Theosophy - BECAUSE:- For the Children Who ask Why
BECAUSE
-
FOR
THE CHILDREN WHO ASK WHY ΔΔ
Published
in The Magazine "THEOSOPHY" in 1916
PREFACE
Chapter
-1- God
Chapter
-2- Modes
of Consciousness
Chapter
-3- Karma
– Law
Chapter
-4- Reincarnation
Chapter
-5- Death
Chapter
-6- Prayer
Chapter
-7- How
Worlds Began
Chapter
-8- The
Masters
Chapter
-9- Former
Continents
Chapter
-10- Fairies
Chapter
-11- Ghosts
– Seven-fold Nature of Man
Chapter
-12- Dreams
Chapter
-13-
Devachan and Birth
Chapter
-14-
Seeds
Chapter
-15- Applications
PREFACE
This
little book is intended to serve as a guide to the mother who wishes to teach
her children the basic facts of life, the purpose of life, and the laws of living
it. While many books for children have been written with these Theosophical
ideas in mind, the principles have been often so obscured by story and diversion,
that no clear ideas have been gained. In this book, the principles are insisted
on to the exclusion of story interest, with the idea that each mother in her
own way, and according to the nature of her child, may impart – maybe
learn at the same time – the teaching more clearly and comprehensively
than any other mother could possibly impart it. The work is in reality for the
mother the principles here given are undiluted Theosophy as written down by
H.P.Blavatsky; the applications in many instances as taught by her colleague,
Wm. Q. Judge, and further passed on by one who followed in their footsteps,
- in gratitude to each of whom this little book is written by
A Student. (Edited by Robert Crosbie (1849-1919)
BECAUSE-
For the Children Who Ask Why
Dorothy
and Milton Steward were two very forlorn and miserable little people, as they
sat with their father, riding on the train to Aunt Eleanor's house. Things
had been all so strange and wrong since their mother went to bed. They could
not see her, and someone was always saying, "Hush!" if they spoke much above
a whisper. Even when they tried to be quiet, looking at their books, one was
sure to fall most unexpectedly, so that they jumped and made more noise than
ever. And now, after all their trying, Mother had gone away without kissing
them good-bye – gone on a long, long journey, their father said, to get
rested and well.
Father
always was sober and quiet when Mother wasn't home, but now – seemed as
if he just completely forgot they were with him at all. Freddy Baker's mother
had come down to the train to see them off, and she cried and hugged them up
and called them "Poor little dears!" which was just the way they felt. Someway,
a lump seemed to be right where they swallowed, all the time, and it didn't
go away even when they saw out of the car window the cunningest little red colts
kick up their heels and run away from the train back into the pasture.
Finally,
Milton dropped off to sleep, and knew no more till he opened his eyes looking
into Aunt Eleanor's rosy face. Then he knew he felt better, and smiled up at
her. Aunt Eleanor kept him under one mothering arm, and Dorothy under the other
all the way to her house, in the carriage – and it felt so good. And when
Father said they were going to stay with Aunt Eleanor now while Mother was away,
they knew they would choose to be with her before anybody else but their own
sweet mother. Father would come and stay with them too, after a while, he promised,
but for now they were content just to look at Aunt Eleanor's bright face and
to feel that she loved them.
Such
good friends and chums they got to be with Aunt Eleanor, as the days went by!
Someway, she never was impatient when they asked her why – and there were
so many whys! That is the reason some of their talks together are written down
here. Every little boy and girl has many whys, and perhaps Dorothy and Milton
have found the answers for those very whys. Who knows?
CHAPTER
1
GOD
One Sunday morning Milton ran in to Aunt Eleanor from the yard where he and
Dorothy had been playing catch. Chester, the boy next door, had called out to
them, "You'd better stop playing ball on Sunday. God doesn't
want you to. It's bad – and he'll punish you, if you do."
Milton
had replied – "Well, who's God? Is he a policeman?"
"Bigger'n
that," said Chester. "And he made the whole world and everything."
"H'm
– well, who made God? Was Milton's question.
Chester
said – "I've got to go now." As he turned toward the
house, Milton whispered to Dorothy: "I think I'll go ask Aunt Eleanor
about this God man of Chester's."
Dorothy
said: "I guess there must be some God, anyway. I heard Papa and Mamma
talk about God one day, and they said that they didn't want to tell us
about the kind of a God they had taught them, and we'd better find out
about such things for ourselves."
"Well,
I guess it must be time to find out now, sister. Do you believe it's
wrong to play catch on Sunday because anybody says so? Aunt Eleanor will know,
if anybody does."
Aunt
Eleanor was reading when he came in, but she put her book down when she saw
Milton's face all one eager question mark.
"What
is it now, son? she smiled at him.
"Why,
Aunt Eleanor, Chester says God will punish us if we play ball on Sunday. Please,
is it wrong to play ball on Sunday – and who is God, anyway?
"One
at a time," laughed Aunt Eleanor. Especially as your last question might be
answered forever and not be done. But now, let's see – before we answer
your first question, can't we find out what is doing right – and
what is doing wrong?
"Each
one has to decide for himself, I think. You see, what might be quite wrong for
Chester would be all right for you. If Chester played ball on Sunday, when he
thinks it is wrong, when it would be a cause of disturbance to his parents who
think its wrong, he then would be doing wrong to play. But you would be doing
no wrong to play, because it seems just as right to do so on Sunday what is
right on any other day. You know it does not annoy those who are taking care
of you, and that they even like you to have the exercise. What you can see harms
no one in the world can not be wrong."
But,
Auntie, why does Chester pick out Sunday to be so 'specially good in?"
"Long
years ago, people thought there was a great Being who made the world in six
days, and rested on the seventh. And so they, too, spent the seventh day in
rest, or rather in worshipping this Being whom they called God. There are people
who still believe that way, but, as a matter of fact, this earth of ours took
millions of years to become – to grow as we see it. It isn't that
the ancient Bible story is not correct, but the people have misunderstood it
from lack of knowledge. I'll have to try to tell you more of how worlds are
made, some day. However, one day out of seven for rest is a great help to all
of us. There are thousands of people who do nothing but drudge except for that
one day. And it is wise generally to do then things not done the rest of the
week. So we get a change, and freshened up for the ordinary daily round of duties."
"Then
God doesn't have the say of what's right or wrong, Auntie?"
"Well,
now, you see, we have to know what God is. I said each one must decide for himself
what is right and wrong. Each one must think for himself. Each one really is
a Thinker – a Perceiver – looking on all things, yet himself the
same Perceiver, the same one who thinks. That is the only God we can ever know,
who can ever punish us. It's not a God outside. We ourselves – those Perceivers
– are really God. We punish ourselves – we reward ourselves –
whether we realize it or not – and we cannot escape either the reward
or the punishment. Especially must we never forget that it's the same God in
every person we know or meet or hear of."
"But
is it always there, Aunt Eleanor? Did I have it when I was a baby, and will
I have it next year just the same as now?"
"It
is always and always, dear. You don't have it, because it's really what
you are. Aren't you Milton just the same now that you were when you were
a baby? And next year, you won't be anyone else but Milton, will you? You'll
know more then than you do now, of course, but the Milton who knows the more
is just the same Milton who can know ten times as much and still be the same
Milton."
"But
I'll be taller then, Aunt Eleanor, and stronger?"
"Your
body will, dear child. But I'm trying to tell you you are not that body.
Don't you see, you can't be, because if you were, you would be somebody else
when you got into long trousers? And in fact, there won't be a bit of your body
as it is now in the body you will have when that time comes."
"But
why does my body change so?"
"Well,
dear, do you know there is nothing under the sun that does not change excepting
that one thing which you are – the one thing Dorothy is –
the one thing I am – and everyone else is, I say it is the Perceiver.
And there is another name others call it – Consciousness – God,
indeed only you see, it is not at all the large-sized man-God that Chester thinks.
It is really this God – this Consciousness – this Perceiver –
this Inner part of ours that makes the changes in our bodies. We do not realize
it – but it is That which causes everything to be done."
"Does
That tell us what is the right thing to eat? Is it – when we want something
so awfully our mouths water – That tells us?"
"Exactly.
If our tastes are not dulled by artificial foods. And our bodies are made from
the food we eat. It is really a wonderful story – how the little thinkers
all through our bodies set about their work and do it for us. People call them
cells, and membranes, and tissues, and many other things, but they too are Thinkers
in their way."
"Oh,
Auntie, do you mean everything is a Thinker?"
"Everything
dear, in the wide, wide world. Only there are different kinds of thinking. The
stone doesn't think as much as the plant, you see. The plant doesn't
think as much as the animal, and not even the wisest animal thinks as you do,
dear, because he doesn't know he's thinking. He doesn't know,
for instance, even that he is an animal and you are a boy."
"But
won't he sometime ever know?"
"Yes,
he will – ages and ages from now, when the men of now have grown so wise
they'll go to some other earth to learn. That is Life, dear, the ever
growing, the ever becoming something bigger and better and wiser. But enough
for this time, son. Now run and play."
CHAPTER
-2-
MODES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Dorothy and Milton were not beyond the joy of mud pies, and only the next day
after their learning from Aunt Eleanor that everything in its way is a Thinker,
as their practised fingers moulded the most luscious pumpkin pies, Dorothy burst
out –
"Why
Milton, do you suppose even these wee bits of grains of sand think? How can
they?"
"Well,
if everything thinks, they must someway. Oh, Aunt Eleanor" – he
called, as he spied her turning in at the gate.
"Yes
indeed, dear." she answered, slipping into the garden chair near by. "Of course,
it's a small kind of way the grain of sand thinks and gets experience and knowledge.
It's really just this rubbing up against other grains that is its knowing –
its living. And take a rock – made up of many such tiny particles that
to us seem so solid and quiet, men of science have found that all these particles
are in constant rapid motion about some central point – as we call it,
the thinker – the consciousness. And in that very rock beautiful crystals
form. This amethyst stone in my ring is a higher kind of thinking in some stone.
Out of rocks grow lichens – the first of the vegetable world. Growing
toward the sun and light is the way vegetables think. It isn't so hard to see
how animals think, of course, because we see how they are wise against danger
to themselves, and how they take care of their young."
"But
Aunt Eleanor, if a little baby lamb got lost, and suddenly saw a wolf that it
had never seen before – would it know the wolf was dangerous?" questioned
Dorothy.
"Yes,
indeed. I think, were you near by to watch, you would see it tremble a great
deal, and try to run on its wobbly legs. Something inside – what we call
instinct – would tell it the danger. Because other sheep and lambs before
him had suffered the cruelty of wolves, that knowledge became a part of the
knowledge, or nature, of all lambs. When you are older, I can explain to you
just why, but now it is enough to see that in the little lamb, the instinct
is much the same thing as in you, that which knows right from wrong, without
someone else first telling you. That's your Thinker, isn't it? Some
call it Conscience – as well as intuition."
"Oh,
Aunt Eleanor, was that it when I didn't go to ride with that man who offered
me all that nice candy? I wanted the candy, and I wanted to go to ride, and
you weren't here to ask, and he said we wouldn't be gone long – but I
just felt uncomfortable to do it. So I ran quick as ever I could into the house
and told Norah to lock the door."
"Surely
something inside told you, Dorothy girl, just as it did the lamb when the wolf
appeared – that there was danger. It may well be that you know a great
deal inside that you will gradually rediscover as time goes on. Many times you
have had new bodies on this earth – bodies that grew up, grew old and
died – while you went on with what you had learned to take other bodies
for learning more."
"But
Auntie, were we once somebody else?" asked Dorothy perplexedly.
