“BECAUSE

FOR THE CHILDREN
WHO ASK WHY

CONTENTS

“BECAUSE—”
FOR THE CHILDREN WHO ASK WHY   ——1

CHAPTER I—
God    ——————————————3

CHAPTER II—
MODES OF CoNsciousNEss —————11

CHAPTER III—
KARMA—LAW  ——————————15

CHAPTER IV—
REINCARNATION   —————————19

CHAPTER V—
DEATH     —————————————24

CHAPTER VI—
PRAYER   —————————————28

CHAPTER VII—
How WORLDS BEGAN ———————  34

CHAPTER VIII—
THE MASTERS———————————  41

CHAPTER IX—
FORMER CONTINENTS———————— 48

CHAPTER X—
FAIRIES——————————————  55

CHAPTER XI—
GHOSTS—SEVENFOLD NATURE OF MAN—64

CHAPTER XII—
DREAMS—————————————— 70

CHAPTER XIII—
DEVACHAN AND BIRTH     ———————76

CHAPTER XIV—
SEEDS———————————————85

CHAPTER XV—
SOME PROBLEMS  ——————————90

CHAPTER XVI—
SOME MORE PROBLEMS    ———————98

CHAPTER XVII—
THINGS WORTH KNOWING——————113

CHAPTER XVIII—
MORE THINGS WORTH KNOWING———125

CHAPTER XIX—
WHAT MIGHT BE ——————————142

PREFACE

THIS third edition of “Because—” For the Children Who Ask Why is again put forth in response to the steady and insistent demand for it ever since the first edition, in 1916, appeared as a pioneer in books dealing specifically with pure Theosophy for children. The second and much larger edition has proved even more attractive than the first, and that text is now unchanged. Whereas the book was originally intended to be a guide to parents in imparting Theosophical ideas to children, it has been found to appeal directly to the children themselves: they read and love the book, and so it is published particularly for them. Meantime, the parents and teachers are being served by The Teacher’s Manual and Guide to The Eternal Verities, in which the, history of the work of Theosophy School for children is given, methods discussed, and supplementary reading suggested. The Eternal Verities also, in its present form of Lessons, Songs and Stories, all developed in consonance with the Three Fundamental

       Propositions of H. P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, is for the direct use of children, and therefore a companion volume to “Because.”
These books are important for children, since the cycle of the Theosophical Movement has now something less than thirty-three years to complete before the new centenary impulsion will come. Those now children will be, it is hoped, Companions to the Teacher, and to all the great Souls embodied in that cycle. What, then, could be of more moment than that they know the fundamentals of Their philosophy; that in their hearts they hold the noble example and practise the precepts of Those who worked in the nineteenth century effort?
       This book is intended to honor Her who brought the Message of Theosophy from the Great Teachers and Friends of Humanity—Madame H. P. Blavatsky; to give grateful recognition to her colleague and faithful friend, who demonstrated the application of the Message—W. Q. Judge; and to acknowledge the debt to Robert Crosbie, who, ever pointing to the Predecessors, taught among many others, the student now “passing on” what is contained in this simple book.

“BECAUSE—”

FOR THE CHILDREN WHO ASK WHY

DOROTHY and Milton Stewart 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 had said, to get rested and well.

Father always was quiet and grave when Mother wasn’t home, but now—seemed as if he just completely forgot that 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 cutest little

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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! Some-way, 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?

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CHAPTER I

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 just 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 talking about God one day, and they said they didn’t want to tell us about the kind of a God they had had taught to 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’
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on Sunday because somebody 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?
             “That is really a big question in itself, Milton. It is easy to say—what is true—that what harms no one in the world can not be wrong; and to say, what helps and serves all others, oneself included, must be right. But, in the end, everyone has to decide for himself what his own actions must be, and, often what would be quite wrong for one person in his place would be quite right for another in his. So, it can’t be the matter of a day, Sunday or any other day, that makes right or wrong, can it?”
              “No, I see that, Auntie. But, why does Chester pick out Sunday to be so ‘specially good in?”
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  “Well, it is supposed by most so-called ‘Christian’ people that 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. Believing this, the wickedest people have been known to cease from their particular sins at twelve o’clock Saturday night, and return to them again promptly twenty-four hours after, because of their fear of punishment by ‘God,’ if they practised this sin on the Sabbath!

