LETTER XLIII

A CLOUD OF WITNESSES

 

ARE you surprised to learn that there is even a greater difference between the beings in this world than between the people of earth? That is inevitable, for this is a freer world than yours.

 

I should fail in my duty if I did not tell you something of the evil beings out here; perhaps no one else will ever tell you, and the knowledge is necessary to self-protection.

 

First I want to say that there is a strong sympathy between the spirits in this world and the spirits in your world. Yes, they are both spirits, the difference being mainly a difference in garments, one wearing flesh and the other wearing a subtler but none the less real body.

 

Now the good spirits, which may be "the spirits of just men made perfect," or those who merely aspire to perfection, are powerfully drawn to those fellow-spirits on earth whose ideals are in harmony with their own. The magnetic attraction which exists between human beings is weak compared with that which is possible between beings embodied and beings disembodied. As opposites attract, the very difference in matter is a drawing force. The female is not more attractive to the male than the being of flesh is attractive to the being in the astral. The two do not usually understand each other, neither do man and woman. But the influence is felt, and beings out here understand its source better than you do, because they generally carry with them the memory of your world, while you have lost the memory of theirs.

 

At no time is the sympathetic power between men and spirits so strong as when men are labouring under some intense emotion, be it love or hate, or anger, or any other excitement. For then the fiery element in man is most active, and spirits are attracted by fire.

 

(Here the writing suddenly stopped, the influence passed, to return after a few minutes.)

 

You wonder why I went away? It was in order to draw a wide protective circle around us both, for what I have to say to you is something which certain spirits would wish me to leave unsaid.

To continue. When man is excited, exalted, or in any way intensified in his emotional life, the spirits draw near to him. That is how conception is possible; that is the secret of inspiration; that is why anger grows with what it feeds upon.

 

And this last is the point which I want to drive home to your consciousness. When you lose your temper you lose a great deal, among other things the control of yourself, and it is barely possible that another entity may momentarily assume control of you.

 

This subjective world, as I have called it, is full of hateful spirits. They love to stir up strife, both here and on earth. They enjoy the excitement of anger in others, they are thrilled by the poison of hatred; as certain men revel in morphine, so they revel in all inharmonious passion.

 

Do you see the point and the danger? A small seed of anger in your heart they feed and inflame by the hatred in their own. It is not necessarily hatred of you as an individual, often they have no personal interest in you; but for the purpose of gratifying their evil passion they will attach themselves to you temporarily. Other illustrations are not far to seek.

 

A man who has the habit of anger, even of fault-finding, is certain to be surrounded by evil spirits. I have seen a score of them around a man, thrilling him with their own malignant magnetism, stirring him up again when by reaction he would have cooled down.

 

Sometimes the impersonal interest in mere strife becomes personal; an angry spirit here may find that by attaching himself to a certain man he is sure to get every day a thrill or thrills of angry excitement, as his victim continually loses his temper and storms and rages. This is one of the most terrible misfortunes which can happen to anybody. Carried to its ultimate, it may become obsession, and end in insanity.

 

The same law applies to other unlovely passions, those of lust and avarice. Beware of lust, beware of all sex attraction into which no spiritual or heart element enters. I have seen things that I would not wish to record, either through your hand or any other.

 

Let us take instead a case of avarice. I have seen a miser counting over his gold, have seen the terrible eyes of the spirits which enjoyed the gold through him. For gold has a peculiar influence as a metal, apart from its purchasing power or the associations attached to it. Certain spirits love gold, even as the miser loves it, and with the same acquisitive, astringent passion. As it is one of the heaviest of metals, so its power is a condensed and condensing power.

 

I do not mean by this that you should beware of gold. Get all you can use, for it is useful; but do not gloat over it. One does not attract the avaricious spirits merely by owning the symbols of wealth—houses and lands and stocks and bonds, or even a moderate amount of coin; but I advise you not to hoard coins to gloat over.