"No,
never anyone but yourself – nor ever will be – though you have had
different names and different kinds of bodies. Always the 'I," the
thinker, the Perceiver is the same forever and ever. The 'I" simply
uses that body as an instrument for learning, just as we use a telescope to
see the stars with. So it is the 'I" that really has the knowledge
and experience of all the bodies it ever had. It is the knowledge of the 'I"
that is intuition – a memory of past lives, whether or not we can remember
them in our brains. We get our brain new every life – so we cannot expect
that to remember what it never experienced."
"Oh,
but I wish you could tell us about some other of the bodies we have had. Won't
you Auntie, some day?"
"
That, dears, I cannot do – but I will gladly tell you many things that
explain why you have just these bodies as they are now. Why, it is getting late!"
she stopped in surprise. "We must hurry to get those muddy little hands washed
in time for tea."
CHAPTER
-3-
KARMA – LAW
For
two days it rained fast and hard every minute, so that Dorothy and Milton had
to stay in the house, quite as much prisoners as was Robinson Crusoe on his
desert island. Surely Crusoe could not have rejoiced more to see the sail than
the children did, when on the third day the clouds broke, and a fresh wind scudded
them out of the way to let the sun through. Not many minutes passed in getting
on coats and caps and rubbers ready to go with Aunt Eleanor to see the swollen
river in the arroyo. All three of them fairly bounded along in their joy to
be out again in the fresh sweet air. The birds, too, were glad, and singing
away on the telephone wires and fences. And, Oh, how fine the river was when
they reached it at last after a scramble down the banks all soft and slidey
from the rain! To be sure, the water was noisy and muddy, and carried with it
all sorts of debris – but to watch it all and hear it was enough entertainment
to make up for the long indoor exile. On the way home, too, they discovered
several little ponds made by the rain – quiet and clear enough to reflect
the clouds sailing by.
"Throw
in a stone, Milton," said Aunt Eleanor," and let's watch what
happens. There – see how the circles spread out wider and wider from where
the stone dropped in. Now they have reached the shore. Wait – see them
go back again – back – ever smaller – to where the stone first
dropped! Do you know, that is always just what happens when any stone is thrown
by anyone into any pond? The stone makes a point of disturbance – from
which ripples go forth and return again to it. The falling of the stone is the
cause of the ripples – the ripples are the effect of that cause. If you
will remember just how and why it happened this time, you will have learned
the most important law anyone can ever know – no matter how wise or powerful
he may be. When you are older, indeed, you will learn to say it like this: '
Action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions.' Out to shore
was action of the water, back again to the same place from which it started
was reaction. But the most interesting thing about this law is that it acts
not only where we can see it, but it acts everywhere and all the time, and more
where we don't see it than where we see plainly. It works inside us just
the same as everywhere else outside. It is this law that we name Karma."
"Tell
us how it works inside, Auntie," asked Dorothy, as they then walked on.
"Well,
let us suppose that some little girl became angry at her brother and pushed
him off the step – that he stumbled and fell and received an injury to
his back which made him lame all his life. It would seem as if the little girl
got no bad reaction to herself from her anger but, of course, she did, for
she never could escape from the sorrow of having so harmed her brother."
"If
her brother had been teasing her though, and pulling her hair, maybe, wouldn't
she be right in getting angry?"
"No,
A wise man once said: ' There is no such thing as righteous indignation."
Nothing that anyone does or says should stir us to anger. If we see to it that
we do the right and kind thing by others, and remember it is only our own conduct
we need to criticize, I someway think that other people would soon find little
charm in trying to annoy us. If they find we cannot be annoyed, they'll
stop trying that kind of fun."
"But
the little boy, Auntie, how did he deserve so much punishment for just teasing
his sister?"
"That
is one of those ways for reaction harder to see, isn't it? Well, - he
did deserve it some way – no doubt of that. You see law would not be law
if it would work in some places and not in others. There is no happening –
no accident – really. Nothing merely happens – but it comes about
under law. It may be that this little boy was born with a tendency to annoy
others. It may be that in some other body he had lived in before, he had cruelly
teased some unfortunate person so that it resulted in a lasting harm. If that
were so, you can see he deserved similar suffering, can't you?"
"Oh,
but so long ago, Auntie, seems as if he might be excused, mightn't he?"
"And
who would excuse him, dear? No one but himself can excuse him. But even if some
other could and did, do you suppose he would have learned his lesson as well
as he has to when he himself meets the consequences of what he sees to be wrong
acts? The law often seems to us cruel, but it is only just and merciful, you
can see, if you remember we are in life and in bodies to learn – to become
wise – and then to teach others who know less than we do and who make
more mistakes. There are the same lessons for us all to learn, but some learn
more quickly than others."
"Oh,
yes, Auntie. Why, you know Willie Robbins at school seems never to get his lesson
in Geography, even when Miss Dole gives him an extra half hour just for that!
Why is he so slow, Auntie?"
"Dear
me, younkits – here we are at home," laughed Aunt Eleanor. "We'll have
to postpone the case of Willie Robbins, won't we?"
CHAPTER
-4-
REINCARNATION
Dorothy and Milton had started a real vegetable garden in Aunt Eleanor's
back yard. Dorothy was raising radishes and cucumbers, and Milton was growing
onions and string beans. Aunt Eleanor had been a faithful ally and adviser,
and the children spent many a busy hour digging and weeding and watering and
cultivating. They remembered seeing Mother and Father tending flower beds, but
they themselves had never grown things before.
"Aunt
Eleanor," exclaimed Dorothy one day, busy with her trowel, 'do you
remember that big flower bed Mamma had once, all clear white petunias in the
middle and a border of red geraniums? Milton and I loved to watch that bed.
Such tiny mites of seed Mamma sprinkled on the soft soil, and so many tiny plants
came up! They grew so fast that almost before we knew it, the buds had come,
and there were lovely, sweet, white blossoms. But when fall came, Jack Frost
killed the plants and they were all carried away and burned. Next spring Mamma
didn't make a garden, but the petunias came up just the same as if they
had been planted."
"Were
they just the same, Dorothy?" queried Aunt Eleanor, "were they just as
large as they were the year before, and were all the blossoms pure white?"
"No,
Auntie, I know they were smaller because they had no care, but I wanted to ask
you, why were some of the blossoms next time pink, and some with little red
spots?"
"Well,
Dorothy," said Aunt Eleanor, "do you know the answer to that question
will help us with the one you asked yesterday about Willie Robbins? For just
fancy that you and I and all of us are seeds, like the petunia seeds –
we, the Thinkers, I mean. We come into the world in babies' forms –
tiny plants – that grow up and blossom into manhood and womanhood, that
grow old, and wither and die – and like the dead petunia plants, become
ashes again. But we, the seeds, still live and when the soil and season are
right, we enter other tiny baby forms, grow up, and bloom with a little different
color, or fragrance, because beside us, there were other plants, or persons,
who influenced us for better or for worse – just as the petunias were
tinged with the color of the geraniums beside them. In their petunia way, they
gained knowledge of the geranium's ways, and when their seed sent up fresh
plants, these still kept the knowledge that the petunia life had gained.
"When
I was a little girl, I remember reading with delight the story of a drop of
water. It was drawn by the sun's rays out of the ocean, carried in a cloud
over the spreading country to a mountain top, there fell on loose earth, trickled
down a ledge to a tiny brook, with that travelled through meadow and forest
to a river, and then by towns and cities back again to the ocean. Again it was
drawn up by the sun into clouds, and this time fell down in a city street, found
a stream in the gutter where merry boys were sailing boats, finally found itself
in a long dark pipe, and again when day came, it was once more at home in the
ocean.
"Even
a drop of water is a Thinker in its way, has its own knowledge and experience.
But it doesn't know it is a drop of water it doesn't know it does service when
it frees some insect from a perilous position, or refreshes a forget-me-not.
Men and women, all human beings, know that they are human beings, know
when they are doing service, and only in that are they different from all the
other beings and lives in the world. The same laws govern us that govern the
plant and the drop of water. We take the same kind of a life journey to learn
about men and things and ourselves, and to help others like us and all below
us, - and we come again and again until we have learned all that this earth
can teach us – until we have given all the service that it needs.
"Now
sometimes we neglect our duties. For that we have to pay. In school, if you
do not study, you do not learn. In life, it is the same, and if we do not learn
the lesson in one life, we have to take up the same lesson in another body.
Some people are born with brighter minds than others they have earned promotion
to that sort of mind they have. And then some Thinkers have lived in more bodies
than have others, and so some people seem wiser than others just as children
in the eighth grade seem wiser than children in the second.
"Well,
then may we not imagine that Willie Robbins has had less opportunity to gain
experience in previous lives, or that sometime he neglected his opportunities
to learn, so that now his task is more difficult? Anyway, he has just the kind
of a mind he has earned, and he can train it, and earn a better mind both in
this life, and in other lives he has to live. But those who now have brighter
minds are not excused from helping him the more; he gives us in turn our opportunity
to be of service. We can most help those who know less than we know, and if
we refuse that help, or ridicule a stupid person, we may quite likely earn a
less active mind ourselves in some other life.
"I
think there is nothing we should all hold in our minds more carefully than this:
We are to learn our lessons well, not in order to surpass someone else, to gain
some prize, but that we may be the better able to help and teach others learn
well, because everything we have to do, we do in reality for all – for
all men and creatures everywhere. They and we are all a part of the great whole,
and if we learn well, we help all others to learn well, just by our own learning.
That is why doing a wrong and unkind thing brings so much trouble and sorrow;
whether we mean to or not, we cause disturbance to every being in the universe.
If everyone really did think and act for every other one, wouldn't it be the
happy, happy world? Let's try it, anyway – shall we?"
CHAPTER
-5-
DEATH
It was not until late in the summer that Dorothy's and Milton's father came
to see them. And before he came, they learned why he had seemed so silent and
so sad those last days at home. They knew it was Father's writing when they
brought the letter in to Aunt Eleanor one morning, and asked her eagerly as
she opened it, 'Is he coming, dear Aunt Eleanor?" Strangely enough, Aunt
Eleanor seemed sad, too, as she read, and there were tears in her eyes when
she drew them to her and said, "Yes, dears, your father will be here in just
one week. Run now and play on the joy of that."
So
they played and planned, with Father's coming uppermost in their minds, yet
wondering, too, why Aunt Eleanor was sad about it. At night, in their cosey
hour before the snapping fire on the hearth, they found out.
"Father
wants me to tell you, dears," began Aunt Eleanor softly, "that your sweet mother,
as you remember her, can never come back to you from her long journey. Like
the petunia plants we were talking of yesterday, her worn-out body has died
and gone, and she is free from all its sufferings. It was the journey of death
she took when you, dears, came to me.
"Father
could not bear the pain of telling you then, nor even now. But I think Mother's
girl and boy are wise enough and brave enough now to know, and they love her
enough to feel that they are always close to her, though they cannot see her
face. Her love for you and Father did not die with her body always that love
of you is a part of her soul, and even now she is happy in that love. So, too,
your love for her is a part of your soul. It doesn't die, because her body is
dead – and you can be happy in the love you remember and still have. Yes,
and you must try, dears, to be glad for Mother that kind Death came to her tired
body. She herself lives just as truly and even more happily.
"If
you were to leave me now and go across the hall, drawing the curtains together
so that I could no longer see you, you would not love me less, dears? I should
miss you from my side, but still you would love me, and I you. So it is with
Mother. Your bodies form a curtain through which she cannot look, because she
has not your sort of body to see through any longer – but she loves you
just the same, for love doesn't need to have eyes – it only feels
– and is of our very self that never dies."
Dorothy and Milton held their heads buried deep in Aunt Eleanor's shoulder,
as she talked gently on.
