“Yes, they combine every appealing force, as we do. One man may answer to doubt, fear, cupidity, and envy. Another to malice, doubt, and lust. Any forces that can reach him mass themselves in attack and call on their purposes in him to respond.”
“Then there must be a considerable degree of intelligence among them. You said they would become constructive when intelligent.”
“When intelligent enough. I never meant to imply that the purposes and forces of destruction are unintelligent. They are not fully intelligent. They are not balanced, not fully animated. All forces of construction comprehend destruction. No forces of destruction comprehend construction. They are intelligent and wily in destruction, but fail to apprehend its futility.”
“Are they what we on this plane call uneducated, unlearned, ignorant in that sense?”
“They are sometimes found on your plane among the highly educated, learned, and powerful. Here we regard them as undeveloped forces, to be fought unceasingly until they consent to become constructive.”
“You don’t call that coercing your brother, do you?” I asked.
“No, we do not compel them to construct, if they would destroy by preference. We opposethem until they perceive that they must fail, and seek light. Then we accept them, instruct them, and are stronger.... The forces opposing us have no faith, hence no knowledge of a future. They dread destruction, fear the end of existence, deny a future, and constantly seek to destroy the inevitable.”
In this connection, Mr. Kendal once asked Mary: “What do the evil forces think they’re trying to do? Have they lost the great primary idea? Was there a great primary idea? Or are they just bandar-logging it around in a chaotic forest of spiritual upas-trees, screaming at anything they happen to see?”
“There was no great primary idea of destruction,” she returned. “A lot of idle force gathered together, and finding itself behind the procession in strength, radiance, and beauty, began envying and coveting and backbiting, and from that to destruction is a logical and inevitable progression. Why is anybody among you envious, or malicious, or cowardly, or destructive? There is no great idea behind it. They see they are behind somebody else in something, and instead of developing what constructive power they have of their own, they, hate the person who has more and try to destroy him, or his reputation, or his property. There you have concrete examples ofall the idea there is in destructive purpose. It’s spiritual unintelligence.”
“Why did they quit Germany?” he asked, then. “Isn’t the apotheosis of such personal and deterrent and soul-driving and dominating purposes just their caliber?”
“They see the forces of progress gathering among you, and know that they cannot win through Germany. She still follows their methods, but without their help, while every vibration of progressive and co-operative purpose among you enables us to help you more. So they have left her to the fruits of their union, the consequence inevitable, and hatch fresh mischief themselves.”
On the evening of his arrival, May 7th, Mr. Kendal asked his wife whether she could stay with us during his visit to New York, and she replied that she would outstay him, unless the forces attacking me were defeated before his departure.
“It really helps, then, for us to get together here,” he inferred.
“Yes, indeed, it helps. All combination of force adds by the sum of its participation to the original amount of force combined.”
Taken in conjunction with other, similar assertions in this connection—“Its force is freed and multiplied by the sum of your participation”; “For every vibration of pure constructive purpose among the Allied forces, we have added two”; “Force united is more powerful by half than similar forces separately striving”; etc.—it seems probable that these expressions were intended as figures of speech, emphasizing the increased potency of united purpose on our plane and the ability of the free forces to reinforceit in proportion to its actual vitality, rather than as mathematical statements of the exact degree to which this reinforcement and co-operation may be carried.
Mentioning that sometimes they seemed to make a distinction between purpose and force, and again to use the terms interchangeably, Mr. Kendal said he would like to know the character of each. “Is purpose like the direction of an electric current, and force like amperage and voltage?” he asked. “Or is purpose the road, and force the velocity in following it? Is purpose qualitative, and force quantitative? Is the distinction between them along some of these lines?”
“It is along all those lines,” was the reply. “Purpose is the force that draws. Force is the purpose that pushes.”
Like various others to whom these messages first came through me, Mr. Kendal had been trying, with some success, to obtain direct communication. Mary facetiously described his pencil as “a good burro,” and mine as “a real hawse.” I had thought this dialecticism differently spelled, but he reminded me that “hoss” belonged to New England, and “hawse” to Mary’s native state, Kentucky.
While the pencil-point rested idly on the paper, we talked about the sensations accompanyingits movement, and about the probable direction of the force propelling it. To him, the impulse seemed to come first and chiefly through the consciousness; to me, it seemed a physical force externally applied to the pencil, notwithstanding occasional consciousness of what the message would be; but we were agreed that it was difficult, at first, to be sure that the impulse was not in some unrecognized way our own.
