On Friday and Saturday of that week (March 29th and 30th), there were interviews of great interest, but of too personal a character to be extensively quoted.
Replying to the inquiry of a man for his father, Mary K. said: “He was a great force here, but has passed on into the life beyond ours. He can and will return to talk to you, but not immediately.”
“Tell G—— the constructive forces are working for him, as he for them,” was the answer to questions about a man in this life. “Temporary disappointments are unimportant. Do not fear. We build together, and surely. The result is certain and for his purpose—progress, light, and justice. His individual concern is to have faith, follow his purpose, and trust us. The only failure possible comes from admitting doubt, disintegration, and fear.”
An expression of anxiety concerning another man on this plane was met thus: “N—— has felt his own purpose stirring a little.... A perfectly good purpose when he finds it. He has had many forces fighting, within and without. He will wake when this message is given to the world. He is too intelligent not to recognize truth as obvious as this will be.” Some one asked when this would occur. “When Margaret completes the book she willpublish soon.” This was the first intimation of the way in which I was expected to carry out Mary K.’s instructions to make this experience known, concerning which we had wondered not a little.
It was suggested that a member of this person’s family might help him, from the next plane, but this was said to be impossible, as they were not of the same purpose.
“The family connection is nothing here. His own purposes know him, both good and bad, and they are fighting it out. He has answered first one, then another. But fundamentally he is for justice. He will answer to that in the end.... Sometimes he will shut it all out and yield to the forces seeking to destroy him, but he will fight in the end for freedom and justice.”
“She is not of our forces,” was the reply to an inquiry about an artist who left this life twenty years ago. This was crossed out, however, and “not mentally free” substituted.
When I was alone, I asked Mary K. about this woman, and she returned: “She is not a destructive force, but is deterrent. She is working out problems not met when she should have met them, and is fighting for growth, just as she soon or late will fight for progress.She fights for herself, her own growth, and not for progress in the larger sense.”
Afterward, I learned, from some one who knew her well, of this woman’s devouring and unquenchable ambition for supremacy in her profession.
Whimsical Anne Lowe, writing to three friends of her continued association with them, said: “Believe—know—that we are a positive force, and united we stand, hurrah! Our faith helps all beneficent purpose. Its force is freed and multiplied by the sum of your participation.”
“I wonder if she could tell us what our purposes are?” Elizabeth said.
“Yours is Progress, Ruth’s is Light, Katharine’s is Healing and Light. You are blended. Elizabeth to push, Ruth to illumine and interpret, Katharine to understand and soothe.”
Ruth said, wistfully: “Then all I can do is to shine?”
“Interpreters are really prophets,” she was told. “That is all the greatest prophets ever were. You are of their purpose, so cheer up!”
Interrupting a little discussion as to whether dominant purpose is born in us or developed, she said: “We are born with many purposes, latent and striving, but as we live we make daily choice.”
That evening, our old friend Maynard Holt came for a long talk. After some entirely personal exchange, Cass spoke of Maynard as having been, in this life, a believer in individualism.
Beginning with some allusion to former discussions between them, concerning what he called “the temporary manifestations of Socialism,” Maynard replied: “Now I can tell you definitely that the salvation of the civilized world is dependent on the independence of the individual.... It’s a big and glorious period in eternal history. The time has almost come for the open fight. Prepare your ground carefully, and gird up your loins for combat. It’s coming.”
A little later, in a similar connection, he said: “The conscious co-operation of purpose is the only sound principle of Socialism. That is eternally sound. And now that we are consciously and forcefully working in harmony with the great and eternal purpose, they can’t stop us.”
“Has this new opportunity of communication with this plane made you over there happier?” he was asked.
“It has opened an entirely new channel to us here in this part of the world. In the Far East, we have the channel, but no hard-panto support the stream. Here science gives us a foundation from which to work, but we have had no channel through which to reach it.... Everywhere in the civilized world the minds of intelligent people have turned to this. There is reaching and questioning and longing, and a dawning faith.”
At this time I did not know how frequently belief in the possibility of communication with those in a life beyond is accompanied by an inclination toward the Oriental philosophies, but Maynard’s allusion to the Far East was given greater significance by the replies to later questions.
To an inquiry concerning the possible influence of these teachings in Germany, he returned: “They are a philosophical and abstract-minded people, and they’ll be hunting a plausible and satisfactory explanation of themselves before long. And this is less uncomplimentary than the others will be, besides having the undeniable advantage of being true, which they will have learned, by that time, to appreciate.”
“Can’t those with eyes, ears, and understanding learn wisely to control, lead, and uplift the mass?” Cass asked. “In Russia, for example?”
“Don’t be in such a hurry. There’s alleternity, and evolution is slow. But the mills of the gods grind on, and the grist is sure. The Russians, like the Germans, must climb their own hills. America has a few to climb, too. This will help many, uplift a few, escape the mass, but leaven the whole. There is no millennium at hand. This is just a light by which the path is made more clear. It will influence many thousands, in many countries, but the inert mass must work its way on, through the old channels of evolution, made easier by knowledge and by experience of those ahead, but not to be evaded or avoided by any miracle.”
“But it will bring conscious purpose and effort to bear in helping this evolution?”
“Surely. It is a message eagerly awaited and desired.”
Later that evening, I asked Mary K. whether she could tell me anything about the book Anne Lowe had said I was to publish.
“Yes. It must be ready for publication by Fall.”
