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LETTER XIV
THE FOEMAN WITHIN
You
have something more to do than simply to write down what I say about
brotherhood. With selfless devotion you must help the world to realize it,
pointing out the way to individuals and aggregates of individuals.
Universal Brotherhood! It has a pretty sound, and mouths have
repeated it for the sake of its music, when the meaning of it was neither in
the heart nor in the brain.
Universal Brotherhood is not only the brotherly relation between
the units of the Many, but Universal Brotherhood is also their unity,
conscious and real, in the One Self. Universal Brotherhood is the return of
the Many to the One, as well as their enjoyment of the journey itself.
You have repeated the old Hindoo word, formula, mantra, AUM,
repeated it like a parrot; but if you had realized AUM I should not have to
preach brotherhood to you, and by “you” I mean all men and women who have
prattled of Universal Brotherhood.
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 Bhagavat-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 co-existence, and behind
co-existence 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 man-kind 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 XV.
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