"And
now, you'll soon be going to bed and to sleep. Yet you never knew you slept,
did you, dears? You knew you were getting sleepy, but the next thing you knew,
you were awake again. You've seen other people sleeping, but you yourselves
don't know what sleeping is. It is just in the same way Mother went to sleep
in death, but she never knew death. She did not die. She merely
waked up again without the pain and tiredness.
"When
you are asleep, you don't know anything about what is going on in the street,
or downstairs, or in the very room. Your body is quiet and motionless –
quite dead, really – except that when you waken, you can set it going
again, like a clock that has run down and needs only winding. In sleep, we all
of us for a time leave our bodies behind us, and live in other bodies of our
souls. In them, we are free to do whatever we please, and we seek out our heart's
desires. Untouched by sorrow, we know and live with those we love, whether they
have bodies they can waken again, or not. Each night in sleep, then, I doubt
not you see and love both your father and your mother; I doubt not they both
love you and delight in you and teach you to be strong and brave and true."
"Oh,
but Auntie," sobbed Dorothy, "if in the morning we could only remember!"
"Yes,
but sometimes we do. Sometimes we waken remembering a dream touch, or kiss,
or word, so real we wanted not to wake. It is the realness – the feeling
of nearness – that is truly remembering, and oh, it is very sweet and
precious!"
They
sat then a few minutes before the fire, comforted and quiet. Only when Aunt
Eleanor tucked them in did Dorothy cry out"
"Oh,
but Mamma will never tuck us in again !"
"Try
not to cry, Dorothy dear. Just think that now you will lay your body down to
rest, while you yourself go where Mother is. Be with her by night, even though
you miss her by day. You, and not Mother, know Death, because you miss her bodily
presence. Then think, that sometime again, when you, too, have put off these
bodies like clothes that have grown ragged and old; when you, too, have had
a peaceful, happy rest away from the world where everyone is doing battle to
learn, - in newer, better bodies, you will have your mother again, in her newer,
better body – you will know again that happiness with her, now passed
away for a time. Goodnight, dear ones " – Aunt Eleanor murmured low, for
already the tired eyes had closed, and Dorothy and Milton were long on the way
to Dreamland.
CHAPTER
-6-
PRAYER
It was a red-letter day, when at last toward its close, Dorothy's and Milton's
father came. For a special treat they curled up beside him in front of the fire,
a whole hour beyond bedtime, and then he went upstairs with them, and tucked
each one into bed. Dorothy whispered to him as he kissed her:
"It
is so good to hug my dear father again," And Milton called after him sleepily:
"Show
you my new little cucumbers in the morning, Daddy."
Had
they but known it, Father joined Aunt Eleanor with more happiness in his heart
than he had felt for many a day. There was a glint of amusement in his eye,
when he said to her:
"I
notice the kiddies didn't have any 'Now I lay me" to say, Eleanor. I supposed
all respectable children said their prayers."
"Then
I'm afraid your children are very disrespectable, Richard," Aunt Eleanor answered,
"because I've been teaching them what makes such a prayer as 'Now I lay me,"
seem absurd. The picture of a Lord sitting on a high throne, with his hands
full of children's souls (evidently of some easily handled material of convenient
size) for which he finds a capacious pocket, in case the child doesn't waken
again – seems to me an insult to any child's intelligence. For the child
is a soul – a Perceiver – himself the Lord, one with the pervasive,
sustaining principle of all life and being – and the only God he can ever
know, or pray to. True prayer is really the command of that high God within
to the lower nature to become one with it. The usual prayer is a petition for
something not earned nor deserved. As if the law of our own being could
be suspended at our caprice!
"By
the way, I tried to transpose those little verses one day, so as to suggest
the right thought on going to sleep. I didn't have very good luck, for
it needs a poet, but I'll repeat them to you, and maybe you can catch
the idea.
I lay
my body down to sleep,
The while my soul doth vigil keep.
My
body lies all still the night,
My soul goes free in lands of light.
O, what I
learn, may I bring back
To guide upon this daily track
Of love and
duty, joy and pain –
And so God's
service I maintain.
"You
see, Richard, that makes clear our continuous existence – that we are
not our bodies, and that while our bodies sleep, our souls have a life of their
own, in which they may receive, or give, help and instruction. I don't know
how many souls would have the courage to go on, were it not for this life of
the soul in sleep, which sustains them in the trials in the body. Even criminals
have respite from wickedness in sleep, and therein is always a seed for their
reformation."
"Very
interesting, Eleanor. But did you make away with the Lord's Prayer so easily?"
"Richard,
do you realize that is the one prayer that Jesus gave, and that his command
was to pray in secret? If you wish, I will explain that to you, too, as I did
to the children, of course. They say that prayer at the opening of school, you
know, and I told them that while many people say it, few understand what it
means – that when they repeated it with others, I hoped that they would
remember its true meaning. ' Our Father which art in Heaven" means that God
within, which we are. ('The Kingdom of Heaven is within' was the teaching).
'Hallowed be thy Name', is rightly translated ' Intoned be thy Name' –
such a sounding having the tendency to rouse the higher nature, and call the
lower to attention. 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in
Heaven,' means, may the will of the indwelling spirit be done in the body. For
our bodies are our earths. We couldn't know a single thing about earth, if we
didn't have bodies to learn through. 'Give us this day our daily bread,' means,
may we receive spiritual food from our higher aspirations. 'Forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors,' means – realizing that all men are the same
in kind, let us not judge or condemn any other. 'Thine be the glory' is again
a harking back to the one Reality – the real part of us – from the
basis of which, and for which, every action should proceed. The 'Amen' is really
that sounded 'Word' again, which you often see written in Eastern writings –
and occurs in ' The Light of Asia' as Om – the Sanskrit word, standing
for that God within, the Self of all things and creatures."
"H'm
– well, it's reasonable, anyway. So go ahead as far as you like with the
kiddies. Maybe they'll be teaching me some day. Who knows? I'm pretty sure,
if I'd known these things at their age, I shouldn't have been the poor, scared
little rat I was then. Why, do you know, Eleanor, that idea of God watching
me every minute, ready to pounce on me with a big stick, if I didn't do the
right thing, made me a little cringing coward!
"They
couldn't tell me God was 'good,' if he was a-nagging like that with his eyes
all the time. And the very thought that God took care of me while I slept made
me feel there was something awful to be afraid of, if he had to be so careful
as all that. Of course, as I grew older, I saw that such a God was no friend
to any man, but I did know that I suffered if I did wrong, and concluded that
if I did the best I could, it was all the wisest being could expect of me. At
least, I can say, I haven't been a coward since I gave up the idea of God as
an extra-sized, powerful man-being."
"You
are fortunate, Richard, for it seems to me there are a great many grown-up cowards
in the world, because they still believe in that bogey man-God. They are afraid
to die, and afraid to live, afraid of their fellowmen, afraid all the time of
what may happen to their precious bodies – which are in reality not themselves
at all. Of course, fear always comes from ignorance, and it is the most pitiable
ignorance not to know that all beings are in essence that one Supreme Reality
– a great chain of Brotherhood down to the smallest atom that only the
law of our deathless, eternal being metes out justice, - reward, or punishment
that the purpose of life is to learn, it matters not under what conditions.
Indeed, the only thing we have to fear is doing wrong to others. But you must
be tired, Richard, after your journey. I mustn't talk you from your rest."
"No,
really, Eleanor," he answered, as he went upstairs, "I'm rested already, as
if I'd been breathing fresh air. Good night."
CHAPTER
-7-
HOW
WORLDS BEGAN
With Father's coming,
the days were much happier for Dorothy and Milton. Every morning they walked
with him to the Bank where he was busy all day, and it was not long after four
o'clock, when he was ready to go home with them. Then they all worked in the
garden together, or as the short colder days came on, read, and talked, and
played games indoors with him and Aunt Eleanor. Sometimes they hurried Father
home very fast, as on the night when Aunt Eleanor was to tell them before dinner
how worlds were made. Milton had been eagerly thinking about it for some time,
and he said to his father as he skipped along:
"Daddy,
this town wasn't always here, was it?"
"No,
son."
"Nor
this state, nor this America?"
"No,
son."
"Then,
there must have been a time when there wasn't any world, either?"
"Just
so."
"Well,
Daddy, where were we when there wasn't any earth to live on?"
"We
always were, Daddy, so we must have been somewhere," broke in Dorothy.
"How
do you know that we always were, little girl? Asked her Father.
"Well,
you see, Daddy, we can't think ourselves as nothing. We can think that the whole
world and everybody in it burned and there is nothing to see but just darkness.
Only who is looking at the darkness? We are, aren't we? We just are,
that's all."
"You're
quite right, daughter," Father answered, as they went into the house, "and I
fancy that Aunt Eleanor will answer Milton's question in her story tonight."
"Yes,"
Aunt Eleanor began, "we ourselves, the Perceivers, - we only – never had
a beginning. Every town, or city, or country, or continent, or world had its
beginning, and will have its ending. And there have been many worlds before
this we now live in that began, and grew, decayed, and perished – to be
born again as other worlds.
"Our
Moon that we see in the sky is just an old dead world, where we once lived,
but came away from because there was no more for us to learn there. The life
that was on the Moon has now another body in this Earth. Very wise men who study
the heavens have discovered through telescopes signs of human works there, and
many believe there are still inhabitants. The truth is that the Moon is a slowly
decaying corpse, and by the time we get ready to leave our Earth, the Moon will
have entirely gone to dust, while our Earth, or planet, will be a Moon to the
next new Earth we shall build.
"We
have our days and nights planets have their days and nights. When we die, we
have a longer night time; planets have their longer night times even the whole
Universe itself has a day and a night. Let us suppose that we are in the night
time of the Universe."
"Oh,
yes, Auntie, where would we be? Asked Milton eagerly.
"Where
are we when we are asleep? We are not using these outer bodies that we see,
though we do use other finer bodies, and waken to use these outer bodies again
next day. So in the night of the Universe, we are not using any part of the
bodies we had use of in its daytime. In that one state, we share the knowledge
all other beings have brought into it. We are not separate from each other any
more – the finest bodies we ever had are blended in one substance –
we are all Perceivers, with nothing to perceive, resting in the Great Darkness,
until the Great Day.
"So,
Milton, you see, there isn't any 'where' at all – we aren't in
any place – we just are! And when the Great Day comes. We each
come out again, clothed in new bodies, and separately take up our tasks again
in a different world. Long, long thoughts, aren't they dears? And many wiser
than you would not say they comprehend them clearly.
"Well,
let us just fancy that we are looking on at this Great Darkness. Somewhere in
it all, by and bye, we should see a point of light appearing, then other points,
which soon would begin to collect other drops of light, as a snowball gathers
snow, then to whirl around in a fiery misty cloud that yet is cold. This misty
cloud is what is called in these days, nebulous matter. In Latin, the world
'nebula' means cloud. You can see it any bright night in the sky in what I have
pointed out to you as 'The Milky Way.' And you can just think of what you are
looking at, that it too, maybe, is getting ready to make a new world in the
great Universe.
"As
this cloudy, misty cold fire whirls round and round, it grows thicker and brighter
with the motion – for at first it was thinner even than air – and
it becomes thick as water. Then, when the outside of the ball cools off, and
hardens, we have earth, though inside it is so very hot that it actually boils
over, and makes mountains and valleys on that cooling earth crust – as
you see them on your relief maps at school."
"And then, right
off, Auntie, were there trees and flowers just as they are now? Asked Dorothy.
"Oh,
no, " Aunt Eleanor went on. "When this globe of ours was very new, it was covered
with water – quite warm water, too, and the plants and animals growing
in it were tremendous, larger than anything you can imagine. And the men were
like giants – not like people, as they look now – but globular in
shape – without bones – and almost transparent, like jelly. Man
began to have bones 18,000,000 years ago.
