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LETTER XXVI
A
MASTER OF MIND
To-night,
the seventeenth of April, nineteen hundred and fifteen, there passed along
the battle line of one of the nations at war a great spiritual being, a
being whose body is mind and who works through the mind alone.
The hour had come when a certain number of those who had fought
bravely for their ill-starred country might know that their cause was
hopelessly lost. A few only might know to-night; but their knowledge will
spread, and with spreading knowledge will come a change of spirit. It is
disheartening to fight on for a lost cause. It takes a peculiar quality of
devotion, a rare quality of devotion.
What will come from the visit of that
celestial being, you wonder? Wait and see. I rarely permit myself to
prophesy. I only figure out the probable result of causes known to me. You
can do the same, if you let reason take the place of predilection. To judge
clearly of the effects of a given cause, the mind must be unbiased by
desire; it must be as cold as a mathematical calculation. It is by this
celestial algebra that Masters look ahead.
When you get in symbols or pictures the answers to questions
propounded by your Higher Self, it is by this profounder mathematics that
the interior one prepares its answer. It knows causes that are unknown to
you, and from these causes can foretell effects with a degree of accuracy
almost as great as that of an astronomer foretelling an eclipse. Almost,
I say, not quite; for in dealing with human affairs even the greatest
Masters must take into consideration an erratic element, the free will in
human beings. That, too, may be guessed; but it is guessing, nevertheless. A
sudden uprush of free and erratic will, and a new cause is set up, and the
calculation must be made afresh.
There is a certain charm in dealing with the erratic element of
will. Perhaps that is why some persons find cats more fascinating than dogs.
A cat is a willful erratic animal; so are many men.
The great being who passed this night along
the battle line has been watching the course of earthly events for a
considerable time. He is one of those who serve the planetary spirit of the
earth by carrying certain ideas around the earth when the time has come for
them to play their part in history. I cannot tell you many details about the
life of this being, for I know only a few facts concerning him. He is so far
superior to me that my possible comprehension of him is limited. He may once
have been a man, I think so; but of that I am not even sure.
I have been told that it was he who first impressed upon a small
but courageous section of American people the conviction that the time had
come when human slavery in America should cease; that it was he who inspired
Columbus with the idea that he could find land by sailing west, though in
the latter case he was not able to force through into the mind of his
instrument the great fact that an immense and independent continent lay off
there beyond the western sea, and between it and another sea whose waters
washed the eastern shores of Asia. Again, I have been told that it was this
being who was instrumental in revealing the knowledge of electricity to
mankind.
Can you imagine the life of such a being?
Can you extend your consciousness so as to touch his? I am frank enough to
say that it is difficult even for me, who have been able to remember so much
of my own long past, and to work out so many of the probable effects of the
causes which I myself set up in the far past, effects which will shape my
future lives on earth.
Imagine an independent entity of vivid life, yet without a
physical or even an astral body, a being of thought whose lowest medium is
thought, who influences his chosen instruments by contact with their naked
minds. What personal wishes can such a being have? What ambitions can
he have? The lower and limiting word ambition seems grotesque as
characterizing the motive force of such a being.
He has a name among us, but I am not
permitted to tell you the name. It has a great mantramic value, that name,
and if you should repeat it too often it might raise your own consciousness,
and the vibration of yourself, to a height which would make it extremely
difficult for you to keep your hold on that physical body, without which you
cannot do certain work that it is your privilege and duty to perform at this
stage of your evolution.
There is a certain initiation which the pupils of the great
Masters take under the guidance of this being; but those who take that
initiation retire permanently from the everyday life of men. They get into
the centre of causes, which make them so dynamic—which makes their
personality and their thoughts so forceful—that for the sake of the world
itself they must not come too close to it; because all things work by cyclic
law, and to hasten too much the evolution of humanity would be dangerous to
humanity. It can only go safely at a certain rate of speed. Above that speed
it is likely to meet with accident.
I know exactly the stage that I myself must reach before I can
take the initiation which is presided over by this being. When I have
reached that stage I shall not be able to come and write through your hand,
unless you raise yourself a corresponding degree above your present
consciousness, because to do so might dangerously accelerate your own rate
of growth.
Since coming out here I have learned much
about those beings who have in charge the higher evolution of mankind. Their
development would be quite incomprehensible to the mass of even enlightened
men at the present time.
They are and must be very lonely beings, though they too have
their peers and fellow-workers. Can you imagine remaining alone a hundred or
a thousand or ten thousand years, yet all the time extremely active in mind,
following with your thought the course of an evolution which you yourself
have long left behind in your own growth, following it with the mind alone,
because the emotional nature you have also left behind, and doing all this
not for any personal reward but because it is a labor in accordance with the
great law of a Being still above and beyond yourself?
Obedience is taught in certain schools, not in an effort to
control the pupil in the interest of the Master, but that the pupil may thus
take his first steps on the path which leads to obedience to the Cosmic
Will. On that path he will have to go an immense distance before he can be
trusted to do such work as is being done by the being who passed this night
along the battle-line of one of the opposing armies, shedding the light of
his thought and the certainty of his purpose into a few minds whose
receptivity made possible their grasping what he gave.
Do not weary on the path, you who are
taking the first and easiest steps of the journey that shall one day lead
you to the Masters! The path is indeed steep, and as one inspired writer
said, it leads uphill all the way; but there are stages at which the
traveller may pause and enjoy the prospect. I seem to have reached such a
stage myself, and though I am always working now, yet I enjoy my work.
The awful battle that some of us fought with the elemental
beings is now over. The worst calamity that could have befallen mankind is
happily averted. The labor of the present is light compared with the labor
of that struggle. If the world could realize what it owes to the
Masters whom most men regard as myths! But such Teachers do not work for
gratitude nor for reward.
Follow you in their footsteps, for it is
the only road that can lead mankind above the awful calamities that
threatened recently to engulf mankind. (I am not referring to a mere
German victory.)
It is wise to keep from the knowledge of men in general the
great evolutionary facts which govern the life of the planet. A mind must be
lifted above the small circle of everyday interests before it could endure
such knowledge.
You all use words without realizing their meaning. You talk of
guardian angels; you talk of hell and purgatory, and of vicarious atonement,
and of sacraments. Sacraments! I could tell you of a sacrament that is
verily an eating of the body and a drinking of the blood of God; but I
refrain lest you should tell the world, and if you should tell the world the
evil forces of the world would destroy you.
But I am coming now perilously near the things that may not be
spoken, so I will wish you a good-night—a good-night indeed—and go back to
my labors, in the rear of that being of light who passed along the
battlefields this evening.
April 17.
Letter XXVII
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