April 1st.
“This is the fourth lesson.
“The world fears purpose that is free and fearless. All the forces of humanity are turned against freedom. The church imposes its creed, the class imposes its caste, the profession imposes its etiquette, the moralist imposes his fear, the libertine imposes his folly. All men are bound by the conventions of church, caste, profession, or moral status. Thus do they throw wide the door to forces of disintegration. Each man assumes a purpose not his own; a force that is his own deserts him.
“Free development demands free purpose and concentrated force. Wherever two or three are gathered together to follow the same purpose in free and conscious co-operation, there force is multiplied. Wherever an hundred are assembled to be led like sheep by the bell-wether, there force is debauched and disintegrated.
“Because men have huddled together infear, destruction threatens them. Because free speech has been debauched to fell purpose, free men distrust it. Men, forces of disintegration, but possessed of glib tongues, have played bell-wether to the multitude. Priests of purpose, whose counsel was inspired by the Eternal, have been thrust aside and stoned. Better were it for the immortal man to follow his purpose to death and mortal oblivion, than to lose his force to the bell-wether. Many purposes make great purpose. Many forces unite for freedom. But better for immortal man to destroy greatly and greatly strive than to sink his purpose in the medley disguised as brotherhood.
“A great brotherhood is possible only when its component parts are great. Strength lies not in numbers, but in purpose. The fit may not lie down with the unfit, and their progeny survive. The strong may not yield their purpose to the weak, and their force remain.
“A light breaks in the East—Russia, given as a sacrifice to the brotherhood of men. A light not of star or dawn, but of sacrificial fire. Heed it, guard it, ye youths and virgins, for by its flaming sacrifice are ye saved.
“Brotherhood is purpose of progress, not purpose of profit. Brotherhood is made beautiful by unity, not by schism. Brotherhoodsuffereth long, and is kind. Brotherhood regardeth every brother, great and small. Brotherhood waiteth upon brother and grumbleth not. All build together the common home of all.
“Seek ye those of your own purpose. Unite together all who fain would build. Master and man, architect and mason, financier and farm laborer, all work to the same end, and this is Brotherhood.
“To work for the same purpose, in whatever capacity may be necessary, this is the only true Brotherhood.
“This is the fourth lesson.”
April 3d.
“This is the fifth lesson.
“Men have long cherished the ideal of Brotherhood, but they have clung to the letter of the ancient law and lost its spirit. Before the days of liberty, when men were languishing in slavery or bound as vassals, sell all thou hast and give to the poor had a significance lost in a day of free labor and industrial progress. The spirit of the law is unchanged and unchangeable, but the letter progresses with civilization’s advance.
“To-day, the first essential of brotherhood is freedom. Freedom to think, freedom to believe, freedom to strive, freedom to develop, from highest to lowest. And the employer who refuses this opportunity to the men who work under him is no more truly a force for disintegration than the laborer who refuses to co-operate with his employer and thus proves himself unworthy of a place in the procession of progress.
“There can be no house that will stand against storm that has not foundation, walls, and roof. There can be no society that will withstand disintegration that has not labor, capital, and market. When capital oppresses labor, forces of disintegration are freed. When labor dominates capital, forces of disintegration are freed. When the people forget justice, forces of disintegration are freed. And the destruction of one is the destruction of all. The rich man who denies his brother freedom is a destroyer. The poor man who denies his brother freedom is a destroyer in no less degree. Each is a part of the other, and each follows eternal purpose to one end—construction and progress.
“The man who has freedom of thought, freedom of purpose, freedom of action, is free, though he be a pauper, and is free to choose whether he will build or destroy. The man who is bound by any tie that dictates his thought, belief, or action is a force of disintegration, because he may not follow his purpose freely and with all his force. The man who has freedom and wealth, and, forgets his brother, is a force of disintegration. The man who has strength and poverty, and forgets his brother, is a force of disintegration. Equality of opportunity does not demand or implyequality of development. Many men are rich who use their wealth to forward the purposes of construction. Many there are who waste it and invite disintegration. Many men are poor, who use their strength to help along construction. They are forces of progress, and will find their places here. Many there are who delay the march, and invite disintegration. What shall it profit a man, though he gain the earth, if he lose his own soul?
“There are seven purposes. Progress, Light, Truth, Healing, Building, Production, and Justice. Equally great, save Progress, which moves them all. One of these must each man serve, if he proceeds toward the Great Purpose. Whether great or small, high or low, wise or foolish, learned or ignorant, rich or poor, powerful or apparently impotent, each human individual is a force for construction or for disintegration, and follows his purpose to its inevitable end: constructive forces to construction of great purposes, disintegrating forces to the long struggle that can have but one end, however distant—construction.
“There are many phases of development, each looking onward to the next. If a man climb without envy, forgetting himself in his purpose, he shall climb far. If he look with envy at his higher brother and with scorn atthose below him, he shall climb on slipping sands and find himself again at the foot.
“Bear ye one another’s burdens is a command unchanged and unchangeable. Give unto each his opportunity to grow, and to build for progress. Freedom to strive is the one right inherent in existence, the strong and the weak each following his own purpose, with all his force, to the one great end. And he who binds or limits his brother’s purpose binds himself now and hereafter. But he who extends his brother’s opportunity builds for eternity.
“Choose ye.
“This is the fifth lesson.”
April 3d.
“This is the sixth lesson.
“Men are afraid of fear. They fear to fear, and fall into folly. Fear of disintegrating purposes makes for wisdom, and wisdom makes for construction. Fear is a disintegrating force made constructive, when directed against disintegration.
“Wisdom in high places has been dethroned, and intellectual curiosity usurps the scepter. Men who should lay foundations of wisdom experiment with fantasies of the intellectual dreamer.
“Brotherhood, to one class, is a defensive organization, for protection. Brotherhood, to another class, is an offensive organization, for pillage. Brotherhood, to another class, is an organized attempt to preserve the unfit. Brotherhood, to another class, is a dream of unorganized following of untried theories. None of these know that all men are brothers.
“Evolution of matter follows evolution ofpurpose, but when material things are left behind, purpose continues to progress. Why, then, lose your purpose in pursuit of material gain?