“It has been amusing to us to see you two struggle against our psychical intrusions,” Mary remarked, at this point. “We do push the pencil. We also reach the mind. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other, is what does the trick. It is easier for us to impress the mind, but harder for you to recognize that suggestion as ours. You think it’s your own, and fight. Margaret is even more resistant than Manzie—perhaps because she has more responsibility to other people.”
“Are present conditions—the gathering of the clans for the coming struggle—going to enable many people to do this, who have never done it before and otherwise would have been unable to do it?” he asked.
“Yes; but the danger of that is that the other forces will find their own channels, and steal and defile some of ours. So we can’tadvise people to experiment, unless they can absolutely identify the force here, and only a few, comparatively, can do that.”
He said that he had hesitated to ask questions of his own pencil, being unwilling to go too far in this until he had checked it up through me.
“He’s scairt,” she teased, before he had fairly started to speak. “You don’t trust yourself or me.”
Laughing, he retorted: “That’s another!”
“You are right to be careful,” she went on, serious again. “It’s a dangerous adventure, unless you keep your balance, follow your own purpose, keep close tab on the force handling the pencil, and lean on it only spiritually. The minute advice in material things is sought, that minute there is danger.”
“There’s no danger that anybody can impersonate you and fool me,” he declared.
“Never! The danger is that somebody might lie to you about me; or if you cease to stand on your own feet and make your own choice in matters of your plane, only then somebody might impersonate me for a moment. Sometimes I can tell you those things, but the habit of depending on them is bad for you.”
A night or two later, beginning with a reply to a question concerning another subject, shereturned to the discussion of the force used in conveying these communications—“a force compared to which electricity is like spring water,” she said—declaring, like Frederick, that its explanation is still impossible in terms of our plane.
“There is a vital and potent force, not yet isolated—and hardly discovered—by your most advanced scientists,” she told us. “It has characteristics and attractions not explainable until its discovery and analysis give rise to a new set of words. There is no adequate comparison that may be used to indicate its force, or the conditions and degrees of its variations. It has some resemblance to electricity, yet the comparison in certain cases would be misleading.”
“I am talking about the force we use in moving this pencil, and to some extent in affecting your thought,” she continued, when Mr. Kendal had mentioned certain recent scientific experiments of which he had read. “The scientists have long associated the power of thought with the brain, and have seriously argued that, as we could not be seen, measured, weighed, or condensed, we did not exist. We do. And we have a force at our command that cannot be explained, as yet. It can only occasionally be demonstrated as clearly asthis. Electricity is the most likely to impress the man in the street as a comparison, but to argue from that as a premise would lead to misconception. At present, it must be accepted as a recognized but not understood force, only dimly perceived, as for years electricity was.”
“Does it help, if we emphasize what we know of static electricity, as well as thinking of the comparison in terms of electric current? A static force in your plane, perhaps?”
“Yes, that helps; but the static force is in your plane, quite as much as here. We have more knowledge of the current, to continue the simile, but encounter static conditions both here and there, as well as counter currents here.”
This would seem to offer reasons—in addition to David Bruce’s explanation of the difficulties of translation when the messenger’s reaction to certain word-symbols fails—for occasional delays in the transmission of these communications.
“Margaret hasn’t tried us yet with an antagonistic force on your plane,” she said, on another occasion. “We don’t do it this way when the forces there are not harmonious.”
“Is your forward sight much greater than ours?” her husband asked. “Or is it, in relationto other planes, about what ours is in regard to yours?”
“We can see the end as you have not even dreamed it yet, but our detailed knowledge is limited to two or three planes beyond ours. Even here, development is uneven, and some of us see farther than others. We are far from omniscient or omnipotent. We have advanced beyond you, our individual purposes are clear where yours are confused, we know where we are bound and why, we see much farther ahead than you can, and we work in three planes—yours as teachers, ours as laborers, and the next as students.”
Referring to the statements about Russia, of which we had told him, he asked whether there were the same relative differences of opinion and judgment among them as among us, as to psychological policies to be pursued for the Great Purpose, and as to the applications of those policies on this plane.
“There are some differences of perception. Light, for example, sees shadow and desires to dispel it. Truth sees error and wishes to correct it. But, broadly speaking, the opinions are the same. The impediments in the path of progress are many. Each purpose deals with its own; Light with darkness, Truth with error, and so on. Each may workin the same field, even in the same individual, but here we work for the same ultimate purpose. We do not disagree. Each follows his own work, and recognizes the other’s field.”
“We have a united policy,” she said, at another time, “but each our individual application of it in personal relations and messages like these. It is all intended to enlighten and inspire you, but only in certain fundamental and specific matters are we instructed what to say.”