“Evidently sordid, material details of book manufacture escape your attention,” I said, laughing. “This is the thirtieth of March, and you have not yet given me all the material for your book. When you have done that, it still must be edited, assembled for publication,copied, accepted by publishers, printed, and sold. Perhaps you don’t know that salesmen for publishing-houses begin taking orders for Fall publications in June, and generally carry sample copies of the books with them?”
She said I would have the necessary material in a month or six weeks, and that editing would “take another month,” from which it is evident that no eight-hour law is operative on her plane. She also advised me to see publishers at once, tell them what was happening, read them parts of communications already received, and arrange for Fall publication, conditional upon their satisfaction with the completed manuscript—which, not without misgivings concerning such procedure, I immediately prepared to act upon.
A night or so later, Maynard Holt came again, with his mother, who said: “Maynard brought me to call.”
When we asked if she worked with those on this plane, she replied: “Yes, but also with undeveloped purposes, here before their time.”
Returning to the subject of Russian upheaval, Maynard said: “They are goners for some time, now. It will take them long to assemble their purposes again constructively.”
“If you had been here,” Cass asked, “wouldyou have viewed the Russian situation and its effect on the world as you do now?”
“Not quite, I think. We see farther ahead, and have sounder premises from which to argue than you’ve ever had there.”
“This plan, of course, includes all the people of the world,” Cass continued. “Are those who leave here undeveloped, still undeveloped there?”
“There is a large and growing population here of the undeveloped,” was Maynard’s reply, “which is one of the lesser reasons for our keen desire to purposize the world.”
“What place have the unfit on your plane?” we asked Mary K., at the conclusion of the sixth Lesson.
“No place. They are errors of development, and have a long struggle ahead before they can reach the degree of development that should have been theirs in your life. They are fusions of weak purposes, and should not be permitted to hold back the strong and the fit. Development will come to them slowly, at best, but more quickly here than there.”
“In the present stage of our development, is there a sufficient incentive to progress, without hope of material gain or personal improvement?”
“Any material gain that is for the constructive purpose is a force for light and progress in the larger sense. Material gain is deterrent only when purpose is its price. Personal ambition is an incentive always. When it is for personal gain, at any price, it is deterrent. When it is ambition to serve a great purposeworthily, it becomes a constructive force, to which material gain adds only more constructive force.”
“Have you all history spread out before you? Or are you taught after you get there?”
“We have a grasp of results, not easily understood in your life. It is like seeing a landscape from a high and distant hill. The salient features are easily distinguished.”
“Are these messages for all people? Or only for civilized people? Do they come from Christians on your plane?”
“This is a message to the civilized world.... Jew or Gentile, Christian or agnostic, all men are brothers in the larger sense. Uncivilized little brothers will grow, or come to this freer plane to join their larger purposes.”
“Then from whom do these Lessons come?”
“From great constructive purposes. There is no sect or creed, color or prejudice, here.”
Saturday, April 6th, Mrs. Bruce came again to talk to her husband, and he thanked her for a public gift which she had just made in his name, promising such co-operation in the work it promoted as could be given from his plane. She said that she had felt suddenly impelled to make this contribution, and had acted at once upon the impulse.
“You all feel impelled to work with us assoon as you realize we are here near you,” he told her, “and the things we can do together are as yet undreamed in your life.”
She spoke of his former interest in the arts, which he said he had left behind as “material manifestations.” Discussing the relation of artistic expression to constructive purpose, he said: “Art, when it is a real interpretation of life, is a high and noble thing, but the art that is merely self-expression is a disintegrating force. Too much of it is that now.”
At that time, she had read none of the Lessons, and he told her of the seven purposes of construction, continuing: “To purpose of any nature only similar purpose calls, and when the call is heard there is no choice but to answer. No choice after the call has been admitted to consciousness. It may be shut out and denied, but once listened to, whether for construction or for destruction, the answer is bound to come. That is why we so insistently urge the discovery of purpose and the beauty of construction. Character, as you understand it, results from the purposes admitted to consciousness. Not always recognized, but always let in.”
He had some difficulty in getting one word written, and she spoke of his erasures of wrong starts as extraordinary and unusual.
“Not a bit unusual, if you think how often the words of your languages fail as convincing and accurate symbols. You often correct them yourselves. A translation may be made in any of several ways, depending on the reactions of the translator to certain symbols. So, when Margaret reacts freely, we let it stand. When she fails, wholly or in part, we correct it.”
In view of later statements concerning the force used in these manifestations, I assume this to mean, not that I make the translation mentioned, but that certain symbols used in translation are sometimes difficult to convey through me. Frequently other words have been substituted for those originally begun, when there was trouble in writing them. Another explanation of these occasional difficulties of transmission was suggested afterward, first by Frederick and later more explicitly by Mary Kendal.
“Do you see us visibly?” Mrs. Bruce asked.
“Yes, of course. We see all you do, and more. We see motives, where you see appearance.”
[Long afterward (May 26th), Mr. Kendal asked Anne Lowe whether she could see sunsets, and she replied: “No, but we see their equivalent in dawn of purpose.”
[She had previously expressed approval of aroom, which had been arranged with great care for one dear to her, and he asked whether she saw its physical details, or only its effects upon the minds of persons entering it, to which her answer was: “We never see material things. We see their significance.”
[Similarly, Mary K. said (May 31st), “We read your thought frequently, and always perceive motive, intention, and the mental and spiritual significance of your reactions to material things, in themselves unimportant. So we say we see the thing itself, because we perceive its essential significance.”]
