The Letters of Johann Caspar Lavater

The Letters of Johann Caspar Lavater

To the Empress Maria Feodorovna, the wife of the Emperor Paul I., of Russia.

(Written in the year 1798, and translated from the original autographs.)

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Johann Caspar Lavater, the famous Physiognomist, was the son of a skilful physician at Zurich and was born November 15th, 1741. As a child he was of a very lively imagination and gave himself up to silent reveries; while yet at school he believed that he had received direct answer to his prayers. Later on at Leipzig and Berlin he made the acquaintance of the scholars and theologians of Northern Germany, and on his return to Zurich was made deacon and subsequently first pastor of the orphan church there. Until he entered on his great physiognomical work, all his energy was devoted to the service of religion, although he also gained a sufficient reputation as a poet. His sermons were marked by such fine style, lively enthusiasm, and also by a certain mysticism which always characterized him, that they won large admiration even in foreign countries. His great work, entitled “Physiognomical Fragments,” was based on the theory that there was a close connexion between the internal man and the outward expression of the face. This won him such fame that his name was speedily known all over Europe. During the Swiss Revolution, he boldly opposed the new views and the Directory, being decided in this by the spectacle of the French Revolution which had thoroughly disgusted him. For this he was imprisoned in 1799, but was soon set at liberty and died in 1801 of a wound received while assisting the distressed at the capture of Zurich by Masséna. In private life Lavater is said to have been one of the most virtuous and even saintly of men.

In presenting a translation of these letters, of which only a few have previously seen the light, we are guided by a desire to interest those of our readers who may be orthodox Christians or Spiritualists. For although the opinions of Lavater are greatly in advance of the narrow theology of his times, and in many places he gives utterance to ideas of great sublimity, still no Theosophist or Occultist can agree with his theology, psychology, or spiritualism, which are throughout characterised by very material conceptions, and remind us strongly of the “Summer Land,” and the literal interpretation of St. John’s Revelation. And now with regard to the letters themselves.

In 1881, in Nos. 3 and 4 of the German journal, the Christian Reading, appeared a letter from the Director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Public Library to the authorities of the University of Jena, congratulating them on the occasion of the completion of the 300th year of the existence of its foundation, and concluding with the following words:

“. . . We have collected some accidentally preserved pages belonging to the rich treasury of German literature, and have the honour to present them, as a jubilee offering, to one of the most active centres of German culture, traces of which are perceived in every place where science and learning are a care, and the remarkable monuments of which occupy the most prominent place in our Library, in whose name I now present the enclosed copies. “The St. Petersburg Imperial Public Library wishes the University of Jena success in its future undertakings, which have hitherto been so beneficial to science during the 300 years of its existence.

“The Director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Public Library.

(Signed) “Baron Korf.

“Member of the State Council of the Secretariat.

“P.S.—The copy of the enclosed was entrusted by the Council of the Library to its chief Librarian, R. Meenoulof, who deems himself very happy to have had the good fortune of discovering, during the re-cataloguing of the private library of the Grand Duke Constantine Nicolaevitch, at Pavlovsk, this forgotten correspondence of Lavater.”

The above letter was prefaced by the following explanation:—The palace of the Grand Duke of Pavlovsk is the residence where the Emperor Paul passed the happiest years of his life. Later on it became the favorite residence of his late august widow, the never-to-be-forgotten—for her philanthropy and beneficence to suffering humanity—the Empress Maria Feodorovna. The palace library, which owes its existence to this august pair, contains a collection of most remarkable and choice works. Among other things a small packet was found there containing some autograph letters of Lavater, which have hitherto remained unknown to the biographers of this famous man. These letters were written by him, at Zurich, in 1798. Sixteen years before, Lavater had the opportunity of making the acquaintance of the Grand Duke Pavel (Paul) Petrovitch and his wife, during their travels incognito, under the titles of the Count and Countess Severnoy (North), when they visited Zurich and Schaffhausen. From 1796 to 1800, Lavater sent his physiognomical discoveries to Russia and along with them letters, or rather fragments in the shape of letters, of a spiritualistic tendency, with the object of giving the best possible general conception about the state of the soul after the death of the body. Lavater allows that the soul of the dead can transmit its thoughts to a receptive and chosen mind (now called a medium), and thus communicate with and write letters to the friends it left on earth, and give them an idea of its existence in the realm of the spirits. In his letters Lavater speaks of his religious convictions with great enthusiasm. The publication of a few of these letters with the permission of the Grand Duke Constantine Nicolaevitch, will enable the public to become better acquainted with the sympathetic and lofty soul of Lavater. As to the rest, and the correspondence which contains his physiognomical observations, owing to their private nature and length they cannot be made public property.¹

Those now offered to the public were translated directly from the autograph letters at St. Petersburg.—Ed. [H.P.B.]

———

On the State of the Soul After Death.

First Letter.
General Thoughts.

Highly revered Maria, of all Russias,

Deign to absolve me from the obligation of giving you the title of “Majesty,” with which the world honors you, but which does not accord with the sanctity of the theme chosen by me for my correspondence with you. I crave this liberty in order to have the opportunity of speaking in all sincerity and with all freedom.

