dear jasper:
i have your letter, comrade, in which you say how much you wish there were some adepts sent to the united states to help all true students. yet you know well they do not need to come here in person, in order to help. by going carefully over your letter there appears to be the possibility of the seed of doubt in your heart as to the wise ordering of all things, for all are under the law, and masters first of all. mind, i only say the "possibility of the seed of doubt." for i judge from my own experience. well do i remember when i thought as you say, how much better 'twould be if some one were there.
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if that is allowed to remain it will metamorphose itself into a seed and afterward a plant of doubt. cast it right out! it does not now show as seed of doubt, but it will be a case of metamorphosis, and the change would be so great as to deceive you into thinking it were never from the same root. the best stand to take is that it is all right as it is now, and when the time comes for it to be better it will be so. meanwhile we have a duty to see that we do all we can in our own place as we see best, undisturbed and undismayed by aught.
how much i have in years gone away said and thought those very words of yours and to no profit! why do you care what becomes of a million human beings? are not millions going to death daily with no one to tell them of all this? but did you suppose that all this was not provided for? "and heavenly death itself is also well provided for." now, then, you and i must learn to look on the deaths or the famishing of millions of beings with unfaltering heart. else we had better give it all up now. consider that at this moment are so many persons in various far distant places who cannot ever hear these truths. do you grieve for them? do you realize their state? no; you realize only partially the same thing among those with whom it was your present lot to be born—i mean the nation. do you want to do more than your best? do you covet the work of another? no; you do not. you will sit calmly where you are, then, and, with an unaffected heart, picture to yourself the moral and physical deaths and famines which are now without the possibility of prevention or amelioration. your faith will know that all is provided for.
i do not say that you must attain to that calm now or give up seeking the way; but i do say that you must admit that such an attainment must be absolutely tried for. for of such is the trial, and why27 should we care? we must some day be able to stand any shock, and to get ready for that time we must be now triumphant over some smaller things. among others is the very position you and i are now in; that is, standing our ground and feeling ourselves so much and so awfully alone. but we know that they have left us a commandment. that we keep, although now and then objects, senses, men, and time conspire to show us that masters laugh at us. it is all a delusion. it is only one consequence of our past karma now burning itself out before our eyes. the whole phantasmagoria is only a picture thrown up against the screen of time by the mighty magic of prakriti (nature). but you and i are superior to nature. why, then, mind these pictures? part of that very screen, however, being our own mortal bodies, we can't help the sensation derived therefrom through our connection with the body. it is only another form of cold or heat; and what are they? they are vibrations; they are felt; they do not really exist in themselves. so we can calmly look on the picture as it passes fragmentarily through those few square feet contained within the superficial boundaries of our elementary frame. we must do so, for it is a copy of the greater, of the universal form. for we otherwise will never be able to understand the greater picture. now, then, is there not many a cubic inch of your own body which is entitled to know and to be the truth in greater measure than now? and yet you grieve for the ignorance of so many other human beings! grieve on; and i grieve too. do not imagine that i am what is there written. not so. i am grieving just the same outwardly, but inwardly trying what i have just told you. and what a dream all this is. here i am writing you so seriously, and now i see that you know it all quite well and much better than i do.
yet, my dear jasper, now and then i feel—not28 doubt of masters who hear any heartbeat in the right direction, but—a terrible despair of these people. oh, my god! the age is black as hell, hard as iron. it is iron, it is kali yuga. kali is always painted black. yet kali yuga by its very nature, and terrible, swift momentum, permits one to do more with his energies in a shorter time than in any other yuga. but heavens, what a combat! demons from all the spheres; waving clouds of smoky karma; dreadful shapes; stupefying exhalations from every side. exposed at each turn to new dangers. imagine a friend walking with you who you see is in the same road, but all at once he is permeated by these things of death and shows a disposition to obstruct your path, the path of himself. yes; the gods are asleep for awhile. but noble hearts still walk here, fighting over again the ancient fight. they seek each other, so as to be of mutual help. we will not fail them. to fail would be nothing, but to stop working for humanity and brotherhood would be awful. we cannot: we will not. yet we have not a clear road. no, it is not clear. i am content if i can see the next step in advance only. you seek the warrior. he is here, somewhere. no one can find him for you. you must do that. still he fights on. no doubt he sees you and tries to make you see him. still he fights on and on.