Mrs. Bruce said her daughter wanted to know whether dogs continue to exist after life here, feeling that they must.
“They do not come as animals, exactly. But there is no manifestation of force that is not purpose, and purposes are united and gather here, in ways not possible for you to understand, in the progress toward the great purpose.” Ten days later, Frederick stated this more explicitly.
After a pause, Mr. Bruce said: “We are so full of our fine but tremendous task here, at this great moment of crisis, that I’m afraid I’m not very entertaining. We talk shop to you, because that is the reason we can come so freely now.”
“You refer to the great crisis?” she asked. “Not to our present crisis here?”
“Germany is bereft of all purpose. Purposes of destruction have left her. She has one sole, frantic force remaining—fear. After that, destruction, long followed, will turn and rend her, and fear will be lost in despair.”
“Aren’t there some good Germans?” she suggested, adding that their daughter thought it unfair to condemn a whole people for the sins of some of them.
“Many good Germans have admitted to consciousness the call of destructive purposes, and have for the moment joined forces against us. For many years this preparation has been going on. No German who has ever admitted the forces of disintegration is quite free from them now. There were some officers who took their own lives and faced the consequences, rather than join forces with the dominant purpose of their people. No person can live in Germany now who is not party to disintegration. No German lives in the world, who still calls himself German, who is not party to disintegration.”
“You say they have ‘joined forces against us for the moment,’” I mentioned.
“Some of them will see light, and build forcefully for true progress. Some of them willdestroy while they live. Some will be for years deterrent, and the end is impossible to foresee.”
A day or two after this, when I was alone, I asked Mary K. what Mr. Bruce meant by saying that once the call of purpose is admitted to consciousness, there is no choice but to answer.
“He meant that your personal struggle is only with the purposes admitted to consciousness. All forces are constantly trying to reach you, to enlist you for the great struggle. Once admitted to your consciousness, you have no choice but to answer, and the struggle between opposing forces is fought with your help. Many waver between the two, now lending aid to this one, now to that. A few choose instantly; some to progress, some to delay, some to build, some to destroy. This is what men call character.”
“He said also that no German who has ever admitted to consciousness the forces of disintegration is quite free from them now. Why?”
“Because there is in your life, as here, a group loyalty. But whereas here we are grouped by purpose, there you are grouped largely by geographical location. And any German who justified this war in the beginningis party to disintegration to some extent still. His group loyalty holds him, though his purpose protest. That will be the final test. Purpose, or finite loyalty to finite group.”
One or two interesting statements were made, about this time, during an interview with the widow of a well-known New York surgeon.
“Your husband’s work is healing still,” Mary K. told her. After enumerating the constructive purposes, she continued: “Healing was always his purpose, and he follows it still, with all his great force. He has a freer field here, and fulfils his purpose fully. That is the reason he is unable to be here to-day. The Germans are liberating many bewildered and fear-stricken souls, and all our great healers are held by their need.”
When we spoke of ways of finding happiness she said: “Who fears the purpose he should serve with force destroys it. Fear not. Find it, serve it, and happiness of a positive kind will find you.... Your force is scattered among many latent purposes. Find the dominant call of Progress to your soul, and follow that, leaving the rest behind.”
Again, a day or two later, the present preoccupation of healers on the next plane was mentioned, when I asked Mary K. whether acertain woman would come at a given time to meet friends who had asked for her.
“She may. I shall try to have her here,” she said. “Her work is healing, and all our healers are working constantly.... She was an artist with you, and somewhat deterrent. She has found a new purpose.”
The day before the last Lessons were given, Maynard Holt, explaining to a friend the seven purposes, said: “Every Human being who is for progress and construction serves one or more of these purposes. It is by them that what you know as human force is ultimately grouped for eternal advance. Our effort now is to unite all forces for Progress in conscious co-operation.” After speaking of Germany’s unity of purpose, he went on: “She is, and has been for years, the center of forces and purposes of disintegration in your life. She is, in theological parlance, the ally of his Satanic Majesty. We have learned here that there is no evil, per se. There is only purpose, constructive or destructive.... But the forces of disintegration are gathering for a battle of wits and morals, and we are emulating Germany in just one thing.... We are preparing. We want you to wake up and realize what is going on. We want every one of you to find and recognize not only your own purpose, butthe other fellow’s. Find out who is for progress, and who merely camouflages disintegration. Conscious co-operation of constructive purpose is warranted to beat the devil. He can’t defeat it, nor yet delay it. (O)Thatis what it means to all of us.... Come on in. The water’s fine!”
As has been said, our invisible friends have seemed somewhat hazy in their perceptions of time and place and of mundane details generally, and they have shown no inclination to concern themselves with our trivial personal affairs. When pressed for specific statements about small details, their replies have been sometimes in exact accordance with the fact as we have perceived it, sometimes not, but they have rarely diverged widely from the truth. In the larger matters directly related to spiritual unity and growth they have been correct, as when Mary K. explicitly stated, March 23d (already quoted), that the German offensive then in progress and up to that time successful would ultimately fail.
On one occasion, apropos of certain questions her husband had asked, Mary Kendal said: “We are not here to satisfy intellectual or any other kind of curiosity. If we were not sure you would use this information for construction,we wouldn’t fuss about it—except you and I, Manzie.”
Several times during March and April, however, Mary K. gave me correct and specific information about various minor affairs, and these incidents are mentioned here because I have been asked repeatedly whether such statements had been made and verified, rather than because undue importance is attached to them.