“Church and state alike urge morality for personal ends, and recommend personal punishments. There is no morality. There is only purpose, constructive or destructive. There is no punishment. There is only consequence.
“Personal motives are deterrent forces, neither actively constructive nor actively destructive, except as they may be applied. These forces crowd in between the contending purposes, hindering both and helping neither, except when compelled by sheer force of numbers to sweep on with one or the other.
“Forces of disintegration are frequently mistaken for personal motives. They are always destructive. Personal motives are always deterrent. Self-interest excludes sympathy. Purpose demands sympathy. Self-interest excludes true unity. Unity is the Great Purpose. Any morality based on personal interest is, therefore, a deterrent force.
“The time has not yet come when men in the mass have vision. The great Purpose to the small mind is vague and of no significance. Personal motives are more easily recognized than purpose, and Church and state emphasizeand encourage them. But the time is at hand when great conflicting purposes will meet in combat for control of men. Wake the sleepers. Cast off little things. Sink personal motives. Rouse Church and state to perception of force and purpose, and unite together, regardless of class, creed, or party, to win the world to purposes of construction.
“Church and state urge unity, and yield none. Tolerance, freedom, fearlessness, light—these are almost strangers to temple or court. Little by little the lines are softening. Little by little we gain on fear. Here a tolerant and noble clergyman, there a statesman who serves the state. But for one of these, a thousand huddle under creed or slogan, and fear of freedom impels them all. This is because they have not recognized purpose, and they impede progress who might be its power.
“Come forth, then, priests, teachers, and leaders! Call upon the people, not to follow, not to huddle, not to hesitate, but, to choose. Set ye the seven purposes clearly before them, clearly perceiving them, ye that call, and bid them choose, for the life of all, the purpose they will serve.
“Thus may deterrent forces become constructive, and the Great Purpose known of all men.
“This is the sixth lesson.”
April 5th.
“This is the seventh lesson.
“Before the light of freedom dawned on the world, a puissant chaos of purposes and forces fought for control of the liberties of men. A short space of time brought liberty of body, after the perception of the people had been clarified by the gradual development of the ideal of liberty. They moved rapidly toward it, when they began to understand it, with halts and hesitations and blunders, but forcefully and inevitably still. They overthrew kings and barons, and took into their own hands the physical and material government of their kind. But their minds and forces are still enslaved and shackled by outworn tradition. ‘Onward Christian soldiers’, is a plea for progress; but it has become a recessional, not a marching song. Men have made their justice vassal to tradition, and their brotherhood fief to gain.
“Men have learned the value of free bodies,but free force, mental or spiritual, terrifies and puzzles them still. They have learned to discipline their bodies, to keep them strong and clean. But they fear to trust the purposes and forces, without chains and prison bars to hold them, lest they make chaos of civilization. Church, state, profession, trade, guild, or society commands: Thou shalt not think. Follow, yield, accept, and endure, but let not thought be found among ye, lest the bars be broken and destruction loosed.
“Many men follow; a few men think. These are the overlords, the kings and barons of forces that might be free. But freedom demands free purpose, and free purpose demands justice.
“No man is free who commands not himself. No man is free who forgets his brother. No man is free who fears to follow his own purpose with all his force. No man is free who fails to carry his share of common load. He may have wealth and luxury; yet is he slave. He may be tempted by beauty; yet is he slave. He may be frightened by calamity; yet is he slave. He may be beaten by strangers; yet is he slave. No man is free who commands not himself in any emergency. He may lose wealth and luxury, and still be free. He may dwell with squalor, who loves beauty, andstill be free. He may be defrauded by his brother, and still be free. He may be shackled by strangers, beaten and imprisoned, and still be free.
“Freedom lieth not in a man’s estate, but in the man himself.
“This is the seventh lesson.”
April 8th.
“This is the eighth lesson.
“Many men try to perceive the purpose of God in truth and beauty and justice, and fail to recognize that the Eternal Purpose is unlimited by the detached conceptions of men. Truth is one of the fundamental purposes. Beauty is a subdivision of Building. Justice is fundamental. All are part of the Eternal Purpose. But the Great Purpose is unity.
“The fundamental purposes are common to all men, of whatever race, color, belief, or prejudice. They are the foundation from which the forces of Eternal Purpose start, and by their divisions only are men ultimately grouped. As a commander divides his army into infantry, artillery, cavalry, air forces, quartermaster, engineer, and medical corps, so are the eternal forces divided into the seven purposes for the eternal conflict.
“The purposes of disintegration are more than seven. They divide into myriad motivesas they fight the aspirations of immortal man. Free men choose freely how they will array themselves, but slaves are driven by their masters, visible or invisible, to fight for purposes not their own. Only when they have learned to discipline and develop their minds, as they now discipline and develop their bodies, may they choose freely the force with which they will be arrayed.
“Rich man against poor man. Capital against labor. State against offender. Poor man against wealth. Labor against development. Criminal against law. All are false distinctions.
“Seek ye the man of your own purpose, and cleave to him. If ye would build, seek a builder. If ye would heal, seek a healer. If justice absorb ye, seek a man furthering justice. But be not misled by the slave-driver, without or within. Beware of the bell-wether, and of personal or material motives. Govern yourselves first, and then choose ye whether to fight for progress or for disintegration, for unity or for destruction. Then choose ye the purpose ye will serve forcefully through eternity.
“This is the eighth lesson.”
April 8th.
“This is the ninth lesson.
“Men have lived in fear of forces from without, and have not perceived that within themselves all forces are made potent. Men have feared purposes from without, and have not perceived that their own purpose is eternal. Men have talked of power, and failed to perceive its source. Men have dreamed of possession, and failed to find freedom. Possession is temporary and ephemeral. Freedom is eternal. Should a man yield the freedom of his eternal purpose for any possession whatsoever?
“Build ye with all possessions, that purpose may be free. For brotherhood commandeth service, and for this are possessions hallowed. He who hath, and denieth his brother opportunity, destroys his own purpose. He who hath possessions, and giveth his brother opportunity, builds for eternity. He who hath power and plenitude, and giveth his brotherhelp, has given all men more than the one can take. He has built for eternity.