how plainly the lines are drawn, how easily the bands are seen. some want a certificate, or an uttered pledge, or a secret meeting, or a declaration, but without any of that i see those who—up to this hour—i find are my "companions." they need no such folly. they are there; they hear and understand the battle-cry, they recognize the sign. now where are the rest? many have i halted, and spoken the exact words to them, have exposed to them my real heart, and they heard nothing: they thought29 that heart was something else. i sigh to think how many. perhaps i overlooked some; perhaps some did not belong to me. there are some who partly understood the words and the sign, but they are not sure of themselves; they know that they partake of the nature, but are still held back.
do you not see, jasper, that your place in the ranks is well known? you need no assurances because they are within you. now what a dreadful letter; but it is all true.
a student of occultism after a while gets into what we may call a psychic whirl, or a vortex of occultism. at first he is affected by the feelings and influences of those about him. that begins to be pushed off and he passes into the whirl caused by the mighty effort of his higher self to make him remember his past lives. then those past lives affect him. they become like clouds throwing shadows on his path. now they seem tangible and then fade away, only a cloud. then they begin to affect his impulse to action in many various ways. to-day he has vague calling longings to do something, and, critically regarding himself, he cannot see in this life any cause. it is the bugle note of a past life blown almost in his face. it startles him; it may throw him down. then it starts before him, a phantom, or, like a person behind you as you look at a mirror, it looks over his shoulder. although dead and past they yet have a power. he gets too a power and a choice. if all his previous past lives were full of good, then irresistible is the force for his benefit. but all alike marshal up in front, and he hastens their coming by his effort. into this vortex about him others are drawn, and their germs for good or ill ripen with activity. this is a phase of the operation of karmic stamina. the choice is this. these events arrive one after the other and, as it were, offer themselves. if he chooses30 wrong, then hard is the fight. the one chosen attracts old ones like itself perhaps, for all have a life of their own. do you wonder that sometimes in the case of those who rush unprepared into the "circle of ascetics" and before the ripe moment, insanity sometimes results? but then that insanity is their safety for the next life, or for their return to sanity.
receive my brotherly assurances, my constant desire to help you.
in respect to karmic action it is well to recall the statement of patanjali that "works exist only in the shape of mental deposits." (book 2, aph. 12, a.) by "works" is here meant karma, the stock of works, or action. its results remain as mental deposits or potential energies in the higher part of the fifth principle, and when it re?ncarnates those seeds are there to "ripen on the tablets of the mind" whenever they are exposed to favoring circumstances. sometimes they remain dormant for want of something to arouse them, as in the case of children. "the mental deposits of works, collected from time without beginning in the ground of the mind, as they by degrees arrive at maturation, so do they, existing in lesser or greater measure (the sum of merit being less than that of demerit, or conversely) lead to their effects in the shape of rank, raised or lowered, ... or experience of good or ill." (book 2, aph. 13, b.) the mind energizes and impels us to fresh action. the impulse lies within, in germ, and may be ripened by interior or exterior suggestion. can we, then, be too careful to guard the ground of the mind, to keep close watch over our thoughts? these thoughts are dynamic. each one as it leaves the mind has a vis viva of its own, proportionate to the intensity with which it was propelled. as the force or work done, of a moving body, is proportionate to the square of31 its velocity, so we may say that the force of thoughts is to be measured by the square or quadrupled power of their spirituality, so greatly do these finer forces increase by activity. the spiritual force, being impersonal, fluidic, not bound to any constricting center, acts with unimaginable swiftness. a thought, on its departure from the mind, is said to associate itself with an elemental; it is attracted wherever there is a similar vibration, or, let us say, a suitable soil, just as the winged thistle-seed floats off and sows itself in this spot and not in that, in the soil of its natural selection. thus the man of virtue, by admitting a material or sensual thought into his mind, even though he expel it, sends it forth to swell the evil impulses of the man of vice from whom he imagines himself separated by a wide gulf, and to whom he may have just given a fresh impulse to sin. many men are like sponges, porous and bibulous, ready to suck up every element of the order preferred by their nature. we all have more or less of this quality: we attract what we love, and we may derive a greater strength from the vitality of thoughts infused from without than from those self-reproduced within us at a time when our nervous vitality is exhausted. it is a solemn thought, this, of our responsibility for the impulse of another. we live in one another, and our widely different deeds have often a common source. the occultist cannot go far upon his way without realizing to what a great extent he is "his brother's keeper." our affinities are ourselves, in whatever ground they may live and ripen.
j. n.