You want to know some of my thoughts about the state of the soul after death. However small is the knowledge of even the wisest and most learned of us—since none of those who were translated to these (to us) unknown realms, has returned thence²—nevertheless a thinking man, the disciple of Him who came on earth from a (to us) hidden world, can say leave this world to-day or to-morrow, restoring to the earth our mortal envelope, our souls will ascend with the rapidity of lightning to the prototype of all the loving ones, and we will be joined to Him in ineffable bliss.

X.

Neither I nor any other mortal can know what will become of our soul after the death of the body; meanwhile I am profoundly convinced that pure love must impart to our spirit, once it is liberated from its body, a limitless freedom and widen our existence. Love must give to it (Spirit) the possibility of an incessant enjoyment of God, and will present it with an infinite capacity of rendering happy those who are capable of tasting the highest bliss. O, how ineffable is the freedom of spirits released from the bonds of their body. With what a radiant flight will be the ascension of those who love! What an endless knowledge, what a force of intercourse with others, becomes their bliss! What light in all their being! What life informs it! Radiant streams of bliss are poured to meet him (the Spirit) from every side in order to satisfy his lofty aspirations! Innumerable hosts of loving beings extend their arms to him! Harmonious voices emanate from these brilliant choirs, telling him: “Spirit of our Spirit, Heart of our Heart! Love outpouring from the source of love! Loving soul! Thou belongest to us and to all of us, and we all are thine! Each of us is thine, and thou belongest to each of us! Our God is Love and God is our love! We are full of God and our love has found bliss in our mutual bliss.”

Is it possible that you, highly venerated Sovereign Lady, your noble and excellent Imperial Consort so inclined to good, and I after you, shall not each use all our efforts in order to prepare ourselves for the enjoyment of love by our acts, prayers, and sufferings, in order not to lose sight of Love, the God, and also of the Man who bowed his head on Golgotha.

Johann Caspar Lavater.
Zürich, 18  viii., 1798.

God permitting, to be continued.

(To be continued in any case.)

The external conditions in which a soul, after leaving its body, will find itself placed, depend on its own internal state; to wit, all will appear to it in consonance with its own nature. The good will see everything that is good, the wicked will attract naught but the wicked. The loving souls will find themselves surrounded with loving spirits; the souls which hated will approach the fiends of Hate. Every soul will be reflected in Spirits akin to itself.

A virtuous soul will become better in the midst of the most perfect Beings which it will find itself able to approach. A pure soul will become more pure still through the sole fact of its incessant contemplation of Spirits still purer and more radiant than itself. A loving soul will become more loving . . .

Likewise, the vicious soul will become more corrupted through its contact with other wicked Beings. For if we find even on earth nothing more contagious and attractive than vice and virtue, hate and love; it stands only to reason that beyond the threshold of terrestrial life, every moral and religious perfectibility becomes inevitably still more attractive as every immoral and unclean feeling, more contagious.

You, most revered Sovereign, will become the most loving in the midst of Beings full of love.

All the remnants of vanity, selfishness, and neglect of the kingdom of God and His pre-ordinations will be engulfed, without leaving a trace, by this feeling of love, if it only predominates in us, this attribute which will find itself ceaselessly being purified in such relationship and touch with pure and loving Spirits.

Rising by the power of that love in us, a love which we can develop so broadly when still on earth; purifying ourselves through contact with the love of those pure Beings which radiate on us the beams of their light, we will thereby only prepare and train ourselves gradually to the direct contemplation of the most Perfect Love in the hereafter, lest by being too strongly dazzled we should be thrown back and thus prevented from fully enjoying it.

But, highly revered Sovereign, how may a weak mortal, and how dare he attempt to explain to himself the nature of the contemplation of this embodiment of Love! Canst Thou, O inexhaustible Mercy, visibly approach him, who from Thee alone draws love and that without appalling and blinding him?

I believe that at first He will approach us invisible and unrecognized. Has not He acted ever in this way? Who, more than Christ sought to remain unrecognized? Who manifested in Himself the unsolved riddle of the unknown as He did? Who knew better to remain unrecognized, than He, in whose full power it was to manifest Himself; He before whom all Heaven bowed; aye, He came to us under the guise of a modest carpenter and preserved till death the personality of a Nazarene, appearing at first in an incognizable form. He manifested Himself only subsequently.

I surmise that He will always preserve this mode of action, so well according with His nature, His wisdom and His love. Is it not as a gardener that He appeared to Mary while she was seeking for Him, despairing of ever finding whom she sought? Unrecognized at first, He allowed her to know Him only a few minutes later.

Equally unbeknown He approached His two disciples, who full of Him went in search of their Master. He journeyed along with them for some considerable time. Their hearts burned within them with a sacred fire; they felt the presence of a higher and a more divinely pure Being, but they did not recognize Him, “For their eyes were holden that they should not know him”; and they were opened only when He “brake” the bread, and also when they saw Him the same evening in Jerusalem. The same happened at the Sea of Tiberias, and when, radiant in all His glory, He appeared to Saul.

How lofty and identical are all the words and manifestations of our Lord! . . . .