“The man who has this power to build with possessions for eternal progress has a force beside his own, the force of material purpose to aid his brother’s force. Many there be who build for eternity with material possessions. They are the keepers of the keys for all who labor, stewards of opportunity.
“He who has opportunity to strive, and striveth not, destroys his own purpose. He who has the key to opportunity for building offered him, and fails to free the force, destroys both his own purpose and that of his brother.
“One purpose are all to serve—Progress. And whether it be with purpose and possessions, or with purpose and poverty, all serve equally who put their whole force into service.
“So may all men know they are brothers.
“This is the ninth lesson.”
April 9th.
“This is the tenth lesson.
“The purposes of disintegration are these. Malice, Envy, Doubt, Falsehood, Ignorance, Lust, Cupidity, Fear. All these make for Destruction, which is the strong purpose that moves them all. Each of these is divided and subdivided into myriad motives of disintegration, many of which disguise themselves before daring to enter the consciousness of man.
“Malice and Envy present themselves most often as Light or Justice. Doubt as Light, Lust as Justice or Production, Cupidity as Building, Fear and Ignorance as Truth, and Destruction as Progress. But the disguises vary with the individual and with the moment, and the motives springing from these purposes are legion.
“Each individual in your life is a battleground of purposes that have fought from the moment the purposes of disintegration gathered one to another. Each man struggles toally himself permanently with one or another of the purposes within him. Thus is it that a man whose desire is for light falls victim to malice, envy, and destruction; and he whose desire is production, to lust. Weakness of purpose is a subdivision of fear, and folly a minion of ignorance.
“All men aspire. Some with reluctance and halting, but all feel the purpose of progress working within them. They may mistake its nature or deny its power, but no man lives who has not felt its prompting. This is the purpose beyond all others, the Eternal Purpose of United Construction. No man can thwart it, no man can evade it, no force can defeat it. Why, then, oppose and delay it?
“Come, all ye who struggle and strive! Perceive once and forever the purpose of life, join now the forces of construction, and bring to all men Brotherhood.
“This is the tenth lesson.”
April 12th.
“This is the eleventh lesson.
“There is no man who has not force. He may be frail of body, weak of purpose, light of mind, faltering of step. Yet to some degree has he force, for without force personality cannot exist. There is no man so frail of body, so weak of purpose, so faltering of step, that he has not personality. There is no personality that is not a force for construction or for destruction. None that may not serve to build.
“There is no man so bound up in himself, so personal of motive, so narrow of vision, that he may not be turned from a deterrent force into a force for construction, save only those already given to purposes of disintegration.
“But no man is so vigorous of body, so firm of purpose, so profound of mind, so sure of step, that he may perfect his brother’s life. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ has been transformed from a question uttered in defense ofiniquity to an assertion uttered in defense of arrogance. ‘Am I not my brother’s keeper?’
“No man is his brother’s keeper. The utmost that he may do for his brother is to arouse his brother’s purpose, whether for construction or for destruction. Call to the purpose of Progress. Call to the seven purposes of construction. Help ye each brother to find the onward way. But if he will not answer, if calling fail to move him, then bid him destroy after his own purpose, that the fight may be open and his allegiance known of all men.
“Freedom to choose is the inalienable right of every human soul. Who hinders his brother’s purpose delays the end of battle. Win him to progress, if he can be won by calling. Bid him declare himself, if he answer not the call. But he who coerces his brother, though it be toward construction, prolongs the struggle and delays the Great Purpose.
“No man is his brother’s keeper.
“This is the eleventh lesson.”
April 12th.
“This is the twelfth lesson.
“Many men there be who fight for liberty and coerce their brothers.
“In war, all men must fight. But there is no man who may choose for another how his allegiance may be given.
“He who is not for progress is against it. He who has no allegiance that he will declare, is traitor to himself and to the purpose he follows. Cast him out and he will find his purpose known.
“So shall the opposing forces be clearly indicated. So shall each man find his own purpose clearly defined. So shall the wars within wars cease among men, and the fight be with you, as it is with us, between purposes and forces known and united, one against the other, until all purposes of destruction have been conquered and transformed, and the Great Purpose rendered free to progress to greater glories without end.
“This is the twelfth lesson.”
Asked to explain one phrase in the first Lesson, “the original purposes were all good,” Mary K. said: “All were balanced. There is no evil that may not be good in proper combination. Evil is the gathered force of undirected and not fully animated good, combined in a destructive purpose by the attraction I mentioned.”
An apparent contradiction of a statement in the first Lesson—“All pure purpose is fearless, whether for good or evil”—by one in the second Lesson—“The forces of disintegration are wily, but fearful. Bullies and cowards”—seemed to imply that forces of disintegration are not pure purpose. Mary K. explained: “They are pure purpose, fearless in pursuance of destruction, wily in bringing it about, brutal in consummating it, but cowards individually. Fearless of consequences when theypursue, but fearful when they fail. Like Germans.”
Early in June, I discovered a relation between the definition of Eternal Purpose in the second paragraph of the third Lesson, and the divisions of the purpose of Progress near the end. “Eternal purpose is perfect justice (Justice), perfect fearlessness (Production), perfect understanding (Light), perfect honesty (Truth), perfect sympathy (Healing), perfect unity (Building), and eternal growth (Progress), which is progress perfectly expressed.”
The end of the seventh Lesson seemed obscure, until the relation between its clauses was discovered. Written thus, its meaning is clear: “(1) No man is free who commands not himself. (2) No man is free who forgets his brother. (3) No man is free who fears to follow his purpose with all his force. (4) No man is free who fails to carry his share of the common load. He may have wealth and luxury, yet is he slave (1)if he commands not himself. He may be tempted by beauty (2)to forget his brother, yet is he slave,if he commands not himself. He may be frightened by calamity (3)in following his purpose, yet is he slave,ifhe commands not himself. He may be beaten by strangers (4)while carrying his share of the common load, yet is he slaveif he commands not himself.”
9th Lesson.
A curious inconsistency in the use of verbs will be noticed here, archaic and modern forms appearing in the same sentence repeatedly. This may have been due to my great fatigue when this lesson was taken, to the presence in the room of other persons, or to some condition or intention as yet unexplained.
