LETTER XXI
A RAMBLING TALK
November 15, 1917.
I AM not in a literary mood to-night, so I may talk in a rambling way.
I wonder if you know the seriousness of the enterprise which America has undertaken. You think you do. But before the matter is all threshed out at the end you may have surprises in store.
Do not worry about your things in London. London is large, and a good many bombs can fall without destroying any great portion of it.
Yes, I say emphatically again what I said some two years and a half ago, that there will be internal troubles in Germany—and in other places, too. The world is going to be made over. Do not be afraid. The making over of the world will not hurt you.
Humanity is so afraid of change! The race has gone through many changes—some of them in prehistoric times—more dramatic than the present change. Humanity has a long history, and little of it is recorded in books that you can read.
Yes, the world will be united, and the world will be cut up. That sounds like a paradox, perhaps.
As I am resting to-night, I may take the liberty of being disconnected. You ought always to live in a quiet place like this, a little remote from the centre of things. You do not belong in the bustle and crowd downtown, either in New York or any other large city. All those who have developed their inner senses should live a little apart. That does not mean that they should all become hermits; but they should live in the outskirts. When you feel a desire for the crowd you can go down into it.
Tell ————— not to worry because this book is going slowly. You are not working against time. The world will go on, and you will go with it. Make no mistake about that. The world is going very fast. All these new “psychic” books are an evidence that the world is going fast. A few years ago no publisher would have issued them.
I do not wonder that your head swims a little.
You have been impressed by “losing” so many personal friends since the war began, friends whose deaths seemed unconnected with the war. But they are of those who could not adjust to the new world that is coming. Their Silent Watchers are taking them out. You each have a Silent Watcher, a something, a part of you that is above and beyond you, yet which is the most real of all the parts of you.
The Watchers of the universe are watching more intently than usual. Your own is watching you as well as the world. It will give you notice when any important action is necessary.
It seems as if the world had adjusted itself to the idea that the dead may speak with the living. But that is only the beginning of knowledge.
When the worst of the war is over, and men begin to adapt themselves to peace, they will try to know themselves. And they will discover that their bodies and souls are only parts of them, that they exist on as many planes of being as there are planes of matter and of subtler substance, and that each of these selves is as real as the personality they see in the mirror. They will learn to form links between them, to build bridges of communication. Finally they will become consciously complete beings.
Joy is coming back to the world some day, such joy as the world has never known. You will one day be glad to be alive again, and I mean all of you.
Do not fret because you have to remain in America. At the moment America is a good place in which to be. The world is opening its eyes at the efficiency of America. She is setting an example that her friends will be ashamed not to follow. Some day she will set the highest example of all.