It has been with regret that I hear of your serious illness, Jasper. While life hangs in the balance, as it would seem yours does and for some time will, you will feel much depression.

Now it is not usual to thus calmly talk to a person of his death, but you do not mind, so I talk. I do not agree with you that death is well. Yours is not a case like that of —— who was to die and decided to accept life from Great Powers and work on for Humanity amid all the throes and anguish of that body. Why should you not live now as long as you can in the present body, so that in it you may make all the advance possible and by your life do as much good as you can to the Cause and man? For you have not yet as Jasper Niemand had a chance to entitle you to extraordinary help after death in getting back again soon, so that you would die and run the chance of a long Devachan and miss much that you might do for Them. Such are my views. Life is better than death, for death again disappoints the Self. Death is not the great informer or producer of knowledge. It is only55 the great curtain on the stage to be rung up next instant. Complete knowledge must be attained in the triune man: body, soul, and spirit. When that is obtained, then he passes on to other spheres, which to us are unknown and are endless. By living as long as one can, one gives the Self that longer chance.

"Atmanam atmana pashya" (Raise the Self by the self—G?ta) does not seem to be effective after the threshold of death is passed. The union of the trinity is only to be accomplished on earth in a body, and then release is desirable.

It is not for myself that I speak, Brother, but for thee, because in death I can lose no one. The living have a greater part in the dead than the dead have in the living.

The doubt which you now feel as to success is morbid. Please destroy it. Better a false hope with no doubt, than much knowledge with doubts of your own chances. "He that doubteth is like the waves of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed." Doubt is not to be solely guarded against when applied to Masters (whom I know you doubt not). It is most to be guarded and repelled in relation to oneself. Any idea that one cannot succeed, or had better die than live because an injured body seems to make success unattainable, is doubt.

We dare not hope, but we dare try to live on and on that we may serve Them as They serve the Law. We are not to try to be chelas or to do any one thing in this incarnation, but only to know and to be just as much as we can, and the possibility is not measured. Reflect, then, that it is only a question of being overcome—by what? By something outside. But if you accuse or doubt yourself, you then give the enemy a rest; he has nothing to do, for you do it all yourself for him, and, leaving you to your fate, he seeks other victims. Rise, then, from this despondency and seize56 the sword of knowledge. With it, and with Love, the universe is conquerable. Not that I see thee too despondent, Jasper, but I fain would give thee my ideas, even did something kill thee against our will next day.

Am glad that although the body is painful, you yourself are all right. We have in various ways to suffer, and I do not doubt it is a great advance if we can in the midst of physical suffering grasp and hold ourselves calm and away from it. Yet also the body must be rested. Rest, and let the anxieties to do lie still and dormant. By that they are not killed, and when the body gets stronger more is known.

You have been in storms enough. A few moments' reflection will show you that we make our own storms. The power of any and all circumstances is a fixed, unvarying quality, but as we vary in our reception of these, it appears to us that our difficulties vary in intensity. They do not at all. We are the variants.

If we admit that we are in the stream of evolution, then each circumstance must be to us quite right. And in our failures to perform set acts should be our greatest helps, for we can in no other way learn that calmness which Krishna insists upon. If all our plans succeeded, then no contrasts would appear to us. Also those plans we make may all be made ignorantly and thus wrongly, and kind Nature will not permit us to carry them out. We get no blame for the plan, but we may acquire Karmic demerit by not accepting the impossibility of achieving. Ignorance of the law cannot be pleaded among men, but ignorance of fact may. In occultism, even if you are ignorant of some facts of importance you are not passed over by The Law, for It has regard for no man, and pursues Its adjustments without regard to what we know or are ignorant of.

If you are at all cast down, or if any of us is, then57 by just that much are our thoughts lessened in power. One could be confined in a prison and yet be a worker for the Cause. So I pray you to remove from your mind any distaste for present circumstances. If you can succeed in looking at it all as just what you in fact desired, then it will act not only as a strengthener of your good thoughts, but will reflexly act on your body and make it stronger.

All this reminds me of H., of whose failure you now know. And in this be not disappointed. It could hardly be otherwise. Unwisely he made his demands upon the Law before being quite ready. That is, unwisely in certain senses, for in the greater view naught can be unwise. His apparent defeat, at the very beginning of the battle, is for him quite of course. He went where the fire is hottest and made it hotter by his aspirations. All others have and all will suffer the same. For it makes no difference that his is a bodily affection; as all these things proceed from mental disturbances, we can easily see the same cause under a physical ailment as under a mental divagation. Strangely, too, I wrote you of the few who really do stay, and soon after this news came and threw a light—a red one, so to say—upon the information of H's retreat. See how thought interlinks with thought on all planes when the True is the aim.

We ourselves are not wholly exempt, inasmuch as we daily and hourly feel the strain. Accept the words of a fellow traveller; these: Keep up the aspiration and the search, but do not maintain the attitude of despair or the slightest repining. Not that you do. I cannot find the right words; but surely you would know all, were it not that some defects hold you back.

The darkness and the desolation are sure to be ours, but it is only illusionary. Is not the Self pure, bright, bodiless, and free,—and art thou not that? The daily waking life is but a penance and the trial of the body,58 so that it too may thereby acquire the right condition. In dreams we see the truth and taste the joys of heaven. In waking life it is ours to gradually distill that dew into our normal consciousness.............