“Science is the ladder by which life may quickly ascend, but until science recognizes a spiritual force as the one essential force, of which all other forces are incidental phenomena, progress must be limited.”
“We have purpose to progress beyond the vision of man, but even material progress, to be constructive and permanent, must be governed by a vision beyond the day. We are trying to extend that vision.”
Immediately after the first Lesson had been given, Cass telephoned that the news from France was alarming. It was Saturday, March 23d. The great German offensive of 1918 had begun two days earlier, and the Allied forces were falling back, with appalling losses. I asked Mary K. whether she could tell us anything about it.
“Yes. It is a force of destruction, momentarily victorious, but Germany cannot win. She moves steadily toward her destruction.”
Remembering our differing conceptions of time, I asked: “Do you speak in terms finite or infinite?”
“You will see her defeat soon, but the fight eternal will not be over with the end of the Great War. That will be only a temporary lull, and we shall have it all to do over and over, until conscious purpose ends it.Do not fear.” The emphasis is hers.
To be sure I had made no mistake, I pressed the inquiry again.
“You need not fear the end of the war. It is certain and inevitable. Germany is doomed, and must work her way back to light. This is not foreordained, but here we already see the end, and are looking toward the battles that will still be raging when the countries of the world seem peaceful.”
[Some weeks later, this confident prophecy was slightly modified in its letter, though not in its spirit, when she said: “Unless the Allied purpose is undermined by forces of spiritual disintegration, Germany is doomed, but the fight must be kept up with confidence and consciously united force and purpose.” This, however, merely emphasizes the teaching of all the lessons, that constructive purpose cannot find expression in passivity, that he who would live must fight, and that he who is not actively striving for progress is arrayed against it.]
As has been said, my knowledge of philosophies is of the slightest, and there is scarcely a suggestion contained in the first Lesson that was not new to me and entirely foreign to my habit of thought. Therefore, I sent a copy of it to Mr. Kendal, asking him to tell me whether the cosmic theory there outlined was familiar to him. Conscious of Mary K.’s summons, I took up a pencil.
“Tell Mr. Kendal the philosophers have perceived the truth in fragments. This is to be the whole truth, as far as it can be understood on your plane. It may sound, at moments, like a patchwork of philosophies, because all—or most—of them have some truth. He will help you in this. He found the truth in spite of philosophies, and it is part of his work to help others find it because of one—a philosophy not dreamed, but lived and proved and known. Therefore, not a philosophy, but a faith.”
The next day, we dined with friends of that Anne Lowe for whom I had asked the first night Mary K. came to me, and from her long messages to them, a few may be quoted.
“... It has always been easy for me to reach you, because you never doubted that I was there. Doubt is one of the things we cannot reach through. Doubt, bitterness, grief—all these are destructive forces.” To a statement that they had felt deep grief, she returned: “You have not had the kind of grief that would shut me out. You have shut out some helpful forces, but you will do that no longer. It is because the force may reach you through me that I can come. We are the same purpose, and I can reach you freely. We can always reach those who are very near and dear. Sometimes people are dear to usthere who are not really near us here. They do not need us, nor we them. It is an ephemeral relation. Love lasts eternally. Please don’t ever forget that.... Listen to me. I cannot always reach you as directly as this, but just as soon as you learn to read my thoughts, as I now read yours, a messenger will not be necessary.”
Briefly she explained to them the eternal significance of the Great War, the united purpose of Germany, and the failure of the Allies, thus far, to comprehend the essence of unity. Elizabeth, one of her friends, mentioned that it was like her to drop personalities for great issues, and she replied:
“The reason that I told you the thing I did about the great purposes and the eternal conflict is that I want you to realize a little of what it is all for, and to help you recognize the great ends toward which your problems lead. Build, build, never cease to build. Unite yourself to anybody who is of your purpose. Keep as clear as you can from entangling yourselves with forces of disintegration.”
Miss S——, a teacher, and a stranger to me, was present, and after a little her brother took control of the pencil.
“You cannot realize how intimately we worktogether still,” was one of his assertions to her. “You are a fine force for progress. You are being and teaching the things we all work for here. Teach, above all, unity of purpose. Never mind the method. Look to the goal. Building, light, freedom, faith—these are what the forces of construction stand for, the way to the great purpose. The forces of disintegration are gathering for a tremendous fight. The Great War is one of the crises of civilization, but the battle to come still is one of the crises of eternity. It is for that we are preparing now. This is what we must say to all dear to us and, through them, to as wide a public as we can reach.... It is a great message that is to be given. To-day I only want you to be sure that I know all you feel and all you have suffered, and that the more confidently and freely you reach out to me, knowing I am there, the more easily and surely I can reach you.”
Like the others, this man used the circle, which we were beginning to perceive must signify more than joy, as we understand the word. For example, on this occasion it was used thus: “You will look for me now, listen for me, feel me near you, and the (O) will be as near your life as it ever can be there.” After telling her of the frequent use of thissymbol, I asked him whether it had not a deeper significance—perhaps completion, perfection, consummate unity, something joyous of this larger sort, to which he replied in the affirmative.
A night or two after this, Cass suggested that we must make an effort to get into touch with David Bruce, but I said that we had asked about him several times, and that if he wished or needed to communicate with his family he would undoubtedly let me know. Aware of Mrs. Bruce’s interest in psychic phenomena, I thought they might have established communication in some way. Within a few minutes I was conscious of a summons to the pencil.
First came Mary K.’s strong signature. Then, very quickly: “David Bruce is here, and wa....” There it ran off into nervous, illegible waves. When I said I could not follow, and asked that the message be more slowly given, it was resumed where it had been dropped. “... wants to talk toE... Bess.” His wife’s name is Elizabeth, and naturally was in my mind, but having written E, the pencil balked, delayed, crossed out the E, and finally wrote “Bess,” firmly.
“Thank you,” was the response to my promise to arrange the interview. For the firsttime it occurred to me that possibly Mary K. had given over the pencil, and I asked who was writing, to be told quickly: “D. B.”
