War Letters From the Living Dead Man

LETTER I. The Return of “x”

THE RETURN OF “X”

IN a far away star I heard the command: “Go back to the earth, and learn the mysteries of love and hate.”

I did not know to what I was going, but went as commanded.

As I neared the earth an army of angry beings sought to bar my way. “What are you doing here?” they cried. “This is our field, and we brook no interference.”

I called to the Teacher, and he stood beside me. Even he was grave at the power of the forces before us.

“It has come,” the Teacher said; “it has come suddenly, after a long preparation.”

Wrath is a cosmic force, and hate is a cosmic force, and love is a cosmic force, and fear is a cosmic force. Did you think that love was a pretty sentiment? Did you think that hate was a mere annoyance? I have seen the sources of wrath and hate and love and fear, and that my experience may be of use in helping men to understand the forces working in and behind the race, I have made the effort to write for the world again.

This war is more than a war of men; it is more than a war of angels. Its roots are in Necessity itself.

A new race has to be born, and races like men are born in the pain and the blood of their predecessors. But as “the curse of Eve” came through her listening to the envious serpent of evil, so this curse has come upon the world through mankind’s listening to the suggestions of envy and hate from the forces of evil within and around the world.

I have seen those forces in forms, I have faced them and wrestled with them. I am strong because I have struggled.

I came back to the world nearly five weeks before war was declared on earth, but war was already declared in the spaces above the earth. As the nations had long been getting ready their forces, so the entities outside were ready and in arms. The demons who met me--for they were demons--had triumph in their eyes.

A beginning had been made, a seed of anger sown in the heart of Austria. And the seed was watered in the ground by those who felt that their harvest was approaching.

You must understand that evil is co-existent with good so long as the egos of men evolve. The forces of good and the forces of evil are complementary. They are in actual forms, they have acquired egos; their concentration on their work would shame the greatest geniuses among men.

But they too are consciously or unconsciously servants of that Cosmic Will whose designs we call the will of God.

I have learned much since the days when I entertained you with stories of the newly-dead who had died serenely in their beds and had gone out into the astral world as into an adjoining room. A million souls have gone out recently, shocked, torn, mangled, buffetted by their own hate and the hate of those who sought to destroy them.

Pity those who have died even tranquilly during the last eight months. They have passed through a region of torment--those who have passed through. Many have remained below, spun round and round in the whirlpool with those who died by war.

Had I not a great purpose, and the conviction of a great mission, in thus revealing the secrets of the other world at this time, I should not harrow your feelings by a recital of what I have seen and sometimes taken part in since my return from that journey among the stars.

Comfort yourself--if you need comfort--by my assurance that the race is passing through a rite of initiation. Those who have died in the service of an unselfish enthusiasm will in time rebody themselves and reap on the earth the fruits of their service. But not all who have died have been filled with this enthusiasm. Many have hated for hate’s own sake. They are the ones who have failed.

Pity them if you must, but it is better not to think about them. They are the willing victims of the demons who sought to bar my way, when I was commanded to return to the world and learn the mysteries of love and hate.

Love! Yes, there has been more love born of this war than the earth has known in all the two thousand years of Christianity. For the human race is awake at last, and that it may not go to sleep again is my purpose in once more breaking through the wall that separates me from you.

March 5, 1915.

LETTER II. A Dweller on the Threshold

A DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD

THERE was one demon who seemed to be a leader of demons. He was unlike many of the others--more personal, more egocentric.

As we stood opposite each other I entered into conversation with him, partly to satisfy my curiosity, partly to throw him off his guard.

“Who are you?” I asked. “You seem to be a ruler among your kind.”

He straightened himself with pride.

“I am indeed a ruler,” he said, “a ruler on earth and up here.”

“On earth also?” I queried.

“Yes, also on earth,” he answered, “for I am the deeper self of a man who is great among men, a man who will follow my will as others follow his will.” Then he made a claim which startled me, and I forbear to repeat it.

“If you are the evil self of a man still living,” I demanded, “how do you stand as a separate entity up here? How are you apart from him?”

“You are somewhat ignorant,” he said to me.

“I am ignorant of many things,” I admitted. “Instruct me in any way you can. I have a thirst for knowledge.”

“Know then,” he said pompously, “that I broke away from the earthly form that had enchained me when he acknowledged my ruler-ship and worshipped me as his genius.”

“He set you free?” I asked.

“He set me free by acknowledging me as his Master. His knowledge is even less than yours, and he called me by a name that I despise; but so long as I rule I care not the name I rule by. Or I care little,” he corrected himself. “But such things as these are too deep for you!”

“I am deeper than you think,” I asserted, “and I have met your kind before.”

“My kind maybe, but not my equals. I am a King among spirits.”

“I had observed your crown,” I said, “it has a familiar look.”

During this colloquy the Teacher had stood silently by, but now I turned to him with an unspoken question. He led me aside a little way, and said:

“When a man exalts himself too much, he sets free the demon within him. He often thinks that he rules the demon, and sends him on errands through the Invisible; but it is really the demon who commands, and the commands of the man are only echoes.”

“And it took this vision of hell to teach me that!” I exclaimed.

“What you would have learned in due time by reason or by precept, you now learn by example,” the Teacher said. “You have truly beheld the evil self of a great ruler.”

“It is very powerful,” I admitted.

“It will grow in power for a time,” the Teacher said, “and then it will go to Gehenna.”

“And when will it go to Gehenna?”

“When peace returns to the world, after the war is exhausted up here. But the war will be exhausted up here before peace returns to the world.”

“What war is about to be fought?” I asked.

“The greatest war of all time,” the Teacher said, “the greatest war of all time up here, and also on the earth.”

“And when will it begin?”

“It is already begun here, as you have seen. Had you not been far away you would have known it before.”

“I have indeed been far away,” I said. “An angel has shown me many stars, and I have learned much.”

“The angel kept you away from the world until you should be strong enough, and rested enough, to work as well as learn.”

“And where does my work lie?” I asked.

“In many fields,” he answered. “But first you must fight your way through the astral world above Europe and save your friends who are in danger.”

Swimming the Hellespont was a minor feat compared to swimming that sea of devils, but I got through. A year before I could not have done it, perhaps, for the forces of good were overpowered. There is a tide in good and evil, as well as a tide in the sea. Evil was at the flood.

I saved one friend in danger, and saw that another was safe.

Back in the sea of hate, when I was nearly exhausted, the Beautiful Being, that angel who had been my guide so long, came and whispered something in my ear. It was a spur to ambition.

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