“Can you determine time there, by other than the memory of it here and by close inspection?” was another question.
“We have no time here, in your sense. We watch you, and remember, but we lose track of you, sometimes.”
Mr. Kendal then said—explaining his phrase, “close inspection”—that he thought they saw time dimly, as we see through water or through fog.
“Is memory with you as acute as answers to some of these questions seem to indicate?” one of us inquired.
“Not of material things, generally. We don’t pay much attention to them, unless they interfere with purpose. Just now they are interfering a good deal—or were, before the war, which is itself a material manifestation ofpurpose.” We said that we should have thought this interference in full force still, and she continued: “The real interference, from our point of view, came before the war, when the world outside of Germany was too much occupied in pursuit of material things to see what was happening. They failed even to see Germany’s intention. Much less did they discover their own danger, of which Germany’s purpose, materially, was the least. The war woke them up by degrees, fortunately, or there would be no use telling them this.”
A question concerning the possibility of communicating with a person recently departed from this plane, was met with the statement that he had “free communion” still to learn. This expression had been used several times by others, and now I asked: “Mary, what is free communion?”
“You don’t think we vocalize our talk, do you?”
Mansfield suggested that when a man found himself suddenly without his material veil, he must be at a loss how to proceed, and asked whether that was what she meant.
“Not entirely. The veil isn’t missed particularly, but there is a ... a....”
“Difference of medium?” he asked. “Like a water-color artist who can’t paint in oil?”
“That’s it.”
“Referring to your assertion in March that truth is absolute,” he said, “is not truth itself relative on this plane? Truth as a statement of eternal law is absolute, but when applied to concrete facts and ideas, it changes from time to time? That is, a concrete statement which expressed the relations of certain mundane conditions to the eternal verities inB.C.1000, would not necessarily be a correct statement of the relations of corresponding conditions to those verities in the year 1900A.D.”
“That is the idea on which this whole revelation is based,” she returned. “These things have always been true. They would not have sounded true in the year one, any more than a lot of the ‘truths’ of that day are true now.”
A night or two after this, he said he would like more light on the practical application of these principles, especially those in relation to freedom. “How, for instance, would you go about helping a school?” he asked. “Take, as concrete examples, a University like ——, its Faculty held in subjection by hidebound trustees, and the proposed People’s University, to be governed from day to day by plebiscite or referendum, with no defined policy for procedure beyond a general idea of freedom. ‘You may lead a horse to water, but you can’tmake him drink.’ Should the construction of the trough be left to chance, or should it be planned carefully? In other words, should mundane provision and prevision be employed in building it?”
“It has been said already that men must first learn to think, and to govern themselves, before they can be free.” It was Mary K. who answered. “If experience were not taken into consideration, progress would be impossible. Mundane prevision and provision is essential to all constructive activity on your plane. Opinions will differ as to ways and means of applying principles of progress. The first way to help a school is to establish unity among the teachers. Not only unity of purpose, but a certain large unity of method, that one may not tear down what his brother builds. Ideals of freedom have been confused by men resenting the first law of freedom—discipline. Lack of discipline, carried to its logical conclusion, would return the world to chaos. The school that is free in its teaching must be carried on by disciplined teachers, united in a purpose of progress clearly recognized and agreed upon, to teach discipline that the minds of men may dare to be free.”
“The idea underlying that, I take it, is that as the athlete whose body is thoroughly trainedand co-ordinated dares to jump an abyss, without fear of falling, so the man whose mind and spirit are disciplined can jump an intellectual abyss, without losing balance or sanity.”
“Yes. And as a man trained to carry great weights on his shoulders must be trained to it from youth, so the man who would carry government and freedom of thought must train his mind to carry its weight—not alone to hold it briefly, but to carry it on.”
“Is it true, then,” he asked, “that safe freedom and constructive freedom are only possible after prior discipline and self-control?”
“How can undisciplined freedom be safe or constructive? It makes the wilderness. It makes the jungle. It makes the uncharted and devouring sea.”
One day, about the middle of May, discussing these manifestations over a luncheon table, a man who described himself as “a sympathetic agnostic” mentioned that while all those on the next plane reported that they were busy, none to his knowledge had told just what they were doing.
At that time, we had received several statements concerning their activities. Frederick had spoken of his efforts in connection with “a pro-German newspaper editor.” Maynard Holt’s mother had told us that she worked “with undeveloped purposes, here before their time.” It had been said of a famous editor: “He is for Justice.... He is one of the forces determining the grouping of the newly arrived.” Anne Lowe had said: “I handle children. Some of them thought they were grown up when they left you.” And the work of the healers, in receiving and soothing “war-stricken forces,” had been repeatedly mentioned.