Mrs. Bruce came the next day to talk to him, and Mary K. told me, before her arrival, to give her no details about the previous messages, adding: “He will tell her.” And while his opening message to her merely summarizes similar assertions previously received, it is interesting as the first consecutive personal statement of the survival of individuality in the eternal pursuance of constructive purpose.
“I am here with you, darling Bess, as I have been with you from the start,” he began at once. “You have known it all the time, and I have been able to reach you in a way that I can only describe to you as spiritual.”
Here was the first veiled allusion, at first rather puzzling, to that unknown force afterward mentioned by William James and others.
“We so long to tell you whom we love not to grieve. We are of you, as you are of us. Even more closely than we were when I was visibly with you. Perfect union is only possible to pure spirit. That will come. Meanwhile, one of us is pure spirit, and both of us so much the richer thereby. Once, in the beginning of things, you and I were the samepurpose. Purposes are eternal. They may be temporarily divided, temporarily overcome by the forces of disintegration, which are forever seeking to destroy, but forever each divided purpose answers to the call of its own. You and I were one purpose in the first, and we shall be perfectly reunited when you have joined me here. But while we were one in the beginning, one with many others of our great purpose, we are now eternally definite and separate individuals, but united as perfectly, after the first life there, as if we had returned to one unit.... The first message any of us send must be this one. That is the reason we can come so freely now and tell so much.”
A little later, speaking of their children, he said: “All young people have battles to fight and problems to solve. Don’t try to spare them that. It is thus they learn life’s lessons, and the more they learn there the readier they will be to do the fine and glorious work here.”
He had spoken before of being very busy, and now she commented: “He seems so interested in the work!”
“Interested is not the word. It’s more like inspiration.”
“Was the passing difficult?” she asked.
“Not difficult at all. The pain ended with unconsciousness.”
“But you had no pain!”
“Yes, I had some—not expressed, nor quite definite. Difficult to explain until experienced. Words do not convey the sensation. Not quite fear, not quite pain, but a strange moment of suffering. Then consciousness again, beauty, force, perfectly clear perceptions, but a period of something approaching incredulity.” I mentioned Frederick’s statement that he had been “dazed by the bigness of it,” and Mr. Bruce went on. “That’s it. The bigness of it is indescribable, and so extraordinarily lovely and high that it is not readily realized or grasped.”
She said she had dreaded to have him go alone, and asked whether some one met him.
“Yes, we are very tenderly received. There is always a part of one’s own purpose waiting.”
“Have you seen Jack?”
“Yes; he is still a little bewildered, but will soon be in fighting trim again.” This young man had been killed in an accident.
“‘In fighting trim’!” she repeated. “How funny!”
“No, it isn’t funny. We fight perpetually, and love it. It is a wonderful thing to fight with the great forces, and to know why. Most of those in your life fight in confusionand doubt, and suffer. But here we unite ourselves to a definite and constructive purpose, and the fight is glorious.”
“Do you see Granny?”
“No. She has gone on to a life beyond ours. She will come back, some day, and I will see her.”
“You have helped me very much by believing that I lived,” he told her, at another point. “It is very hard for us to be put aside.... We know here how intimately our life and yours are lived together, and the one almost intolerable thing is to have our dear ones live and believe that we do not. It defers things so.... It hurts us when the apparent separation is made real.”
“I hope you won’t get so far beyond that I can’t catch up,” she said.
“Never! You will begin farther along than I did. We shall go on together now, for eternity. Since you know that I am with you, and especially as we live and work consciously together, we shall grow together.”
“Did I do all I could for you, at the last? Did you feel my fear?”
“No, I did not feel your fear. But when one knows that the step is coming, there is one blinding moment of dread.... You kept me a little while,” he continued, when shesaid that she had tried to hold him here, “but the thing had gone too far.”
“Was there anything we could have done that was not done?”
“Nothing. It had to be.” But when she inferred that the time had come for him to take up work in the next plane, he protested. “No. Nothing like that is ‘intended.’ There is no foreordination. It is all a matter of forces, constructive and destructive. My material energy was too little to withstand the material forces of destruction. My flesh yielded. That has no real relation to eternal force.... One serves one’s purpose, here or there. I am doing better work here than I could have done there, but that has no relation or part in death. It is entirely a physical thing.”
“Did —— make you nervous?”
“No mere man could make me fail to respond to your call to courage. I knew and you knew, that it might be the end of life there; but there was no possible thing that you could have done, mentally, physically, or spiritually, that you did not do. It was your courage that kept me calm, even through that dread moment; your spirit that met me when I woke here; your tenderness that soothed my first bewilderment; your purpose thatroused me to better, broader, finer work than I had ever dreamed before. It has been you—you and I, one always—that have helped and upheld me, as your faith has enabled me to reach and uphold you.”
This interview took place in the afternoon, and with a good deal of incidental conversation, covered several hours, leaving me very tired. But after dinner the familiar summons warned me that my services were again in demand. I took up a pencil, and Mary K. announced the second Lesson, which followed rapidly, with the same unhesitating flow that had characterized the first one.
Meanwhile, happy letters were coming almost daily from the Gaylord family, and less frequently, but with expressions of equal conviction, from Mr. Kendal.
Mrs. Gaylord had promised to spend Easter week with relatives, in a Middle Western town, which she had not visited—indeed, had scarcely dared to think of—since taking Frederick’s body there for burial; and the day after the second Lesson was given she arrived in New York, where she paused brieflyen route, her elder daughter and son-in-law joining her the next morning.
Although her train arrived late in the evening, we talked a little to Frederick before separating for the night. We had been commenting on her changed appearance.
“Mother dearest, you are not much differenter than I am,” he began, after the usual signature.
“Why, Frederick!” she exclaimed. “Are you better, too?”
He made the enthusiastic little circle so often used. “(O) So much better! You can’t guess how much better I am. It helps me as much as it does you.”
“Were you at Mrs. Z——’s the other day?” she asked, referring to a visit to a “medium,” of which I had not been informed.
“I was that, but she fell down on what I was trying to get over,” was the reply. When his mother said she had not received what she expected on that occasion, he returned: “Nor what we expected.... She’s all right, as far as she goes.” He told her, also, that the woman accompanying him, described by Mrs. Z——, had been his father’s mother.
