War letters from the living dead man

LEST anyone should think that in working for brotherhood I am either knowingly or inadvertently striving to bring about a state of lax acquiescence in the wrongs committed by my fellowmen, by my brothers, I want to talk about justice.

As one who has been a so-called Judge in a court of justice, I have had some little experience in the practical working out of a balance between mercy and severity. Justice is one of the gods that I have always placed high in my personal pantheon, and never in handing down a decision did I, through weakness or sentimentality, hamper the right of the good in order to pander to the wrong of evil. I have given mild judgments when most good seemed to be promised that way; I have given severe judgments when it seemed to me that evil would be best curbed that way.

Much nonsense has been talked and written about universal brotherhood, as about most of the other ideals of mankind. Universal brotherhood is not universal acquiescence in evil; it is universal acceptance of the ideal of good. And you will never have a brotherhood worthy of the name until you raise, not lower, the standard of justice.

Justice is balance, justice is equilibrium between forces, justice is poise. It is because I hope to see a more poised humanity that I am urging men to concentrate upon love instead of upon hate.

Since I have been stationed in Europe and in the immediate neighborhood of the western battlefields, I have helped hundreds of souls to help themselves through the terrible astral conditions into which a sudden and premature dropping of their physical bodies has precipitated them; but in no case have I tried to upset the balance between cause and effect by helping a soul to a freedom for which it was not prepared. I have let men suffer when I could have shortened their suffering; I have let many souls work out in the astral world the slow battle with their lower desires, because I knew that if they were plucked from the tree of pain before they were ripe, they would have to go through it all anyway and battle harder in another life with those very forces which now by their suffering they were severing in the region where—from the very limitation of satisfactions—elementary desires are more easily starved out than on the earth.

There was in one of the armies a very cruel officer who was hated by his men. He came out here and many of the men came out here, and I made no attempt to protect him from their reproaches, because he needed to learn that injustice deserves reproach. On earth their mouths had been stopped by army discipline, but out here he had to realize how much he had wronged them. He could never have realized it in any other way. Had I preached to him he would have told me to mind my own business. The law of justice does not preach. It demonstrates. He had to endure the demonstration of his own injustice through the dark and reproachful shadows by which he was long surrounded. And I may say in passing that he is still surrounded by them. I have made no effort to help him. Perhaps I could have done so; but such determined opposition on my part to the law of justice might have let him go forward into his own selfish heaven with such a load of injustice on his soul that in his next earthly life he would have been crushed by it. The resentment of these men was very deep, and while I might have softened it for their sake—not his—I let it work itself out.

Had there been no one else needing my help and deserving it more, I might have spent a long time with these men and yet made little impression. I did exactly as I should have done on earth had such a case come before me, and I believe that I did right.

Whenever I see a soul afflicted by the unjust judgments of others I seek to set the balance true, as I should have done on earth; but I am not here to upset the law of cause and effect. When I can help, I help; but I am more useful in preventing the setting up of evil causes than I could ever be in deflecting the legitimate course of effects.

When I urge men to help the Masters in holding back the awful karma of Germany, I am not talking sentimentally. I am talking as a just judge. The German people have been deceived by their leaders and have followed blindly a course they have not understood. Collectively they are responsible to the other races, but individually they are not responsible in the same degree; for they have been themselves deceived, and they do not know that their cause of national aggression is unjust and of satanic origin.

It is the hope of those Teachers who can watch from the outside and above, that the docile German people should not be forever hated by the world because the arrogant war-party has hurled them at their neighbors. I am not condoning the unlovely traits in the German character, or in the character of any other people; but of all the races engaged in this gigantic struggle, the German race knows least about the causes that hurled it forward. A spoon-fed press and the penalties of lèse majesté have kept them from knowing anything which could have made them less flexible instruments in the hands of their leaders.

The karma of those whose headstrong and arrogant policy precipitated this war is an individual karma, and it will have to be worked out by individual suffering and so-called punishment; but the karma of the great mass of the German people is a race karma. They have let themselves be led on to their own defeat. Think how the very law of reaction will throw the light of popular and democratic investigation into the darkest nooks and crannies of the German nation and government after this war. Those who have been deceived to their hurt will demand to be deceived no more. In twenty years the life of the German government will be as open as that of the United States. The so-called “muck-raker” will arise with a lantern on his hat.

Also by the law of reaction England will be shaken out of her sluggishness that has filled her shops with the wares of other countries because she was too slack to make her own.

By that same law a demand will arise for an uncorrupt political machine in France. One or two things have happened in France which she prefers for the moment to keep to herself.

The great shock of this war will cause each nation to examine itself more closely, to look into its own motives, to see wherein it fails to come up to the very exigeant standard demanded by the New Time.

Look also for changes in Russia, and Austria will be but another name for change.

Justice will advance many paces by reason of the great injustice of this war. The Law of Opposites again! Most things can be explained by that law.

In writing about the reign of brotherhood which I hope to see established in the world, I am not laboring under the delusion that an impossible Utopia is about to be ushered in with a blare of trumpets. I am not recording a prophecy that the Kingdom of Heaven is immediately at hand. The human race is not ready for the Kingdom of Heaven, and will not be ready for a long time; but if one person in ten can be made to realize that brotherhood is an ideal to be striven for, they can leaven the other nine-tenths and make the loaf of human society much lighter and more palatable than it is at present. The loaf will not become fruit-cake all at once. That is too much to expect of the next race; but if you can carry the memory of this prophecy through a sufficient number of births and deaths, you may see a very sweet loaf come from the planetary oven when the second race following, the Seventh, is brought forth into the light of the sun.