For example, hastening to an appointment one morning (March 29th), I carelessly left my muff in a taxicab. Discovering the loss an hour later, I telephoned to the cab company, to be told that no report had been received from the cabman, but that they would try to locate him at one of their various stands. It was arranged that I should call at their office for it late in the afternoon, had it been found.
During luncheon, which I took at a restaurant, Mary K. indicated that she had something to say, and on the back of an envelop wrote: “Your muff is found for you.” Two hours later, when I reached home, the muff had been returned by the cabman.
Another incident, less accurate in detail, but substantially correct, concerned Mr. Kendal and my record-book. Having had, during his brief stay in New York, no leisure in which toread the record—which then contained only the genesis of this experience, Frederick’s first interviews with his mother, and some messages from Mary Kendal not included in my letters to her husband—he had taken the book away with him (March 20th), and three or four days later I began looking for its return. When, on the 29th or 30th (exact date not noted), it had not arrived, I asked Mary K. whether she knew anything about it, and she replied that it had been sent and would probably reach me that day. At that time the record, wrapped and addressed, lay on his desk, where he had left it with instructions that it be mailed when he left home for the Easter week-end. It had been overlooked, and he found it there when he returned on the following Monday. Apparently Mary K. perceived only his intention and belief that it was on its way to me.
On the 1st of April she told me that a letter concerning these communications, then several days overdue, for which I waited with great anxiety, had at last been written.
“Really written?” I asked. “Or is this one of those successfully started things you regard as accomplished?”
“Really written.”
At the same time she promised me otherletters, from persons specifically named, and gave me certain information concerning a member of the Gaylord family.
Two days later, when none of these letters had appeared, I said, “Where are those letters you promised me?”
“The letters are coming, fearful and wonderful messenger,” she humorously assured me. “You have not made am...fr...friend...free... fantom (O) friend in vain.”
Laughing, I asked: “Is ‘fantom friend’ right?”
She said it was.
Half an hour later the long-delayed letter arrived, and as she had told me, it was dated April 1st. The other letters came later the same day, the one from Mrs. Wylie verifying the information already given by Mary K. about a member of her family.
On Monday, April 1st, I sent a copy of Frederick’s recent interviews with his mother and sister to Mrs. Gaylord at K——, hoping that it might reach her by Wednesday morning. Wednesday night Mary K. told me that an expected letter from Mrs. Gaylord had not been written, adding: “She waits for the record.” A week later, after a happy visit in K——, Mrs. Gaylord returned to her home and notified me that she had not received themanuscript from me. Fearing that it had been lost in the mails, I asked Mary K. about it, and was told that it would be received. This was repeated at intervals covering several days.
When, on Monday, April 15th, two weeks from the day it had been sent, it was missing still, I told Mary K. that it must have been lost.
“They shall have it soon,” she said. “It is not lost, but delayed.”
“Shall I make a duplicate for them?”
“You must trust us.”
“You are positive that it will arrive?”
“Yes, it will.”
It was delivered to Mrs. Gaylord the following day, April 16th.
On one occasion I asked Mary K. about a woman for whom I had been requested to arrange an interview with a person on the next plane, but about whom I knew nothing whatever.
“She is deterrent,” was the reply, and during the subsequent interview, for the first time since the beginning of this experience, I encountered an individual whose outlook and desire was limited to the narrowly personal.
One of the most striking of these examples of specific information occurred on the nightof Tuesday, April 2d, the day of the Senatorial elections.
Cass said: “Ask Mary K. whether she will answer a specific, mundane question for me.” When she had written her name and indicated her willingness, he inquired: “Who was elected in Wisconsin to-day, Lenroot or Davies?”
“Are you there?” I questioned, when no reply came.
“Yes.”
After another delay, when the pencil wandered lightly and aimlessly, she wrote: “Lenroot.” Supposing that she had finished, I put the pencil aside, but she summoned me again, to add: “Lenroot elected by latest count. Close in some places. We consider him elected.” Cass looked at his watch. It was five minutes past twelve.
The next morning our papers announced Mr. Lenroot in the lead, with final returns not yet received, and not until Cass reached his office did we discover how truly “exclusive” our information had been. He learned then that the suburban editions of several New York City papers, which probably went to press about the time we talked to Mary K., practically conceded the election to Mr. Davies, reporting him ahead by returns then available.
Of many other specific statements that wereeither absolutely correct, or so nearly correct that Mr. Kendal’s theory of a difference of perceptive method might easily account for the error, one is notable. On Sunday, May 19th, I asked Mary K. whether she could tell me anything about the projected German drive.
“Yes. It will be fierce, but futile. All forces here see her doom, and the war will last only as long as unsupported human endeavor can endure against eternal purpose. Germany has no ally here. The forces that have impelled her for these many years are overpowered by world-purpose, and have left Germany to her destruction, while they prepare to destroy the finest spiritual fruits of victory.”
Similarly, while writing to friends at the front of our entire confidence in the outcome of the Picardy drive then in progress, May 30th, I paused to ask Mary K. whether she had anything more to say about the war.
“Only that we are the victors. Germany does not win this drive, either. Our forces rally, and the end is near. Defeat this time will leave them despairing and afraid.”
To this Maynard Holt added, “All the forces have withstood the blow and gather for the final and decisive defeat of Germany.”