 

There are certain jewels, however, whose possession will aid you, for they attract the spirits of power. But you will probably choose your jewels by reason of your affinity with them, and may choose wisely.

 

Now that I have done my duty by warning you against the passions and the passionate spirits of which you should beware, I can go on to speak of other feelings and of other spiritual associates of man.

 

You have met persons who seemed to radiate sunshine, whose very presence in a room made you happier. Have you asked yourself why? The true answer would be that by their lovely disposition they attracted round them a "cloud of witnesses" as to the joy and the beauty of life.

 

I have myself often basked in the warm rays of a certain loving heart I know upon the earth. I have heard spirits say to one another as they crowded round that person, "It is good to be here." Do you think that any evil thing could happen to him? A score of loving and sympathetic spirits would strive to give him warning should any evil threaten.

 

Then, too, a joyous heart attracts joyous events.

 

Simplicity, also, and sweet humility, are very attractive to gentle disembodied souls. "Except ye be as little children, ye cannot enter in."

 

Have you not often seen a child enjoying himself with unseen playfellows? You would call them imaginary playfellows. Perhaps they were, perhaps they were not imaginary. To imagine may be to create, or it may be to attract things already created.

 

I have seen the Beautiful Being itself, more than once, hovering in ecstasy above an earthly creature who was happy.

 

A song of joy, when it comes from a thrilling heart, may attract a host of invisible beings who enjoy it with the singer; for, as I have told you, sound carries from one world to another.

 

Never weep—unless you must, to restore lost equilibrium. The weeping spirits, however, are rather harmless because they are weak. Sometimes a storm of tears, when it is past, clears the soul's atmosphere; but while the weeping is in progress, the atmosphere is thick with weeping spirits. One could almost hear the drip of their tears through the veil of ether—if the sobbing earthly one did not make so much noise with his grief.

 

"Laugh and the world laughs with you," may be true enough; but when you weep, you do not weep alone.

LETTER XLIV
THE KINGDOM WITHIN

 

THERE is one obscure point which I want to make clear, even though I may be accused of "mysticism" by those to whom mysticism means only obscurity.

 

I have said that the life of man is both subjective and objective, but principally objective; and that the life of "spirits" dwelling in subtle matter is both subjective and objective, but principally subjective.

 

Yet I have spoken of going alone or with others to heaven, as a place. I want to explain this. You remember the saying, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," that is, subjective. Also, "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there will I be in the midst of them."

 

Now, those places in this subtle realm which I have called the Christian heavens are places where two or three, or two or three thousand, as the case may be, are gathered together in His name, to enjoy the kingdom of heaven within them.

 

The aggregation of souls is objective—that is, the souls exist in time and space; the heaven which they enjoy is subjective, though they may all see the same thing at the same time, as, for instance, the vision of Him whom they adore as Redeemer.

 

That is as clear as I can make it.

LETTER XLV
THE GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE

 

ONE day I met a man in doublet and hose, who announced to me that he was Shakespeare. Now I have become accustomed to such announcements, and they do not surprise me as they did six or eight months ago. (Yes, I still keep account of your months, for a purpose of my own.)

 

I asked this man what proof he could adduce of his extraordinary claim, and he answered that it needed no proof.

 

"That will not go down with me," I said, "for I am an old lawyer."

 

Thereupon he laughed, and asked: "Why did you not join in the game?"

 

I am telling you this rather senseless story, because it illustrates an interesting point in regard to our life here.

 

In a former letter I wrote about my meeting with a newly arrived lady, who, finding me dressed in a Roman toga, thought that I might be Caesar; and that I told her we were all actors here. I meant that, like children, we "dress up" when we want to impress our own imagination, or to relive some scene in the past.

 

This playing of a part is usually quite innocent, though sometimes the very ease with which it is done brings with it the temptation to deception, especially in dealings with the earth people.

 

You see the point I wish to make. The "lying spirits," of which the frequenters of seance rooms so often make complaint, are these astral actors, who may even come to take a certain pride in the cleverness of their art.