"Its
hard to imagine such a long time, isn't it, even if one should be a hundred
years old? And wouldn't it seem foolish if we could live only those few years
on an earth so very, very old? But we have lived on it thousands of lives, you
see, in other bodies we have had.
"Well,
it took many millions of years for the earth to get cool and hard and small
as it is now, with men and animals all smaller to fit it. In all that time,
you must remember, the globe has gone through many changes. We are the fifth
great race of people who have lived on it, and after we have learned all we
can from it as it is, there will come floods, and earthquakes, that will send
mountains down into the sea and bring up land that once belonged to a continent
now buried there, and there will be a new continent. Something of the sort is
going on by degrees all the time. You will remember the terrible floods and
earthquakes all over the world, and especially in Japan, in January 1914? The
really great change will not come till the axis of the earth tips so that it
will make summer where now is winter, and winter where summer is now. All that
is so far away in the vast future that it does not profit us to think of it
– only it explains why bones of tropical animals and tropical plants are
found up in Greenland.
"
But before that new great continent comes up out of the ocean for the great
sixth race to dwell upon, there are two divisions, called sub-races, of the
fifth great race yet to come. The sixth sub-race is even now beginning to form
here in America, though it will be 16,000 years before it has fully arrived.
Then, too, there will be many changes in lands and waters. That race in another
25,000 years will be preparing for the next sub-race, the seventh and last of
the fifth great race. Then when the seventh sub-race is through, Nature will
begin her spring house cleaning and get ready for the company of the sixth root
race. She'll take ample time to do it, too, I assure you. Nature is never in
a hurry.
"I
think, someway, if we are always mindful of how big life is – how long
our world has existed – in how many bodies and races we ourselves have
lived before – how everything in the vast world is ever changing, and
only we ourselves – the Perceivers – remain unchanged to see all
the changes – it will be easier for us to be unselfish – to act
so that we may be helpful in all the works and changes of Nature – and
helpful of all our brothers who live and learn through them all."
And
then Norah called them to dinner, so that the questions must wait for the morrow.
CHAPTER
-8-
THE
MASTERS
"Aunt
Eleanor," began Milton at the breakfast table next morning, 'I don't see how
anyone can know about the world as it was millions of years ago, when it has
been destroyed so many times. Please, where did you find out about it, and how
do you know that it's all true?"
"Well,
dear, you learn from me, don't you, because I know more than you do? Just so,
I have learned from those older and wiser than I. There is always someone to
learn from, and always someone to teach."
"Oh,
Auntie," broke in Dorothy, 'I was thinking about that – and who was there
to teach when this world began? Weren't all the people new on earth?"
"They
all had new bodies on the new earth, Dorothy. But, you see, they had all had
other bodies on other earths. So the first Teachers on this earth were those
who when the Moon was an earth like this, had grown to be the wisest of men,
and were able to choose to come to the new earth to help and teach those who
already had been their younger brothers."
"Are
those Teachers still on earth, Auntie?" asked Milton.
"Some
are, surely. They are wherever they can best help. Some again may have been
needed on an older earth than this, and have passed over the work of this earth
to another Teacher, whose wisdom is also great. Wherever they may be, they are
where they are most needed – because they are wise. And we must always
remember, dears, that just as these Masters of Wisdom are wiser than we, so
we are wiser than the savages of Africa just as those Masters of Wisdom help
us, although we do not see them, so we, by unselfish thoughts and deeds help
them, - as well as the African savage, the animal in the forest, and the very
grain of sand upon the shore. We are all climbing up the great stairway of Life,
and the higher each one goes, the higher rung he leaves for those below him
to climb upon."
"Then,
Auntie, seems as if it doesn't matter if we are rich and famous, but only if
we know how to help others. Is that it?"
"Surely,
Milton. All the riches and fame in the world are useless, if they are not used
to help others. Riches and fame are not wrong in themselves, but wrong as they
have been gained selfishly – as they are used selfishly. If we are trying
to serve, instead of to be served, we may not be very famous, and we may not
be very rich, but we'll know what riches cannot buy. Such knowledge these Elder
Brothers have.
"You
asked me, Milton, how anyone can know about earth as it was millions of years
ago. Those wise Elder Brothers have kept the records of those times, and of
all the races that have perished or still exist on the earth."
"Why,
did they have books then, Auntie, just like those we have now?" asked Dorothy.
"Their
books did not look like ours, you must understand. Sometimes the records were
written on metal discs, on waxen tablets, on palm leaves, on stone. You could
not read them, no matter if you can read in the Fourth Reader, for they are
written in the signs of a language no longer used, which great scholars can
read only after many years of labour and study. Usually these records have been
preserved in caves under the ground – cut in the rock – even under
vast stretches of desert sand, that have piled over buried cities. For while
many cities and many races have perished – there has always been someone
left as a witness, someone to guard the ancient records until the time comes
for men to use them wisely. Then the Elder Brothers send a Teacher into the
world to teach what these records hold – and more, which they can only
give to others as they speak it.
"As
you grow older, you will find the names of these Teachers with every race in
history. It is only about forty years ago since They sent the last Teacher.
She was known in the world as Madame Blavatsky, and Mr. Wm. Q. Judge helped
her with her work. (And, by the way, all the boys and girls who knew Mr. Judge
voted him their best friend and playmate.)
Madame
Blavatsky studied these ancient writings and put them into our language for
us – and she gave her whole life to make the truth plain to us. So, when
you ask me, how do I know these faraway things are true, I'll have to tell you
that to me they seem to be true because they agree with many records, and all
the facts I see and know. Madame Blavatsky shows me plainly how reasonable the
whole universe is, and because whatever else she said I could prove for myself
I have found is true, I trust her also to know those things that I have
not yet proved for myself."
"Madame
must be the wisest one you ever knew, then, Auntie?" Dorothy questioned.
"Yes,
dear. I couldn't begin to make you understand how wise she was. But, anyway,
the wisest men of Europe sat and listened to her – and however differently
they believed, they could not contradict her."
"But
you said the Elder Brothers sent her? Why didn't they come themselves, Auntie?"
"Well, you see, if they had come, so beautiful and perfect as they are, people
would have fallen down and worshipped them, instead of seeking out the truth,
and thinking for themselves. And then the people wouldn't have been any wiser
than before, would they? They sent one with a body such as we all have, that
we should pay attention not to that body or person, but to the words and lessons
taught. And now, of course, after all these years, we realize that only a Great
Being could have been trusted to do that work."
"Where
do these Elder Brothers live, Auntie?" asked Milton.
"Why,
they live in all parts of the world, though few know just where they are. Those
who taught Madame Blavatsky live beyond the high Himalayan Mountains. But it
is more important that we should be learning what they gave us to learn, than
to think about where they live or what they are doing. Not being very wise ourselves,
we could not understood the life of such Wise Ones."
Then
Father broke in – "Should you say, Eleanor, that Jesus was one of those
Elder Brothers?"
"Surely.
And isn't it strange that when these Messengers come, there are so few to realize
their greatness? Only, after hundreds of years did people begin to see in the
despised carpenter, son of Joseph, a great Teacher. He taught what Buddha and
Confucius taught. All these great Teachers say the same great things to men.
They all know each other They know the same things to be true They come from
the same place, on the same mission – to tell men those things that are
true and that will lead them on to wisdom.
"People
are often vain of their learning and proud, and they do not like ideas that
would show their own to be wrong. Those that come to bring true ideas are not
vain or proud, and because they do not sound their own trumpets, as common men
do, are despised, except by a few. Then as the years go on, little by little,
their ideas take hold – the old ideas are proved to be false by fresh
discoveries – and men finally see that a Messenger has been among them,
eager only to give true ideas, and they have not recognized him or been grateful."
"Oh,
Auntie," Dorothy questioned, breathlessly, "supposing such a Wise Person could
live with us every day, how would we know he was wise?"
"Well,
dear – not because anyone else told you he was wise. You would know it
by what he said. If he himself said he was wise, you would know it could not
be so. All down the ages the Great Teachers never told men to look at them,
but only to look at the truth they brought. Then you would study their words
to see if they explained all else you already knew. For if they were true, they
would explain all things everywhere – and leave nothing out."
Then
Father jumped up and kissed them all good-bye, saying:
"I'll
have to run to the Bank to get there in time this morning. Be sure to meet me
tonight, kiddies!"
CHAPTER-9-
FORMER
CONTINENTS
Do
you know, Auntie," began Dorothy one morning at breakfast, "I like my Geography
lessons ever so much better since you told us how worlds began and how they
change and grow. And I can see on the map just the very places where once the
land must have been that connected these great continents and then broke off
from the mainland, and I can almost imagine the shape of the lands that used
to be. Do you suppose, if I brought my geography home tonight, you could show
us just where those continents are buried under the sea? And tell us their names?"
"Well,
dear," answered Aunt Eleanor, "that would be fun for us all, I"m sure. Only
about the names, of course, you will have to remember that we are using the
language of this continent and this great race now. While there are Wise Men
who know those ancient names, they know them in such different forms from any
language we speak, it is useless for us to be told them. So we give these buried
continents names in our language. Nor can I give you an exact map of these old
continents – but just a general idea as to where land once was, and where
later it was not. But it will be interesting to go over it together, after dinner.
So bring your geographies home, and I'll hunt up a globe I have upstairs that
will help, too."
This
is the way Aunt Eleanor described those buried lands that evening, as a soft
gentle rain fell outside, and made home seem a cosey nest for a bird's eye view
of the ages.
The
first land crowned the North Pole like a skullcap, and is called "The Imperishable
Sacred Land." But Wise Men say this land is still there where it first began,
and will always be there till this earth has passed away. In reality, neither
Capt. Peary nor Dr. Cooke ever reached the North Pole, which is beyond an inland
sea, far, far beyond the frozen fields of snow and ice. Some arctic travellers
have seen that sea, but they thought it was a mirage.
Well,
then, just let us imagine that 'skullcap' as the head of the world, and that
inland sea as her neck. Now, we shall find the Second Continent – the
'Hyperborean,' stretching out her shoulders southward and westward from the
neck, and comprising the whole of what is now known as Northern Asia. You will
read of this land when you come to study Ancient Greece, though the books will
make you think it was only a strange fairy-tale of the Greeks. So you see, Northern
Asia is the oldest land we know of in these days – and has been peopled
in turn by the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth races.
You
can get a better idea of this continent from the globe here. It began on a line
above the most northern part of Spitzbergen, and on the side of the Western
hemisphere included lands now occupied by Baffin's Bay, with neighbouring islands
and promontories. On the Eastern hemisphere it reached as far as Kamschatka.
The continent was in the shape of a horseshoe, you see, - the inner edge connecting
the northern part of now Greenland with the northern part Kamschatka by the
coasts of Eastern and Western Siberia the lower curve of the horseshoe probably
took in the southern end of Greenland and the southern part of Kamschatka. All
around this horseshoe, of course, you must picture an immense ocean –
from which yet other lands are to emerge, for the use of the Third Race. Their
continent we will call Lemuria.
We
must not suppose, though, that an old continent went down all at once, and a
new one came up in the same way to take its place. The Third Continent contained
some of the Second Continent mainland, and again Second Continent land became
islands with bays or straits between. Then land kept emerging to the south of
where you pictured the Second Continent as the shoulders of the earth; now she
seems to be forming a tremendous body. Just fancy a continent big enough to
include the Indian, the Atlantic, and the Pacific oceans! – See, I'll
draw lines over your map to show you its general shape. Here again we have rather
of a horseshoe, the inland sea, that makes its center, covering most of Africa
and Europe and the country north of the Himalayas in Asia; while there is left
of us most of the Second Continent land, and you see the British Isles have
come out of the sea. The Australia of the present time is a remnant of that
gigantic continent, which reached over to America – including part of
California, Lower California and Central America. Then, too, Alaska was not
disconnected by Behring's Straits.
