War Letters from the Living Dead Man by Elsa Barker Read Free Book Online Page B

Lucifer, Ahriman. Satwa , rajas , and tamas , again, under other names.
    You Kabalists have heard of Neshamah, Ruach, Nephesh: aspiration, individual intelligence, materiality.
    You have all heard of Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva: the Preserver, the Creator, the Destroyer. Yes, that is the proper order, for Vishnu preserves from kalpa to kalpa , and Brahma recreates.
    Krishna (Vishnu) says in the Bhagavad Gita , “I am the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings.”
    He is the One and the Many, for He is in the many and the many are in Him. You cannot realize Krishna save as you realize Him as the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings. You cannot realize the Christ until you can see Him in the hearts of all beings.
    Yes, you may struggle with one another and call it hate, or war; that is separateness.
    Separateness is necessary as a stage of evolution, that the ego may realize itself as distinct; but the time has come when the race should turn back toward its Source, to Unity, to the Atma that is the same in everyone.
    I have learned much since I last left you two years ago. On earth I did not talk incessantly of Universal Brotherhood. I wanted to achieve a “peerless individuality.” Well, I have achieved it. On my two years’ journey among the planets and elsewhere, I found the power I sought; but I found something else—love, the greatest power of all.
    Brotherhood is love and that is why I preach brotherhood. You may acquire individuality by hating, but not a “peerless individuality.”
    Do not be afraid of losing your identity. So long as you can love something other than yourself you will not lose your individuality. For to love something other is to posit your individuality.
    To love only your separate self is to lose your hold on individuality, for you are only an individual in relation to other selves. Alone in the universe, you would have to be nothing or everything, and you cannot be everything—not just yet, save as you are everything through unity with everything, and that is love.
    Rebel as you will; by that very rebellion against others you assert their equality with you, you assert their coexistence, and behind coexistence is Unity, Krishna—“the Self that is seated in the hearts of all beings.”
    Do not be shocked when I say that from our point of view this war seems very childish, very ignorant.
    War was noble a long time ago when mankind was on its way out and needed to realize separateness; but in course of time war will become not only unnecessary, but banal.
    I am not jesting with serious things. I know far better than you can know how very serious this war is, for I have watched it on both planes.
    The war between the forces of good and evil was not banal. In the human heart that war will go on for a long time yet, aeons on aeons; but the day has come when men should war with the evil in themselves, and let other men war with the evil in themselves. The sword of Mars, the war god, will not rust so long as the Mars in man wields it against the powers of darkness within himself.
    I have seen the powers of darkness in men exteriorized, have seen them in objective form, and I assure you they are foeman worthy of your steel. Each of you has within a foeman worthy of his steel.
    Each man has also the Self, the divine, the Christ, the Krishna that is seated in the hearts of all beings.
    I want to tell you something which I saw with my own eyes.
    On the battlefield in France, two soldiers killed each other with the bayonet. The devil in each escaped with the soul. They were not ordinary men. I saw these two devils, these two “dwellers on the threshold,” these two “desire-elementals,” call them what you will. Do you think they fell upon each other to destroy each other? Not at all. Each fell upon the soul it belonged to. They had no interest in each other; they had nothing to give or to take away from each other, these devils, dwellers, elementals.
    Do you see what I mean?
    Your