 

Be not too sure that the spirit who claims to be your deceased grandfather is that estimable old man himself. He may be merely an actor playing a part, for his own entertainment and yours.

 

How is one to tell, you ask? One cannot always tell. I should say, however, that the surest test of all would be the deep and unemotional conviction that the veritable entity was in one's presence. There is an instinct in the human heart which will never deceive us, if we without fear or bias will yield ourselves to its decision. How often in worldly matters have we all acted against this inner monitor, and been deceived and led astray!

 

If you have an instinctive feeling that a certain invisible—or even visible—entity is not what it claims to be, it is better to discontinue the conference. If it is the real person, and if he has anything vital to say, he will come again and again; for the so­called dead are often very desirous to communicate with the living.

 

As a rule, though, the play-acting over here is innocent of intent to deceive. Most men desire occasionally to be something which they are not. The poor man who, for one evening, dresses himself in his best clothes and squanders a week's salary in playing the millionaire is moved by the same impulse which inspired the man in my story to assert that he was Shakespeare. The woman who always dresses beyond her means is playing the same little game with herself and with the world.

 

All children know the game. They will tell you in a convinced tone that they are Napoleon Bonaparte, or George Washington, and they feel hurt if you scoff.

 

Perhaps my friend with the Shakespearean aspiration was an amateur dramatist when he was on earth. Had he been a professional dramatist, he would probably have stated his real name, more or less unknown, and followed it by the declaration that he was the well­known So-and-so.

 

There is much pride out here in the accomplishments of the earth-life, especially among those who have recently come out. This lessens with time, and after one has been long here one's interests are likely to be more general.

 

Men and women do not cease to be human merely by crossing the frontier of what you call the invisible world. In fact, the human characteristics are often exaggerated, because the restraints are fewer. There are no penalties inflicted by the community for the personating of one man by another. It is not taken seriously, for to the clearer sight of this world the disguise is too transparent.

LETTER XLVI
HEIRS OF HERMES

 

THERE is much sound sense and not a little nonsense talked about Adepts and Masters, who live and work on the astral plane. Now I am myself living, and sometimes working, on the so-called astral plane, and what I say about the plane is the result of experience and not of theory.

 

I have met Adepts—yes, Masters here. One of them especially has taught me much, and has guided my footsteps from the first.

 

Do not fear to believe in Masters. Masters are men raised to the highest power; and whether they are embodied or disembodied, they work on this plane of life. A Master can go in and out at will.

 

No, I am not going to tell the world how they do it. Some who are not Masters might try the experiment, and not be able to go back again. Knowledge is power; but there are certain powers which may be dangerous if put in practice without a corresponding degree of wisdom.

 

All human beings have in them the potentiality of mastership. That ought to be an encouragement to men and women who aspire to an intensity of life beyond that of the ordinary. But the attainment of mastership is a steady and generally a slow growth.

 

My Teacher here is a Master.

 

There are teachers here who are not Masters, as there are teachers on earth who have not the rank of professor; but he who is willing to teach what he knows is on the right road.

 

I do not mind saying that my Teacher approves of my trying to tell the world something about the life which follows the change that is called death. If he disapproved, I should bow to his superior wisdom.

 

No, it does not matter what his name is. I have referred to him simply as my Teacher, and have told you many things which he has said and done. Many other things I have not told you, for I can only come occasionally now. After a time I shall probably cease to come altogether. Not that I shall have lost interest in you; but it seems to be the plan that I shall get farther away from the world, to learn things which necessitate for their comprehension a certain loosening of the earthly tie. Later I may return again, for the second time; but I make no promises. I will come if I can, and if it seems wise to come, and if you are in a mood to let me.

