not be the end of confusion. The
world-soul has been inoculated with the virus of disruption, and it will
need the wills of millions working together for a common end to expel the
poison and restore the body of humanity to health and security.
America as we know it was born of protest
against oppression, and the love of liberty, father and mother, positive and
negative, in the old days. If now the protest against oppression degenerates
into the protest against all restraint, and if the love of liberty
degenerates into the love of license, then I may tell you that those who
cannot govern themselves have to be governed from outside.
The human race is passing through a period of initiation. The
morally weak and the weak of will are always in danger of being carried
away. The spirit of destruction finds them ready tools with which to work
its will.
The kingdom of heaven is not immediately at
hand, and full seven years will be needed to settle the consciousness
of mankind after the shaking-up it has received. The dregs, as usual in such
cases, have risen and diffused themselves throughout the fluid of the cup.
If there were only a dozen people in the United States who
understood or could be made to understand the occult forces behind
the present universal unrest, and if these twelve could work together with
unity of purpose, some here, some there, with the pen, the voice and the
will, under a leader, those twelve might lead the people out of the
wilderness. But where are they? Every leader knows that in unity is
strength.
And I may mention the opposite law, that in disunity is
disintegration.
Bolshevist and anarchist! Finding the world
not to their liking, and being unable to adjust to environment so as to
satisfy their love of power, or their love of ease, these people have
devoted themselves to destroying the society in which they are unsuccessful.
They believe themselves right. There is so much of the divine in almost the
worst man, that he has to believe he is working for the right even when he
is working for evil. It is necessary for a murderer to justify his act in
order to do it, unless he is swept away by blind passion, and then he seeks
to justify passion itself.
The heart of man is superior to the brain of man. Almost anyone
can feel a good impulse; but the man who can think independently of his
passions is rare and isolate. Popular education does not mean universal
reasoning power. But popular education is the beginning; it is the seed out
of which will grow the tree of world-intellect.
I have told you of the reign of love that
is at length to comfort the hearts of mankind; but I have not told you that
it is coming to-morrow or the next day.
If you can get away from the personal and the temporary, and see
life and the movements of cycles in perspective, you will see how temporary
unrest is only a stage by the way.
He who adjusts to environment adjusts even to unrest. Remember
that. The supple tree feels the wind, but its roots cling tight to the soil
and the rock of individuality.
Be like the supple tree, America. In the wind that sweeps across
the world, cling tight to the soil of freedom and the rock of social
responsibility. You can save the world if you do not lose your hold on
the soil and the rock that have steadied and sustained you.
The anxious eyes of a Europe in
conflagration are turned in your direction, your friends with hope, your
enemies with dread. When you threw the weight of your strong young body into
the scales of justice, you changed the destiny of the world. Yes, it was
your destiny to do it.
All you who have studied “occultism,” which merely means
knowledge too profound to be understood by the material-minded,—you who have
studied occultism know that to the candidate for initiation come trials and
tests, and that without them he cannot go on. Think of the human race as a
candidate for initiation. If your mind is developed beyond the minds of your
fellows—you, and you, and you—do not forget that you are united to them by
an indissoluble bond. You cannot break away from the race. You may rise
above it as the Master does, or sink beneath it as the lost souls do; but
the link between you and those other fragments of God can only be broken at
your peril.
The Master works for the race, knowing well
that he cannot safely ignore it. Even if he made himself equal with the gods
and desired to build a world of his own, he would have to take the substance
for it from the common reservoir of substance. If like a spider he could
spin his world-web for himself, he would have to eat the common substance to
sustain himself in his power.
You may as well love the race, for you cannot escape it
altogether. Even if you rise and dwell in the thin air of the kingdom of the
mind, you will feel the wind-currents from your fellows above and below.
Some will deny this, but I have made the test.
I recently sought a high place for rest.
But the needs of the world pulled me back.
The greatest need of the world for the next few years will be
the knowledge of the law of conservation. Retain, O world! the treasures you
have labored for throughout the centuries, and discard only the worn-out
garments and utensils. The wooden plough and the wooden shoe are no longer
needed in a wisely ordered world; but the sciences and the arts you will
need, and the Gothic cathedrals you destroy can never be replaced.
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