  “But, as a matter of fact, no one Being created our wonderful earth, out of nothing, as some people think. The earth is made up of myriads of beings of many kinds and degrees; besides, there are the human beings who people it. And it took all these beings together millions and billions of years to make the earth as we see it; or, we might say, for the earth to become—to grow as it is. In all these many years of becoming, there were times, like ours of day and night—now, when there was much action going on, as by day, and, following it, a time of equal length, like our night, when no action went on. Sabbath means, really, a period of rest equal to the day of action before it. So, if we were doing strictly as the Bible indicates, we should work seven days and rest another seven! The people who worshipped this ‘God,’ such as Chester’s is, simply misunderstood the Bible story, and felt they were doing after God’s

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example to take the seventh day for rest and worship. Some day, I must surely tell you more of how worlds are made, for it is a wonderful story.
              “The one day taken for rest Out of all the seven, however, is a great help to all of us. Thousands of people do nothing but drudge except for that one day. And it is wise 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. But, any act, done any day, for the good of all others, is right; while doing it on Sunday makes it neither more right nor more wrong. Only, see, when we come back to Chester! If Chester played ball on Sunday, when he thinks it is wrong, when it would be a cause of disturbance to his parents who also think it wrong—why, of course, he would be doing wrong to play. The same act would not be wrong for you in your place, because you know it does not annoy those who are taking care of you, and who even prefer that you should take that exercise.”
             “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 or 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

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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?”

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   “Well, dear, do you know there is nothing under the sun that does not change excepting that one thing which you are—that 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 ‘thinks,’ and not even the most intelligent

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animal thinks as you do, dear, because it doesn’t know it is thinking. It doesn’t know, for instance, even that it is an animal and that you are a boy.”
           “But won’t he sometime ever know ?“
           “Not ‘ he,’ for, you see, there isn’t any ‘ he’ there! A ‘he’ could say, ‘I am’; and if it could say, ‘I am an animal,’ it wouldn’t be an animal!”
           “Oh, my, then, Aunt Eleanor, what is an animal, anyway ?“
           “That is a deeper question than many people suppose, Milton. But let us take it this way: we all live in a universe of Life, and there is, indeed, no better word for ‘God’ than Life. In this universe of Life are many grades, just as in a school, and calling the mineral kingdom the first grade, there are even forms of life not yet able to enter that grade; calling human beings the last grade, there are beings who have gone even beyond that! In between the first and last grades comes the animal grade, that is, there is Life moving and acting in animal forms. And, sometime, the Life in the animal forms will enter the human grade; though the animal grade will be there just the same, into which the Life may advance from the vegetable grade. So, when we say animal, I think we mean a form of life, with all the intelligence of the lower grades, and the additional power of being able to move where it wants to. The stone doesn’t move of itself, you know, and the plant must stay

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by its root, but the animal is not confined in its motion.”
             “Why, their bodies can move around just as our bodies do, can’t they?”
             “Yes, but their ‘minds’ can’t move about as our minds can. They can’t think, for instance, of doing something next week, or of what they did last month.”
            “Then it’s the mind-motion that makes us different from animals? Then the ‘God’ in us is just the same God or Life as in the animals, only in us It knows it knows?”
            “Yes, that is the whole story of Life, dear— the ever growing, the ever becoming something bigger and better and wiser. But enough ‘mind- motion’ on such deep things for this time, son. Now, run and play. Boys and girls need to keep their ‘animal’ motion going, too, if they would be happy and healthy and wise.”

CHAPTER II
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 some-way 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, the grain of sand thinks in a very small kind of way, and gets so very little experience and knowledge, as compared with a human being’s ! It’s really just this rubbing up against other grains of sand 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. Every point is a thinker; every particle has its own consciousness. And in that very rock beautiful crystals form. This amethyst Stone in my ring is a higher kind

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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 it had suffered from 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 he wouldn’t be gone long—but I just felt Un-

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comfortable 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 don’t remember in our brains even all that happened a week ago—perhaps, not all that happened yesterday. Just try it out tonight when you go to bed, younkits, and see if you can remember everything that happened and that you thought of

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today! How could we expect to remember in a brain we never had before this life, then, all that happened in a past life?
            “But, you will find that what we do remember of any day is what we felt strongly—what we loved, and what we hated, what was joy and what was pain—what we were really conscious of; because, no matter what goes on around us, if we don’t see it or know it, it is not a part of our experience. Those experiences that make us think and feel are what make up the knowledge of the ‘I’, that goes on from life to life.”
            “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.”

