Theos-Talk Archives (April 2001 Message tt00108)

Judge letters vol. 1, # 6 -



Extracts from LETTERS THAT HAVE HELPED ME -- Letter # 6 --


By William Q. Judge

Volume 1 compiled by Jasper Niemand;

The Letters in Volume 1 originally appeared in The Path, December
1888 to March 1890. W. Q. Judge first published them in book form
in 1891,
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SOME EXTRACTS


>From Volume 1

"Seeking for freedom I go to that God who is the light of his own
thoughts. A man who knows him truly passes over death; there is
no other path to go." -- Upanishads

"We need a literature, not solely for highly intellectual
persons, but of a more simple character, which attempts to appeal
to ordinary common-sense minds who are really fainting for such
moral and mental assistance as is not reached by the more
pretentious works."

The experience of one student is, on the whole, the experience of
all. Details differ, however. Some are made more instantly rich
than others: they are those who put forth more vigorous and
generous effort; or they have a Karmic store which brings aid.

Karma, or the law of spiritual action and reaction, decided this,
as it works on all the planes, physical, moral, mental,
psychical, and spiritual alike. Our Karma may be worked out on
any one of these planes when our life is chiefly concentrated
upon it.

The letters, in the hope that they may assist others, are here
published. They are hints given by one who knew that the first
need of a student is to learn how to think.

The true direction is pointed out, and the student is left to
clarify his own perceptions, to draw upon and enlarge his own
intuitions, and to develop, by his own inward exertions.
Such students have passed the point where their external
environment can affect their growth favorably. They may learn
from it, but the time has also come to resist it and turn to the
internal adjustment to higher relations only.

The brevity of these letters should not mislead. Every statement
in them is a statement of law. They point to causes of which life
is an effect. That life, arising from the action of Spirit in
Nature, is that which we must understand. It is to be manifested
within us before we can advance on the Path.

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Letter 6

Dear Jasper:

It is a great advance that you hear the bells, which few hear,
and evidence that you are where you can hear them; that is a
great deal indeed.

Do not look for the voice of the bells, but regard the ideas
which thereupon come into the head, and apply to them the
touchstone of your own Soul, just as you advised B.

The fact that you feel "dead" is something you should not worry
about. It is likely that you are under the operation of a law
which prevails in nature, that you will find referred to in an
article in Path Magazine for April, '86, page 14. It is that the
soul goes to a new place or new surroundings and becomes silent
there awhile -- what you call "dead" -- and draws strength there,
begins to get accustomed to its new surroundings, after which it
begins to move about. This is seen in ordinary life in the
bashfulness of a boy. That is, the bashfulness is the shyness
felt in new surroundings, and is just what happens when the soul
goes to a new place or into new surroundings. There can be no
loss or detriment to our efforts. Every aspiration higher
brightens up the road connecting the higher and lower self. No
doubt of that. It is not what is done, but the spirit in which
the least thing is done that is counted. Hear the word of the
Master.

"He who does the best he knows how and that he can do, does
enough for us."

The mere fact that a man appreciates these truths and feels these
aspirations is proof that he is on the right road. It is well to
tread it now. We will not always live. Death must come. How much
better, then, to embrace death while thus at work than to swerve
off only to be brought up with suddenness in after lives.
Immediate rebirth is for those who are always working with their
hearts on Master's work and free from self interest.

The one Spirit is in all, is the property of each, therefore It
is always there, always with us, and, by reflecting on that,
little room is left for sorrow or delusion. If we believe that
the soul of all is measured by the whole of Time and not by a
part, then we care not for these moments which relate alone to
our body. If we live in our hearts we soon prove that space and
time exist not. Nothing foreign to Master enters there; our
faults are not there. The heart reaches Him always, and no doubt
He replies. He does I know. He helps us while He leaves us to
ourselves. He needs not to stoop to see our devotion, for that is
of a supernal quality and reaches anywhere.