Next
the continent of Atlantis rises from the ocean floor, or grew, we might say,
from the Atlantic portion of Lemuria, while the Pacific and Indian portion were
falling to pieces. Atlantis covered the whole of the North and South Atlantic
regions, portions of the North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the
Indian Ocean. In fact, you see, if someone had seven-league boots, he could
have walked right over from India to the America's without wetting his feet.
That is how it happens that we have the same trees and flowers here as in the
other continent now – because they were once connected.
There
is so much to tell about Atlantis. Many scientists have written about it, and
when you are older you will find a whole book written of it (Donnelly's Atlantis)
which tells about the people, their arts and sciences, and monuments. For they
were very wise, those Atlanteans! They had a language, an alphabet, books. And
they knew many things we are now trying to find out. They had better aircraft
then than we have now, as well as telephones, and far more wise physicians.
Almost every day there are fresh discoveries that point to these ancient peoples.
Even the ancient Egyptians were not so wise, though from the Atlanteans their
knowledge came.
Isn't
it interesting that the name Atlantis really was a name used on this old continent?
It isn't a Greek word, as we might imagine. A city named 'Atlan' existed in
Darien when Columbus made his discovery, and there are several words in the
Toltec language that belong with it. Then, too, America is a native word. In
Central America is a mountain range called 'Americ,' and it is far more likely
America was really named from that, than for Americo Vespuccio. (Anyway, his
name was Alberico, not Americo.)
This
continent of Atlantis was distinguished by its high mountains – just as
was Lemuria by its great rivers. (The Wealden in England is the bed of one of
these great prehistoric rivers.) The Rockies and the Andes were then up, and
the Himalayas, and the Azores and Teneriffe Peak were part of another mountain
chain. Down in the ocean now is to be found a ridge 9000 feet high that stretches
2000 or 3000 miles south from the British Isles to Tristan d'Acunha, with connections
on the coast of Northwestern Africa and of South America, near the mouth of
the Amazon. These ridges must have been tremendously high mountains in those
days. Only the northwestern part of Africa was out of the water then, but it
was joined on to Spain, and the solid land connected Spain and the British Isles.
Well,
Atlantis began to break up several millions of years ago. It divided into seven
great islands, the largest of which disappeared 850,000 years ago. A small remnant
of one of them, the last of Atlantis, called Poseidonis by the Greeks, sank
11,000 years ago.
But
meantime, the Fifth great continent was forming. Africa came first out of the
ocean mud, long before France and the British Isles emerged. (Just think of
it, those island have gone down and come up again, four times!) Now the Sahara
Desert was a great sea. But later, Africa separated from Spain, when the ocean
rolled in to make the Mediterranean Sea, and then the Sahara became an arid
waste of sand. In our America, I fancy, all our Middle Western states were covered
with water in early Atlantean days, but were dried off and drained by the Mississippi
and Great Lakes to suit the purposes of the Fifth Continent. South America has
been lifting itself more and more from the sea. Europe has done likewise. Now,
we shall have to watch the changes in the future. For there will be another
continent, and still another. Parts of old Atlantis may come up again to belong
to these; certainly many lands we know now will go down into the sea.
"But
16,000 years is a long time to wait for that, isn't it? We'll just watch –
not wait – and learn from watching – won't we, boys and girls? No,
not a single question tonight. Let's sleep on this! " Aunt Eleanor smiled as
she kissed Dorothy and Milton, and sent them to bed.
CHAPTER
-10-
FAIRIES
It
was a gala day for Dorothy and Milton when Father drove up the graveled driveway
to the house in a shiny new automobile – just big enough to carry all
the Family, Father said, and small enough so they could keep it shining and
in good running order all themselves. The car meant many gala days to follow
– every Saturday and holiday being the occasion for a trip into the country
with lunch-baskets and Thermos bottles, and oftentimes fishing rods. There was
always room too, for some friend of Aunt Eleanor's or a joyful little companion
of Dorothy's or Milton's, whose appreciation of the treat gave almost as much
pleasure to the Family as the trip itself. It was on one of these holiday excursions
into a lovely canyon that the children learned much of fairies which they had
not known before. It came about in this way.
Spinning
merrily over the shining boulevard, they came under a long green archway of
pepper and locust trees, - the blossoms of the locust gleaming like great pearls
against the green, - with pepper berries here and there glowing as rubies might.
"Oh,
oh," exclaimed Dorothy, "wouldn't you think this might be the very avenue Cinderella
came down to meet her fairy Prince?"
"Why,
Dorothy!" serious eyed Louise Tabor answered, "Didn't you know that that is
just a fairy story? There aren't really any fairies. It's just like Santa Claus
– you see – only 'magination1"
Dorothy's
face clouded with perplexity, and she turned to Aunt Eleanor with the question
in her eyes which she felt sure would be answered somehow to make things straight.
"Well,
Louise," Aunt Eleanor began slowly, "I know many people think as you do in regard
to fairies – but there are so many more people who do believe in them,
so many people in the past who have written of them, perhaps we'd better look
more thoroughly into the matter.
"Now,
as we ride, just look ahead into the air toward the sun, very intently. Do you
not see movements there – vapory, wavery forms, whirling and darting?"
"Yes,
yes," the children answered after a moment. "What are they?"
"They
are tiny lives in the atmosphere – the stuff we might say that air fairies
are made of – those we call sprites and sylphs. For there are many kinds
of fairies. Those that dwell in the fire element are called salamanders those
of the water are nymphs and undines while those of the earth are gnomes and
elves. It may be hard to see how these vague air-shapes make forms of miniature
human beings so that anyone might notice them, but in reality it is the thoughts
of real human beings that give them shape.
"You
see, each thought we think goes out into space on the wings, we might say, of
these little elemental lives, is borne along by them till the force of the thought
is spent. That is why it is so necessary to think right true thoughts. Thoughts
are really alive; they have their bodies they are things. So they can help or
harm whomever they touch.
"Well,
then, don't you see how there really is a Santa Claus where the people
believe in him and think of him and picture him as a being? Can you not see
how there are fairies, good and bad? More fairies, of course, dwell in countries
such as England and Ireland, because the land is old and the people's thoughts
for centuries have given fairies an abiding place there. I know of several English
people who have come unseen upon a little water-nymph beside a quiet pool, or
seen a tiny elf perched upon a swaying flower. And one Welsh gentleman, whom
you both know, to this day remembers the sight of those fairies his old nurse
showed him on their rambles in the forest."
"Then
do you think, Miss Eleanor," asked Louise, "the story of Cinderella is true?"
"I
should hardly like to say it could not be true anyway, Louise, in Fairy
World. For like you, I have never seen such fairies as are described in the
tale, and I do not know their language. But I suspect all fairies speak and
act much as the people think who see them. Our delightful Grimm perhaps did
conjure up the tale entirely out of his imagination – but maybe he really
understood fairies, for all that. You know, all of the books we love best are
not about actual people, but about people pictured so vividly in the writer's
mind that to us also they speak and do just what they would actually have to
speak and do under the conditions. In our hearts and sympathies we feel them
true and real – often more real and true than many people we see and talk
with every day. So many of the tales about the little sub-humans we call fairies
might be true in a way similar to that, don't you see?
"There
is so much going on about us all the time that we don't notice. You wouldn't
think, would you, that it's fairies who set those little whirlwinds stirring
in quiet fields? And, don't you remember, Dorothy, the other day when we were
sewing together, I laid down my needle and thimble and went out of the room
for a moment? When I came back, there was no needle nor thimble in sight, and
I asked you if you had been using them. You said 'No, Auntie," and helped me
in the search. After we had looked everywhere in the room, I came back to my
chair, and there beside it on the table in plain view was the missing needle
and thimble! You didn't suspect fairies of that, did you, dear? But it was some
mischievous little elementals that did that to us. Of course, the needle and
thimble were there all the time – only the elementals covered them up
from our view. But remember, children," warned Aunt Eleanor with a smile, "you
mustn"t after that blame elementals for your not being able to find things!
Anyway, it happens almost exclusively in the case of metal objects. Those same
little busybodies couldn't so well manage a book, or cap, or gloves, or lunch-basket!
"Well,
we mustn't get into the habit of thinking that men and animals and birds and
fishes and insects are the only live things in the world. There are lives whose
actions we do not ordinarily see, just as there are colors seen by some people
which others cannot see sounds high and low, heard by some, which others cannot
hear. Maybe I can tell you more of the fairies after we get up in the canyon."
It
was such a beautiful canyon – with rocks and trees overhanging the clear
running water, blue in the swirling pools, and foaming white over the rocks!
Above on either side rose high mountain walls, and birds called gaily to their
neighbors in the treetops. After lunch, Father and Milton went off on an exploring
'hike', while the girls and Aunt Eleanor, drowsy from the drive and satisfied
sharpened appetites, curled up on the ground beside the brook to rest. But it
was not long before Dorothy called out:
"Aunt
Eleanor, where is the music?"
"What does
it sound like, Dorothy/"
"Why, it's
a band – not very far away. Don't you hear it, Louise?"
"Yes, Dorothy,"
said Louise, "I was listening to it when you spoke, but I don't hear it any
more now."
Aunt
Eleanor laughed merrily. "There isn't any band of music inside of fifty miles,
girls. You didn't know, did you, that you were listening to the fairies?"
"Oh, but Miss
Eleanor," said Louise, "it was so real and loud! And how could fairies
play cornets?"
"Certainly,
child, they don't play cornets – but the music you heard like that of
the cornet is made by the fairies – or elementals – this time, the
water elementals. The water you might think of as something like a phonographic
record kept and played by the elementals. But I have heard them at this sort
of thing much nearer home, and when I tell you about it, may be you can see
more clearly how the music came about.
"You
remember you were very quiet when you heard the music – almost ready to
drop off to sleep? It was then you heard from an inner ear – not listening,
really, nor paying particular attention to outside things. So, one night not
so very long ago, during a heavy rainstorm, I found myself wishing that the
people passing by on the sidewalk would be more considerate of those who wished
to sleep at eleven o'clock at night. They were laughing and talking noisily,
and I recognized Mrs. Harter's voice especially. I thought she must have been
having a party and her guests were leaving. Imagine my perplexity when I remembered
she had been away for three days and would not be home for another week! I listened
more intently, and heard Chester's voice teasing, and his mother talking to
him, sharply scolding. I even heard your father's voice calling to you! And
then it dawned on me. Not far from my chamber window is the storm-drain between
our house and Chester's. Down it the water was pouring noisily – and all
those voices were in the water! The water was playing the records made by the
elementals of the words and laughter of people living in the vicinity. The records
were made in the air and the water furnished the power to make them audible!
"As
soon as I realized the meaning of it, I turned over on the other side contented,
and went to sleep.
"So,
this band music you have heard today may have been impressed on the atmosphere
a hundred miles away, and the air-fairies brought it to this lovely canyon ,
for the water-fairies to play the record."
"Now,
Aunt Eleanor," Dorothy said, "you've told us something of the fairies of earth,
air, and water. Could you tell us something, too, of the fire-fairies?"
"Very
little other than you have seen for yourselves. Sometimes it seems a very mysterious
thing that several fires will occur in the same vicinity at about the same time
for which no apparent reason can be found, so that each fire is declared to
be caused by spontaneous combustion. That really is the work of naughty fire
elementals. Don't you remember, both of you, when Mr. Flower's house burned
down, how angrily the flames seemed to resist the water and fairly to eat up
the timbers? We all felt as if some ruthless monster were at work! And there
was good reason to feel so, as you now know.
