|
|
|
LETTER XXXIV
THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER
Passing yesterday along the line where the
great French army stands before its powerful opponent, and marking the spirit of
courage and aspiration which makes it seem like a long line of living light, I
saw a familiar face in the regions outside the physical.
I paused, highly pleased at the encounter, and
the sylph—for it was a sylph whom I met—paused also with a little smile of
recognition.
Do you recall in my former book the story of a
sylph, Merilene, who was the companion and familiar of a student of magic who
lived in the rue de Vaugirard in Paris?
It was Merilene that I met above the line of
light which shows to wanderers in the astral regions where the soldiers of la
belle France fight and die for the same ideal which inspired Jeanne d’
Arc—to drive the foreigner out of France.
“Where is your friend and master?” I asked the
sylph, and she pointed below to a trench which spoke loud its determination to
conquer.
“I am here, to be still with him,” she said.
“And can you speak to him here?” I asked.
“I can always speak with him,” she answered. “I
have been very useful to him—and to France.”
“To France?” I enquired, with growing interest.
“Oh, yes! When his commanding officer wants to
know what is being plotted over there, he often asks my friend, and my friend
asks me.”
“Truly,” I thought, “the French are an inspired
people, when the officers of armies ask guidance from the realm of the
invisible! But had not Jeanne her visions?”
“And how do you gain the information desired?”
I asked, drawing nearer to Merilene, who seemed more serious than when we met
some years before in Paris.
“Why,” she answered, “I go over there and look
around me. I have learned what to look for, he has taught me, and when I bring
him news he rewards me with more love.”
“And do you love him still, as of old?”
“As of old?”
“Yes, as you did back there in Paris.”
“Time must have passed slowly with you,” said
the sylph, “if you call a few years ago ‘as of old’.”
“Are a few years, then, as nothing?”
“A few years are as nothing to me,” she
replied. “I have lived a long time.”
“And do you know the future of your friend?” I
asked.
A puzzled look came over the face of Merilene,
and she said, slowly:
“I used to know everything that would happen to
him, because I could read his will, and whatever he willed came to pass; but
since we have been out here he seems to have lost his will.”
“Lost his will!” I exclaimed, in surprise.
“Yes, lost his will; for he prays continually
to a great Being whom he loves far more than me, and he always prays one prayer,
‘Thy will be done!’ It used to be his will which was always done; but now, as I
say, he seems to have lost his will.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “it is true of the will as
was once said of the life, and he that loses his will shall find it.”
“I hope he will find it soon,” she answered,
“for in the old days he was always giving me interesting things to do, to help
him achieve the purposes of his will, and now he only sends me over there. I
don’t like over there!”
“Why not?”
“Because my friend is menaced by something over
there.”
“And what has his will to do with that?”
“Why, even about that, he says all day to the
great Being that he loves so much more than me, ‘Thy will be done’.”
“Do you think you could learn to say it, too?”
I asked.
“I say it after him sometimes; but I don’t know
what it means.”
“Have you never heard of God?”
“I have heard of many gods, of Isis and Osiris
and Set, and of Horus, the son of Osiris.”
“And is it to one of these that he says, ‘Thy
will be done’?”
“Oh, no! It is not to any of the gods that he
used to call upon in his magical working. This is some new god that he has
found.”
“Or the oldest of all gods that he has returned
to,” I suggested. “What does he call Him?”
“Our Father who art in heaven.”
“If you also should learn to say ‘Thy will be
done’ to our Father who is in heaven,” I said, “it might help you toward the
attainment of that soul you were wanting and waiting for, when last we met in
Paris.”
“How could our Father help me?”
“It was he who gave souls to men,” I said.
The eyes of the sylph were brilliant with
something almost human.
“And could He give a soul to me?”
“It is said that He can do anything.”
“Then I will ask Him for a soul.”
“But to ask him for a soul,” I said, “is not to
pray the prayer your friend prays.”
“He only says-----”
“Yes, I know. Suppose you say it after him.”
“I will, if you will tell me what it means. I
like to do what my friend does.”
“Thy will be done,” I said, “when addressed to
the Father in heaven, means that we give up all our desires, whether for
pleasure or love or happiness, or anything else, and lay all those desires at
His feet, sacrificing all we have or hope for to Him, because we love Him more
than ourselves.”
“That is a strange way to get what one
desires,” she said.
“It is not done to get what one desires,” I
answered.
“But what is it done for?”
“For love of the Father in heaven.”
“But I do not know the Father in heaven. What
is He?”
“He is the Source and the Goal of the being of
your friend. He is the One that your friend will re-become some day, if he can
forever say to Him, Thy will be done.”
“The One he will re-become?”
“Yes, for when he blends his will with that of
the Father in heaven, the Father in heaven dwells in his heart and the two
become one.”
“Then is the Father in heaven really the Self
of my friend?”
“The greatest philosopher could not have
expressed it more truly,” I said.
“Then indeed do I love the Father in heaven,”
breathed the sylph, “and I will say now every day and all day, ‘Thy will be
done’ to Him.”
“Even if it separates you from your friend?”
“How can it separate me from my friend, if the
Father is the Self of him?”
“I would that all angels were your equal in
learning,” I said.
But Merilene had turned to me in utter
forgetfulness, and was saying over and over, with joy in her uplifted face, “Thy
will be done! Thy will be done!”
“Truly,” I said to myself, as I passed along
the line, “he who worships the Father as the Self of the beloved has already
acquired a soul.”
April 29.
Letter XXXV
|
