LETTER XIV
INVISIBLE ARMIES
May 23, 1917.
MANY of the soldiers out here who have become fully awake and self-conscious are striving to bring about those ends for which they gave their lives on earth. There are thus soldiers working on both sides of the war and on this side of the veil. Immediately after the change many of them fight each other; but they soon learn that they can do more effective work by giving attention to their comrades in the flesh. They can soothe and inspire and instruct.
We are forming an army out here. There is no lack of recruits. America must be saved, and few of you know how much America has to be saved from. But we know—we who have watched the world for the last two years and three-quarters.
It is not so terrible to die. It is really far more terrible to be born.
The army that we are recruiting here is made up of men of all ages—all ages in this life, I mean. Yes, there are women also in our army. There are some veterans of the Civil War and veterans of the War with Spain. Over the regiments and divisions of this army there are commanders, as over the armies of earth. Otherwise the work would lack unity of purpose. Ours is mostly a volunteer army, though conscription is not unknown among us.
You wonder what I mean? Do you not suppose that we can call a soul from a useless occupation and give him useful labor? We can and do, daily.
We have even recruited largely from the old and native Americans, the red skinned hunters and warriors who remain in such large numbers in the neighborhood of the earth. There is work which they only can do. There are many kinds of work and a great variety of workers.
I come and go, from coast to coast. I know what is doing on the shores of the Pacific, in the Atlantic States, on the Gulf of Mexico, and the Middle and Rocky Mountain States are familiar ground to me. I am renewing my youth in this period of activity. I am working for my country. I am in training, too.
Why do you smile? There is a training of the mind and the will that is more effective than any training of the physical body—quicker and more effective. Then too the astral body can be trained to a high degree of efficiency and elasticity. Surely I need not tell you this.
And I am training others. We old fellows can be very useful in a time like this. I am glad now that I came out when I did, that I went through my novitiate while the world was still at peace and there was leisure for many things which now I should not have time for. I had a delightful holiday. I hunted through the wilds of the invisible, and fished in the waters of space; but now I am back at my work again.