“This is a nice, peaceful powwow we’re having to-night,” he commented, when they had exchanged views concerning various personal matters. “I had to work last time, but this time I’m here for....”
The pencil paused, and I asked: “For what?”
“Just for a good time, Mrs. L——. Sis is coming to the party to-morrow. Hooray!”
A little later, when she expressed some uncertainty about her ability to go through an Easter in K——, with all its sad associations, unshaken, he warned her: “Don’t you go backsliding!” Continuing, she told us that his last illness had developed just before Easter,and that in his desire to give the family an unclouded day he had persuaded a friend to send them a typewritten letter, which he signed, containing no intimation of his illness.
“I’ll write you a letter this Easter with a lot more pep in it,” he promised. “You go on and have your Easter presents, and flowers, and eggs, and all, and when you begin backsliding, stop ... look ... listen[7]... and I’ll be on the crossing, ringing the bell.”
With an ejaculation of surprise, his mother told us that she had been recently in the home of a traffic expert, whose large hall was strikingly decorated with signs for the regulation of traffic.
“I believe that’s what he’s thinking of!” she exclaimed.
“Sure, you’ve got it! I’ll ask Sis to buy you a bell for me, to remind you.”
This diversion had completely banished the gathering sadness of her reminiscences, and she began talking of Washington, whence she had come, saying that there seemed to be a good deal of pessimism in official circles concerning war conditions. It will be remembered that the bombardment of Paris, by a long-distance gun, began March 23d.
“There are lots of things Washington doesn’t know,” Frederick assured her. “The end of the war must come soon.”
We wondered, as I had before, how much difference there was between his conception of time, as indicated by the word “soon,” and ours.
“None of us can name the day and hour, but we see the inevitable end coming soon. Germany knows she is weakened, but doesn’t know why. We do, and we have told you. No nation on earth can fight this fight alone, deserted by all purposes, both for good and evil, and with only one force left—Fear.”
[Long afterward, Mary K. said to me, in this connection: “We see the awakening purpose of forces for progress in your life, and are able to help them in proportion to the vigor with which that purpose is put into action. Germany, on the other hand, fights now with only physical power. Eternal forces are implacably against her, and the forces of destruction have abandoned her. She has no ally here now. Her unity is destroyed, while ours is strengthening. The only danger, as far as the war is concerned, lies in a weakening of actual purpose, forcefully expressed in action. We are your allies, answering your call and inciting you to endeavor. When Germanybegan this war she had superhuman strength, which the world was unprepared to meet, but for every vibration of pure constructive purpose among the Allied forces we have added two, and only a weakening of your purpose can defeat us now. Every individual among you who fails to strive for victory with all his strength invites disaster.”]
Frederick’s talk with his mother was brief that night, and when she arose, to return to her hotel, he said: “Good night. I am going home with you, if I may.”
This seemed to Cass and me a curious phrase, under the circumstances, and we also commented upon his generous use of slang, especially in the latest interview, wondering whether it were characteristic of him.
The next morning his sister, Mrs. Wylie, arrived with her husband, to spend a day with Mrs. Gaylord in New York. It chanced that they had been away from home for several weeks and had seen none of Frederick’s manuscript, nor any copy of it. As she read—from the original roll—his messages of the preceding evening, she constantly exclaimed: “How characteristic!” and his closing phrase brought tears to her eyes. She told me, then, that along with a copious use of slang, Frederick had preserved an odd little formality of phrase,even in his closest personal relations—a trait not common to other members of the family.
Later, in glancing for the first time through the typewritten record of earlier interviews, again and again she expressed astonishment at the characteristic quality of his phraseology, which had not been mentioned to me before. Mrs. Gaylord had spoken of her vivid consciousness of his personality, imbuing all he said to her, and had told me, during the earlier days of this intercourse, more or less about his habit of thought, but it is characteristic of her to ignore minor details, and only when Mrs. Wylie arrived did I learn anything about his habit of speech.
“Frederick,” he announced, when we invited communication, his bold signature stretching across the whole width of the paper. “Hello, Sis! This is too good not to be true! Hello, Dick!” This to Mr. Wylie, whose marriage to his sister had taken place during the last weeks of his illness. “Welcome home to the family! We’re all in it now, for good and all. This is the thing we’ve all needed, I almost as much as the rest of you, but I did know that sooner or later it must come, so I could bear it better than you could.”
It must not be understood that all these communications came as consecutively as theyare presented here. There were frequent pauses; sometimes because of our preoccupation in conversation; sometimes, apparently, because of difficulties of transmission not explained. Occasionally I stopped to verify a word or a phrase, asking if it had been correctly taken, and with increasing frequency the pencil returned without suggestion from me, to cross out false starts. Some of the latter, which seemed significant, will be indicated from time to time. The following message, however, came rapidly, without pause.
“We are all of kindred purposes. That’s the reason we cling to each other so. Family hasn’t a thing to do with it. It was our good fortune to have no forces of disintegration in our immediate group. We are all builders, in one way or another. Not all in the same way, but all for the great purpose. This is one of the things I have wanted to say to you. Don’t be misled by transient relationships of that life. Respect them, but don’t be eternally influenced by them, because when you get over here you’ll find that some of the people you’ve thought you were most fond of have simply dropped out. You don’t need them, nor they you. Find your purposes clearly, and stick to them. We all have purpose, but not all of you there have found out just what yours is.Find it, and follow it fearlessly. There, that’s off my chest!”
Mr. Wylie spoke of the “upside-down stunt,” of which some one had written him, and I said it had been done chiefly to convince me—to show me, in Frederick’s phrase, “who was running it.”
“You know now who is running it,” he contributed, “but you’re certainly formal with strangers!”
In the midst of some talk of ours, the pencil swung off with vigor, writing, “Sis!” in huge script, like a joyous exclamation, ending in strong circles. “Just wait till I catch Dad!” he went on. “And Babe, too! All of us together! Margaret will have to forget her formality then, I tell you!”