All follows an uninterrupted sequence which moves us on incessantly forward, bringing us nearer and nearer the goal; but that goal is not, however, the final one. Christ is the middle point, the chief motor, at times visible, at others invisible, in this great divine drama so strikingly simple and at the same time so terribly complicated; a drama which seems to never end, though it seemed complete and finished a thousand times over.

In the life-drama of each of us who follows and bows before Him, He always appears at first unrecognized. Can Love refuse to manifest to him who adores It and which It loves—during the moment he most needs it? Yes; O most humane of men, Thou shalt manifest Thyself to men in the form that is the most human. Thou shalt appear to the loving Soul I now address. Thou shalt appear also to me, at first as unrecognized, but forthwith Thou shalt make Thyself known. We shall see Thee innumerable times ever different yet ever the same; even more perfect in proportion as our soul will be perfecting itself and—never for the last time! . . .

Let us then soar as frequently as we can toward this enchanting ideal, which, God permitting, I will try to explain more fully in my next letter, thus endeavoring to make it more realistic to You. This must now be done through the means of a communication from a departed Soul.

(Signed with the usual assurances of respect)

Johann Caspar Lavater.
Zürich, 1  ix., 1798.

Fourth Letter.

In my last, I had promised you Highly Revered Sovereign Lady, to send you the letter of a dead man to a living friend of his. I did so in order that you should be offered the means of understanding the better my conceptions with regard to the post mortem condition of a Christian after the death of his body. I now take the liberty of enclosing the promised document in my present letter, for your inspection. You have to judge it from the standpoint already indicated by me; and to kindly give all your attention to the main subject rather than to the secondary details; though even these, as I have reasons to suppose, bear the stamp of truth upon them.

For a clearer understanding of all that I shall have occasion to submit to you in the future in this form, I deem it necessary to add to it as a general conclusion a conviction of mine. And this is, that quite independently of the universal and immutable law of condemnation and the highest bliss, every spirit, coordinately with his personal character,³ not only moral and religious, but also individual and social, experiences after his terrestrial death, sorrows, and joys quite different from what other spirits do, and appertaining to himself only. A universal law is determined by the personality of every distinct being; i.e., it will produce in its particular applications different effects, as the same beam shining through colored glass regulates its direction and intensity of light in accordance with the degree and quality of the color of the glass, its protuberances and defects.

Thus, I take the following for an unconditioned axiom:

Notwithstanding that all spirits from the highest to the lowest and most suffering, are subject to the same simple law of affinity with, or repulsion from, the most perfect Love; nevertheless, it is the personal and separate character of each of them which places him in conditions of bliss or suffering entirely its own. Every one among them suffers independently and quite differently from the others, and enjoys a bliss which belongs to no other. The material and the spiritual worlds, God and Christ, appear to each in a form in which they appear to none other but himself.

Each Spirit has its own standpoint, personal to himself. God talks with each in a tongue comprehensible only to him. He communes with each separately, and grants to him a bliss which he alone is able to feel.

This idea, of the truth of which I feel firmly convinced, serves as a basic one in all the subsequent letters from disembodied spirits to their friends on earth.

I will remain quite content if my explanations will help you to understand how each Spirit, developing his personal character and ennobling his personality,⁴ may prepare himself for joys and blissfulness entirely his own, as best fitted and peculiar to him.

Nothing is sooner forgotten, as nothing is pursued with less steadiness than our conception of the bliss best fitted for us, or the possibility of preparing oneself to enjoy it. Therefore, do I feel sure, that you, wise Sovereign Lady, so worthy of respect, will not deem vain this, my earnest prayer, that you should give your fullest and attentive consideration to the above idea, and that you should fathom it for the sake of Your own edification and personal elevation to God. God has placed Himself and the whole Universe in the heart of every man!

Thus, each man represents a separate mirror reflecting the Universe and its Creator. Let us endeavor then, highly reverenced Sovereign, to preserve this mirror in us, in the greatest purity, that God should see in it at every hour, the reflection of Himself and of his divine creation.

Johann Caspar Lavater.
Zurich, ix, 1798.

The Letter of a Defunct to His Friend on Earth,
Concerning the State of the Disembodied Spirits.

I.

At last, my beloved one, I am permitted to partially satisfy our mutual desire and to communicate to thee something of my present condition. I can tell thee very little, this once. All depends on the way thou shalt profit by my advices.

I am aware how great is thy desire to learn something of my present state, as of that of the disembodied Spirits in general; but it is no greater than my own wish to let thee know all that can possibly be revealed.

In him who loved in the material world, the faculty of loving increases enormously as soon as he becomes a denizen of the immaterial world. Together with such love, the desire to notify those on earth whom he loves, and to let them know all that is permitted to be said upon the subject, increases in him in the highest degree.

II.

First of all I have to explain to thee how, without touching pen or paper, I have the possibility of writing, and of conversing with thee in a tongue quite terrestrial and human, which tongue in my present normal state I can no longer comprehend. This alone must serve to throw a ray of light on the idea, concerning the way thou hast to conceive our actual and normal conditions.

III.

