LETTER XVIII
ORDER AND PROGRESS
July 18, 1917.
OUR purpose is to make the changes that must come, come gradually. We want to avoid sudden changes.
You in the world have no faint idea of the influence and power we can wield on our side. We can speak to the minds of men without their knowing whence the ideas come. They think, when a sudden idea comes into their minds, that they have evolved it; but sudden ideas generally come from outside. (I put one in your mind this morning, then ran away before you could recognize me. Why did I run away? Because I wanted you to use your own judgment.)
Just at present we are trying to encourage America as to her future—her orderly and peaceful future, after peace is declared in Europe.
You may as well know that there are many out here who are anxious about the future of the world. All men do not cease to worry when they have left their bodies. There are many here who think the world is going to smash. They always had that fear in life whenever things seemed to go wrong; and now they are no less inclined to accept every perplexity as an omen of failure and confusion.
All over America there are men and women—and many of them are in pulpits and on platforms—who are croaking away about the destruction of society following this war. Bless your troubled hearts! Society is not going to be destroyed. Some elements in society will be gradually done away with, and good riddance to them! But society has made too great advance, in mechanical and intellectual ways, to permit its structure to be pulled from beneath its feet.
Do not worry. Watch out, but do not worry. As Abraham Lincoln once prevented this country from being territorially divided and thus weakened, so he and others are now working to prevent a spiritual division that would be even more disastrous.
No, we are not going to see your useful inventions and your structures that the future has need of, cast into the rubbish heap by reckless violence and extravagance. What is useful must be conserved. What is useless for the future can be made over into something useful.
Humanity has not been in the habit of taking sudden jumps. It has put one foot regularly before the other, and gone ahead rather steadily. The way of man in the past has been to improve and make over, rather than suddenly to discard its institutions, or even its garments. Only that which is really worn out is cast away. And our financial system, and our social system in general, will be improved and not discarded. Did you think we were going back to wampum? Oh, no!
There is a strong pull from this side, and from those who inhabited your continent, to simplify the life in America. But America is no longer isolate. She has now taken her place in the republic of nations.
Some of the souls who used to be American Indians would like to see America resume wigwams and campfires, because those souls want to come back, and they dread the complexity of modern American life. But there are teachers here—and some of them red teachers—who can instruct the souls behindhand in adaptability.
I have told you that there is an influence tending to draw America backward. But I have not told you to be panicky regarding the fact. There are reactionaries—even in your world.
The influence from this side is subtle. But the majority here who desire to lead the world, desire to lead it forward and not back. The world will go forward.
Yes, the souls you call the “departed” are organizing themselves. They realize that their influence can be more effective if it has a purpose and a program. For a time after the war began there was great confusion out here, but things are becoming more orderly. Minds are becoming more united. Many of us who have common sense and some measure of political judgment give most of our time to lecturing here and there, wherever we can draw a crowd together. That is one reason why you have seen me so seldom of late. I have been busier than ever before. Knowing that a time is coming soon when I can rest from my present labors, I am using my strength as fast as I generate it. For those whom I convince that America and other countries are going forward—must go forward to greater activity—seek to convince others in their turn. No lecturer on earth ever had so busy a month as I have had this last month. I have spoken to hundreds several times every day, going from place to place, from State to State, from city to city. I can speak in San Francisco in the morning, in New York at noon, in New Orleans at two o’clock, in Butte, Montana, in the evening. I am not limited to railway time-tables, nor do I pay my fare.
Believe me, we are going to save America, and we are going to save the world. For the Masters are behind us, and they will not let the world be destroyed.
I should not like you to know how near it has been to destruction more than once during the last three years. But the forces of premeditated evil against which we fought so long have been scattered now, and though they have not been destroyed, their effect has been greatly lessened. What we have reason to fear now is the unwisdom of those who believe they wish good to the world—the unwisdom of fanatics and agitators and fuss-budgets of all sorts, stirring up confusion and darkening counsel with their unpractical and conflicting ideas.
Order, order, order! That is what the world must strive for in the period of reaction which will follow this war. The reaction must be reckoned with; but it will be only a brief rest of overwearied hearts, who will again begin building.
It is in that building period that I hope for America, because she will be less tired than the other members of the great world brotherhood. But in America at that time there will be a danger. I tell you that, lest you be taken unawares and relax your attention.
Be watchful, but not over-anxious.
And trust the Masters of Life somehow to lead you through.