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CHAPTER III

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 isle. 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.

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   “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 the 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.

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  “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

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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 ?“

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CHAPTER IV

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, with a border of red petunias? 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, and the richest red ones. 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.”

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   “Were they just the same, Dorothy ?“ queried Aunt Eleanor. “Were they just as large as they were the years before, and were all the blossoms in the middle pure white, and all pure red on the border?”

               “No, Auntie, I know they were smaller because they had no care, but I wanted to ask you why were some of the blossoms in the middle of the bed 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 white petunias were tinged with the color of the red ones growing beside them. In their petunia way, they gained knowledge of their neighbor’s ways and it must be, too, that some of the red ones gained knowledge of their white

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neighbors, and when their seed sent up fresh plants, these still kept the knowledge that the past 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 traveled 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

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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.

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  “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?”

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CHAPTER V

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 cosy 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.

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            “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. Your love for her doesn’t die, because her body is dead—and you can be happy in the remembrance of the expressions of her love, and happy in the love for her you 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 a 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.

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           “And now, you’ll soon be going to bed and to sleep. Yet you never knew that 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, as you might wake up in the sweetest dream you ever had.
           “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 !”

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  “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. Good night, dear ones,” Aunt Eleanor murmured low, for already the tired eyes had closed, and Dorothy and Milton were far on the way to Dreamland.

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CHAPTER VI

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 sat 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)

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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

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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. For, in spite of the injunction of Jesus, it is the custom in the churches, as you know, and in the school which the children attend, to repeat it in unison at the opening of the session. I felt that if they had to conform to the rules of the school in that respect, they should, at least, know what they were doing. I told them that while many people say it, few understand what it means—that when they repeated it with others, I hoped 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

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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 Sanscrit word, standing for that God within, the Self of all things and creatures. It is really the mechanical repetition of such prayers that makes people forget That in themselves which is deeper and holier than any words or prayers.”
       “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 ?“
       “Well, man begins to be the God he is, in reality, when he sees that his good actions are the only ‘priests’ he needs, and that only his sinful, selfish thoughts and desires are the sacrifices called for by that Presence within himself.”
       “Yes, I’m pretty sure, if I’d known these

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things at their age, I shouldn’t have been the poor, scared little rabbit that I was then. Why, do you know, Eleanor, that idea of a 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 fellow-men, 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 small-

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est atom; that only the law of our own 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.”

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CHAPTER VII

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 so 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 an earth to live on?”

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           “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 is 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. The learned men whom we call astronomers say that there is no atmosphere on the Moon—that is, no air like ours in which beings such as we are could live.

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But, at the same time, it is a kind of pull from the Moon on our Earth that makes the tides of the ocean! So, while there is life of a kind on the Moon, it is like the life of a slowly decaying dead body: the breath of life has left it, and its particles are leaving it all the time. 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 awaken to use these outer bodies again next day. So in the night of the Universe, we are not using any 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 outside our own inner na-

 [36]

ture 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 by, we should see a point of light appear. ing, 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 word ‘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 actual-

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ly 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 there 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 eighteen million years ago.
             “It’s 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 belong to 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

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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 remember that there have been terrible floods and earthquakes all over the world. And especially in Japan, since January, 1914. Since that time the depression in the ocean floor near Japan which formerly could be reached by sounding has been found to be apparently bottomless. Possibly that fact is not unconnected with another one; about a mile from the coast of California a mountain range is coming slowly to the surface of the ocean. It has risen more than 2000 feet in the last few years. Where once its tops could not be reached at 1200 fathoms, now they are sounded at 300 fathoms. The land ‘growing’ around Hawaii, too, may be a part of that same continent to be.
            “The really great change will not come, however, 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 subraces, of the Fifth Great Race yet to come. The

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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 housecleaning and get ready for the company of the Sixth Great Race. She’ll take ample time to do it, too, I assure you. Nature is never in a hurry. Even now on the earth the majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub-race of the Fourth Great Race. (Chinamen are some of these.) There are some remnants, indeed, of the seventh sub-race of the Third Great Race—as the Tasmanians, and Veddahs of Ceylon.
            “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.

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CHAPTER VIII

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 like the 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.

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         “Some are, surely. They are wherever they can best help. Some again may have been needed on other earths than this, and have passed over the work of this earth to other Teachers, 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 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. In helping them we help as well the African savage, the animal in the forest, and the very grain of sand upon the shore. We are all climbing up the great stair. way 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 in that they have been gained selfishly—in that 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.

