LETTER XLIV
POISON GASES
TO-NIGHT I shall not prate to you of charity. Instead, we will speak of east winds and poison gases, and the demons that ride on poison gases.
All hell is again let loose upon the world. It is worse out here than during the month before the war.
For eleven days I have not been with you. I have had no time for eleven days to spend even an hour with you.
Were you strong enough to hear what I could tell, you would never publish it for the world; but I can tell you much which you are strong enough to hear and which the world is worthy to know.
East winds and poison gases! The very idea seems infernal, for men die in indescribable agony from the gases borne on those winds from the German camps over to those camps where rational human beings wage war by human means. But poison gases are demonic, and demons ride on them.
I have seen them come rolling forward in droves, their eyes aflame with hate, their mouths horrible with rancor and triumph.
Oh, you safe there as yet in your native land! could you see behind the trenches of the enemy, could you see what lurks in the air above the camps of the enemy, you would even pity the enemy. I may tell you that many out there are stark raving mad.
When human beings, invoking the powers of hate, send such hell-fumes to choke and torture their fellow-beings, they have ceased to be quite human.
I, who see their souls, am sick with horror. It is perhaps well that you are alone now, for I may tell you things which you can best endure alone.
Were it not for the work which you have to do in future, were it not for this work and that which is to follow, I should take you out and away from the world for good, as far as this life is concerned. * * *
But you must endure to the end, as I shall endure to the end; for you have work to do.
Those who say that all is well in Germany lie in their throats, or they are hypnotized by the lie that holds Germany to the belief that she can conquer.
Could hell conquer heaven all souls would be destroyed. Should hate conquer now the world would be broken asunder.
Hate! You know not the meaning of the word. Hate of England, hate of America, hate of Italy! The race that inspired this war is poisoned to the last molecule with hate. Babes imbibe it with their mothers’ milk and their stomachs turn sour. Children see it in their parents’ eyes, and shrink away in fear of their own source. No, you know not the meaning of hate.
On the poison gases borne by the east wind there came across to me a demon with no eyes. Where did he come from? From some subterranean hell where no light is, and therefore no need for eyes. Could I draw, I could make you see him; but words were devised to express those things which are known in the experience of the race, and no one who has seen such things has used language to describe them. Groping his way, that astral monster fastened himself upon a human victim, a prisoner in the hands of the French—one who had spit at his keepers in the madness of hate.
No, I must not tell you what followed; but the astral soul of the prisoner went out of his body and remained out.
This attempt to tell the world what I know now is like trying to play Beethoven on a penny whistle. I feel as a mathematician would feel should he set himself down to teach addition to small children. I dare not tell you more than I do, for you could not contain it.
The world is old, and the world deemed itself wise, and the world has come to this!
There are many earnest souls who desire experience in the astral world. I have heard one say in your presence that a certain attack was “only astral.” I listened, and said no word.
Do you know what the astral world is, you who seek knowledge of it? The astral world is the world of feeling, the world of emotion, the world of love and hate. The astral world at this time is so thick with evil passions that one could cut it with a knife. It is often cut with knives now, with bayonets, and the crowding demons suffer from contact with the steel. “Only astral!” The astral world above New York, awful as you know it to be, is nothing to the astral world above those battlefields. Keep away! You can do no good there. If possible, go up among the mountains and seek in the pure breath of the pine-trees healing from the poison of the astral world above New York. Go there and stay there until the pressure is exhausted. You can do no good either where you are.
I can write better in the pure air of the pine woods. Get away from the poison fumes of unneutral New York, for devils ride on the winds of hate, and you are not to be destroyed by them.
You have work to do in the future.
May 27.