Imagine then, that my present state differs from the one that preceded, almost as much as the state of the butterfly carrying itself about in the air, differs from the state it was in while a grub. I now represent just such a grub, transformed, freed and having survived already two transformations. We soar over the heads of the good, as butterflies circle round sweet-smelling flowers. Invisible to you mortals, visible but to the very few, at any rate, our light radiates softly around the head of every good, loving, and true Christian.⁵

[The idea of the luminous aura that surrounds the heads of Saints is based on this verity. Akin to this light, the light supernal is attracted to it, as it is only through the former that beatitude is possible.]

No unclean Spirit will ever dare, nor could he if he would, approach this light.

Plunging into the light that surrounds the heads of good and pious persons, we acquire the faculty of perceiving their Selves. We see the Self as it is, in reality.

Every ray that emanates from it becomes for us a word, often a whole discourse.

We reply to its thoughts, but the man is not aware that it is we, who answer him. We stimulate in him ideas, which without our influence could otherwise never have entered his head, though the receptive faculty and predisposition to accept them is the heirloom of his Soul.⁶

Thus a highly worthy man, and one capable of receiving light becomes in this manner an obedient and useful agent for the spirit to whom he is sympathetic and to whom he is anxious to impart his divine light.⁷

IV.

I have found such a self, or rather a man, possessing around him the required light, whom I can approach, and through whose instrumentality I now can talk with thee. Without his means I should have found it impossible to enter into any relations with thee, human, oral, visible, or subjective; in short, I should have been unable to write to thee.

V.

But through this means thou shalt receive anonymous letters from a man quite unknown to thee, but who feels a powerful attraction to hidden and spiritual subjects.

I soar over, and light upon him, almost as the holiest of spirits lighted upon the holiest of men after His baptism.⁸

I influence him, I suggest in him thoughts. He writes them under my inspiration; I guide him by the light of my rays.

With a light touch I cause the chords of his soul to vibrate, in unison with our two individualities. He writes but that which I desire him to write. I write through him, and all my thoughts become his thoughts.

He becomes happier, freer, more animated, and richer in ideas.

It seems to him that he lives and floats in a more radiant and blissful space. He moves on lightly as a friend led arm in arm by another friend, and all this culminates in thy receiving from me a letter. He who writes considers himself free, and he is indeed so. No compulsion is felt by, or weighs over him—he is free, as are free two friends going arm in arm, yet mutually leading each other.

Thou must feel, however, that my spirit is inter-related with thine, since thou assimilatest that which I tell thee; thou comprehendest my innermost thoughts. For this once, enough. The day on which I dictated for thee this letter is called by you on earth.

—15, ix, 1798.

(To be continued.)

Editor’s Note. [H.P.B.]—We are sorry to see that in this case, as invariably as in almost all such cases of “Spirit-writing,” the latter is so far inferior to what the “medium,” if at all intellectual, might write himself. Those who read Lavater’s works, and are acquainted with his keen intellect and the beauty of his style, will feel surprised that he should send such a meagre “Spirit” production to a highly intellectual Princess—as food for religious thought! The several letters from the venerable Makariozenagath—as the “Spirit” signs his other epistles—are, however, more in consonance with Lavater’s style, religious gush notwithstanding.

Letter the Fifth.

To which is appended a letter from the Spirit about his first contemplation of God.

Highly Revered Empress!

One letter more from the unseen world. Henceforth, God permitting, such communications will be more frequent.

This letter contains an infinitesimal fraction of that which might be said by a mortal of God, manifesting to, and being contemplated by him.⁹

God manifests simultaneously to billions of creatures and in millions of various forms.

He wills and He multiplies for the benefit of His numberless creatures and embodies simultaneously for each of these separately.

To you, O Sovereign, to your glorified spirit He will appear as he did to Mary Magdalene in the Garden of Gethsemane. When you feel for it the utmost need, and when you expect it least, then shall you hear coming from His divine lips your name “Maria”; and penetrated by the same feeling of the highest bliss as the Magdalene, you will answer His call, by saying as she did, “Rabbi!” Or else, filled with adoration as was the apostle Thomas, you will exclaim “My Lord and my God!”

We hasten to penetrate the darkness of the night in order to reach light. We travel along thorny paths that lead to paradise and we have to cross the wilderness before we enter the promised land; we must bear the pains of birth before we can be regenerated and born into the one real life.

May the Lord and the Holy Ghost be with you!

Johann Caspar Lavater.
Zurich, 13  xi., 1798.

———

Letter II of the Blessed Spirit to His Friend on Earth,
Concerning his first contemplation of God.

I.

Dear friend, out of a thousand things I would if I could tell thee, I will speak only of that one which must interest thee most: I have received for this special permission. Spirits do nothing without first receiving permission to do so. They live bereft of their free will, subject to the will alone of the Almighty.¹⁰ They transmit His commands to billions of beings as they would to one, and give instantaneous and most varied answers to millions of His questioning creatures.

II.