However, with the comment of the “sympatheticagnostic” in mind, we asked Mary Kendal, apropos of some allusion to the healers on her plane, whether she could tell us of their work in detail.
“You have already seen that our ability to be specific, even about things here, is dependent on your ability to understand conditions of our plane,” she reminded us. “As fast as we can, we give it to you. But as well explain the operation of wireless telegraphy to an illiterate ‘cracker,’ as to try to explain healing, as we understand and practise it, to the person unprepared by thought and study of these truths.”
The next day, in another city, Frederick, writing through a member of his family, said that he had been doing some work in developing some spirits who had “let their lowest tendencies be their guiding force.”
“They were men who were very unhappy, because they had left the world before they were ready, and did not know what this life meant,” he said.
“Had they recently gone over?” he was asked.
“Yes, not very long on this side. They were so bewildered that they thought they were in some kind of dream that they could not wake from. They had been sick, but not long enoughto let them get any idea of death, or light after death, so they were sorry to come over.”
“Do they call you teacher?”
“No, just a friend.”
Replying to a question about a specific activity on this plane, he said: “I can tell you that a lot of those things that seem bewildering are not important enough to be doing what we call work here.”
“What do you call work?”
“Conscious development of spiritual forces.”
A month later, a question about a woman known here as a sculptor brought the following reply from David Bruce.
“She is working with a development of the purpose of production, which is the foundation that underlay her work there. She is producing force by developing the undeveloped producers.”
Probably the most specific information yet received by any of our small group concerning the practical application of these principles to the affairs of our plane, came through Maynard Holt.
“My work lies principally with business men on your plane,” he said, one day, to a family connection. “We are much concerned about the lack of co-operation among persons of constructive tendencies, and my own job is toapply this force we cannot fully explain to you, in any way that will influence men or women toward co-operation. Sometimes we use it to suggest a new idea. Sometimes we use it to so direct apparently consequential circumstances and events that the person we wish to influence gets an object lesson.”
In support of this is a statement of his made in April. While writing a long message, most of which was intimately personal, he indicated his interest in business conditions, and urged a greater and more far-seeing co-operation among business men. In the midst of a sentence the pencil stopped, creating a long delay. Failing, after repeated efforts, to transmit the word he had attempted, he drew a series of singularly uniform arches across the whole width of the paper.
After puzzling over it a moment, I drew a line above the arches, and said, perceiving no significance in the symbol: “That looks like a viaduct.”
“That’s what I mean,” he resumed, vigorously, and proceeded with an elaboration of his theme, comparing co-operation to a viaduct.
“In the end, the forces for progress will cross to all lands by that viaduct,” he continued, “and those who balk and refuse it will be diverted and delayed by following oldpaths through the tortuous chasm of competitive destruction. Not that we discourage competition. The individual organization, like the individual man, must follow its purpose and develop its force, but ... competition at its best is entirely friendly and constructive. Boys have it taught them in the simplest form in college sports. There it is personal, but co-operative in the development of college spirit. Each man does his best for himself and his own record, but loyally and cheerfully supports against opposing forces the more successful man who is of his own group. With increasing responsibilities, temptations and difficulties increase, but experience should bring ability to meet them. The code of school and college forces may be developed and applied to business and productive forces. This is the first application of college training to competitive business.”
Afterward, when Mr. Kendal had expressed his cordial sympathy with the theory of co-operation, widely applied, Maynard said: “That’s where the college team has won and the union has failed. The union was good in conception, but has made for the suppression of individual development, where the college team encourages it.”
Later still, following a conversation concerningnational economics and international commerce after the war, he said:
“Co-operation is moral. Commercial supremacy is material. Material success is constructive only if permanent, and permanent only if constructive. Until co-operation for permanent progress becomes a principle of international as well as national purpose, there will be little actual progress toward permanent peace, or lasting prosperity.
“As the college boy works first for his own power, but most for his team, and first, last and all the time for clean athletics, so the business man should work first for his unit, definitely for his country’s welfare, but first, last and always for clean co-operation with all who make for the world’s progress.
“The exponents of national supremacy at the expense of world progress are exactly in the position of the exponents of personal prosperity at the expense of national welfare. The situations are analogous to a degree as yet comprehended by few men.