"Well,
such are certainly destructive elementals, but there are those that even build
cities! They hold pictures of cities in the air, just as we imagined them holding
records of the music, and somehow men see with an inner eye, and are impelled
to begin the building. Very few people know why there are so many cities unearthed,
one on top of the other – like Troy, and Pompeii, and Herculaneum. Very
few people know why cities grow in one direction first – rather than in
another which should have been thought more favourable. It is the elementals
(the thoughts of ancient peoples still alive in the atmosphere) that draw newcomers
to the spot – just as a magnet draws steel filings – and urge them
on in directions that have been taken before."
"Oh,
thank you, Miss Eleanor," said Louise. "It is lovely to know such things. And
to think there is a real reason for fairies!"
Just
then Father and Milton rounded the turn in the road to tell them of a bank all
sweet with maidenhair ferns and columbines. They did not say fairies were growing
there, too, but if Dorothy and Louise half expected to spy a little elf swinging
on a columbine, you don't wonder, do you, that they jumped right up to look?
CHAPTER
-11-
GHOSTS – SEVEN-FOLD
NATURE OF MAN
Only
a few days after this excursion into the canyon, Dorothy came running home from
school to find Aunt Eleanor, with another question
"Auntie,
there really are ghosts, too, aren't there, just like fairies?"
"Yes,
dear – there are. But what makes you think so?" "Well, you see, we were
reading the 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow" this afternoon in school, and it says
there that ghosts flourish in that vicinity because people believe in them.
And that's just what you said about fairies. Why is it that in stories people
never seen afraid of fairies, yet are just scared to death about ghosts? What
is the difference, Auntie?"
"For
one reason, I suppose, that fairies are diminutive, tiny beings, and ghosts
are 'life-size." Ghosts are commonly supposed to be dead men coming back to
this world of living men. But in reality, of course, a man is always alive –
and it is only his body that goes to pieces. Once a man leaves the earth, he
waits to come back again in an infant's body. I have told you before that we
have also inner bodies besides this of flesh and blood and bone and muscle.
The physical body is changing all the time in its molecules and atoms, and we
would not long look like the same person, if there were not a pattern, or inner
model body, for the new molecules and atoms to grow into. This model body is
usually called the 'astral body". ('Astra' means star – and so 'astral'
would mean made of starry matter but in this case merely made of a finer kind
of matter than the physical body.)
"When,
then, a man 'dies,' as we say, he simply slips out of this physical and astral
body, and goes on living in other still finer bodies. But meantime on earth
his physical body is decaying, and just so in the astral world, his astral body
is also going to pieces – even more slowly than the physical body, however.
It is like a photograph of the man who once lived in it, and is so strongly
impressed with the thoughts and desires of its former owner, that the elementals,
pushed on by the thoughts of living people, can stimulate this photographic
man into apparently real action and speech. That is all a 'ghost' amounts to,
generally speaking, for it is another thing when at death, or shortly after,
the going one appears to those most beloved in astral form and again, 'ghosts'
are credited for doing wonderful things, which in reality have quite other causes.
"As
for ghosts, well, you know how it is when Father is driving the automobile on
a level road. Suppose he shuts the power off – the machine goes on for
several yards by its own momentum, as we say. The more power he has previously
applied, the farther the car goes. So the astral bodies of men who have thought
most about eating and drinking and other selfish pleasures – with very
little thought about the fine beautiful things of life – live longer in
the astral world. And that is why ghosts, or so-called 'spirits,' never say
anything wise. The real man isn't there to speak – it's only an echo of
the old earthy thoughts that the elementals have set to sounding. To suppose
ghosts are real men is as foolish as to suppose, Mr. Judge said, 'that a lot
of educated parrots left in a deserted house were the souls of the persons who
had once lived there and owned the birds, … a good parrot behind a screen
could make you think that an intelligent man was hidden from view but speaking
in a voice you hear and words you understand."
"So
there is certainly nothing to fear from ghosts – and there is certainly
nothing to gain from thinking about them. The fear comes from not knowing what
they are. We are wise to put our thought and attention on the duties and services
of our everyday life in the world where we are living. There is plenty of wisdom
to guide us here; and there are plenty of souls in bodies to help, without seeking
the companionship of bodies without souls. In fact, there is grave danger in
that sort of seeking. And there are so many mysteries under our noses right
in the sunlight for us to explore and learn by!"
"But
I wish you would tell us more about those other bodies we have, Aunt Eleanor,"
said Milton wistfully. "How many are there, and why do we need more bodies than
this one?"
"One
question at a time, son, please," replied Aunt Eleanor. "And that one I will
answer by reminding you of how many number sevens we have in Nature. There are
seven colors in the rainbow – violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange,
red. There are seven notes in the scale. The body is completely changed in its
atoms every seven years. There are seven openings in the head – eyes,
nostrils, ears, mouth, - and when later you study Physiology, you will find
little groups of sevens all over the body. Our seven days of the week follow
out this natural order of Nature.
"Now
we, as bodies, are just copies of big Nature. Just as our earth has seven bodies,
so have we. We couldn't live on this solid earth, if we didn't have a body belonging
to it. The air sprites couldn't make their journeys in the air, if their 'bodies'
weren't made of air – and so, if the life of our earth has seven bodies
belonging to it, we just have other bodies similar to earth's bodies, in which
to learn what there is to know anywhere.
"You
remember how we spoke of worlds being made – first issuing as a fiery
cloud from the Great Darkness. We were there, and have bodies of that cold fire-matter.
Some call that the etheric body. But before this body, even, was one of finer
thought-force – which in its turn was like a shadow thrown from the finest
spirit-matter, which makes the basis of all bodies – and contains them
all.
"Then
came a more gaseous state of matter, and we had bodies made of that. Then air
was our habitation, and next we came into the astral state – with, finally,
earth, the most solid of our bodies. Now you mustn't think of these various
bodies as separate. They are not even so separate as the rounds of skin on an
onion! I told you the astral body is what makes us keep the same likeness –
but you can see that the physical body is so blended in with it, very few people
suspect the existence of the astral body. They don't suspect they hear only
with an inner ear see, with an inner sight, that all our senses and nerves belong
to the astral body. Take the matter of Father's pipe smoke, for instance. You
see it is in the air – and yet you know it is pipe smoke, different
from the air which surrounds it and holds it up. So our various bodies are distinctly
bodies – yet they interblend and penetrate each other.
"All
these bodies are in use by us – whether we are conscious of it or not.
We use chiefly the astral and physical bodies while we are awake, but when we
sleep, we spend our time in finer bodies. We are never idle, you see.
Life – (which is We) goes on always some way, somewhere. And what
we learn in those finer bodies, sometime we may be able to know while we are
awake. That would mean we were really and truly awake. So the great Masters
of Wisdom are always awake in their earth bodies. They are able to use their
finer bodies as they will – and remember."
"Why,
Auntie!" exclaimed Dorothy, wondering, "do you mean such Wise Ones never have
dreams?"
"Yes, indeed,
that is just what I mean. Suppose we talk about dreams tomorrow. Would you like
that dears?" asked Aunt Eleanor.
"Oh, yes, Auntie,"
both agreed. And Milton added to Dorothy in a whisper:
"Let's dream
something extra-special tonight to find out about – sister!"
CHAPTER
-12-
DREAMS
Next
morning, as Milton came down to the breakfast table with rosy cheeks and shining
eyes, Aunt Eleanor chuckled softly –
"No
dreams for this boy last night, I can see that! Anyway, you can't remember any,
can you Milton?"
"No, Aunt Eleanor,
I don't remember any. But didn't you say once that everyone dreams every night?"
"Yes,
everyone goes into the land of dreams every night on his way to Deep Sleep,
and comes back from there to waking through the land of dreams. But each one
has his own dreamland, just as he has his own thoughts when wide awake No two
people ever dream the same dream. But there are various kinds of dreams. One
kind Milton knew a great deal about, before we realized he must eat just his
bread and milk at night. For his body was too tired to take care of a hearty
dinner, and so was uncomfortable enough to keep telegraphing news of disquiet
to the brain. Then the Perceiver kept watching the movements of the poor tired
little brain, instead of going free into the state of deep sleep. Such horrid
dreams those were, weren't they Milton? 'Nightmares," everyone calls them.
"You
see, it's just as if the brain were a hallway leading from waking to Deep Sleep.
On its walls the Perceiver has been hanging all kinds of pictures during the
day, and these the Perceiver sees all in a tangle, if his body is not comfortable
when he tries to go through the hall. But if the body is comfortable, then the
Perceiver just glances at them in their order as he passes through, and forgets
them till he comes back through the hall to waking again. But what he has seen
in Deep Sleep, he connects when he is awake with the pictures in the hallway,
so that he cannot be sure of just what did happen in that world on the other
side of the hall."
"Did
you have any dreams, sister?" queried Milton.
"Yes," answered
Dorothy. "But, Aunt Eleanor, if you please, I'd rather not tell it just now."
"Certainly,
dear, don't tell it unless you care to. Sometimes, people lose the sense of
the rarest dreams by repeating them idly. Anyway, it's nearly time to be starting
for school."
That
evening, however, when they were all sitting quietly in the firelight, Dorothy
spoke up:
"Aunt
Eleanor, I think I'd like to have you know about my dream now. It was a dream
about my Mother. We seemed to be walking in the twilight together through a
lovely garden. It was too dark to see Mother clearly, but the flowers seemed
to be shining like stars. I could smell the violets, and the lilies were so
bright in their white and gold I just held my breath to look at them. All the
while my hand was in Mother's, but we were not speaking, till at last we came
to a dark wall and Mother put her arms about me, saying:
"
' Now, run along, Little Daughter."
"That
was all of the dream, but when I woke up, it seemed as if Mother was standing
there beside my bed. I lay very still and quiet and just felt her there, until
I had to look to see. And then I knew that she was gone."
Everyone
was quiet for a few moments.
"That
was a real dream, dear," Aunt Eleanor said. "Your feeling, when you woke,
was the memory of what happened while you were away in that far Land of Deep
Sleep. You surely were with your Mother there. On coming back through the hallway
of the brain, you saw such pictures of radiant beauty, because what took place
in reality called up in your brain the most beautiful pictures ever hung there."
Then
Father questioned:
"Why is it,
Eleanor, that often people dream of accidents or death, that some time after
really come to pass?"
"That
is another kind of dream, Richard – the dream of premonition. But you
must understand that it would not be possible to dream such events, if the causes
for them were not already set in motion. The Perceiver, seeing the cause in
his inner vision of Deep Sleep, would just naturally follow it out to its effect
in this outer world. The effect is always wrapped up in the cause, just as a
blossom is wrapped up in a tiny seed. Or, you might look at the law of cause
and effect as a coin with two faces. You can't say either side of the coin is
the coin [or law], yet both sides belong to it. Now a matter of terrible catastrophe
or death seen in Deep Sleep probably shocks the physical brain into remembering
– just as the meanest of men sometimes becomes a great hero, when a terrible
catastrophe in waking life shocks him into a sudden swift remembering from his
inmost soul, - and he acts as that soul, sublimely.
"One
day, children, you asked me to tell you about some other bodies you had when
you lived before this time. I said I could not do that. But it is quite possible
as the years go on that you may catch glimpses of some of them in dreams. You
may even know the names that you were called when living in those bodies. The
record of them all is in that Land of Deep Sleep."