Shall I be able to make you comprehend how I saw the Lord? Oh, it was by means entirely distinct from those which you mortals can imagine. After a number of visions, rules for guidance, explanations and hours of bliss accorded me by the Lord, I was once crossing a paradisiacal land in the company of twelve other Spirits, who had passed almost as many degrees of perfection as I had. Like unto an ethereal cloud we glided hither and thither in profound silence, united in an enchanting sympathy, and, as it seemed, unanimously filled with the same aspirations and soaring towards the highest goal. With every moment we felt ourselves uniting more and more with each other. As we moved on we felt sincerer, happier, freer, more capable of realizing our bliss. “Oh, how great and merciful He who created us! Glory to the Creator! We are the creation of Love! Glory to the Loving One! . . . .”¹¹

It was under the influence of such feelings that we continued our flying until we stopped close by a fountain. Here we felt as it were a feeble breath blowing on us. It was not in the similitude of man or Angel, yet that which was approaching us bore an image so closely human that it attracted our joint attention. A radiant light, like unto the light of pure Spirits, but not surpassing it, overshadowed us. . . . “It is one of our own,” we thought simultaneously. It vanished, and we suddenly felt as if we had lost something or someone. “What an enchanting Being,” we said to each other; “what a royal bearing and withal what a child-like charm, what beauty and what a grandeur.”

As we were still under the influence of these thoughts a most ravishing form suddenly appeared, greeting us in a most friendly way.

It did not resemble the preceding vision, but, like the latter, had likewise in itself something infinitely majestic and at the same time inexpressibly simple.

“Peace be with you, brethren and sisters!” it said; and we answered in unison, “Peace be with thee, thou blessed of the Lord. Heaven reflects itself in thy face and the love of God shines in thine eyes.”

“Who are ye?”¹² enquired the stranger.

“We are the happy worshippers of Almighty Love,” we answered.

“And who is that Almighty Love?” he asked with an incomparable charm.

“Art thou ignorant of the Omnipotent Love?” we exclaimed, or rather I did, for all my companions.

“I know it,” quoth the stranger in still more enchanting tones.

“Oh could we but be found worthy to see Him and hear His voice; but we do not feel ourselves yet sufficiently purified for a direct contemplation of the holiest purity!”

In answer to this we heard behind us a voice saying:—

“Ye shall not call impure that which was cleansed by God! Ye are washed of every impurity! Ye are purified! Ye are justified by Jesus Christ and the Spirit of the living God!”

An inexpressible bliss penetrated us through and through, when, upon turning in the direction whence came the voice, we felt impressed to fall on our knees and worship the invisible interpreter. What happened further? Each of us heard simultaneously a name which he had never heard before, but which every one of us comprehended and recognised as being his own new name. Instantaneously, with the rapidity of lightning, and like one man, we turned towards the adored interpreter, who, with the same eternally unfathomable charm, explained to us the above.

“Ye have found that which ye have sought. He who sees me sees Omnipotent Love. I know all mine, and mine know me. I give my sheep life eternal and they will perish nevermore, and none will wrench them from My hand nor from My Father’s hand: I and the Father are one.”

How describe the sweetness of that highest bliss in which we were plunged, when He who became with every second more radiant, beautiful, and enchanting, opening to us His arms, pronounced the following words, a sentence to ring for us in the eternity and which henceforth no power can obliterate from our hearts:

“Come, ye blessed of my Father; and receive in heirloom the kingdom prepared for you since the world’s creation”; and, having embraced us in one simultaneous, sweeping embrace, He disappeared. We stood in silence, feeling ourselves bound for ever by the closest ties. We merged into each other, motionless, and experiencing the highest ravishment.

The eternally inexplicable Being confounding itself with us, became our heaven, the essence of our existence, in its full signification. It seemed to us as if a thousand new lives had penetrated into us. Our preceding existence vanished from our memory, and we felt created anew, and realized a new existence. We tasted immortality, i.e., experienced the feeling of an infinite abundance of life and strength, bearing on them the seal of indestructibility.

At last speech returned to us.¹³ Oh, could I only impart to thee one sound of our blissful adoration!

He is, and we exist through Him, and Him alone! He is, and His existence is—life and love; and he who has seen this lives and loves after seeing them emanating from His divine face and eyes, full of the loftiest bliss.

We have seen Thee, all-powerful Love. Thou hast appeared before us in a human form. Thou art our Lord, our God. And yet thou wert neither man nor God, but God-man. Thou wert the One Love and art omnipotent by that love alone.

Thou supportest us through thine omnipotence, that thy power, even softened by Thy love, should not crush us. Is it Thou, Thou glorified in Heaven? Thou art a sea of bliss, Thou art Omnipotence, Thou art the personification of love, Thou, who having incarnated once upon a time in a human frame, took upon Thyself the burden of the World, and bleeding to death wert nailed upon a cross and becamest a corpse.

Yes, it is Thou—O glory of all beings! A Being before whom bows the whole Universe,¹⁴ vanishing before Thee, O loftiest Love!

In a single ray of thy light centres the life of all the worlds!

And from a single breath of thine ignites the Universal Love.

This, my friend, is only the smallest of the crumbs fallen to earth from the table abounding in the bliss which feeds me. Profit thereby, and more shall be given thee.

Love, and thou shalt be loved.

Love alone can be loved, love alone can aspire to the highest felicities. Love alone can give happiness, but only to those who also love themselves.

What an eternity of bliss is contained in a single instant of the contemplation of Love, but again, only to those who can themselves love.