“It took many years to convince the manufacturer that increased production would follow shorter hours and improved working conditions. It took many years to convince merchants that decreased cost and increased profit followed combination of forces. It tooksome time to convince financiers and manufacturers that success, not failure, would follow the co-operation of competing concerns in the foreign field. Yet it is now recognized that all these things are true and practicable. No less—even more—is it practicable to unite world forces of progress in commerce as they are united now in war, the fight at all times being for construction and development, against destruction and regression.
“This cannot be done in a day or a year, but this is the goal toward which enlightened forces should move. It may sound Utopian now. So did model factories and tenements, a few years ago. Their advocates were scoffed at and discredited. Now, the manufacturer who fails to provide healthful working conditions for his operatives is called short-sighted and pig-headed, and cheats himself twice, while cheating his employees once.
“Co-operation is the basic principle of all progress, and the point at which it stops is the measure of strength of man or nation. The nation that refuses to co-operate for progress is a nation confessing itself deterrent.”
Again, in June, Maynard returned to this subject, saying that men must become “strong enough to let the other fellow live and prosper, without fearing him.” After mentioning “fearof what may come, or lust for what may be seized,” as motives making for destruction, he added: “Neither is constructive or progressive, and neither can win in the end.”
“We have purpose to progress beyond the vision of man,” he went on, “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.
“Co-operation in individual enterprise has succeeded. Co-operation in national enterprise would succeed no less. More and more, men are recognizing the value of united effort in commercial enterprise, however long it took the truth to dawn. Must other centuries pass, other wars be fought, other dynasties rise and fall, before the larger truth ushers in a new day? Will co-operation in business, co-operation in war, teach them to study and practise co-operation in world welfare and progress? Will they learn that it is not only in war that a weakened Belgium means an endangered England, that a hungry France means short rations in America, that a link weakened means the chain weak?
“How many times must this premise be demonstrated before the argument is carried to its logical conclusion, and national co-operation,free and voluntary, provide for the good of one by protecting and developing all?
“This is not a Utopian fantasy. It is common sense.”
Talking about the Lessons one day, Mr. Kendal mentioned his impression that Zoroaster had said something approaching the first one in theory, and then asked, a whimsical gleam in his eye: “Mary, has Professor James said anything about Zoroaster in this connection?”
“Manzie, Mr. James has no philosophical library here to refer to,” was the prompt retort. She told us, however, that he would soon come himself to talk to this former pupil of his, adding a characteristic glint of humor in the assurance that he would then give “a demonstration of a philosopher simplified to a force.”
A night or two afterward (May 13th), she announced: “Manzie, here is Mr. James.”
There was a brief delay, and when the pencil moved again, it was with a changed application of force and a new movement, the first words being personal. Referring to an early period in his own investigation of psychic phenomena, he said:
“Youth, in its nearness to inspiration, sometimes sees more clearly than age, with its academic dependence upon theory and precedent and what men call the wisdom of experience. When this wisdom is based on perception, conscious or otherwise, of eternal purpose, it transcends the vision of youth. But when it is based on perception of physical phenomena and the accumulated theories of other men, youth has an inspiration and a faith that leads it, all unknowing, to the brink of great mysteries.” This was followed by an allusion to those “befogged in precedent, physical phenomena, and intellectual theory,” who were “unable to follow where they should have led.”
“There has seemed to be a good deal of genuine feeling underlying the humorous persiflage through the pencil about the scientific state of mind,” Mr. Kendal suggested. “Hasn’t the time come when we can reach the scientific type of mind? And isn’t it worth while to do so? And if so, what is the best psychological line of attack?”
“The scientist is not by any means hopeless, but like many men in your plane, he is overbalanced and therefore unbalanced by physical considerations. Physical phenomena are of vital importance in your life, and their studyand analysis has led to a degree of material progress which would have been incredible to the third—and all but incredible to the second—generation back. It is only because scientists have persisted in the study of physical phenomena that you are enabled to understand in some part what is now being given you. The misapprehension has been that physical phenomena alone could be recognized. Those who have believed that have denied the existence of the greatest and most persistent of all forces. Attempts to explain spiritual phenomena by physical formulæ have been found unsuccessful by every one save those who took refuge in denial of the thing that moved them to deny, the eternal and indestructible purpose.
“When to their laboratories scientists bring perception of spiritual phenomena exceeding any material manifestation known to man in strength and significance, then they may hope to discover and develop a force beside which all known forces are insignificant. 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.”
“Then, generally speaking,” Mr. Kendalsaid, “perhaps the most effective appeal to scientists would be the appeal to scientific ambition.”