"But,
Auntie," asked Dorothy, "how could we tell it was a dream of a past life, or
just a mixing up of the pictures of this one?"
"Yes, Auntie,"
added Milton. "Or something we remembered out of a book or what someone else
had told us?"
"That,
in many cases, could be easily checked up. It would certainly be wise to examine
the dream for any apparent cause first, and if you found one, let it go at that.
But if you can find, for all your thinking, no cause at all, quite likely it
is a memory of other lives. I have known of people dreaming scenes they had
never read of, heard of, nor fancied – of implements they likewise never
heard of – of costumes and strange peoples – yet having in the dream
no sense of strangeness, themselves being a part of the scene, and clothed like
the other actors. Their sense of 'I am I" simply belonged there. So, as it is
that 'I am I" which is ourselves, and which we can never think out of existence,
it seems quite likely, doesn't it, that the 'I" can make a connection with its
other lives in Deep Sleep? Anyway, such is the fact, which some day you may
prove for yourselves."
"Ah,
I seem to see, Eleanor," Father went on, "it is that feeling of 'I am I" that
shows the difference between the dream of a past life, and a dream of this present
one. Is it not true that we dream dreams of mere fancy? The Perceiver catches
hold of some picture in the brain, and builds and builds upon it a real tower
of meaningless actions and events? But in that case the 'I am I" belongs to
the circumstances and body of this present lifetime, and we know it. Is that
right?"
"Yes,"
nodded Aunt Eleanor.
"Auntie," said
Dorothy, "some of the girls at school have dream-books that, they say, tell
the meaning of dreams. Do they?"
"No, dear,
I'm sure they don't. Every dreamer dreams differently, and only the dreamer
can get the meaning of what he dreams.
"Well,
there are other kinds of dreams than those we have spoken of. There is very
much more known about all kinds than we have said. But after all, the important
thing is to keep out thoughts unselfish, true, and clean during our daytimes;
then our voyages into the Land of Deep Sleep are bound to be fair ones that
bring us back to waking time refreshed, and eager for our daily tasks. So, sweet
dreams to you, boys and girls," smiled Aunt Eleanor, as she led the way upstairs
for Dorothy and Milton, while Father called after them:
"I'll be up
as soon as you're ready, youngsters."
CHAPTER
-13-
DEVACHAN
AND BIRTH
Dorothy
and Milton had some very companionable playmates. One of these was Eloise Moore,
who lived about two blocks away, the happy possessor of a tennis court, where
they spent many gay hours. It was there one day they met Helen Brown, a small,
bright-eyed girl, who seemed to have an endless variety of questions at the
end of her tongue, when they stopped playing between sets. Dorothy and Milton
had often seen her in the neighborhood and at school, but had never spoken with
her before.
"You
live with your aunt, don't you, Milton?"
Milton nodded.
"Did your mother
die and go to heaven?"
"No," answered
Dorothy, as Milton hesitated. "My dear Mother still lives, but we see her only
in the Land of Deep Sleep."
"That's queer,"
said Helen. " My mother said she was in heaven with the angels."
Though
the children then went to playing, you may be sure they did not forget Helen's
remark, and Aunt Eleanor that evening must needs explain to them 'heaven' and
'the angels.'
"There
are just as many 'heavens," dears," said Aunt Eleanor, "as there are dreams
and dreamers. ' Heaven" by many people is thought of as a place where
souls go when they leave their bodies, and where they live forever, as angels,
dressed in shining white robes, and singing songs in praise of the Being they
call God (such a God as, you remember, Chester spoke of long ago). So the people
who think that way will really have that kind of a 'heaven," after they leave
their bodies, and it will be thousands of years, probably, before they come
back again to earth in infants' bodies.
"There
are people who think there is no life but this present earthly one. They, on
dying, would scarcely have a 'heaven" but come back very quickly to earth, very
little wiser for the life lately lived.
"Then
there are others, who have lived pure, unselfish lives, who think of 'heaven'
as some place of rest, about which they can know nothing until they reach it.
Their 'heaven' would be a state of complete happiness, - surrounded by all those
dear to them, - allowing the pursuit of every high ideal, which in a physical
body, they may have been denied. But no 'heaven' is a place, any more
than the Land of Deep Sleep is a place.
"You
remember our talk about our seven-fold bodies. Well, 'heaven,' then, we might
say, is simply the element of one of our finest inner bodies – just as
we know the water is the element of the fish, and the air, of the bird. Within
our true bodies are all elements, you see. To be living in one element doesn't
mean that the other elements are thousands of miles away. Just a thought takes
us from one to the other. A beautiful, unselfish thought puts us in 'heaven'
a bad thought keeps us away from it, - chains us to unhappiness, discomfort,
and discontent.
"The
same people, by the way, who think of 'heaven' as a place, also think there
is a place of evil, which they call 'hell.' But neither is 'hell' a place.
It is simply the suffering for evil thoughts which we feel in our physical bodies.
"I
like the Theosophical name of 'Devachan,' – meaning 'the place of the
gods' – for expressing the condition of souls, who have finished one life
in the body and are getting ready for another, - because that word has never
been taken to mean a place, like a fine city."
"Then,
Auntie," queried Dorothy, breathlessly. "Devachan must be like the real
dreams that we bring back sometimes from Deep Sleep?
"Yes,
dear, there is no better way to describe it."
"Auntie, what
sort of a Devachan do you think Mother is having?" asked Milton.
Well,
in the first place, I am sure she would have her boy and girl, and their father,
there. I fancy she would be sharing her delights with them – whatever
those may be. You remember, don't you, how dearly she loved her music? Quite
likely in Devachan she is working out in music all the beautiful things she
longed to create, while she was on earth, but which were never possible –
chiefly because of her devoted care of her two babies."
Then
Father put his head in at the door with:
"Well,
son, are you going to help me clean the car now?"
"Yes, Dad,
I'll get on my overalls in a jiffy. Please excuse me, Auntie?"
Then
Aunt Eleanor and Dorothy went on with their talk alone.
"The
best part of her lovely dream of Devachan, you see, Dorothy, is that when Mother
comes back, she may bring with her some of the music she created there. Maybe
some day on earth she will compose the sweetest lullabies ever written, - some
songs that will reach the heart of all the world."
"But, Aunt
Eleanor, how will she ever get back to earth? I just can't understand how it
will happen."
"It
is a great mystery to every one, Dorothy dear, but the most beautiful mystery
there is, - so sacred that we never speak of it except with those who are our
nearest and dearest and who understand us best. You can appreciate that from
the way you felt about your dream of Mother. That was sacred, but this mystery
of birth is even far more sacred.
"First,
let us remember that when Mother's body grew tired and died here, she was born
into Devachan. Before she left her body, however, she saw in lightning-flash
a sort of moving picture of all her lifetime, and knew the meaning of it all.
So in Devachan, even, she will at last grow tired and long to come back to earth
again, and her Devachanic body will cease to be. When that comes about, another
lightning-flash will show her what her next life on earth will be. Then she
will be ready indeed to come back again, for as your Mother, she has died to
Devachan."
"But
how will she be able to find her father and mother, Aunt Eleanor? And will she
next time be a little girl?"
"Your
last question first, Dorothy. She may be a little girl, and she may need a boy's
body next time. Whichever the soul needs, that it finds. But there won't be
any searching for her parents. It will be just as if a hole in the sky opened
for her – for her alone – and only through that can she go."
"Would
her parents be looking for her, Aunt Eleanor?"
"Yes,
I think they would. They might not know it to speak of it, but deep within,
and in the Land of Deep Sleep, they would know. The love between father and
mother is a part of the great mystery, too, you see, and it acts like a magnet
to that soul waiting to come back. The soul knows its mother where it finds
her, and waits the opportunity to build its own house with her help."
"Why
then, Aunt Eleanor, the stork doesn't bring babies. They just come by themselves?"
"No,
we couldn't say they come by themselves either, dear, although, of course, the
stork story is just an invention of those parents who know so little of the
mystery that they do not care to undertake a true explanation to their children.
No one ever came into the world without the help of others. A soul might be
near the mother it was due to come to, but the parents refuse it entrance into
life. This means we must study the body for a moment and understand what a wonderful
and precious thing it is.
"All
Nature is made up of the pairs of opposites. You know there is heat and cold
we wouldn't know we were happy, if we were not sometimes unhappy we wouldn't
know light, without dark. So the body of a man is a necessary opposite to the
body of a woman, and together they furnish proper material for the body of a
new life. There are especial organs for this most wonderful process, and you
can easily understand, it is those organs we instinctively do not speak of that
are the instruments used in such a precious way.
"All
our organs seem to have two different uses. All of them are means of taking
care of waste-matter, but their other use is higher and very much more important.
How little good would our eyes be to us, though, if there were not other pairs
of eyes to look back at us! And of what use would the ears be, if there were
no one to speak what could be heard? We never could learn anything, nor do anything,
if it were not for other selves, who have in their organs by which they receive
knowledge from us. So those secret organs, too, are used. The father gives of
his sacred store a precious fluid. The mother receives it in the place consecrated
to that use. But it is not the father alone, nor the mother alone who can do
it: it is love that works the miracle needed for the coming soul.
"You
know Father has explained to you about the making of water from two gases. Two
parts of hydrogen and one part oxygen in a glass jar remain the separate gases,
until an electric current is thrown into the jar. Then there is a spark, and
the two gases become transformed into water. So love is the electric current
which unites the precious life fluids within the mother, and the spark kindled
is the center of a new physical body. For it fuses to the mother's body the
design body of the waiting soul, and on this the new body of flesh begins to
grow.
"That
is miracle enough, isn't it, dear? But all that follows is just as marvelous.
Ten times the moon is young and old before the little body is ready to come
out of its warm nest into our world. All that time, the mother has been furnishing
material for it out of the food she eats. Those are wise fairies, indeed, aren't
they, who carry that material and lay it in place in the dark, without the sound
of a hammer or a saw? All silently the work is done, and Oh, so perfectly!"
"But
how then does the baby get out from that dark place, Aunt Eleanor?"
"Why,
when the baby is ready, the doors of the temple just opens up. That is all.
And when the little one comes forth, it cries – because, ancient peoples
used to say, it knows the time has come to begin school again in earnest. They
also said that when we die is time for smiling, since school is 'out' for a
while."
"Well,
Aunt Eleanor, dear, it is a beautiful story. I'm always going to remember it.
And I think I'm going to take kinder care of my body, now I know how wonderfully
it was made."
"Yes,
and how wonderfully it is all the time being made. Your own small body will
grow with the years, and will sometime become a temple of the holy mysteries.
"There
is another thing, too, to remember, dear. What I have told you of the process
of birth of the human being is the same process for the world itself, in which
we live. It is just so that the great forces of Nature brought our earth, and
our whole solar system into being!"
"Oh,
Aunt Eleanor, just isn't the world interesting!" exclaimed Dorothy, as they
started hand in hand for the dining room, where Father and Milton were already
waiting them.
CHAPTER
-14-
SEEDS
Mrs
Moore was calling on Aunt Eleanor one day while the children were at school.
"I've
really come on a particular errand, Miss Broughton," Mrs. Moore began. "I am
daily more surprised at the way Eloise is beginning to think. For instance,
just yesterday she found a little dead linnet under the orange tree. She crooned
to it 'Poor little brother!" and then smiled up at me, 'But some day soon, he'll
have a new little body, Mother."
"Last
week she was telling me of one of her schoolmates, whose father had warned him
not to jump on streetcars while they were in motion. The boy was just bright
and merry and quick, and thoughtless, and so in the habit of jumping on successfully,
that he forgot the warning. The poor little lad failed for once, however, and
it likely that now he will always be lame. We were all expressing our regret
at the accident, when Eloise remarked, 'My, that was quick Karma, wasn't it
Mother?"
