MAGNETIC SYMPATHY

   Great man is he who is strongest in the exercise of patience. Look around you, my friend: see the "three poisons" raging within the heart of man - anger, greed, delusion, and the five obscurities - envy, passion, vacillation, sloth, and unbelief - ever preventing them seeing truth. They will never get rid of the pollution of their vain, wicked hearts, nor perceive the spiritual portion of themselves. Will you not try - for the sake of shortening the distance between us - to disentangle yourself from the net of life and death in which they are all caught, to cherish less - lust and desire? . . .

   I can come nearer to you, but you must draw me by a purified heart and a gradually developing will. Like the needle the adept follows his attractions. Is this not the law of the disembodied Principles? Why then not of the living also? As the social ties of the carnal man are too weak to call back the "Soul" of the deceased except where there is a mutual affinity which survives as a force in the region within the terrestrial region, so the calls of mere friendship or even enthusiastic regard are too feeble to draw the "Lha" who has passed on a stage of the journey to him he has left behind, unless a parallel development goes on. M. spoke well and truthfully when saying that a love of collective humanity is his increasing inspiration; and if any one individual should wish to divert his regards to himself, he must overpower the diffusive tendency by a stronger force. . . .

   Your strivings, perplexities and forebodings are equally noticed, good and faithful friend. In the imperishable RECORD of the Masters, you have written them all. There are registered your every deed and thought; for, though not a chela, as you say to my Brother Morya, nor even a "protége" -as you understand the term - still, you have stepped within the circle of our work, you have crossed the mystic line which separates your world from ours, and now whether you persevere or not; whether we become later on, in your sight, still more living real entities or vanish out of your mind like so many dream fictions - perchance an ugly night-mare - you are virtually OURS. Your hidden Self has mirrored itself in our Akasa; your nature is - yours, your essence is - ours. The flame is distinct from the log of wood which serves it temporarily as fuel; at the end of your apparitional birth - and whether we two, meet face to face in our grosser rupas - you cannot avoid meeting us in Real Existence. Yea, verily good friend your Karma is ours, for you imprinted it daily and hourly upon the pages of that book where the minutest particulars of the individuals stepping inside our circle - are preserved; and that your Karma is your only personality to be when you step beyond. In thought and deed, by day, in soul-struggles by nights, you have been writing the story of your desires and your spiritual development. . . .

   During the past few months, especially, when your weary brain was plunged in the torpor of sleep, your eager soul has often been searching after me, and the current of your thought been beating against my protecting barriers of Akàs as the lapping wavelets against a rocky shore. What that "inner Self," impatient, anxious - has longed to bind itself to, the carnal man, the worldlings' master has not ratified: the ties of life are still as strong as chains of steel. Sacred, indeed, some of them are, and no one would ask you to rupture them. There below, lies your long-cherished field of enterprise and usefulness. Ours can never be more than a bright phantom-world to the man of thorough "practical sense"; and if your case be in some degree exceptional, it is because your nature has deeper inspirations than those of others, who are still more "business-like" and the fountain-head of whose eloquence is in the brain not in the heart, which never was in contact with the mysteriously effulgent, and pure heart of Tathagata.

   If you hear seldom from me, never feel disappointed, my Brother, but say - "It is my fault." Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by subtle threads of magnetic sympathy, and, there is a mutual correlation even between a star and a man; thought runs swifter than the electric fluid, and your thought will find me if projected by a pure impulse, as mine will find, has found, and often impressed your mind. We may move in cycles of activity divided - not entirely separated from each other. Like the light in the sombre valley seen by the mountaineer from his peaks, every bright thought in your mind, my Brother, will sparkle and attract the attention of your distant friend and correspondent. If thus we discover our natural Allies in the Shadow-world - your world and ours outside the precincts - and it is our law to approach every such an one if even there be but the feeblest glimmer of the true "Tathagata" light within him - then how far easier for you to attract us. Understand this and the admission into the Society of persons often distasteful to you will no longer amaze you. "They that be whole need not the physician, but they that be sick" - is an axiom, whoever may have spoken it.

   And now, let me bid you farewell for the present until the next. Indulge not in apprehensions of what evil might happen if things should not go as your worldly wisdom thinks they ought; doubt not, for this complexion of doubt unnerves and pushes back one's progress. To have cheerful confidence and hope is quite another thing from giving way to the fool's blind optimism: the wise man never fights misfortune in advance. . . . The cause will never be ruined though albeit the Sisyphus' rock may crush a good many toes.

MAHATMA K. H.