“Always the most effective means to win any man to anything is to appeal to his purpose. If it be personal, appeal to his vanity. If it be progressive, appeal to his eagerness. If it be intellectual, pique his curiosity. Scientists, like others, are divided in purpose.”
“We have been much interested in the decisive definiteness with which our friends on that plane have been able to classify the purposes of persons here,” Mr. Kendal mentioned. “Is this as clear to you as physical characteristics are to us, and as quickly determined?”
“Yes, and in much the same way. We see motive and intention and their variations as you see physical appearance, vitality and its variations. We see disintegrating moral factors more clearly than you see physical ills. We judge of purpose by its vitality and persistence under strain, precisely as you judge of physical health by its vitality under strain and by its persistence in spite of occasional disease.”
“Then you see disintegrating force as the scientist sees germs?” Cass inquired. “As disease?”
“No, we see them as foes. I speak hereonly of the way we judge purpose. There is no diseased purpose. There may be struggle between more or less intelligent forces, but in using the simile of physical health, I did it in a limited sense.”
“Is there an inherent reason for the different types of philosophies?” Mr. Kendal now questioned. “That is, the Nirvana-oblivion type in the Orient, as contrasted with the hell-fire-and-brimstone type in the Occident. If inherent, is its cause geographical, intellectual, biological, or what?”
“A little of all of them. Philosophies are the outgrowth of conditions, physical, moral and geographical—and therefore to some extent biological—to a much greater degree than is generally recognized. It has been said that food makes the man. To a greater degree, environment makes the philosopher.”
“May we publish this as coming from you?”
“Certainly. I am here for that purpose.... Light and Progress are my purposes, and teaching still my work.”
After a few lines of purely personal significance, this was signed: “William James.”
Of the messages that may be quoted, there remain only a few detached statements, removed from their personal context, but reproduced because of their general interest or significance.
“Don’t worry about C——” was one bit of specific advice, given in March, before any of the Lessons had been received. “She will have her troubles, but she must dree her own weird. You might save her some pain, but life’s purpose may not be taught. It must be fought for, with blood and sweat. Let C—— get her wounds in her own way. You may then soothe the pain. But don’t try to spare her the fight. That has to do with the larger questions of life and eternity.”
“‘Life’s purpose may not be taught,’ but the laws underlying the search for it may be?”
“Of course. We are trying now to wake the world to consciousness that these laws exist. Most people, broadly speaking, have forgotten them, in the general contempt for laws wherethey are not enforced, and in the general hatred of them where they are enforced in oppression and fear.”
A few days later, another person, writing of another and much younger girl, said: “She may have a hard time over the conflicting purposes. Everybody does. But with you to give her a foundation, I do not fear for her.... Her struggles will only make her stronger. Do not try to save her from pain. Remember that it is her mother who says this. Let her meet life fully and work her way upward. She will always yield in the end to the sublime purpose.”
On a later occasion, this same person said: “We help all we can, but even when you want us to, we are unwilling to hold back the larger and vital development in order to hasten some smaller conclusion. Even when the small conclusion is important to you, it must be your own choice that helps you; and if the choice is wrong at the moment, it still helps in the end.”
“She’s too sympathetic for her own good,” was said of another young woman. “She’d do the vicarious atonement act for all creation, if she could. What she needs is to have this purpose business driven into her. Every fellow has to do his own fighting, and his ownatonement, and his own climbing, and take what’s coming to him while he does it. She’s always trying to soften the path and take the swipes herself, and it can’t be done. She gets the blow and the strain and the struggle, all right, but it impedes her and gets the other fellow nowhere. It helps nobody to save them the consequences of their own choice. The way to help is to call to their constructive purpose and give them a chance. If they choose not to take it, then let them take all the consequence that’s coming. If that doesn’t teach them, there’s nothing more to do, except to turn them over to somebody who can arouse their purpose, if they have any. Anyhow, making a buffer of yourself just batters up good material for no gain in force or purpose.”
Again, another person to another group. “Let any fighting force do his own fighting. Suggest, enlighten, encourage, but don’t try to carry the burden of another’s life. You can’t hurry their development, and you impede your own and that of others of your own purpose.... You are like the fellow in the fable, who finished by carrying not only the pack, but the donkey, too. It’s a very sweet and unselfish disposition, but do you think it improves the donkey for his station in life? Not that I’m calling S—— a donkey, but likeall mankind, he carries a pack. You can’t carry both, and he won’t learn to apply his force evenly here if you do it for him there. Lots of people develop unevenly and have to even up somewhere. Why delay the process by vicarious labor, especially when it only exhausts you and doesn’t develop his muscles any? Selah!”