The actual existence of intelligent, invisible forces, constantly doing battle for and against spiritual progress, through possession of what we are wont to call our souls, was at first difficult for me to accept literally, the idea being in direct opposition to my whole mental tendency. While the theory was interesting, it seemed hardly credible in its specific, individual application. However, I was soon given a manifestation of the strength and pertinacity of the disintegrating forces, which—although it ultimately strengthened my conviction, proving highly corroborative—threatened for a time to end this effort, as far as I was concerned.
The last two Lessons were given to me on the 12th of April, and it had been arranged that Mr. T——, the representative of a publishing-house, should come on the evening of the thirteenth for a demonstration of the communication with the next plane. From the day this arrangement was contemplated, frequent assertions were made under Mary K.’ssignature, concerning Mr. T—— and his attitude toward this experience, many of which were afterward proved untrue, and all of which I doubted, notwithstanding repeated proofs, already quoted, of her general correctness of statement. Day by day these messages grew more confusing, and I less able to account for them by any theory then formed. That a deliberate “drive” by malign powers was in progress never occurred to me, and would have seemed too absurd to credit, even had I thought of it.
As there seemed to be no close tie between Mr. T—— and any of those from whom he had expressed a desire to hear, no great eagerness on either side to complete a circle of which each was a part, I felt that the interview might present difficulties not encountered before, and resolved to do no writing during the day, reserving my strength for the evening’s work.
In the morning, however, I had occasion to ask Mary K. for some brief information. Beginning, as usual, with her signature—somewhat haltingly done—the pencil wrote quickly, but erratically: “Mr. Farrow is dead.” This man is a business associate of Cass’s, living abroad.
Startled, I thought I must have taken the message incorrectly, but it was repeated.
“Mr. Farrow is dead. Cass will hear later.” When I insisted that this could not be true, it was reiterated. “Yes, he is here, andb...blon...latter... bewildered. Mary K.”
Our personal relations with Mr. Farrow, while pleasant, have never been close, being based entirely upon a business connection, and my affections were in no way responsible for my resistance to this announcement, nor would our personal affairs have been in any way influenced by his death. But I did not believe it.
“Farrow is here with us. May ... Mary K.” This signature was slow and irresolute, beginning as Maynard and ending as Mary K., but lacking the firmness of either—an indecision and inconsequence characteristic, I have since learned, of disintegrating force in these invasions.
“Was he killed in an accident?”
“No. Pneumonia. Maynard. Tell Cass.”
“Shall I telephone to Cass now?”
“No. I am watching over him. Maynard.”
The use of the word “dead” in this connection was surprising, since the whole trend of former communications had been toward elimination of the idea of death. Once more I asked Mary K. if they were sure there had been no mistake.
“Yes. He is dead to your life.”
“You mean Farrow of P——? Not his brother? Or his son?”
“Yes, P——. It is true. You will hear soon. Cass must go there.”
I telephoned to Cass, saying nothing of this experience, and found him in good spirits, proving that he had not heard of Mr. Farrow’s death. Returning to the pencil, I told Mary K. I did not believe the information was correct.
“Yes, he is dead. A telegram on the way to Cass. He will receive it soon. Before one o’clock.”
Some time later, having heard nothing from Cass, I told Mary K. again that there had been a mistake.
“No, it is true. Mr. Farrow of P—— is here with us. Cass will know in a few minutes. He will telephone.”
I warned her then that my faith in her veracity was at stake, and that while I could not doubt that Frederick, Mary Kendal, Maynard Holt, and others, had communicated through me, I could not take the responsibility of publishing anything she had told me unless I could trust her in all things, adding: “If this is not true how can I be sure that any of it is?”
“Mary K. It is true. Don’t doubt.”
I said I had no wish to doubt, but that unlessthis message came from some other than Mary K., I could not believe her again, if it proved, as I was sure it would, to be untrue. I began to suspect that disintegrating forces were at work.
“It comes from the constructive force. Be confident. It perplexes you.”
Later experience has taught me that while either force may be in complete command at moments, during these struggles for control, not infrequently a message begun by one is finished by the other. During the three days of this first persistent attack, however, I held no key to the mystery, and the occasional clearly constructive and characteristic messages from Mary K. and Maynard Holt merely added to my bewilderment and dismay. Yet never for one instant during those three days did I accept the repeated statements of Mr. Farrow’s death as true. Weeks afterward, Mary K. told me why I was not deceived.
Since that time, too, I have learned more clearly to distinguish personality by the degree and quality of force applied to the pencil, which varies greatly with individuals, though it sometimes varies in the same individual at different times. But in the first experience it did not occur to me to apply that test of identification.
All that Saturday afternoon the argument went on at intervals, I insisting that Mr. Farrow was not dead, the pencil reiterating that he was.
At two o’clock Maynard said: “Believe in us, Margaret. We can help you better.” It is evident now that this referred to the conflict with the disintegrating force, but at the moment I misunderstood it and reminded him of the many specific and inaccurate statements made, during the past few days, regarding the man who was coming that evening by appointment, asking if this were more misinformation of the same sort, to which the reply was: “No, Farrow is here. He is dazed, but will be taken care of.”
An hour later, I returned to the pencil, begging them to tell me, before definite information reached me from other sources, that there had been a mistake.
“Mary K. You must not doubt. We shall lose control of you if you do.” When I said that what I sought was truth, she said: “I know, but you doubt our control, and weaken it.”
“I also doubt my own correctness.”
“You are correct.” As, indeed, I was. Her message reached my consciousness.