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          “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 labor 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 have always been some left as witness, some 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 a suitable portion of what these records hold—and more, to those who are ready—or worthy.
            “As you grow older, you will find the names of these Teachers with every race in history. It is only about fifty years ago since They sent the last Teacher. She was known in the world as

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Madame Blavatsky, and Mr. Judge helped her with her work. And, by the way,” Aunt Eleanor paused, “all the boys and girls who knew Mr. Judge voted him their best friend and playmate.
           “Madame Blavatsky learned these ancient teachings 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 far-away 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 I have found to be true many things which she said we can prove for ourselves, 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

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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 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 understand the life of such Wise Ones.”
            Then Father broke in—”Should you say, Eleanor, that Jesus was one of those Elder Brothers ?“
            “Surely. But isn’t it strange that when these Messengers come, there are so few to realize their greatness or to recognize them as Elder Brothers? Not even after hundreds of years do people see in the Galilean carpenter, great Teacher, of the same order as Buddha and Confucius.”
            “Is there any evidence of this ?“
            “All these great Teachers say the same great things to men. They all know each other; They

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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 and 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 someone 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

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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 !”

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CHAPTER IX

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

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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 cosy nest for a bird’s-eye view of the ages.

             The first land crowned the North Pole like a skull-cap, 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. The real North Pole of which Madame Blavatsky speaks has never yet been found,—not by Capt. Peary, not by Dr. Cooke, not by Amundsen. They have reached points in the Arctic circle, undoubtedly, but the North Pole is beyond an inland sea, far, far beyond the frozen fields of ice which they explored. Some Arctic travelers have seen that sea, but they thought it was an unreachable mirage. The ancients speak of the “Fortunate Isles” wherein is the “fountain of life,” as being in the midst of a gloomy glacial sea. Maybe, it was such old traditions that led Macmillan on his aeroplane expedition to search for a land of mild climate and great natural riches beyond an open Arctic sea. But, if the north and south poles are receptacles and liberators, as well as storehouses of the very life-blood of the Earth—its electricity
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—and if, without those poles as safety valves, the surplus electricity would have rent our Earth to pieces long ago, as H. P. B. says, it hardly seems likely that any one of these explorers will ever reach the North Pole. What goes on there we may only guess by the great electric Northern Lights which we call the “Aurora Borealis.”
            ‘Well, then, just let us imagine that “skull-cap” 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 neighboring 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 of Kam-

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schatka 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 it 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 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.

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Then, too, Alaska was not disconnected by Behring’s Strait.
             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 portions 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 Americas without wetting his feet. That is how it happens that we now have the same trees and flowers here as in the other continent—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 be interested to read 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 air-craft then than we have now, as well as telephones, and far wiser 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.

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            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

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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 it1 those islands 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.

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CHAPTER X

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

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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 ‘magination!”
            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

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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 peoples’ 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

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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. 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—of ten 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?
            “Of course, these old tales told by Grimm are the old, old folk-lore of the Germans. There is a meaning in many of them deeper than most people suspect. You  wouldn’t suppose, Dorothy, that the real meaning has anything to do with former continents? But it has. A continent is swept away when the people in it have grown wicked and selfish, and some of these tales handed down by word of mouth for ages are about wicked ones who were able to be more wicked because of all that they knew. Both ‘witches’ and ‘wizards’ are of this kind—people who ‘know,’ for evil purposes.
           “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

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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 elernentals 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. May-

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be 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 tree-tops. 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 comets ?“

               “Certainly, child, they don’t play comets— but the music you heard like that of the cornet is made by the fairies—or elementals—this time,

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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, maybe 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 rain-storm, 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 very 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! 1 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 upon 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 ele-

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mentals 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.

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             “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 Babylon, and Delhi. Very few people know why cities grow in one direction first—rather than in another which should have been thought more favorable. 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 I”
Just then Father and Milton rounded the turn in the road to tell them of a bank all sweet with maiden-hair ferns and columbine. 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?

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CHAPTER XI

GHOSTS—SEVENFOLD 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 seem 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

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is changing all the time in its molecules and atoms, and we would not 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 stars—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 his 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

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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 Iife—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 every-day 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

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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 our bodies are just copied from Nature. Just as our earth has seven bodies, so have we. We couldn’t li