"Not
only does she think, but she has taken to her piano practice much more assiduously
than ever before, and is exact as to her hour, for, she says, Dorothy tells
her that by keeping the regular 'cycle' she will accomplish more with the time!
"Now,
Miss Broughton, what magic is this that you use with the children.?"
Aunt
Eleanor smiled as she answered: "Why, its only the magic of the truth. Do you
know I think most parents greatly underrate a child's intelligence? I don't
believe in 'talking down' to children, myself. I had a lesson in that once from
a friend of mine.
"Her
baby girl was very fond of singing, and before being put to bed was quieted
down by her favourite songs. Whenever a new song was brought out, the baby would
say, 'What is dat song, Mamma?" Sometimes Mother's repertory would run low,
and she would improvise. The baby noticed the difference at once, and asked
the usual question. Mother answered, 'Why, that's improvised." Baby seemed quite
content with the answer, but her mother told me she had not heard the word three
times, when I chanced there one day.
"Baby
was eighteen months old at the time, and carried airs perfectly, herself. She
sat on the floor playing with blocks, and singing her own compositions so lustily
that her mother and I were quite drowned out by the din. Thinking to divert
the stream of melody, her mother asked, "
' What is that song, little girl?"
"The
mite answered: 'Dat's improbised!"
"I
fairly gasped. It was evident that she knew the exact meaning of the word.
"Most
people, you see, Mrs. Moore, think a soul comes brand new to the earth ; that
this is the first time it has ever had experience here. In my opinion, we should
have very wonderful children, if we realized that they are old souls in new
bodies. Dorothy and Milton are gradually coming to realize that in sleep they
are really 'grown-ups," and that they know, within. So some of the knowledge
really does come through."
"Why
that is wonderful, Miss Broughton, for I never saw more genuine child-children
than they are! They do have the best times. Their fertile imaginations keep
the other children all aglow. They have a new game for every day – and
somehow, there never seems to be any quarrelling among them."
"They
have a wider field of true adventure than the others, I think, Mrs. Moore. And
certainly they should not be prigs, because they have a clearer understanding
of life than others."
"But
where do you yourself find the answers to all their questions?"
"It
is in Theosophy, Mrs. Moore."
"I've
thought I should like to study that sometime, but I had no idea it would be
a really useful study."
"On
the contrary, I'm inclined to think it is the most useful study there is. It
includes all departments of nature, and leaves nothing out. It is a statement
of Law – and the real value of it consists in using it."
"Miss
Broughton, I am sure there are other mothers than myself who would be glad to
take up the study for their children's sake. Would it be asking too much of
you to have a class for us?"
"There
is nothing I would do more gladly, Mrs. Moore. The world is in sore need of
the teaching, and if we can start the children right, we shall be doing the
world a great service – as well as saving the children a store of false
ideas, which would prove the greatest obstacles in their lives."
"How
would you recommend us to begin?"
"First,
of course, the mothers must know the philosophy. Then we can study the applications
together. First, I think we might read and study 'The Ocean of Theosophy," by
Wm. Q. Judge, and 'The Bhagavad-Gita," which he has rendered into English."
"Why,
may I ask, do you use the Hindu Bible rather than our own?"
"For
the same reason that I might recommend our Bible to the Hindu. It is easier
to get rid of our wrong ideas, I think, by taking an altogether different presentation
from the one we are accustomed to. After you have the ideas from a different
angle, however, you will be surprised at the illumination our Bible will receive
from it. For children especially it enforces the idea that true religion is
not confined to one book, nor to one people; and also that the true things were
as true thousands of years ago, as they are now, and will forever be. We read
a little aloud from it every day now and the interest and memory of the children
are an amazement even to me. Moreover, I have a shrewd suspicion that the Gita
is cultivating in them a true literary appreciation.
"Well,
it isn't so important to read many books as it is to understand what we do read.
We can find the whole philosophy in just those two. The first thing to do is
to start, of course, and good methods of study will soon suggest themselves."
"I
can see that, Miss Broughton. I think we shall all profit by the study, more
than we now realize. So, I'll talk with other mothers, and come soon to see
you to make further arrangements. But do you know," said Mrs. Moore, as she
rose to go, "I'm not sure that we aren't quite as little children as our babies
– in that we have so much to learn."
"Perhaps
that is the first step, though. Did not Jesus tell us we must become as little
children, before we could enter the kingdom of heaven?"
Milton
and Dorothy came romping up the walk as good-bys were said, and Aunt Eleanor
standing at the door whispered softly to herself:
"My dear little
sowers of seeds!"
CHAPTER
-15-
APPLICATIONS
All
these things Dorothy and Milton learned from Aunt Eleanor in the first year
they were with her. But you must not suppose that questions stopped then. Just
as you learned your tables of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division,
to use all your life long in whatever mathematical problems you may study, so
Dorothy and Milton had these facts as a guide in answering their own questions.
We
never grow so old, nor so advanced in school, that there are no more questions
to ask of those who know more than we. The wiser we grow, the wiser our questions
are. Always life is changing for us; the people in our lives are changing always
the problems are changing. We only have to remember that We, the Perceivers,
do not change, but look at the changes the Law does not change only we see it
working in different combinations and always our problem is to act in our daily
lives according to the Law, to benefit all our brothers – near to us,
or far away – those in human bodies, or those still imprisoned in mineral
or vegetable or animal bodies.
Here
then, are just a few of the questions Dorothy and Milton asked. See if you can
answer them, too!
----------------------------------
"Aunt
Eleanor, it's not so hard to choose between doing what is right and what is
wrong, seems to me. But sometimes you have to choose between two things that
seem good. Does it make any difference which way you choose?"
"Yes,
wherever you have to choose, one way is the better, whether you can see it or
not. We build our characters out of these small choices. But a little thought
ought to show you which is the better way. Suppose you ask yourself these questions:
"Which
would I rather do? Why? Is it easier for me? Would the other way make
it easier and happier for others? Which way will bring most happiness to others,
and least inconvenience and discomfort to others?"
"It
is the same way of choosing, you see, as between right and wrong. Sometimes,
of course, you will make mistakes, because you did not see clearly far enough,
but next time, you will have the benefit of that mistake to help you. Keep right
on choosing the more unselfish way always, and the time will come when you won't
have to be puzzled any more, for you can't do anything else but choose right."
-------------------------------------
"Why
is it, Aunt Eleanor, that when we don't deserve cross words, they make us feel
so badly?"
"
A harsh word uttered in past lives ever comes again. The cross words are some
of your own, coming back to you out of the ages. Isn't that a good reason for
trying to be gentle and patient, now, in this life?"
--------------------------------------
"Aunt
Eleanor, some of the new boys at school are picking on me and trying to make
me fight them. I don't know what to do. I've told them I don't want to fight,
and have laughed at them when they called me names, but every day they are nagging
me more and more, and call me a coward."
"Well,
Milton, suppose they were treating some other boy that way? How would you feel?"
"Why,
Auntie, don't you think I ought to stop it?"
"Yes,
I do. Especially if he were not able to take care of himself. Well, then, in
this case, the boys are bullies, and their example is bad for other boys. Tomorrow,
when they begin their taunts, if I were you, I should offer to fight any boy
who wants to fight. Quite likely your exercise with Father and the boxing gloves
will give you a surprising advantage, and you will not have any provocation
to fight after this affair is over. The bullies may seek another kind of fun
hereafter.
"As
in everything else, it is your motive that counts. You don't need to fight in
anger, but simply with the hope of curing a quarrelsome disposition in those
boys, and showing them that a boy who doesn't want to fight can not be safely
classed a coward."
----------------------------------------
"In
war, Aunt Eleanor, if a man dies killing another, would he in a future life
suffer as a murderer would suffer?"
"Again,
the motive counts. A soldier, believing it his duty as a patriot to kill, would
die for his principle – not to defend himself as a person. He suffers
with his nation in a future life, and has his share in the punishment due his
nation for that killing. As a person, he would not have the punishment of a
murderer, unless his heart were filled with feelings of hatred and revenge such
as a murderer's would hold."
------------------------------------------
"Minnie
Lake came to me at recess today, Aunt Eleanor, and said she was so sorry for
me, because I was a Theosophist! I asked her why she thought that was bad, and
she said that meant that I was a 'heathen' and didn't believe in God. I told
her that even 'heathen' believed in God, if that was what troubled her, but
anyway, I was very happy to be a Theosophist."
"Well,
Dorothy, you see there are people who think that only their idea of God is the
right one. So they would have everyone accept their idea – without themselves
looking at the truth in other people's ideas. You can only convince Minnie that
Theosophy is good by being a good Theosophist. To be kind and true and patient
and gentle and honest, not speaking of the faults of others, and considerate
of others rather than of yourself, will teach her that Theosophy is good, far
more than any words you can ever say."
-------------------------------------------
"Aunt
Eleanor, I'm so afraid I haven't passed my test in Arithmetic! I just got fussed
up over the first problem, and then my head ached, and I didn't get all the
problems done."
"Well,
the question is, have you been doing your best every day in your Arithmetic?
If so, you did your best with the test. If you did your best, that is all anyone
could ever ask of you. You are in school to learn, not to get higher marks than
someone else, nor to envy those who have higher marks than yours. But it may
be, the test showed up a weak place in your Arithmetic. So it is important to
make that weak place strong, and see that there are no weak places when the
next test comes. If you have failed, then learn from your failure.
"But
why get fussed up over any problem? If one seems harder than the others, do
the simpler ones first, and then go to the hard problem. You will then have
the benefit of the exercise on the others. But remember the best you can do
is all that is expected. It is to do your best, even if it's only tying your
shoelace! And doing your best means that whatever you are doing, you are doing
for the good of the Great Self of all creatures, as you are a part of that Self."
--------------------------------------------
"Is
it ever right to tell a lie?"
"Motive
again, boys and girls. Suppose by saying 'Yes" when 'No" were the truth, you
would save the life of a good man unjustly attacked by an angry mob? Wouldn't
you be rendering a service by that lie to the angry mob as well as to the good
man? In smaller matters, I know, it is harder to see, and lies, perhaps, are
easier to tell. If Emma says, 'isn't my dress pretty?" and you think it very
ugly, of course, it will hurt Emma's feelings to say that. Then don't say it,
but think what best you can say, as for instance, 'Well, I rather think I like
you better in your blue dress." Or, just exclaim, 'My, a new dress!" Trying
to make her feel comfortable will tell you what to say, I think.
"Generally
speaking, a lie is an abomination, and, told to protect one's self or for one's
gain, it is the beginning of a downward path that is far from the places of
peace. When one's sense of honesty is lost, he himself is lost indeed, for he
soon cannot be honest with himself."
----------------------------------------------
"There's
one queer kind of lie we don't understand, Aunt Eleanor. Bessie Jones came to
school the other day with her eyes all swollen up, nose running, and a terrible
cough. Somebody said to her, 'What an awful cold you have!" And she answered,
'Oh, no, I'm a Christian Scientist I haven't any cold!" What kind of a lie is
that?"
"We
can't deny that such a statement is a lie, naturally. But it is not told to
be a lie nor does it deceive anyone but the one who tells it. The idea of Christian
Scientists is that by denying sickness, they put it out of existence. But it
is as foolish to think that, as to think in the full sunshine there is no such
thing as darkness. People think that way because their main desire is to be
well and comfortable they believe such thinking cures their bodies. You see,
after all, the lie exists in ignorance rather than intention. If they realized
that their ills are the working out of Karma, they would not try to dodge them.
If they realized that their present bodies will be followed by others in other
lives, and that the Real Thing is not those.
|