 

I do not believe that I shall come through anybody else—at least, not to write letters like this. I should probably have to put such another person through the same training process that I put you through, and few—even of those who were my friends and associates—would trust me to that extent. So, even after I am gone, do not shut the door too tight, in case I should want to come again, for I might have something immensely important to say. But on the other hand, please refrain from calling me; because if you should call me you might draw me away from important work or study somewhere else. I do not say for certain that you could, but it is possible; and when I leave the neighbourhood of the earth of my own accord, I do not wish to be drawn back until I am ready to return.

 

A person still upon the earth may call so intensely to a friend who has passed far away from the earth's atmosphere, that that soul will come back too soon in response to the eager cry.

 

Do not forget the dead, unless they are strong enough to be happy without your remembrance; but do not lean too heavily upon them.

 

The Masters, of whom I spoke a little while ago, can remain near or far away, as they will; they can respond or not respond: but the ordinary soul is very sensitive to the call of those it loved on earth.

 

I have seen a mother respond eagerly to the tearful prayer of a child, and yet unable to make the lonely one realise her presence. Sometimes the mothers are very sad because they cannot make their presence felt.

 

One time I saw my Teacher by his power help a mother to make herself seen and heard by a daughter who was in great trouble. The heart of my Teacher is very soft to the sufferings of the world; and though he says that he is not one of the Christs, yet he often seems to work as Christ works. At other times he is all mind. He illustrates the saying about the thrice-greatest Hermes Trismegistus—great in body, great in mind, great in heart.

 

I wish I could tell you more about my Teacher, but he does not wish to be too well known on earth. He works for the work's sake, and not for reward or praise.

 

He is very fond of children, and one day when

 

I was sitting unseen in the house of a friend of mine on earth, and the little son of the house fell down and hurt himself and wept bitterly, my great Teacher, whom I have seen command literally "legions of angels," bent down in his tenuous form, which he was then wearing, and soothed and comforted the child.

 

When I asked him about it afterwards, he said that he remembered many childhoods of his own, in other lands, and that he could still feel in memory the sting of physical pain and the shock of a physical fall.

 

He told me that children suffer more than their elders realise, that the bewilderment felt in gradually adjusting to a new and frail and growing body is often the cause of intense suffering.

 

He said that the constant crying of some small babies is caused by their half-discouragement at the herculean task before them— the task of moulding a body through which their spirit can work.

 

He told me a story of one of his former incarnations, before he became a Master, and what a hard struggle he had to build a body. He could remember even the smallest details of that faraway life. One day his mother punished him for something which he had not really done, and when he denied the supposed wrongful act, she chided him for untruth­fulness, not realising—good woman though she was—the essential truth of the soul to whom she had given form. He told me that from that childish impression, centuries ago, he could date his real battle against injustice, which had helped to develop him as a friend and teacher of mankind.

 

Then he went on to speak of the importance of our recovering the memory of other lives, in order that we may see the roads by which our souls have come.

 

As a rule, the great teachers are reticent about their own past, and they only refer to it when some point in their experience can be used to illustrate a principle, and thus help another to grasp the principle. It encourages a groping soul to know that one who has attained a great height has been through the same trials that now perplex him.

LETTER XLVII

 

ONLY A SONG

 

WILL you listen to another song, or chant, or whatever you choose to call it, of that amazing angel whom we know as the Beautiful Being?

Why do you fear to question me? I am the great answerer of questions;

Though my answers are often symbols, yet words themselves are only symbols.

I have not visited you for a season, for when I am around, you can think of nothing else, and it is well that you should think of those who have trodden the path you are treading.

You can pattern your ways on those of others, you can hardly pattern your ways on mine.

I am a light in the darkness—my name you do not need to know; A name is a limitation, and I refuse to be limited.

In the ancient days of the angels, I refused to enter the forms of my own creation, except to play with them.

There is a hint for you, if you like hints.

He who is held by his own creations becomes a slave. That is one of the differences between me and men.

What earthly father can escape his children? What earthly mother wishes to?

But I! I can make a rose to bloom—then leave it for another to enjoy.