Mrs. Wylie mentioned the common impression that personality must be transmuted by death into something remote and strange—that only the soul survived. “Of course, we love the soul of any one dear to us,” she said. “But, after all, the thing we know best, and therefore love best, is the habit of thought—the characteristic mental attitude, and it is so wonderful to find Frederick unchanged—just like himself.”
“Sure! Why not?” he returned. “You people must learn that this isn’t ‘like himself.’ Itishimself. Right here on the job.”
“Those words!” His mother and sister exchanged startled glances. Then they told me that just before his long struggle for life on this plane ended, when during six months his powers of recuperation had repeatedly astonished surgeons and nurses, he opened his eyes, to find his father bending over him, and whispered for the last time: “On the job.”
“I’ve always been on it since, too,” he rapidly assured them, “and longing to tell you so. You never can know, until you try it, how we hate to be left out. We’re on the job as you can’t even imagine, and it makes us sort o’ sick that we can’t get it over to you of our own love and purpose.”
He interrupted the talk following this with: “Trot along to lunch! I want to start going and not stop. Get it over, do!”
So we trotted, and got it over as soon as possible, though throughout the meal he insisted upon having a voice in the conversation, writing messages on all the blank paper we had about us, and over the backs of the available menu cards.
“You can’t lose me, and needn’t try,” he told me, and when I protested that he was making it impossible for me to finish my luncheon, he retorted: “You have a perfectly good left hand. Eat with that.”
Several times Mr. Wylie expressed his interest in what he called “the upside-down stunt,” and when we were again seated about a writing-table, Frederick “demonstrated.”
“Incidentally, Dick,” he mentioned, starting at my right and writing toward my left, “you wanted to see this work. Well, here you are. This is the way it is done.”
As this began, Mrs. Gaylord smiled, pulling her chair nearer to the table, where she could watch every movement of the pencil.
“Sit up closer, Mother dearest,” Frederick continued, “and everybody hold hands.” Looking slightly bewildered, she held out her hands to the others. I said that he had used a figure of speech, but she thought he had meant it literally, and we referred the question to him. “Yes, all but your writing-hand,” he said; so we all joined hands, and I asked why.
“Just to make us know more surely that we are all one and indivisible, from now on through eternity. Easter resurrection for every one of us. We are all born again, to some extent, by our communion in this way; I more than you, because I have left the flesh behind. But to you has come new life, new force, new purpose, new faith, through your touch with this life of pure spirit. It is truly your resurrection.This is your Easter message. Hail! And be happy ever after!”
I anticipated none of this message, and its tenor surprised me greatly. Before I had recovered from my astonishment Mrs. Gaylord exclaimed: “That must be the Easter letter he promised me!” Immediately he signed it. “Frederick, to Mother and all of you.”
We spoke of the relation of this whole revelation to orthodox religion, and some one said that it was not in accordance with the Bible.
“Yes, it is,” he contradicted. “You have never learned to read the Bible in this light. The great prophecies have always been phrased in the language, and more or less in the spirit, of the time in which they were uttered. This is the first time in the history of the world when physical science has been sufficiently advanced to enable us to tell the people the truth in terms they would truly understand. Prophecies have been veiled, apparently, not because the truth was vague, but because men were not prepared to understand it in all its details. Nor are they now. But this is to be the whole truth, as far as it can be understood now by your prophets and people. And for the first time it is possible to give it to you directly in this way, without pretense or mystery,book or bell, a natural law operating naturally and freely, through an accredited messenger who makes no claim to inspiration.”
In the course of our drifting talk his mother remembered that Mrs. Z—— had tried to convey a warning through her from Frederick to Mr. Wylie, but had been unable to tell her what it concerned. After some effort to discover its connection, suggesting possible journeys or business ventures, Mrs. Z—— had finally said that Dick was about to do something, she did not know what; but whatever it was, Frederick said he must not do it. Mrs. Gaylord now asked Frederick what he had intended to say.
“She didn’t get my message. I was trying to tell him not to be fearful about anything.” Mr. Wylie is sometimes prey to nervous apprehension and worry. “It keeps us back and we can’t help him as we’re trying to do. Open up, Dick! Let us in and we’ll all pull together.” This apparently touched some situation unknown to me, for Mr. and Mrs. Wylie exchanged glances, and instantly Frederick made his quick circles. “(O) That’s it! Now we’re off! No, it isn’t incredible,” he added, replying to some comment of theirs. “It’s the truest thing you ever heard. But Mrs. Z—— can’t get beyond externals.”
This seems to be a very good example of the way certain messages are confused by the persons through whom they come. In this case, while the intended warning was conveyed, a purely subjective and spiritual message was so distorted, however unconsciously and unintentionally, that it was given an objective and material significance.
Asked whether an acquaintance of theirs would be helped by a knowledge of their intercourse with him, he said: “She is not ready for this yet. Few people, comparatively, are free enough to accept it. It has been forbidden by the church, ridiculed by the laity, and labelled ‘poison, don’t touch’ by neurologists and the scientific, half-baked intellectuals.”
“Fake mediums have done a lot to bring it into disrepute,” Mr. Wylie suggested.
“That’s the reason for some of it. Another reason, less obvious to you, but equally potent, is that people who had the sensitiveness to be messengers frequently lacked the purpose of truth fundamentally, and though thinking they were honest, entertained devils unaware.... That is the reason so many people have gone to pieces, mentally and physically. The purposes of disintegration caught them and destroyed them. But this time, we beat them to it.”
“All philosophies have had some foundation of truth,” he told us, a little later, “or they would not have been permitted to live. This new faith will be attacked by the disintegrating forces, in an attempt to discredit it as a patchwork of philosophies. The new truths they will ignore, or flatly deny. But this is the whole truth, as far as it can be told now. Believe it, follow it, preach it, live it, and we shall truly build that structure I told you of, Mother dearest, of force, light, and sweetness—which is you. I seem to be doing a darned lot of preaching!”
“It isn’t like you, either,” his mother remarked.
“You see, we’ve got to get this over. It’s imperative.”
At that, she said it was like him, after all, because he had always talked eagerly to the family about his “job,” whatever it might be, adding: “Is it ‘imperative’ because of the war and the sorrow? Or because the time is ripe?”