At three o’clock the insistence that Mr.Farrow was dead continued, and attempts were made to explain former inaccuracies, on the plea of a difference in plane, creating “errors in terms of finite space.”
Shortly before five, it was said that Cass had received news of Mr. Farrow’s death, and was on his way home. A few minutes later Mary K. warned me again.
“You must not doubt.... You can’t be a messenger without faith.”
“How am I to know when you are telling the truth and when it is error?”
“The truth is the truth, and you must learn to differentiate between the planes.” I suspect that she intended the last word to be “forces,” and that control was wrested from her before it was written.
Resenting the whole confused situation, and entirely unable to account for my conviction that this message was false, I said: “If Cass tells me, when he comes home, that Mr. Farrow is dead, I will believe anything you tell me in future. If he is not dead, I’ll have nothing further to do with you or your book.”
“Mary K. You will go on with our work. He is dead.”
At this point, Cass arrived. He said that he had received neither letter nor cablegram from Mr. Farrow for ten days, although anexpected and important letter from him was some time overdue. This seemed to lend color to the report of his death, but my conviction was unshaken.
From the beginning of these communications with the next plane, although at times excessively fatigued, I had enjoyed an increasing mental serenity, but with the first announcement of Mr. Farrow’s death, this had given way to the peculiar nervous instability and apprehension invariably accompanying these mischievous invasions.
By night my mind was in a turmoil and my nerves on edge, my confidence shaken, my faith in the balance—which did not lessen the difficulties of an interview prompted chiefly by intellectual interest. Establishing connection with an unfamiliar personality is not easy, at best, and frequently some time is required to obtain free communication. On this occasion, instead of devoting the evening to perfecting one connection, several persons were called, all but one responding, and the messages, with one or two exceptions, were unsatisfactory. There were vain and fatiguing efforts to write a name unknown to any of us, and most of the efforts to obtain specific evidential data were unsuccessful. Whether this was due to my own lack of confidence,to interference by the enemy, or to the fact that at no time have the individuals communicating through me concerned themselves with personal and specific details—except occasionally, for my own greater conviction—I do not know.
At midnight, when this interview was over and we were alone, although wearied to the point of exhaustion, I asked again about Mr. Farrow, receiving the same reply, with a variation to the effect that the cablegram announcing his death had been delayed by the censor, and with occasional phrases of appeal and encouragement—merely intensifying my bewilderment—from Mary K. and Maynard.
“Are you sure you haven’t been away and let in disintegrating forces?” I asked Mary K.
“No, we have been here. They can’t touch your purpose. Don’t fear. You will be perfectly reassured soon,” was her reply, which, had we but recognized it, was an intimation that disintegrating forces had been in partial control in spite of all effort to overcome them.
Again I asked why the word “dead” had been used, and was told: “That is what the cable to Cass says.” Which manifestly did not explain.
Sunday morning, Maynard Holt’s familiar signature came at once, followed by a long,personal message to a friend who was present, steadily written, and pointed by an occasional characteristic turn of phrase, indicating a clear and uninterrupted connection.
When this had been finished, Cass asked, “Shall I go to the office for that cable?”
“It is not there.”
“It’s all a mistake?” I urged.
“Farrow is here.”
But I knew he was not there. Had he been present in the flesh, I could not have been more certain that he had not left this plane.
All day we discussed the bearing of these persistent misstatements—provided they were misstatements—upon the experience as a whole, and I was oppressed, in addition to my personal disappointment, by a sense of my responsibility to those others to whom this new faith had brought active happiness and hope. I had arranged to go to L—— on the following Tuesday, to spend a few days with the Gaylord family; Mr. Kendal expected to arrive in New York a week or ten days later, anticipating further communication with his wife; and various other appointments were pending. But though I could neither question the authenticity of former personal communications, nor deny the constructive quality of the Lessons, I felt that I could not continue to actas intermediary if it were possible for persons like Mary K. and Maynard to lend themselves to this sort of thing, nor could I encourage others to hold a belief after it had become impossible to me.
In the afternoon, Mary K. told me to go to L—— as soon as possible. When we asked about Mr. Farrow, Maynard’s signature preceded the message.
“He is here. Why don’t you accept it?”
“I don’t know why I can’t,” was my reply. “Why don’t you convince my mind, as you have at other times? Why don’t you make me feel it? I can’t believe it’s true.”
“You have the statement of two friends.”
“You’ve been mistaken before in specific statements.”
“Only in those relating to dimensions of finite space, which we are unable to gauge accurately.”
That evening, Mary K.’s signature came first. “You must see how foolish it was to mistrust us,” the pencil wrote. “Mr. Farrow is here, and Cass will learn of it soon.”
“Unless you take refuge again in that difference of plane,” I commented, rather bitterly. “Why don’t you remember it before, instead of after, the error it creates?”
“Because you should not distrust us.”
“But why not encourage me to trust you by remembering that difference of plane in the first place?” I insisted. “Why be so explicit about things you know may be inaccurately stated?”
“I do not deceive you intentionally. We feel that a thing certain of accomplishment is done, and are frequently misled into premature statements by the strength of intention, or purpose, or movement in a given direction. We are accurate from our point of view, and not always able to gauge yours.”
Admitting this to be conceivable, I said: “Now tell me about Mr. Farrow.”