My joy was in the making. It would be dull for me to stay with a rose until its petals fell.

The artist who can forget his past creations may create greater and greater things.

The joy is in the doing, not in the holding fast to that which is done.

Oh, the magic of letting go! It is the magic of the gods.

There are races of men to whom I have revealed myself. They worship me.

You need not worship me, for I do not require worship.

That would be to limit myself to my own creations, if I needed anything from the souls I have touched with my beauty.

Oh, the magic of letting go! The magic of holding on?

Yes, there is a magic in holding on to a thing until it is finished and perfect;

But when a thing is finished, whether it be a poem, a love, or a child, let it go.

In that way you are free again and may begin another. It is the secret of eternal youth.

Never look back with regret; look back only to learn what is behind you.

Look forward always; it is only when a man ceases to look forward to things that he begins to grow old. He settles down.

I have said to live in the moment; that is the same thing seen from another side.

The present and the future are playfcllows; we do not play when we study the past.

I am the great playfellow of men.

 

LETTER XLVIII

 

INVISIBLE GIFTS AT YULETIDE

 

 IT is not yet too late to wish you a merry Christmas.

How do I know that it is Christmas Day? Because I have been looking in at houses which I used to frequent, and have seen trees laden with tinsel and gifts. Do you wonder that I could see them? If so, you forget that we light our own place. When we know how to look, we can see behind the veil.

 

This is my first Christmas Day on this side. I cannot send you a material gift which you could wear or hang up in your room; but I can send you the good wishes of the season.

 

The mothers who have left young children behind them in the world know well when Christmas is approaching. Sometimes they bring invisible gifts, which they have fashioned by their power of imagination and love out of the tenuous matter of this world. A certain grandmother all last evening, Christmas Eve, was scattering flowers around her dear ones. Their fragrance must have penetrated the atmosphere of the earth.

 

Did you ever smell suddenly a sweet perfume which you could not account for? If so, perhaps some one who loved you was scattering invisible flowers. Love is stronger than death.

 

Another whom you know will go out before long. Strengthen her with your faith.

 

The practice of keeping Christmas is a good one, if you do not forget the real meaning of the day. To some it means the birth into the world of the spirit of humility and love; but while love and humility had visited the world before the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, yet never before nor since have they come with greater power than they came to Judaea. Whether the stable in Bethlehem was a physical reality or a symbol, makes no difference.

 

I have been to the heavens of Christ, and know their beauty. "In My Father's house are many mansions."

 

A traveller like me who wishes to go to some particular heaven must first feel in himself what those souls feel who enjoy that heaven; then he can enter and commune with them. He could never go as a mere sight-seer. That is why, as a rule, I have avoided the hells; but the heavens I often visit.

 

And I have been in purgatory, the purgatory of the Roman Catholics. Do not scoff at those who have masses said for the repose of the souls of the departed. The souls are often conscious of such thoughtfulness. They hear the music, and they may smell the incense; most of all, they feel the power of the thought directed to them. Purgatory is real, in the sense of being a real experience. If you want to call it a dream, you may; but dreams are sometimes terribly real.

 

Even those who do not believe in purgatory sometimes wander awhile in sadness, until they have adjusted themselves to the new conditions under which they live. Should one tell them that they were in purgatory, they might deny the existence of such a state; but they would readily admit their discomfort.

 

The surest way to escape that painful period of transition is to go into the hereafter with a full faith in immortality, a full faith in the power of the soul to create its own conditions.

 

Last night, after visiting various places upon the earth, I went to one of the highest Christian heavens. Perhaps I could not have gone so easily at any other time; for my heart was full of love for all men and my mind was full of the Christ idea.

 

Often have I seen Him who is called the Saviour of men, and last night I saw Him in all His beauty. He, too, came down to the world for a time.

