I have much to say here as a sequence to my previous communication to you - and here I am speaking to all aspirants and disciples. The opportunity is so great at this time that I seek to face you with your choices, leaving you free to make up your own minds. What you decide will, however, affect definitely the remainder of your life activity. Herein lies your challenge. What I have to say is of a relatively simple nature - so simple that it may seem to you as [613] in the nature of an anti-climax. Yet simple as the problem may be, it is most difficult to solve. Your reaction to what I have to say will depend upon the nature of your sense of values, and not upon any capacity for abstruse reasoning. The average human aspirant and the intelligent human being are apt to emphasize the present complexity of human affairs and events; these they believe are engulfing men in every land. They thus provide - for themselves - an answerable alibi.

First of all, the outer, physical war is only just over; two years is a short time since the firing ceased and no country has as yet recovered from its dire effects. There is no true intercourse between nations and no true understanding. Today the United States permits the raising of [614] funds in order to arm the Zionists against Great Britain, an ally and a friendly power; it is authorizing propaganda against Russia, also an allied and friendly power. There is no true effort anywhere (carried on with fixed determination and right compromise) to bring to an end those economic conditions which are the major cause of war and which are responsible for breeding hatred among nations.

Until these two sources of world tension are recognized and correctly handled, the life of the aspirant, and still more of the disciple, is exceedingly hard. You may retort (and truly) that the life of all who suffered through the war, the fate of the starving people who are still taking the brunt of the attack in Europe - the inhabitants of Great Britain, Italy, China, Poland, and the Balkans, plus Germany and Japan, who are responsible for the difficulty, and all who are engulfed in the results of Germany's attack upon the world - is hard beyond endurance, and must therefore be shared by all aspirants and disciples. That is indeed true. But the more advanced thinkers and workers have far more than the general fate to endure. They - if they open their hearts and minds - participate not only in the difficulties confronting the mass of men everywhere, but they are also aware of the spiritual possibilities ahead, of the task to be completed in sealing "the door where evil dwells," and of the stupendous and unique circumstances which are faced by those who recognize and accept the imminent return of the Christ.

As the disciple confronts both the inner and the outer events and possibilities, he is apt to register a sense of complete frustration; he longs to help, but knows not what [615] to do; his grasp of the menacing difficulties, his analysis of his resources and of those with whom he works, and his clarity of perception as to the forces ranged against him, make him feel inclined to sit back and say: What is the use of any effort I can make? Why not let the two forces of good and evil, of the Black Lodge and the Spiritual Hierarchy, fight it out alone? Why not permit the pressure of the evolutionary current, eventually and at long last, to bring cessation to the fight and the triumph of the good? Why attempt to do it now?