“It’s because there’s the very devil of a fight coming, and we’ve got to gather every force we have, and unite it.”
“Is beating the Germans helping the constructive force? Or is the war merely the awakening through suffering?”
“Germany has been united in purpose as adestructive force for many years. They gave themselves deliberately, not as individuals, but as a people, to what parsons call the powers of darkness. We know them to be forces of disintegration, which found in Germany their strongest ally in the civilized world. We’ve been fighting Germany and her purposes here for years, I find. Suffering makes people readier to listen to truth, but beating Germany was as necessary to the world’s health as sanitation to a hospital.”
“That’s a clear and explicit statement,” some one said.
“We are perfectly definite and explicit about questions of eternal purpose. The difficulty with most people is that they want to know how much U. S. Steel will go up next Tuesday, or whether to give the baby soothing-syrup.”
After some interchange concerning his father and younger sister, he said, “I want to write them an Easter greeting.” So we got a fresh roll of paper, and he wrote a brief but tender letter, which was sent to them that night.
“Which one of us will be best able to do this?” Mrs. Wylie asked.
“... The time will come when this sort of thing is unnecessary. We can talk without material aid.... We never know when the power is going to develop. It’s much like anelectric current. You never know it’s there until you feel it—until your signal comes over the wire.... Try it out, all of you. We know no more about who can do it than you do, except in cases of extraordinary power.” Some time afterward, however, he warned them of the dangers of attempting to handle this force, intimating that great conservation of energy in other directions should accompany the endeavor.
His mother spoke of his being happy, and he returned: “Perfectly happy now, thank you. It’s the eternal thing, really started. I hate to have this party break up, but anyhow it isn’t for long. I’ve been away longer, when I lived there, than I shall be now, and we are all of us as sure of the next meeting, and the next good time, as we were then.”
“He knows it is ending, and we must go to our trains,” Mrs. Gaylord said.
“Not ending at all. Beginning!Hooray!”
On that triumphant note they took their departure, Mrs. Gaylord westward bound, the Wylies to New England; but, owing to a defective timepiece, both missed their trains. Within an hour, Mrs. Wylie telephoned me that her mother had caught—by the narrowest margin—a later train, hoping to secure sleeping-accommodation after leaving, a dubiousventure in these days of diminished service and crowded trains. We arranged to dine and spend the evening together.
Afterward, it occurred to me that Frederick might prefer to be with his mother that night, and I asked Mary K. about it.
“Frederick has engaged his mother in (O) ...”
“What does that mean now?” I interrupted. “Bliss?”
“Yes ... and will come here to-night to see the others.”
Like the rest of the family, Mrs. Wylie feared the effect of the Western visit upon her mother’s new-found tranquillity of spirit, and she was also uneasy lest Mrs. Gaylord had been unable to secure Pullman accommodations.
“Mother is all right and happy,” Frederick told us, in the evening. “She is still reading her precious book”—a copy of his earlier interviews, which she carried with her.
Some one asked whether he meant that her general condition was “all right,” or that she was “all right” on the train.
“On the train. She’s blissful!”
This was verified a day or two later by a letter from Mrs. Gaylord, in which she said: “I came away filled with strength and calm and joy.” She also mentioned casually that she had found a vacant section on the train, and traveled comfortably.
“How does purpose combat forces of evil?” Mr. Wylie asked.
“It is done by overpowering them, as the sun dispels mist, separating them into smaller particles or units. And when that is impossible, by driving them like clouds before a high wind. They work for evil, but can be separated sometimes from the mass and united with constructive forces. Only small fragments of the main forces can be so converted, at present. Mostly we rout them.”
“Does an evil soul lose personality?” his sister questioned. “Is it absorbed, or broken into fragments?”
“The individuality that finds its first expression in your life is never absorbed or broken up. I speak of the forces of disintegration, composed of more individuals than the greatest army, as being routed. We mass ourselves and our purposes against them and theirs, when we fight in the open here. But as has been explained in the Lessons, the very material form you have was originally an effort to evolve a force not conquerable by purpose alone. Both good and evil forces, in your phrase—constructive and destructive, in ours—took possession of these concrete forms, and now the bitterness of the fight is greatest where both forces are represented in one individual. The only way we can fight that effectively is to sit on the job, and try to callto the purpose that is ours more clearly and appealingly, or more commandingly, than the other fellow does. That’s the reason we are begging you now to work with us. A great crisis is at hand, and we want you to meet it consciously in your life there, knowing its nature, so that we can have your help, not only in withstanding material onslaughts, like Germany’s invasions and brutality, but in things of the spirit—the real things, the eternal things—so that together we may win a real victory. The individual whose purposes are fundamentally destructive is not damned nor lost. He is just delayed. Sooner or later he must work his way up, and it is entirely up to him whether he does it sooner or later—after he reaches this life, especially. In your life, he is sometimes confused or misled. He pays for that, too—not pays, but makes good for it, by working here for the development he had not sense enough to take there. But his delay is brief, beside that of the essentially destructive force.”
A little later, Mrs. Wylie spoke again of her uneasiness about her mother’s visit to K——, and some one suggested telegraphing her that Frederick had been with us that evening.
“Give her my love when you wire,” he directed,“and tell her I’m on the crossing, still ringing that bell. Don’t you worry, Sis. I’ll go and stay with her most of the time she’s there, and she’ll know it. I’ll come to you, Easter, too, for a little while.... Tell Dad I’ll be taking care of Mother. He needn’t fret about it.”
“Do you want me to look up ‘Bob’ and tell him about his little girl?” she asked.
He replied, “Yes, do.” And when she asked if he could give her something more definite than a Christian name by which to trace this unknown man among his large and scattered acquaintance, he wrote the name of a Middle Western city, adding: “You can find out from the fellows. All of them know Bob.”
This seems to be a case of marked deflection of ray, to use Mr. Kendal’s simile, for up to the day when this manuscript goes to the printer the Gaylord family have been unable to identify “Bob,” although there was a confused intimation, late in April, that Mrs. Z—— had made a mistake in the name, and a suggestion that the surname was Roberts. It is not impossible that this was one of those wily incursions of disintegrating force, with intent to confuse, to which we afterward grew accustomed.