Candlelight

The faint flickering gleam of fourteen little Candles shines forth into the world, bringing to a vast number of people some of the Light of astral knowledge.

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Excerpt:

The Sunlight is waning. Coming fast is the end of Day.

The Darkness of communism; is by stealth and treachery engulfing the world faster and faster. Soon the Light of Freedom will be extinguished for a time while Mankind ponders opportunities lost, and regrets warnings unheeded.

But even in the darkest hour there shall be the gleams of little Candles, bringing hope to a stricken world. The darkest hour is before the dawn, and that hour is not yet.

The gloom and despondency of evil men usurping power shall be lessened by the knowledge that all suffering shall eventually pass, and the Sunlight shall shine again.

Candlelight may bring illumination to some, hope to others. Sunlight gives way to darkness, darkness gives way to Sunlight, but even in the deepest dark a Candle may show the Way.

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The sullen clouds came lowering out of the steel sky and began to weep. A thin veil of pattering raindrops scudded across the dirty roofs of Montreal and ended up as rivulets of sooty-black; in the garbage-cluttered gutters. The tempo of the downpour increased; the swirling rainstorm blotted out the bridges, the tall, ugly buildings, and then even the Port itself. Suddenly the trees leaned over, water pouring from depressed leaves, forming scummy puddles over the sparse grass. In the distance a ship hooted forlornly as though in despair at having again to enter Montreal, the City of Two Tongues.

Glumly the cats sat before the fogged-up window and wondered if the sun would ever shine again. Outside on the flooded roadway, a tattered copy of a French-language newspaper blew to its rightful home in a sewer where it momentarily blocked the water flow and then vanished in a scurry of gurgling sound. The old blue bus went chuntering along, engine roaring, wheels flinging plumes of water from the flooded road. Came a CRASH as it dropped into the hollow by the office. Lurching and reeling, it pushed its cumbersome way through the murk and turned right, out of sound. There came the ponderous roar of the garbage truck pounding its way along the road. A behemoth shape glimpsed dimly through the unlighted gloom and then--Peace, save for the drumming of the rain.

The old man in the wheelchair groped for the light switch as he turned away from the steamed window. With the light on he turned sadly to the pile of letters yet to be answered. 'Questions--questions--questions,' he mumbled, 'do they think I am a free advisory bureau on everything from conception death--with a good dose of the hereafter thrown in?'

The letter from the 'lady' in a large U.S.A. city was interesting: 'I have read all thirteen of your books,' she wrote. 'A good author would have told all that and more in one-half chapter.' Gee, Ma'am, well--thanks! But--here they come: a very cross Women's Lib gangster from Winnipeg. Doesn't like me a bit--thinks I hate women. Well, she is not a woman, anyhow, more like a drunken buck navvy from her language. Women? I love 'em. Men, and women, just the opposite sides of 'the coin'. Why should I hate them? What a touchy lot some women are, though, phooey!

T. Lobsang Rampa