O my beloved, it is only because thou lovest that I am permitted to approach thee, to enter into communion with thee, in order to lead thee the more quickly toward the fountain of love.

Love! God and Heaven live in thee, as they live in the image and heart of Jesus Christ.¹⁵

This was written according to your terrestrial chronology in 13  xi., 1798.

Makariozenagath.

Letter the Sixth.

Highly Revered Sovereign,

Herewith enclosed one more letter from the invisible realm.

May it be accepted by You as was its predecessor and be as saving to You.

Let us appeal without cessation to the purest Love; let us enter into constant communication with this purest Love, manifested in man and manifested in Jesus Christ.

Our future bliss, O revered Sovereign, is in our own power. No sooner are we permitted to comprehend, that Love alone is capable of giving us the highest enjoyment, and faith alone in the holy Love renovates in our hearts that love which makes us happy in the eternity, than our faith, develops, strengthens and getting purified, fills to the brim our faculty of loving.

I have much more to communicate to You. I will try to hasten with the continuation of that which was begun for Your sake; and I will deem myself happy in having acquired the right to hope that I have succeeded in my attempt to occupy usefully and agreeably a few moments of Your precious life.

I am, etc.,
Johann Caspar Lavater.
Zurich.

———

Letter III, of the Defunct to his Terrestrial Friend.
Of the relations existing between Spirits and those whom they love on earth.

My Beloved! I have to warn thee first of all, that out of thousands of things, which moved by a noble desire of acquiring knowledge, thou wouldst have me tell thee, and which, in my turn, I would, if I could, inform thee about, there may be hardly one that I dare mention,¹⁶ as, in no way am I independent. My will, as I have already informed thee, is subject to the Highest Wisdom and the Highest Love; and my relations are based solely on the latter. It is this which animates our intellect and embodies for us Love. It is this, which, along with thousands of thousands of my fellow-participators in Its bliss, thus becomes more and more ennobling and enchanting, and attracts us to those still mortal, and propels us to enter with them into relations, agreeable to us, most certainly, yet withal very often darkened, as they are not invariably pure and holy. Know then from me certain of the laws which regulate these relations.

I know not whether I will succeed in making clear to thee a grand truth, but which will, nevertheless, probably astonish thee in its reality. It is this: that our own bliss is often dependent—relatively of course—upon the moral status of those whom we had left on earth, and with whom we find ourselves in direct communication.

Their religious feeling penetrates our being and their infidelity repels us.¹⁷ We rejoice in their exalted and pure joys—i.e., their spiritual and unselfish joys. Their love makes our bliss, but likewise, we experience if not actual sufferings, at any rate a paucity of pleasure, whenever they allow themselves to be darkly overshadowed by sensuality, selfishness, animal propensities, or the impurity of their desires.

Stop, my beloved, I pray thee before this word:

“Overshadowed.”

Every divine, radiant thought, containing in itself a luminous light, generates a ray in a loving mortal, but visible and comprehensible only to loving and radiant natures. Every kind of love has its own ray of light pertaining but to itself alone. This ray unites itself to the aureole that surrounds the Saints, making it still more luminous and beautiful to behold. The degree of the bliss and felicity we experience, is proportionate to the degree of the light and beauty of that ray. With the disappearance of love, disappears the light from that ray and along with it spiritual life—the element of bliss of those who love—as we are incapable of experiencing any kind of happiness without love. The man who separates himself from the latter is, in the full acceptation of the word, “darkened” overshadowed; he becomes more material, by becoming more substantial and terrestrial, and the shadows of night descend upon him. Life, or what is the same for us, human love, generates its share of life, often of the most radiant purity, in virtue of its identity with light and the magnificence of its natural composition.

It is these qualities alone that give us the possibility of a close communion with mortals. Love is the most perfect of ties. Light attracts light. We find it impossible to influence morose or gloomy souls. All non-loving natures seem dark to us. The life of every mortal, his actual life, reflects the degree of the love in him. His light (aura?) adapts itself to that love; and on that light (or aura) is based the possibility of our communing with him. Light is the essence of our and your nature, the mystery of which cannot be understood by any mortal.¹⁸

We are attracted by this light, and attract it to ourselves; for it is the envelope (vehicle?), the organ, the conductor, and the element of that primeval Force which creates all; light, in short, serves us as the means to define the characteristics of all beings.¹⁹

The light of each being is united with his love. We illumine according to the strength of our love; we are recognised by the radiance peculiar to each of us, and we are attracted by all creatures as radiant and as loving as we are ourselves. By the action of the inexplicable motion, our rays being given a certain direction, we are enabled to generate in beings sympathetic to us, thoughts more radiant, and call forth in them feelings more elevated, and actions nobler and more exalted. We have no authority to compel by, or subject to, our power any human being, whose will is entirely independent from our will.²⁰ The free-will of man is sacred to us and must not be interfered with.

It is impossible for us to impart one single ray of our pure light to one who is a stranger to love. Such a man possesses no feeling, no organ through which he could receive anything whatsoever from us. The degree of love possessed by man depends—O, permit me to repeat this to thee, in every letter of mine!—on his faculty to receive the teachings, on his harmony with all the radiant Beings and their primeval prototype. The absence of light in him is produced by his disqualification to approach that prototype of all lights and radiant feelings. The man Jesus radiating light and love was the luminous point which attracted to itself incessantly the legions of the Angelic host.

