it has been with regret that i hear of your serious illness, jasper. while life hangs in the balance, as it would seem yours does and for some time will, you will feel much depression.
now it is not usual to thus calmly talk to a person of his death, but you do not mind, so i talk. i do not agree with you that death is well. yours is not a case like that of —— who was to die and decided to accept life from great powers and work on for humanity amid all the throes and anguish of that body. why should you not live now as long as you can in the present body, so that in it you may make all the advance possible and by your life do as much good as you can to the cause and man? for you have not yet as jasper niemand had a chance to entitle you to extraordinary help after death in getting back again soon, so that you would die and run the chance of a long devachan and miss much that you might do for them. such are my views. life is better than death, for death again disappoints the self. death is not the great informer or producer of knowledge. it is only55 the great curtain on the stage to be rung up next instant. complete knowledge must be attained in the triune man: body, soul, and spirit. when that is obtained, then he passes on to other spheres, which to us are unknown and are endless. by living as long as one can, one gives the self that longer chance.
"atmanam atmana pashya" (raise the self by the self—g?ta) does not seem to be effective after the threshold of death is passed. the union of the trinity is only to be accomplished on earth in a body, and then release is desirable.
it is not for myself that i speak, brother, but for thee, because in death i can lose no one. the living have a greater part in the dead than the dead have in the living.
the doubt which you now feel as to success is morbid. please destroy it. better a false hope with no doubt, than much knowledge with doubts of your own chances. "he that doubteth is like the waves of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed." doubt is not to be solely guarded against when applied to masters (whom i know you doubt not). it is most to be guarded and repelled in relation to oneself. any idea that one cannot succeed, or had better die than live because an injured body seems to make success unattainable, is doubt.
we dare not hope, but we dare try to live on and on that we may serve them as they serve the law. we are not to try to be chelas or to do any one thing in this incarnation, but only to know and to be just as much as we can, and the possibility is not measured. reflect, then, that it is only a question of being overcome—by what? by something outside. but if you accuse or doubt yourself, you then give the enemy a rest; he has nothing to do, for you do it all yourself for him, and, leaving you to your fate, he seeks other victims. rise, then, from this despondency and seize56 the sword of knowledge. with it, and with love, the universe is conquerable. not that i see thee too despondent, jasper, but i fain would give thee my ideas, even did something kill thee against our will next day.
am glad that although the body is painful, you yourself are all right. we have in various ways to suffer, and i do not doubt it is a great advance if we can in the midst of physical suffering grasp and hold ourselves calm and away from it. yet also the body must be rested. rest, and let the anxieties to do lie still and dormant. by that they are not killed, and when the body gets stronger more is known.
you have been in storms enough. a few moments' reflection will show you that we make our own storms. the power of any and all circumstances is a fixed, unvarying quality, but as we vary in our reception of these, it appears to us that our difficulties vary in intensity. they do not at all. we are the variants.
if we admit that we are in the stream of evolution, then each circumstance must be to us quite right. and in our failures to perform set acts should be our greatest helps, for we can in no other way learn that calmness which krishna insists upon. if all our plans succeeded, then no contrasts would appear to us. also those plans we make may all be made ignorantly and thus wrongly, and kind nature will not permit us to carry them out. we get no blame for the plan, but we may acquire karmic demerit by not accepting the impossibility of achieving. ignorance of the law cannot be pleaded among men, but ignorance of fact may. in occultism, even if you are ignorant of some facts of importance you are not passed over by the law, for it has regard for no man, and pursues its adjustments without regard to what we know or are ignorant of.
if you are at all cast down, or if any of us is, then57 by just that much are our thoughts lessened in power. one could be confined in a prison and yet be a worker for the cause. so i pray you to remove from your mind any distaste for present circumstances. if you can succeed in looking at it all as just what you in fact desired, then it will act not only as a strengthener of your good thoughts, but will reflexly act on your body and make it stronger.
all this reminds me of h., of whose failure you now know. and in this be not disappointed. it could hardly be otherwise. unwisely he made his demands upon the law before being quite ready. that is, unwisely in certain senses, for in the greater view naught can be unwise. his apparent defeat, at the very beginning of the battle, is for him quite of course. he went where the fire is hottest and made it hotter by his aspirations. all others have and all will suffer the same. for it makes no difference that his is a bodily affection; as all these things proceed from mental disturbances, we can easily see the same cause under a physical ailment as under a mental divagation. strangely, too, i wrote you of the few who really do stay, and soon after this news came and threw a light—a red one, so to say—upon the information of h's retreat. see how thought interlinks with thought on all planes when the true is the aim.
we ourselves are not wholly exempt, inasmuch as we daily and hourly feel the strain. accept the words of a fellow traveller; these: keep up the aspiration and the search, but do not maintain the attitude of despair or the slightest repining. not that you do. i cannot find the right words; but surely you would know all, were it not that some defects hold you back.
the darkness and the desolation are sure to be ours, but it is only illusionary. is not the self pure, bright, bodiless, and free,—and art thou not that? the daily waking life is but a penance and the trial of the body,58 so that it too may thereby acquire the right condition. in dreams we see the truth and taste the joys of heaven. in waking life it is ours to gradually distill that dew into our normal consciousness.