No, I do not say nor have I said that you ought to do something
other than you do. We each do what we can. None of us can be the
judge of any creature existing; so I do not judge you in the
least respect. Your life may in the great sum total be greater
than any life I ever led or that any one has led.
Whether you are in America, Europe, or India makes no difference.
This is seeking conditions. I have come to understand that
Masters themselves must have worked themselves up out of much
worse conditions than we are in. No matter where we are, the same
spirit pervades all and is accessible. What need, then, to change
places? We do not change ourselves by moving the body to another
locus. We only put it under a different influence. And in order
to change we must have got to dislike the place we moved from.
That is attachment by opposites, and that will produce detriment,
as does all that disturbs the equilibrium of the soul. You know
the same result is produced by two exact opposites, and thus
extremes meet.

That hot flame you speak of is one of the experiences, as are
also the sounds. There are so many, many of these things. Often
they result from extreme tension or vibration in the aura of an
aspirant of pure devotion. They are himself, and he should be on
his guard against taking them for wonders. Often they are
"apparitions of Brahm." They are like new lights and sights to a
mariner on an unfamiliar coast. They will go on, or alter, or
stop. You are only to carefully note them, and "do not exhibit
wonder nor form association."

I cannot say more. All help you extend to any other soul is help
to yourself. It is our duty to help all, and we must begin on
those nearest to us, for to run abroad to souls we might possibly
help we again forsake our present duty. It is better to die in
our own duty, however mean, than to try another one. So lift your
head and look around upon the hulks of past imagined faults. They
were means and teachers. Cast all doubt, all fear, all regret
aside, and freely take of truth what you may contain right on
every step. It will thus be well. Eternal Truth is one and
indivisible, and we may get from the Fathers (Pitris) flashes now
and then of what is true.

Words are things. With me and in fact. Upon the lower plane of
social intercourse they are things, but soulless and dead because
that convention in which they have their birth has made abortions
of them. But when we step away from that conventionality they
become alive in proportion to the reality of the thought -- and
its purity -- that is behind them.
So in communication between two students they are things, and
those students must be careful that the ground of intercourse is
fully understood. Let us use with care those living messengers
called words.

Where I see you mistaken I will speak, to warn my Brother who
temporarily knows not. For did I not call on the bugle, perhaps
other things might switch him off to where perhaps for the time
he would be pleased, but would again be sorry, and then when his
mistake was plain he would justly sigh to me across dark
centuries of separation that I had been false to my duty of
warning.

As ever,

W.Q.J.

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J. N. Comments:

The new plane to which the soul may go, referred to in this
letter, is the astral plane. It is the plane next above the
material one, and consists of a subtile order of matter.

When a student turns his attention to the higher life and desires
intensely to find the way, his soul has begun to awaken and to
speak. It has heard the voice of the spirit. Then the inner
senses begin to unfold, at first ever so gently, so tenderly, we
scarce hear their report. But the soul has then turned its
attention to the astral plane, that being the next one to be
learned on the way upward; its energy is transferred from the
material plane to this one, and we have an influx of many
confused dreams and strange experiences, awake and asleep. These
may or may not continue; all depends upon the individual soul and
upon Karma.
It is a most confusing plane, and, generally speaking, we may say
that those students are more fortunate who make a marked degree
of progress in spiritual things without having any conscious
experience of the astral plane. For then they can later on learn
it from above, instead of from below, and with far less danger to
themselves. The whole must be known, but we may progress in
various ways, even by discontinuous degrees, only then we must go
back later on, to what we passed by. Such a going back does not
imply detriment or loss of degree, for such cannot be lost when
once gained in reality.

With regard to the astral plane's being a more subtile order of
matter, this truth is often denied by clairvoyants and untrained
seers. They do not distinguish between the psychic senses and the
spiritual. They can see through gross matter, such as a wall, the
human body, and so forth, as if it were glass, but they cannot
see through astral substance, and hence they believe its forms
and all the pictures and shapes in the astral light to be real.

Only the adept sees through these illusions, which are far more
powerful because composed of a subtile order of matter: subtile
energies, fine forces have a highly increased rate of power over
grosser ones. The adept has at his command the rate of vibration
which dispels them or drives them asunder. In speaking of the
astral plane, I mean the lower soul plane, and not that higher
and purified quality which the author of Light on the Path calls
the "divine astral."

By anxiety we exert the constrictive power of egoism, which
densifies and perturbs our magnetic sphere, rendering us less
permeable to the efflux from above.

-- J. N.

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