Beings, morose and gloomy in their natures; selfish characters and unloving souls, attract to themselves beings as morose, and gloomy, brutal, devoid of light, malicious and evilly inclined, and are poisoned by these the more; whereas, by their contact with good and loving spirits, the loving souls of men become the more pure, the more full of love.

Jacob, full of pious feelings, dreamt of seeing the angels of God, rushing to him in crowds; while the dark soul of Judas gave the Chief of the Spirits of evil the right, nay, the power, to penetrate into the gloomy atmosphere of his hating nature, which was foreign to all love. The wandering spirits swarm there, where Elijah dwells, and the legions of dark spirits are attracted by dark souls.

My beloved, think well over what I just told thee.

Thou shalt find plenty of landmarks of it in the Bible, which contains in itself the foundation of truths still untouched, and of teachings of the utmost importance about the relations existing between the mortals and the immortals, between the material world and the world of spirit.

It depends on thee alone, my beloved, to attract the beneficent influence of loving spirits, or to repel them from thee; in thy hands lies the power to keep them near thee or force them to abandon thee. And thus doth it depend on thee, also, to make me happier or less happy.

Thou hast now understood that every loving being becomes the happier whenever it meets with another being as loving as itself; and that the happiest and the purest among them, becomes less happy in proportion as love slackens in him whom he loves; that love, in short, opens other hearts to love, and that its absence creates often an impossibility to the access of love or any other good feeling.

If thou wouldst bestow on me, who am already immersed in the highest bliss, a still greater happiness, then increase thy love; for thou wilt make me thereby fully radiant and sympathetic to all the happy and mortal beings. These will hasten to surround thee; their light will unite with thy light, and thine with ours. Their presence will make thee purer, more radiant and animated, more loving and—it may seem to thee incredible though it is absolutely true—they themselves, owing to the light radiated by thee, will also become more radiant and happy in their lives and through thy love more loving still.

My beloved! there exist indestructible relations between that which you call the visible and the invisible worlds, and a constant communication between the denizens of heaven and earth, as a mutual beneficent correlation of each of these worlds to one another.

Carefully reflecting upon this and analyzing this idea, thou shalt approach more and more its truth, realize its importance and its sacredness. Forget it not! My terrestrial brother, thou livest objectively in a world which still remains invisible for thyself.

Forget it not! and in the world of loving spirits there will be joy at this increase of pure and unselfish love.

We are near thee, with thee, when thou believest us very far away.

No loving creature is ever left isolated and alone.

The light of love threads through the darkness of the material world, but to enter in it a less material realm.

Loving and radiant Spirits are ever near love and light.

Literally true are these words of Christ: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Love attracts love. Love feels an insurmountable need of love. Love finds the highest bliss in communing with those who love and are loved.

It is likewise undeniably true that a lack of love in us can pain (?) the Spirit of God, as a surplus of love will make it rejoice, in accordance with the profound meaning of these words: “And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”²¹

You bind, by the absence of love, and loose by its presence. And this causes you to either approach us, or find yourselves still further removed from us. Nothing is better understood in heaven than the love of those who love on earth.

Nothing is more attractive to those pure Spirits who belong to various degrees of perfection, than the love of the children of Earth.

All ye, who call yourselves mortals; know ye not that by the power of love ye can force heaven to descend on earth? Ye can enter with us, the elect, into an endless and most close relation, if ye only open your souls to love, thus making them accessible to our influence.

I am often with thee, O my beloved!

I love to find myself in the sphere of thy light, in the element of thy love. Allow me then to address to thee a few words more of affection and friendship.

The light which streams from thee during those moments when thou thinkest with affection of those thou lovest, or those who suffer, becometh darkened when thou feelest angry; and then I feel compelled to turn away from thee, as no loving Spirit can bear the gloom of anger.

Some time ago I was forced to leave thee. I lost thee, so to speak, out of my sight, and directed myself toward another of my friends, or rather, I was drawn to him by the radiance of his love.