then, too, remember that the influences of this present age are powerful for producing these feelings. what despair and agony of doubt exist to-day in all places. in this time of upturning, the wise man waits. he bends himself, like the reed, to the blast, so that it may blow over his head. rising, as you do, into the plane where these currents are rushing while you try to travel higher still, you feel these inimical influences, although unknown to you. it is an age of iron. a forest of iron trees, black and forbidding, with branches of iron and brilliant leaves of steel. the winds blow through its arches and we hear a dreadful grinding and crashing sound that silences the still small voice of love. and its inhabitants mistake this for the voice of god; they imitate it and add to its terrors. faint not, be not self-condemned. we both are that soundless om; we rest together upon the bosom of master. you are not tired; it is that body, now weak, and not only weak but shaken by the force of your own powers, physical and psychical. but the wise man learns to assume in the body an attitude of carelessness that is more careful really than any other. let that be yours. you are judge. who accepts you, who dares judge but yourself? let us wait, then, for natural changes, knowing that if the eye is fixed where the light shines, we shall presently know what to do. this hour is not ripe. but unripe fruit gets ripe, and falls or is plucked. the day must surely strike when you will pluck it down. you are no longer troubled by vain fears or compromises. when the great thought comes near enough, you will go. we must all be servants before we can hope to be masters in the least.
i have been re-reading the life of buddha, and it59 fills me with a longing desire to give myself for humanity, to devote myself to a fierce, determined effort to plant myself nearer the altar of sacrifice. as i do not always know just what ought to be done, i must stand on what master says: "do what you can, if you ever expect to see them." this being true, and another adept saying, "follow the path they and i show, but do not follow my path," why then, all we can do, whether great or small, is to do just what we can, each in his proper place. it is sure that if we have an immense devotion and do our best, the result will be right for them and us, even though we would have done otherwise had we known more when we were standing on a course of action. a devoted chela once said: "i do not mind all these efforts at explanation and all this trouble, for i always have found that that which was done in master's name was right and came out right." what is done in those names is done without thought of self, and motive is the essential test.
so i am sad and not sad. not sad when i reflect on the great ishwar, the lord, permitting all these antics and shows before our eyes. sad when i see our weakness and disabilities. we must be serene and do what we can. ramaswamier rushed off into sikkhim to try and find master, and met someone who told him to go back and do his duty. that is all any of us can do; often we do not know our duty, but that too is our own fault; it is a karmic disability.
you ask me how you shall advise your fellow student. the best advice is found in your own letter to me in which you say that the true monitor is within. that is so. ten thousand adepts can do one no great good unless we ourselves are ready, and they only act as suggestors to us of what possibilities there are in every human heart. if we dwell within ourselves, and must live and die by ourselves, it must follow that60 running here and there to see any thing or person does not in itself give progress. mind, i do not oppose consorting with those who read holy books and are engaged in dwelling on high themes. i am only trying to illustrate my idea that this should not be dwelt on as an end; it is only a means and one of many. there is no help like association with those who think as we do, or like the reading of good books. the best advice i ever saw was to read holy books or whatever books tend to elevate yourself, as you have found by experience. there must be some. once i found some abstruse theological writings of plotinus to have that effect on me—very ennobling, and also an explanation of the wanderings of ulysses. then there is the g?ta. all these are instinct with a life of their own which changes the vibrations. vibration is the key to it all. the different states are only differences of vibration, and we do not recognize the astral or other planes because we are out of tune with their vibrations. this is why we now and then dimly feel that others are peering at us, or as if a host of people rushed by us with great things on hand, not seeing us and we not seeing them. it was an instant of synchronous vibration. but the important thing is to develop the self in the self, and then the possessions of wisdom belonging to all wise men at once belong to us.
each one would see the self differently and would yet never see it, for to see it is to be it. but for making words we say, "see it." it might be a flash, a blazing wheel, or what not. then there is the lower self, great in its way, and which must first be known. when first we see it, it is like looking into a glove, and for how many incarnations may it not be so? we look inside the glove and there is darkness; then we have to go inside and see that, and so on and on.
the mystery of the ages is man; each one of us. patience is needed in order that the passage of time61 required for the bodily instrument to be altered or controlled is complete. violent control is not as good as gentle control continuous and firmly unrelaxed. the seeress of prevorst found that a gentle current did her more good than a violent one would. gentleness is better because an opposition current is always provoked, and of course if that which produces it is gentle, it will also be the same. this gives the unaccustomed student more time and gradual strength.
i think your fellow-student will be a good instrument, but we must not break the silence of the future lest we raise up unknown and difficult tribes who will not be easy to deal with.
every situation ought to be used as a means. this is better than philosophy, for it enables us to know philosophy. you do not progress by studying other people's philosophies, for then you do but get their crude ideas. do not crowd yourself, nor ache to puzzle your brains with another's notions. you have the key to self and that is all; take it and drag out the lurker inside. you are great in generosity and love, strong in faith, and straight in perception. generosity and love are the abandonment of self. that is your staff. increase your confidence, not in your abilities, but in the great all being thyself.
i would to god you and all the rest might find peace.
z.