“Mr. Farrow is here with us. When Cass gets to the office in the morning he will find the truth.” Again the signature was hesitating and indefinite, first Maynard, then Mary K. I felt that neither of them wrote it, but could not reconcile the frequent constructive statements, urging faith and continuance of this work, to destructive purpose, nor could I understand why, if Mary K. and Maynard were present, they did not warn me of false statements by malign forces, provided such were the case.
Monday morning, the situation was unchanged, save that the statements were slightly elaborated. Repeatedly I asked whether they were not confusing Mr. Farrow withsome other member of his family, or whether they had accepted serious illness as death.
A curious statement followed this suggestion, under Maynard’s signature. “Farrow is both here and there. He is here in essence, there in body.... He is both here and there for some time after death.”
Immediately afterward, however, when I said that this sounded preposterous, Mary K.’s name was written, with: “Mr. Farrow is here. He is dead to you. Actually now dead. Go to L—— at once.”
“I can’t go to L——, with affairs in this state,” I told her.
“You will know soon. Wait.”
Maynard followed, with an appeal to “have faith,” adding: “It will be clear soon.”
This went on, at intervals, until after two o’clock, when I had promised an interview to a woman who had not visited me before. Fully resolved to tell her that I could take no messages for her, I made one last attempt to obtain the truth before her arrival—this time with partial success.
“Maynard. It is a mistake ...”
At that moment, my guest arrived. I told her that I might be unable to get any satisfactory communications for her, but her daughter, who left this plane years ago, came atonce, writing steadily and clearly, with the exception of one brief interruption. She told her mother of the seven purposes and their meaning, urging her, as had all the others, to put herself consciously in touch with constructive purpose, and to open her mind and spirit to those on the next plane who were eager to work with her.
When I was again alone, I returned to the pencil, which wrote quickly and strongly: “Maynard. It is a mistake about Farrow. The ...” Here again the opposing forces evidently gained control. “Farrow here, but not your Farrow.”
“Then why have you insisted that he was our Farrow?”
“He led us to think so.”
I said with some emphasis that I wanted a better explanation than that.
“Maynard. You are messenger for us only if you trust us.”
A fortnight later, after a second, similar experience, Mary K. told me, when I asked about this first confused period: “We had a terrific struggle for you then. We told you the truth, but the other forces controlled the pencil.... The forces of disintegration compelled us for the moment. We were not theirs, but they overpowered and used us.”
Early in June, while preparing this manuscript, I asked her: “Was it you who wrote, ‘You must not doubt. We shall lose control of you if you do’?”
“Yes. We were fighting for your faith.”
“Can you tell me why you did not explain then—why you have never explained—that the enemy had control?”
“We have certain limitations in conflicts of this nature.... In actual conflict we can only affirm. Remember that.... When attacked by disintegrating force, the only way we can help you is to call to your purpose and to affirm our own. In your individual struggle we may not interfere, even when it concerns our work. You must believe or doubt, according to your own choice.... We cannot tell you that disintegrating forces threaten you, until you have recognized them. Then we can help you repel them. Always we call to you and try to encourage you.... You must make your own choice and your own deductions, and learn in that way to discriminate between the forces appealing to you. Details of your personal struggles may not be explained. They are your development.”
Knowing nothing of all this in April, however, I insisted upon a detailed explanation of the Farrow mystery, and again the disintegratingforces played upon my doubt and bewilderment, elaborating excuses for the mistake, in Maynard’s name.
Refusing to accept any of these ingenious but illogical assertions, I contended that they were unfair to me, having first specifically volunteered this erroneous information, which they now attempted to account for by obviously specious explanations.
“We volunteer information pertaining to the message we have for the world through you.”
This, it will be perceived, was an affirmation indirectly disclaiming the Farrow messages, but I did not so recognize it, and reminded them that they had reproached me for not trusting them in this matter.
“You are logical within your limits,” was Maynard’s only reply to that.
“And you still expect me to go on with your work?”
“You have had many manifestations of our force,” Mary K. returned. “Mr. Kendal will show you how this occurred.”
When I mentioned, with some heat, that some one would have to show me, as they had asked me to shoulder a heavy responsibility in this matter, she said: “You are puzzled and frightened, but knowledge of our constructive work through you should decide your action.”
Remembering how fear and grief and despair, in certain cases, and cynical indifference in others, had been banished from the lives of the men and women to whom these messages had come, I conceded the constructive work.
“Then come along and build.... You are unable to distinguish the difficulties under which we work. Many messengers have failed to convey the message we have tried to give.... Many mistakes happen with the best messengers.”
“Was this my mistake?” I asked.
“No. You make only one mistake, so far. You shut us out by doubt. Don’t doubt. We are all working for the same great end.”
Eventually, although far from satisfied about the Farrow affair, I decided to go to L——, feeling that if disillusionment must come to the Gaylord family, it would better come now than later, but still hoping that some explanation would be given while I was with them. In this I was disappointed. Not until a fortnight later did I even begin to understand it. But after the first interview with Frederick at L——, I wrote Cass (April 17th): “If ever I had any doubts about the truth of this, they are gone! Somebody did something I don’t understand, but this isreal.”
I have given this experience in some detail,not only because it corroborates the statements that malevolent and crafty forces are about us, striving to thwart progressive effort, but because it seems also to offer at least a partial explanation of the inconsistencies and contradictions that long have baffled and discouraged investigators of psychic phenomena. Obviously, until the identity and character of the invisible communicating personality have been established and clearly recognized, and the purpose prompting the communication manifested through a series of experiments, it is unsafe to rely upon information received in this way. And it is equally obvious that forces of disintegration could scarcely find a more fruitful method of implanting in the human mind doubt and cynicism concerning the possibility of obtaining authentic and enlightening revelations from planes beyond, than by contradicting and confusing such messages, or by deliberately misleading the applicant for information.