Having no means of his own to help a charitable family which had suddenly fallen into distress, and shedding tears, he was praying for it. Oh, how radiant appeared to me his terrestrial body! It shone like a sheet of lightning. Our Lord approached him and a ray of His Spirit fell across that light. What a bliss for me to plunge into that radiance, and penetrated all through with its light, to have been thus enabled to inspire his soul with a hope of speedy relief. He seemed to hear an inner voice telling him from the innermost depths of his soul; “Fear nought, have faith! Thou shalt soon taste the felicity of being enabled to help those for whom thou callest upon God.” While he was raising himself with a gesture of happiness from prayer, I was instantly drawn to another radiant being, also in prayer. It was the noble soul of a virgin who appealed to the heavens in these words: “O Lord, teach me to do Thy will!” Thereby I obtained the power of inspiring her with thought, which translated in words meant: “I may do well, perhaps, if I send to that charitable young man I know, some money that he could use to relieve some poor family in need of it.” She seized upon the idea with childish rapture; and received it as she would an angel from heaven. Forthwith this pious and charitable soul collected a rather considerable sum of money, and wrote, sending the whole to him who had prayed, who thus received almost immediately after the money and the letter. Shedding tears of joy, penetrated with a feeling of deep and reverential gratitude to God, he directed his steps toward those he had prayed for, his faith strengthened with every step he took. I followed, experiencing the highest bliss, and bathing in his light. He approached the door of the house wherein dwelt the ruined family, and heard the pious wife asking of her husband: “Shall God ever take pity upon us!” to which the answer was, “He will not abandon us, as we have not abandoned those in need.” As these words were pronounced, my friend, hardly able in his emotion to open the door, and almost losing his breath, burst upon them, saying—“No, He will not abandon you, as you have never forgotten the poor. Such is the law of Divine charity: God seeth the just and heareth them!” Oh the light of bliss that shone in the eyes of all, when after reading the letter, they lifted their eyes and hands heavenward! Hosts of spiritual beings hastened to approach them from every side.

Oh, how rejoiced we felt! How, while glorifying the deity, we felt ourselves becoming more perfect and more loving.

Thou, too, resumed thy radiance for me very soon. Once more I could, and dared, approach thee. Thou hast done three things to give me that right and make thee happy. Thou hast repented of thine anger; distressed by it, thou hast been seriously devising various means to crush it out of thy nature; thou hast sincerely begged the pardon of him whom thou hadst insulted, and wast thinking how thou couldst satisfy him. These noble impulses have restored peace in thy heart, lit in thine eye the glow of joy, and restored its radiance to thy body. This will enable thee to judge how well we know all that is being done by our friends on earth, how greatly we feel interested in their moral welfare, and of what importance it is for us in connection with our relations with them. And now thou must have realised thoroughly the nature of the union that exists between the visible and the invisible world, and also to what extent lies in your power to give us bliss or awe. O my beloved! if thou couldst only penetrate thyself with that grand truth, that pure love finds its reward in itself; that love begets love, and that the purest enjoyments, the most divine, are but the fruits of an absolutely purified love, how thou wouldst hasten to cleanse thine own love of all that is not homogeneous in it. Henceforth I will be unable to write to thee without returning to this subject. Nothing, save love, has any value. Alone that love can furnish us with an insight, clear, just, and profound enough to warrant our recognition of that which has to be known; it, alone, unveils to us that which is undeniable truth, holiness, and immortality. With a feeling of inexpressible joy we see in every being, mortal and immortal, animated with pure love, the reflection of God Himself, as surely as you see a sunbeam glittering in a drop of water.

All those who love, in heaven, as on earth, are bound by that Love into one integral whole. No casualty can find room in this: it is on the degree of love that our perfection and our inner bliss depend. Thy love establishes thy relations with the Spirits who have quitted the earth; thy intercommunion with them, their influence on thee, and the closeness of their union with thy spirit. My gift of prevision, which has never deceived me, points out to me that thou art at the present moment in an excellent frame of mind, thinking over a good deed. Every one of your acts bears its own special seal, forthwith comprehended and valued at its real worth by the dematerialised Spirits.

May the Lord help thee!

I, Makariozenagath, wrote this.
16  xii., 1798.

The End.

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Editor’s Note.[H.P.B.]

Two words with the unwary, who believe in the communion of disembodied spirits with mortal men. We have translated the above letters verbatim in spite of their weary repetitions, and have laid them in all their goody-goodiness and gigantic gush before the readers of Lucifer. And now we ask: is there one sentence in them, that could be regarded as new or useful for mankind, or even for the mortal Empress for whose benefit they were written? Has the pious and Christo-gushing Makariozenagath given the smallest information on that bourne “from which no traveller returns,” added an atom of fresh information to the general knowledge of the world, or benefited thereby man, woman or child? Written by Lavater, who was undeniably a man of genius, and great scientific knowledge; one whose sincerity could no more be questioned than his horror of an honest man for any deception of that kind—what are we to think of these letters written by the spirit of a dead man to a friend on earth? How difficult is it for a mind, warped by theological prejudices, to exercise a right judgment, or vision, in the psychic experience of which it may be the subject! We see this strongly in the case of Swedenborg who ruined what might otherwise have been true vision, by clothing everything he saw in this same miserable theological garb. So with the friend of Lavater; the moment he had experience of the realm beyond the five senses, he immediately thought himself with the God and angels of his imaginary heaven and worked in the details with his own preconceptions. It is curious how all these untrained psychics see each in the terms of his own religion or theory, and because they experience some new sensation, are straightway convinced of the absolute truths of their experience. We know a dozen people who believe with all their souls that they have made the intimate acquaintance of Jehovah (!), and will tell you how he is dressed, even to the minutest details of his toilette; others again, a still more numerous class, who are the bosom psychic friends of Jesus Christ (!!); and so on. The “cruel, hard-hearted” world calls them “cranks” and Lucifer, little as he values the opinion of the many as a rule, must endorse its verdict, adding that the communications of the “dear Spirits” up to date must be roughly catalogued under the heading of “flapdoodle.”

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This content is part of the Writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

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