 

I wonder if I can make you understand? The love of Christ is always present in the world, because there are always hearts that keep it alight. If the idea of Christ as a redeemer should ever grow faint in the world, He would probably go back there and relight the flame in human hearts; but whatever the writers of statistics may say, that idea was never more real than at present. It may have been more talked about.

 

The world is not in so bad a way as some people think. Be not surprised if there should be a strong renaissance of the spiritual idea. All things have their rhythms.

 

Last night I stood in a great church where hundreds of Christians knelt in adoration of Jesus. I have stood in churches on Christmas Eve when on earth as a man among men; but I saw things last night which I had never seen before. Surely where two or three are gathered together in the name of any prophet, there he is in the midst of them, if not always in his spiritual body, at least in the fragrance of his sympathy.

 

The angels in the Christian heavens know when Christmas is being celebrated on earth.

 

Jesus of Nazareth is a reality. As a spiritual body, as Jesus who dwelt in Galilee, He exists in space and time; as the Christ, the paradigm of the spiritual man, He exists in the hearts of all men and women who awaken that idea in themselves. He is a light which is reflected in many pools.

 

I wrote the other day about Adepts and Masters. Jesus is a type of the greatest Master. He is revered in all the heavens. He grasped the Law and dared to live it, to exemplify it. And when He said, "The Father and I are one," He pointed the way by which other men may realise mastership in themselves.

 

Humanity on its long road has evolved many Masters. Who then shall dare to question that humanity has justified itself? If one demands to know what purpose there is in life, tell him that it is this very evolution of the Master out of the man. Eternity is long. The goal is ahead for each unit of sufficient strength, and those who cannot lead can serve.

 

This thought came home to me with special force last night. I am not so bold as to say that every unit in the great mass is strong enough, has energy enough, to evolve individual mastership; but there is no unit so weak that it may not have some part, however small, in the great work of evolving Masters out of men. It is sweet to serve. They too have their reward.

 

The great mistake made by most minds in wrestling with the problem of evolution is in not grasping the fact that eternity is eternity, that to be immortal is to have no beginning or end. There is time enough in which to develop, if not in this life cycle, then in another which will follow; for rhythm is sure.

 

If I could only make you grasp the idea of immortality as I see it! I did not fully understand it until I came out here and began to pick up the threads of my own past. My reason told me that I was immortal, but I did not know what immortality meant. I wonder if you do?

 

I know an angel who has done more, perhaps, than many prophets have done to keep that idea alight in the world. Until I met the one whom we know as the Beautiful Being I had not revelled in the triumph of immortality. There is one who plays with immortality as a child plays with marbles.

 

When the Beautiful Being says, "I am," you know that you are, too. When the Beautiful Being says, "I pluck the centuries as a child pulls the petals of a daisy, and I throw away the seedbearing heart to grow more century-bearing daisies," you feel—but words are weak to express what the Beautiful Being's joy in endless life can make one feel.

 

You forget the thing of flesh and bones which you used to call yourself when this sliver of conscious immortality exults in its own existence.

 

When the Beautiful Being takes you for a walk in what it calls the "clover meadows of the sky," you are quite sure that you are one of the coheirs of the whole eternal estate.

 

The Beautiful Being knows well the Christ of the Christians. I think the Beautiful Being knows all the great Masters, embodied or disembodied. They all taught immortality in some form or other, if only in essence.

 

The Beautiful Being went with me last night to the highest heaven of the Christians. Should I tell you all that I saw, you might be in too great a hurry to go out there and view it for yourself, and you must not leave the earth for a long time yet. You must realise immortality while still in the flesh, and make others realise it.

 

I have told you about the minor heavens, where merely good people go; but the passionately devout lovers of God reach heights of contemplation and ecstasy which the words of the world's languages were not designed to describe. With the Beautiful Being at my side I felt those ecstasies last night, while you were locked in sleep.

 

Where shall I be next Christmas Eve? I shall be somewhere in the universe; for we could not get out of the universe if we should try. The universe could not get on without us; it would be incomplete. Take that thought with you into the happy New Year.