“You can train O—— to carry physical temptations, if you begin early,” a man said, writing of his nephew. “Don’t let him yield to impulse or desire when it is destructive. Make him build his body first, as a boy. Make him respect it and its promise. That’s a bully thing for a boy to know at the beginning. He reasons from that to other things. A boy is a brute first, but a thinking brute. If he respects the flesh, he respects all things in time.”
“What is my purpose?” a young man asked, one day.
“Building. You are going to be ‘him that hath.’ Build with your possessions. Begin the foundation now. Build.... Build as a producer, or as a healer, or in any way that makes for progress, keeps you growing, develops forces for construction, and gives the other fellows a chance to do their best also.... Not for yourself alone, but for all who may climb by your ladder of opportunity.”
Maynard Holt, writing to a friend here, spoke of him as a good fighter, and when this person said that he would not have been able to fight at all, but for the little hand of a lady on the next plane, Maynard returned: “I know you fought hard, though in darkness, before you found that hand. That’s one reason we count on you now. A man who will fight continuously in darkness is a ... a ...” The pencil paused, and after futile efforts to proceed, retraced its path, apparently to cross out again and again the last letter. We were talking and paid no attention to its movement, but when it ceased again, we discovered that Maynard had drawn a five-pointed star. Then he proceeded: “... luminary of force himself, when light breaks.”
There were many interesting characterizations, both of persons on this plane and of those on the next.
“E—— is a fine force, but A—— is a force multiplied and refined to power,” was said of one couple.
A striking example of the determination of our “fantom friends” to convey their meaning despite obstacles, was indicated when some one had told me, during an interview, of a boy’s objection to his mother’s activity in one of the recent “drives” connected with warwork, on the ground that it “made her conspicuous.”
“M—— is an entirely tra ... trem ... tr ... normal and tra ... tremulous youth, where his mother and sister are concerned,” was his father’s humorous comment.
Apparently, in this case, the connection was imperfect, no intimation of his meaning reaching me, and only by altering the form of his sentence was he able to get it written.
“Miss T—— has much to learn and much to suffer before a teaching based on unity of force or purpose will reach her forcefully,” we were told, on another occasion. “She must learn the shallows of self before she can sound the depths of individuality, in the larger and eternal interpretation of the word.”
Following one of the numerous discussions of Germany and her purposes, a question about a man of German parentage brought this reply: “B—— is American. The national taint of docility is not in him.”
The meaning of purpose and its application was stated many times in many ways. One of the most characteristic of these expressions came from a famous humorist.
“There are things brewing here and among you there,” he said, “that are going to make the wars of the tribes of Hohenzollern, Hapsburgand Mephisto look like a village prayer meeting. The carnage of Verdun and Mons and the whole show since his little nibs was assassinated is a picayune proposition compared to the losses of time, purpose, force and saving grace that we’re all going to feel, if we can’t wake you people up to pull together against the devil’s crew.”
Some one asked whether a husband and wife, not too congenial in this life, were together there, and was told that he was “flocking with birds of his own feather,” and that she had “peacefully and tranquilly found her own.” Another member of this family group was with neither of the others, it was said, “because she found her very own, for which they were only a substitute.”
“Have you seen Jim? Is there any feeling about his wife’s marrying again?” was a question which will interest many persons.
“Jim is here and very happy. He has no resentment, and wishes Alice to be happy. They are both of the forces of progress, but not of just the same purpose. They harmonize, but do not touch.”
Again, some one asked whether one party to an uncongenial marriage regretted the other’s rejoining him so soon.
“She didn’t,” was the reply. “He hasn’t seenher yet, and won’t. He is willing to work with her purpose, but not eager to touch her force.”
“What about Laura?” a woman asked.
“She is coming to us soon, but do not be afraid, dear. She will be tenderly met and guided, and will be much nearer you all, much happier and more helpful, than she is now. Never grieve again for death. It is birth, and so happy.”
Within a few weeks, this came to pass.
When I asked Mary K. for a message for a mother bereaved by war, she said: “Tell her we will send for her when he has grown accustomed enough to talk to her. Tell her that he is cared for tenderly and guided, and that she must not grieve. She hurts him and herself. Make her understand that she can help him by knowing that he lives and loves her and is near her, and that it is part of her work as a mother to help him in this ... to find his purpose more quickly through her love.”
We were afterward told that he had not yet learned the “free communion,” but that from the moment his mother began to “lift her spirit to meet his,” this young man’s development was hastened.
Frequently, when telling about these revelations, I have been asked: “What do they say about reincarnation?”
“There is no possible reincarnation,” Mary K. said, when I referred the question to her. “That is a dream of the Orient. The idea of reincarnation is regressive. Not destructive, but deterrent. Not progressive. It is born of bodily desire.”
“Is it like the desire of old men for youth?”
“More. It is a mask, covering material desire with spiritual semblance. It is taught from this plane by deterrent or partly deterrent forces, lacking free vision.”
In another connection, but with similar meaning, David Bruce said: “Some persons hide their love of the flesh by an exaggerated expression of spirituality, and then think of ways of insisting on the flesh.”
Similarly, writing through her husband’s pencil, Mary Kendal said, when he asked her what had become of persons like Cæsar, Luther, Cobden, Archimedes, and others in general: “There is a great difference in the length of time people stay in this plane nearest to that of the earth, which depends not only on the stage of development which they have attained when they come here, but also on the character of work they are best fitted to do. If they can be of more use in direct or indirect contact with your plane, they stay here sometimes many years, as you measure time; but if theyare retarded in their development when they arrive here, they have a long road to travel before they can go on to any other plane. There is no such thing as transmigration of souls as you understand it, but that idea is akin to what actually does happen, in the sense that such individualities have to pass through stages of development which are relatively inferior in status to those that they might enter into, coming from your plane, if they had made greater progress there, or had fought a better fight on that plane.”
When he said that his idea in asking about specific individuals was to get concrete instances by which to check up the general law, she returned: “The danger in that is that your idea of what those individuals really were is very apt to be wrong, and starting from wrong premises you could hardly avoid reaching wrong conclusions.... Martin Luther was a mixture of purposes. He did great work for progress in fighting the conventions and binding tendency of ecclesiasticism in his times, but he had personal motives which were deterrent, and which he spent a long time in working out when he left that plane.” Of Napoleon she said: “There have been few instances of greater prostitution of great talents and great opportunity in history, and he paid—andis paying—the penalty, or the consequence.”
To the many inquiries as to how direct communication may be established between persons here and the dear ones gone before, this message of David Bruce’s to his wife contains the briefest and most comprehensive answer.
She said: “I wonder what he’s going to tell me?”
“I’m going to tell you to be calm and serene of spirit, no matter what seems to be happening to disturb you. Most of the disturbing factors of individual life on your plane are ephemeral—things of the moment and of the place. Others are more important than they seem. I am not always able to tell you about them. It delays you, instead of helping you, when the decision is not your own. One way that I can truly help when you are troubled is by what we can best describe as the free communion. When you are perturbed in spirit and full of doubt, it is difficult for us to reach you.... Open the door of spiritual force to forces here, and we can always help. That is what we hope to establish as a recognized truth in your life there. That a force as yet unknown to science is operating between the planes, and can be developed and used in yourlife there—to a less degree than in ours, but still with great effect. It is for this that we work in this communion, which is more definite to you now and less so to us. We know the limits to which material manifestation like this is confined, and are eager to teach you gradually the freer and fuller way.”
“A thought that will occur to many persons is that the truths we endeavor to teach are not entirely new.
“Truth is fundamental and eternal. There is no new truth; there is only new understanding and application of truth that has always existed. No great teacher has ever told new truth. No great teacher has ever told truth in a new way, until the older teachings had begun to lose their hold on the minds of men. No great teacher has ever found an audience for his new interpretation of truth, until the minds of men had groped through darkness toward a light dimly perceived, if at all.
“The time is ripe now for the crystallization of new application of eternal truth. Men hunger for bread of the spirit, and thirst for the waters of eternity. This is the answer of eternal forces to their search, and it comes, for the first time, not through a teacher or a prophet, but through a human instrumentsensitive to a high degree to the influence of the force that is life’s motive power.
“There are many conditions affecting the application of that force in these communications, that cannot now be explained; many conditions influencing its direction, that you do not understand. Some day your scientists will discover and prove by experiment certain laws now unrecognized, and these days of doubt and scoffing will disappear in a past filled with denial and discouragement of almost every discovery now called modern and progressive.
“Two things only we have striven for through you: to prove to a group of intelligent persons that this force exists and may be practically applied between your plane and ours, and to warn mankind of the nature and eternal import of impending struggles. We have more to tell when they are ready to listen, and upon the choice of them who hear this truth the immediate progress of the world depends. It is a warning to unite and prepare for combat.
“This is the truth. Heed it.
“Mary K.”
June 13, 1918.
THE END