Later experience brought further demonstration of the diligence of the sinister purposes, together with greater knowledge of ways to defeat them.
Before beginning the Gaylord interviews at L—— (April 17th), Mary K. asked me not to tell the family the details of the Farrow episode.
“Are you ever going to explain that clearly?” I asked.
“Not until you know more about these conditions.”
That night, for the first time, I saw a photograph of Frederick. During the year of her grief and despair Mrs. Gaylord had been unable to bear the added poignancy of a portrait’s suggestion, and only when I arrived, to manifest his actual presence in the family circle, was the hidden photograph—a singularly lifelike and virile reproduction—brought to light.
“Hooray!” he began, after the customary signature. “Here we are again, all of us together at last! Dad! (O)” It will be remembered that this was the first time that either his father or his younger sister, Lois, had witnessed these manifestations. “You have been the one I wanted most, after Mother.The girls I knew I could get sometime, for this is the future for everybody with purpose, and I knew they’d come to know me again soon. But you and Mother dearest I had to have (O) right now. You both need this knowledge and intercourse as much as I do. The fuller development that comes there with age and experience, and here—where there is no age except experience, makes me nearer to you and Mother in feeling and outlook than I am to the girls and Dick. Not that I am not one with all of you. But being here has showed me the reasons for the things—protective, overseeing, far-seeing things—that you stand for, and have learned there through your experience in that preliminary life. So we are a lot nearer of an age than we used to be. Now we are off together again, and there is no reason, unless somebody backslides, why we can’t keep step through the countless aeons of eternity.... Mother dearest, this time I sure am in. Thank you for putting me on the mantel. I like it. Coming home is lots happier business now. It used to make me sorry to see you all so sad. But this is bully!... Dad, look happy for the boy! He’s here for keeps now.”
Mr. Gaylord had generally spoken of Frederick, during his life here, as “the Boy.” I had never heard him use any other name.
“Can you give your father the proof of your presence that you give me?” his mother asked. “Not only by writing, but by the feeling in his heart?”
“I will in time. Remember, he hasn’t yet grown used to this communion. It hits everybody hard, at first, and this fluency is inconceivable to any one who has not seen and felt it at first hand. Give us time to get used to it, and Dad will be as fully in touch with me and my life as he ever was when I lived there. The shock and grief of my supposed departure are taking force from him still, but he’ll see, just as you have, that I am the better and bigger for this one great experience, and that I never was so deeply and truly a part of his life.... Come on, now everybody talk! I sure do preach, but you called the turn the other day, Mother dearest. It’s my job to get this across, first to you who are my own, and through you to every one you can reach. It’s all our jobs.”
Both Mrs. Gaylord and Lois had had some success in establishing communication with the next plane, through the pencil—obtaining detached words, and some names. And the former now asked: “Where were you Sunday? I tried to get you.”
“I had a big job, attacking a pro-Germannewspaper editor in South Africa. He didn’t give in, either, but we’ll get him yet. He doesn’t fight openly. He poses as a Pharisee, but he’s really pro-German, and thanks God he is like other Germans.”
Lois asked whether there are any pro-Germans where he is, and he replied that disintegrating force is “pro-anything that destroys.”
During his last illness, one of his diversions had been to plan with his father a long journey they were to take together when he should be convalescent. Now, after a pause, he wrote slowly and distinctly, as if to emphasize the deliberation of his intention:
“Dad, do you remember that trip we were going to take? You take it with Mother some day, and I’ll go with you, and we’ll do all the things we planned. And I can tell you, if you will just let me in and listen, all the things you want to hear. We don’t need a messenger, you and I, but as long as I can’t get to you any other way, I’ll use one. I can help you actually—physically, mentally, spiritually, materially—as for so many years you helped me. It was due to you and Mother that I got such a good start here. Now I am here, it is for all of us still, as it always was. But it’s my turn to lift a little. You carried me foryears. Let me come in again now, as a real, existing, active, growing force—your son, sir, wanting to be nearer and more intimately yours than ever. You go on and take our trip, and I promise I’ll go with you. Frederick.”
A little later, he said: “I wish there could be any way of showing you visibly the radiant force I am, now that we are all united. You have to be translated to this plane before you can understand what it means to be brought back into the family circle. Not all families, but ours. We are all of kindred purposes, and there’s no separating us.”
“I wish you’d do some of your ‘stunts’ for Father,” Lois suggested.
“All right. If you want stunts, here is my best one.” This was written briskly, upside down and backward from my position. “Dad, this is the way I wrote the letter to you and the girls. Here’s another, with my love and greeting. I said I’d do this with trimmings. This is the beginning.”
We gave him fresh paper, and he wrote rapidly, in winding circles, starting at the edge of the table and finishing at the center: “Now I’ll do it this way, all around the family circle. All of you in, and I am not left out.” Diagonally across the whole in bold script, “Frederick.”
In moving the paper again, it was torn alittle. Mr. Gaylord made some suggestion as to the way it should be handled, and Lois humorously complained that he was “always interfering with other people’s purposes.” Beginning at the upper right-hand corner of the table, Frederick wrote along the edges, and then in circles toward the center, as indicated in the diagram: