LAST LETTERS
FROM THE LIVING DEAD MAN
BY ELSA BARKER
LETTERS FROM A LIVING DEAD MAN
WAR LETTERS FROM THE LIVING DEAD
MAN
SONGS OF A VAGROM ANGEL
LAST LETTERS FROM THE LIVING DEAD
MAN
THE SON OF MARY BETHEL
THE FROZEN GRAIL
THE BOOK OF LOVE
STORIES FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT
FOR CHILDREN
LAST LETTERS
FROM THE
LIVING DEAD MAN
WRITTEN DOWN
BY
ELSA BARKER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
NEW YORK
MITCHELL KENNERLEY
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
MITCHELL KENNERLEY
PRINTED IN AMERICA BY
J. J. LITTLE & IVES COMPANY
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7
LETTER
I THE GENIUS OF AMERICA 49
II FEAR NOT 54
III THE PROMISE OF SPRING 61
IV THE DIET OF GOLD 67
V CONTINGENT FEES 71
VI THE THREE APPEALS 74
VII THE BUILDERS 76
VIII THE WORLD OF MIND 88
IX AMERICA’S GOOD FRIDAY 95
X THE CRUCIBLE 97
XI MAKE CLEAN YOUR HOUSE 103
XII LEVEL HEADS 109
XIII TREES AND BRICK WALLS 112
XIV INVISIBLE ARMIES 114
XV THE WEAKEST LINK 118
XVI A COUNCIL IN THE FOREST 123
XVII THE IDEAL OF SUCCESS 140
XVIII ORDER AND PROGRESS 147
XIX THE FEDERATION OF NATIONS 155
XX THE NEW IDEAL 159
XXI A RAMBLING TALK 166
XXII THE LEVER OF WORLD UNITY 171
XXIII THE STARS OF MAN’S DESTINY 179
XXIV MELANCHOLY 182
XXV COMPENSATORY PLAY 190
XXVI THE AQUARIAN AGE 198
XXVII THE WATCHERS 209
XXVIII A RITUAL OF FELLOWSHIP 216
XXIX RECRUITING AGENTS 218
XXX THE VIRUS OF DISRUPTION 227
XXXI THE ALTAR FIRE 235
LAST LETTERS FROM THE LIVING DEAD MAN
INTRODUCTION
THIS book, the third and last of the Living Dead Man series, was
written between February, 1917, and February, 1918. Then I lost the
ability--or perhaps I should say the inclination--to do automatic
writing.
As this third manuscript was shorter than the other two, I had supposed
it to be a fragment which would probably never be finished; and it was
not until my publisher urged me to issue it _as_ a fragment that I
read it all over for the first time and discovered that it was really a
complete thing, an organic whole.
“Perhaps,” I told myself, surprised and still half-incredulous, “there
_is_ a divinity that shapes our ends.” For had this book been
published when it was written, it would have seemed premature; now the
greater part of it is timely as yesterday’s editorials.
For the benefit of those who have not read the earlier books of the
series, “Letters From a Living Dead Man,” 1914, and “War Letters From
the Living Dead Man,” 1915, I will quote from the Introductions of
those books. In the first Introduction I said:
“One night last year in Paris I was strongly impelled to take up a
pencil and write, though what I was to write about I had no idea.
Yielding to the impulse, my hand was seized as if from the outside,
and a remarkable message of a personal nature came, followed by the
signature ‘X.’
“The purport of the message was clear, but the signature puzzled me.
“The following day I showed this writing to a friend, asking her if
she had any idea who ‘X’ was.
“‘Why,’ she replied, ‘don’t you know that that is what we always call
Mr. ----?’
“I did not know.
“Now, Mr. ---- was six thousand miles from Paris, and, as we supposed,
in the land of the living. But a day or two later a letter came to me
from America, stating that Mr. ---- had died in the western part of
the United States, a few days before I received in Paris the automatic
message signed ‘X.’
“So far as I know, I was the first person in Europe to be informed
of his death, and I immediately called on my friend to tell her that
‘X’ had passed out. She did not seem surprised, and told me that she
had felt certain of it some days before, when I had shown her the ‘X’
letter, though she had not said so at the time.
“Naturally I was impressed by this extraordinary incident....
“But to the whole subject of communication between the two worlds I
felt an unusual degree of indifference. Spiritualism had always left
me quite cold, and I had not even read the ordinary standard works on
the subject....
“Several letters signed ‘X’ were automatically written during the next
few weeks; but, instead of becoming enthusiastic, I developed a strong
disinclination for this manner of writing, and was only persuaded to
continue it through the arguments of my friend that if ‘X’ really
wished to communicate with the world, I was highly privileged in being
able to help him....
“Gradually, as I conquered my strong prejudice against automatic
writing, I became interested in the things which ‘X’ told me about the
life beyond the grave....
“When it was first suggested that these letters should be published
with an introduction by me, I did not take very enthusiastically to
the idea. Being the author of several books, more or less well known,
I had my little vanity as to the stability of my literary reputation.
I did not wish to be known as an eccentric, a ‘freak.’ But I consented
to write an introduction stating that the letters were automatically
written in my presence, which would have been the truth, though not
all the truth. This satisfied my friend; but as time went on, it did
not satisfy me. It seemed not quite sincere.
“I argued the matter out with myself.... The letters were probably
two-thirds written before this question was finally settled; and I
decided that if I published the letters at all, I should publish them
with a frank introduction, stating the exact circumstances of their
reception by me.”
The interest aroused by “Letters From a Living Dead Man,” which had
been published simultaneously in London and New York, astonished me.
Requests for translation rights began to come in, and I was flooded
with letters from all parts of the world. I answered as many as I
could, but to answer all was quite impossible.
Now I will quote again, briefly, from the Introduction to the second
volume, “War Letters From the Living Dead Man,” 1915.
“In that first book of ‘X’ I did not state who the writer was, not
feeling at liberty to do so without the consent of his family; but
in the summer of 1914, while I was still living in Europe, a long
interview with Mr. Bruce Hatch appeared in the ‘New York Sunday
World,’ in which he expressed the conviction that the ‘Letters’ were
genuine communications from his father, the late Judge David P. Hatch,
of Los Angeles, California....
“After the Letters were finished in 1913, during a period of about
two years I was conscious of the presence of ‘X’ only on two or three
occasions, when he wrote some brief advice in regard to my personal
affairs.
“On the fourth of February, 1915, in New York, I was suddenly made
aware one day that ‘X’ stood in the room and wished to write; but as
always before, with one or two exceptions, I had not the remotest
idea of what he was going to say. He wrote as follows:
“‘When I come back and tell you the story of this war, as seen from
the other side, you will know more than all the Chancelleries of the
nations.’”
Then I went on to describe the process of my automatic writing, adding:
“No person who had had even a minute fraction of my occult experience
could be more coldly critical of that experience than I am. I freely
welcome every logical argument against the belief that these letters
are what they purport to be; but placing those arguments in opposition
to the evidence which I have of the genuineness of them, the
affirmations outweigh the denials, and I accept them. This evidence is
too complex and much of it too personal to be even outlined here.”
The second volume, which dealt with the war from the hidden side of
things, and predicted the victory of the Allies, aroused even more
interest than the first one. The flood of letters continued.
In 1916, at the kind insistence of Joyce Kilmer, I published another
and different little book of automatic writings, “Songs of a Vagrom
Angel,” the angel being the Beautiful Being described by “X” in the
Living Dead Man books. The “Songs” were charmingly received by the
critics. The whole book, with the exception of three of the songs, had
been “written down” in twenty-two hours.
In the summer of 1916 I went to California, and it was there, in
February, 1917, that the writing of this third book began.
But I was growing more and more restive at the swamping of my literary
career by automatic writings, and my mountainous correspondence left
me less and less time for original work. Finally, in February, 1918,
the “inner conflict” culminated in a complete cessation of automatic
writing.
The artist in me had become exasperated. If the reader will permit
the exaggeration of the simile, I felt as a man might feel who was
caught between the jaws of a lion that was carrying him away into a
trackless jungle. Before March, 1914, I had been known as a poet and a
novelist; since 1914 my name had become known in more countries than
I have counted as a “psychic,” a medium of communication between the
visible and the invisible worlds. I was not sorry that I had published
the books, because so many people had written me that I had saved them
from despair and even suicide; but I shrank from the publicity they
brought me. I have been nearly devoured by these books and the readers
of these books. I felt, in February, 1918, that I had a right to say
that the incident was closed.
But that did not mean a cessation of correspondence. Suffering souls
to whose letters the limitations of time and uncertain health (for I
had not been well since 1915) made it impossible to respond by return
of post, would write again reproaching me with indifference to their
sufferings. The situation had become inconceivable. And if I went out
somewhere for an hour or two of social “rest,” I was surrounded by
people who wanted me to talk to them about the “X” books, about their
own dead friends, and the possibilities of communication.
I was torn by pity for those who were suffering, and after years of war
nearly everyone was suffering; but I wanted to be at the front with
the Red Cross, and my health would not permit me to go. I could help
various war committees, but I could not go to my tortured and beloved
France--to be perhaps an added burden, should I break down altogether.
The only escape from this conflict was in abstruse studies, studies
where pure mind can work. So I seriously took up Analytical Psychology,
in which I had been mildly interested since 1915. Some fourteen hours a
day for a year I studied, some of the time with a teacher, some of the
time alone. I burrowed under the theories of the three great schools,
and synthesized them, after my fashion. I had rather an active mind to
experiment upon--my own. The “resistances,” so-called, had been broken
down by the teacher.
One of the things which appealed most to my reason was Jung’s
insistence upon the psychological (and therefore practical) value of
the irrational. He says:
“There is no human foresight nor philosophy which can enable us to
give our lives a prescribed direction, except for quite a short
distance. Destiny lies before us, perplexing us, and teeming with
possibilities, and yet only one of these many possibilities is our
own particular right way.... Much can certainly be attained by
will-power. But ... our will is a function that is directed by our
powers of reflection.... Has it ever been proved, or can it ever be
proved, that life and destiny harmonize with our human reason, that
is, that they are exclusively rational? On the contrary, we have
ground for supposing that they are also irrational, that is to say,
that in the last resort they too are based in regions beyond the
human reason. The irrationality of the great process is shown by its
so-called _accidentalness_.... The rich store of life both is,
and is not, determined by law; it is at the same time rational and
irrational. Therefore, the reason and the will founded upon it are
only valid for a short distance. The further we extend this rationally
chosen direction, the surer we may be that we are thereby excluding
the irrational possibilities of life, which have, however, just as
good a right to be lived. Aye, we may injure ourselves, since we
cut off the wealth of accidental eventualities by a too rigid and
conscious direction.... The present fearful catastrophic world-war has
tremendously upset the most optimistic upholder of rationalism and
culture.”
Now my rationally chosen “line of life” had been that of writing books
of poetry, fiction and essays. But “accidentalness” cut in, and I wrote
automatically and published what I had written. That destiny, that
second line of life, may also have been, for all we can prove to the
contrary, based “in regions beyond the human reason.”
I should not like to say that my having led the way, in the spring of
1914, for writers of dignified reputation to publish their automatic
writings might have been causally directed by the coming great need of
the world for spiritual consolation during the most awful holocaust in
history. That would be pressing irrationality too far.
But that second line of life, as Jung would call it, came to its
inevitable end with the last of this manuscript in February, 1918. The
cause of that was also seemingly accidental. But as this Introduction
is only an introduction, it is impossible to follow the course of all
the drops of water in the broad river that has flowed under my mental
bridges during the last fourteen months.
My present line of life (and through the analysis of my dreams I have
means of knowing what it is) points to the resumption of my original
literary work, poetry, fiction and essays, and to the exclusion, so
far as possible, of everything that would deflect me from that course.
“Accidentality” will cut in from time to time, change of place and
therefore change of outlook, studies of all sorts, and legitimate
demands by that society of which I form a part; but I have done enough
automatic writing. Others will do it, if it must be done; and probably
it must--because it is an outlet which it might be unsafe to stop up in
the present state of the race consciousness.
Of course if I should feel strongly impelled to do automatic writing, I
should do it, trusting to that destiny which is another name for causes
beyond our comprehension; but it was the strength of my “inner protest”
that made me realize that I had gone far enough along that line.
As in the forewords to the former books, I state the psychological
situation of the moment, saying, “so and so happened.” The reader, as
before, will interpret in his own way. This introduction indicates my
point of view in the month of April, 1919. Before the month of May,
2019, I shall have solved the problem of survival, or demonstrated
(without knowing it) that it is insoluble.
The more we know about all these things, the less likely we are to
assume that we have the sum of all knowledge. We are like children,
groping among psychological lights and shadows.
My own belief in immortality seems ineradicable. I did not know that
until it was tested out. But we must always remember that our personal
belief is not absolute evidence of the truth of what we believe--at
least until we shall have examined all the psychological roots of
the belief, and in the present state of our knowledge that is
well-nigh impossible. Our rational belief, if we have formed one for
ourselves and have not merely accepted uncritically the beliefs of our
predecessors and associates, is merely our individual synthesis. But we
must not give an exaggerated value even to our own hard-won synthesis.
That also is a moving, an ever-changing, thing. Otherwise we should not
grow. When a man becomes fixed he begins to disintegrate.
In the first book of this series I stated the fact that I had never
been interested in spiritualism. Consciously, I never had. Now, Dr.
Alfred Adler, the head of what we may call the Ego School of analysis,
says: “Often the negation is the assertion of an old interest that
has become unconscious.” Yes.... My father was deeply interested
in spiritualism, and I was born in an old house where ghosts were
supposed to walk. My mother was afraid of the subject. My father died
when I was thirteen. I was always a little afraid of my father. The
first time I met Judge Hatch I told him that perhaps he had been my
father in a “former incarnation.” He smiled, and said, “Maybe.”
No microscopist had ever a greater interest in facts than I have. My
scientific friends say, “A scientist was lost in you.” Other friends
say, “You are a great psychic.” So there I found myself. In studying
with the scientific half the phenomena of the psychic half, I am able
to unify them.
The _authority_ of the Church has been knocked from under us. We
are adrift, we thinking humans of the early twentieth century, upon a
sea of mind, stormtossed by winds of feeling. We were just beginning
to believe in universal brotherhood--when universal war broke out. Our
steersman seemed to have been washed overboard. Everybody wants to take
the helm, distrusting his neighbor’s judgment. Is it any wonder that
bewildered souls by thousands turned to automatic writing, seeking for
guidance, for something _authoritative_? In childhood our parents
guided us. Later the Church guided us--or tried to. Then science guided
us--a little too far. And in the reaction we turned inward, to find
(sometimes) the unconscious more troubled than the conscious. But in
the Letters which follow there is no despair, only light and courage
and hope.
There seem to be two main streams in us, the mental and the
instinctive. Bergson says, in his “Creative Evolution,” “There are
things which intelligence alone is able to seek, but which, by itself,
it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will
never seek them.”
It was inevitable that modern psychology, with its constructive
curiosity, should turn its attention to the religious beliefs of the
past and present. There was no other way of understanding what really
goes on in the minds of people. Some of these old beliefs proved,
on examination, to be scientifically tenable. For instance, the
Theosophists (who got the idea from the Hindoos) tell us there are two
streams of evolution, the elemental and the human. Dr. C. J. Jung,
the head of the Swiss school of Analytical Psychology, divides the
stream of “energy” into two currents, one going forward and one going
backward. And this duality of will Bleuler calls “ambitendency.” The
difference is chiefly a difference of phraseology and associations.
“Always the pull of the opposites,” I quote from the Letters which
follow. The present psychic wave which is sweeping over the world is
accompanied by modern analytical psychology. Truth may lie in the
synthesis.
Between the credulity of those who believe everything purporting to
come from the other side of the veil, who accept every suggestion from
anybody claiming to be “psychic” who half-closes the eyes and says
dreamily, “You will do so and so,”--between this thirst for delusion
and the materialists’ denial that there is anything but matter and the
functions of _matter_, there is also a middle ground.
The great pioneer of analytical psychology himself said, in a recent
little volume on “War and Death,” translated by Dr. A. A. Brill: “In
the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.”
Suppose the unconscious should be right?
And, by the way, between the statement of Christian Scientists, “All is
love,” and the statement of the parent school of psychoanalysis, “All
is libido,” there is striking similarity.
Jung would say, “All is energy.” Judge Hatch wrote, in a little
book published in 1905, “We postulate immortal Units of Force,
each having the power to generate a constant but limited amount of
energy, and no two alike in quantity. Upon this force generation in
the unit, necessitated by law, do we base life. Life results from
the inter-dealing and inter-playing of these units among themselves
eternally, sometimes potential, again kinetic, each limited in the
amount of force generated, but unlimited in variety of motion,
manifestation or specialization.”
Truth may indeed be one, though the roads to it are many.
Fechner’s assertion, that the dead live in us and so influence us, does
not require much stretching to fit the hypothesis that the entire past
of the human race is contained in the deeper levels of the unconscious.
If we go deep enough in analysis that hypothesis is illustrated by
strange phenomena.
It is unwise, at the present time more than any other, even to try
to take away man’s belief in immortality. The world is too sad, too
near the ragged edge where personal uncertainty drifts into social
irresponsibility. The psychic wave that is sweeping over the world,
though it is being carried to excess, as all overcompensations are,
answers nevertheless to a tremendous need. Credulity is the other end
of doubt.
Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, in the Introduction to his translation of
Silberer’s “Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism,” says:
“Much of the strange and _outré_, as well as the commonplace,
in human activity conceals energy transformations of inestimable
value in the work of sublimation. The race would go mad without it.
It sometimes does even with it, a sign that sublimation is still
imperfect and that the race is far from being spiritually well. A
comprehension of the principles here involved would further the spread
of sympathy for all forms of thinking and tend to further spiritual
health in such mutual comprehension of the needs of others and of the
forms taken by sublimation processes.”
William James defended the Christian Scientists. And Jung himself says,
in one of his famous letters to Dr. Loy, “Every method is good if it
serves its purpose, including Christian Science, Mental Healing, etc.”
During the last five years man has had such varied reasons for fearing
objective things that he has come to fear the subjective, perhaps even
more than during the Middle Ages.
Dr. H. W. Frink says, in his masterly book on “Morbid Fears and
Compulsions”: “The biological function or purpose of fear is protective
or preservative. Every one of us alive to-day owes his existence to the
fact that his human and pre-human ancestors were afraid.”
Nearly everyone is afraid of something. Sublime Jeanne d’Arc was
terribly afraid of the fire. (Perhaps she had been badly burned in
infancy, and the unconscious memory twisted and turned in the deeps of
her pure soul. Perhaps, and perhaps ... for we shall never know.)
When we really know what fear is, we shall have solved the mystery of
“the one and the many” that disturbed the cerebration of our ancestors.
Fear may be a momentary surging up of the ego’s consciousness of
its own helpless littleness before the immensity of the unknown and
unknowable non-ego. The reckless courage of the soldier may be an
overcompensation, a triumphant sublimation--sometimes followed by
reaction, secret or unconcealable, depending on the intensity.
For, as Silberer says, “The conflicts do not indeed lie in the external
world, but in our _emotional disposition towards it_; if we change
this disposition by an inner development, the external world has a
different value....”
Man is indeed his own cosmos, the microcosm of the macrocosm, to a
degree incomprehensible to one who has not intelligently studied (and
in himself) the phenomena of “projection,” and compensation including
sublimation.
The great mystics of all ages, through introversion, having discovered
this and reduced it to a science, after their fashion, great modern
scientists like Jung and Silberer have found their systems worthy of
profound study.
Writing of mysticism, Professor Dwelshauvers of Brussels says:
“The effects of mystic union are logical and coherent; a second
quality of the acts of the order of grace is the positive character of
the contribution, the increase which they bring to the psychic life of
those who benefit by them.... The idea of God, the divine presence,
or any other form of inspiration, is no more strange to the mind of
the religious man than is for the _savant_ the sudden conception
of a solution long sought for, or for the artist the vision of the
work which he meditates and of which he pursues the construction
with patience and tenacity.... Neither the invasion of the soul by
God, nor the ‘return’ of the mystics, has any resemblance to mental
disintegration.”
It is not easy to get rid of God.
Will you read what Jung says on this subject in the “Collected Papers
on Analytical Psychology,” edited by Dr. Constance E. Long:
“The concept of God is simply a necessary psychological function....
The _concensus gentium_ has spoken of gods for æons past, and
will be speaking of them in æons to come. Beautiful and perfect as
man may think his reason, he may nevertheless assure himself that
it is only one of the possible mental functions, coinciding merely
with the corresponding side of the phenomena of the universe. All
around is the irrational, that which is not congruous with reason.
And this irrationalism is likewise a psychological function, namely
the absolute unconscious; whilst the function of consciousness is
essentially rational.... Heraclitus, the ancient, that really very
wise man, discovered the most wonderful of all psychological laws,
namely, the _regulating function of antithesis_. He termed this
enantiodromia’ (clashing together) by which he meant that at some time
everything meets with its opposite.... Man may not _identify_
himself with reason, for he is not wholly a rational being, and never
can or ever will become one. That is a fact of which every pedant of
civilization should take note. What is irrational cannot and may not
be stamped out. The gods cannot and may not die. Woe betide those men
who have disinfected heaven with rationalism; God-Almightiness has
entered into them, because they would not admit God as an absolute
function.... Only he escapes from the cruel law of enantiodromia who
knows how to separate himself from the unconscious--not by repressing
it, for then it seizes him from behind--_but by presenting it
visibly to himself as something that is totally different from
him_.... He must learn to differentiate in his thoughts between
what is the ego and what is the non-ego. The latter is the collective
psyche or absolute unconscious.... In order to differentiate the
psychological ego from the psychological non-ego, man must necessarily
stand _upon firm feet_ in his ego-function....
“Obviously the depreciation and repression of such a powerful function
as that of religion has serious consequences for the psychology of
the individual.... One period of skepticism came to a close with the
horrors of the French revolution. At the present time we are again
experiencing an ebullition of the unconscious destructive powers
of the collective psyche. The result is an unparalleled general
slaughter. That is just what the unconscious was tending towards.
This tendency had previously been inordinately strengthened by
the rationalism of modern life, which by depreciating everything
irrational caused the function of irrationalism to sink into the
unconscious....”
“There is indeed no possible alternative but to acknowledge
irrationalism as a psychological function that is necessary and always
existent. Its results are not to be taken as concrete realities (that
would involve repression), but as _psychological realities_. They
are realities because they are _effective_ things, that is, they
are _actualities_.”
So we need not be ashamed to admit that we pray! In this grim period of
history, when the soul is face to face with itself and its brother as
it has never been, we may speak with a greater simplicity than in the
old conventionally-smiling days before the war. I pray--and so do you,
whoever you are, if only by groaning “Oh, God!” when you suffer. Prayer
is an instinct. Even an atheist will pray, if he finds himself beyond
human aid. A friend of mine who was killed at the front used to take
holy communion every morning, and he was doubtless a saner and better
soldier for it. One need not be a Roman Catholic to see the beauty of
that act of faith.
Whether God be a “dominant of the superpersonal unconscious,” a
psychological function, or a mathematical equation, makes not the
slightest difference to me. As William James would say, “He works.”
And whether the souls of our dead live in us, as Fechner says, or
whether they are relics in the personal and collective unconscious, or
whether they are “concrete realities” that can materialize by using
astral and etheric substance, makes also not the slightest difference
to me. If you could know how utterly I am at peace about this whole
question!
And many other differences appear, on close examination, to be mainly
differences of viewpoint and phraseology. The “astral world” of the
Theosophists, mediæval and modern, corresponds to a certain level of
the unconscious. “X” says in one of the Letters which follow, written
in 1917, that melancholy may be produced by the pressure of the unhappy
dead who make us fear. If you locate the dead in the unconscious, which
surges up in moments of passivity, the dead will have the same effect.
Having given much of the leisure time of a laborious life to a study of
the theories and practices of mysticism and occultism, as formulated
by many different schools, I could write volumes (if I had the
inclination, which I have not) in tracing out the psychological roots
and the relations between these things. My own unconscious is rich with
such images. Some of the most striking parallels have not been written
about, so far as I know.
And Jung seems to have covered, with the wide mantle of his
comprehension, even the frailties of those who believe in prophetic
dreams. He says:
“The unconscious possesses possibilities of wisdom that are completely
closed to consciousness, for the unconscious has at its disposal not
only all the psychic contents that are under the threshold because
they have been forgotten or overlooked, but also the wisdom of the
experience of untold ages, deposited in the course of time and
lying potential in the human brain. The unconscious is continually
active, creating combinations of its materials; these serve to
indicate the _future path_ of the individual. It creates
prospective combinations just as our consciousness does, only they are
considerably superior to the conscious combinations both in refinement
and extent. The unconscious may therefore be an unparalleled guide for
human beings....
“The unconscious must contain all the material that has _not yet_
reached the level of consciousness. These are the germs of future
conscious contents.”
He seems to think that true prophecies are merely the result of
synthesis by the unconscious of tendencies (_whether in the personal
or universal unconscious_) significant for future occurrences.
Referring to Maeterlinck’s “inconscient supérieur,” he says of the
prophetic interpretation of dreams:
“The aversion of the exact sciences against this sort of
thought-process which is hardly to be called phantastic is only an
_overcompensation_ of the thousands of years old but all too
great inclination of man to believe in soothsaying.”
I am told that the hearing of voices in the hypnogogic state indicates
“a slight tendency to dissociation.” Very well. Probably the voices
come from a deeper level than automatic writing, whatever the
inspiration of automatic writing may be.
Now while the things which “X” in the following letters advised
America to do, before America came into the war, were the very things
which we did _after_ we came into the war and which we could not
have done except as war measures, our entrance was not written down as
a specific prophecy in these letters. Any startling prophecy has always
had a tendency to shake me out of the passive state in which automatic
writing is possible. _But_--during the weeks from February to
April, 1917, in the hypnogogic state preceding sleep, I several times
heard, “We are coming into the war.” Of course I did not write that
down in the manuscript, as _it was not a part of the manuscript_.
What is heard is heard, what is written is written. I merely mention
it as a curious phenomenon for it was probably the synthesis of the
_deeper levels_ of my unconscious. It was certainly the tragic
hope of my conscious mind; but the conscious alone would not have
produced a voice.
If anybody wonders that I should admit hearing hypnogogic voices,
I can only say that I regard these things rather objectively and
impersonally. I never hear voices except when half-asleep. If my very
accurate memory has not slipped a cog, William James used to talk
freely of his hypnogogic experiences. The more we know about our little
personalities, the less monstrously important they seem. And the
“hearing of voices” has more than once played a respectable rôle in
history, before and after Moses.
But I do not imagine that I have any prophetic mission, nor do I feel
in any hurry to “unite myself with the ocean of divinity,” nor feel any
impulse violently to turn my back upon the universal. There is a happy
mean, which makes for efficiency in life, for health and understanding.
I have touched upon analytical psychology in this Introduction because
I am so constituted that I cannot publish this last volume of my
automatic writings without indicating my point of view, with the same
frankness as in former Introductions. Please do not blame science
because I have not lost through the analytic process my instinctive
belief in individual immortality. I assure you it has not been the
fault of science.
If anyone objects that I have only touched the threads of this great
web of psychology which lead towards the subject of this book, I can
only say that this foreword being by way of preface to this book, no
other course was possible on account of the limitations of space and
artistic relevancy.
Psychology as a method of healing I leave to the physicians, who have
written many books about it, containing bibliographies. And booksellers
have catalogues. Anyone interested can write to them.
This is by way of excusing myself from answering letters of enquiry. I
have unselfishly and laboriously written so many hundreds of letters!
Now I want to write other things. The resolution of psychological
“complexes” frees energy for sublimation in work. It frees ideas for
use in art.
Dr. Beatrice M. Hinkle, in the introduction to her translation of
Jung’s “Psychology of the Unconscious,” says that “this psychology
which is pervading all realms of thought ... seems destined to be a
psychological-philosophical system for the understanding and practical
advancement of human life.”
So, having found a well whose waters were refreshing, I note the
fact--and pass on.
The train of thought which the reader has followed in this Introduction
is the train of thought which led me--after some delay--to the
publication of the book.
I am glad that these “Last Letters from the Living Dead Man” are a call
to courage, to restraint, to faith in the great and orderly future
of America and the world, a call to all those positive qualities so
gravely needed in these days of the rebuilding of Peace.
For I do not believe that Bolshevism, or any other form of lunacy, will
find foothold in the United States. A nation with universal suffrage,
for man and woman, certainly has no incentive for a resort to insane
destruction. In the last State campaign it was interesting to watch the
reactions of women to the privileges and duties of suffrage. I watched
it only in one party, the Democratic, but it was doubtless everywhere
the same. There was an added dignity, a sense of new responsibility,
and always courtesy and real fellowship among the women and the men.
Its happening to correspond in time with the Fourth Liberty Loan
campaign, and the printing of casualty lists, made it all the more
significant. No, these level-headed, socially-responsible women will
never be swept away by collective insanity; and as the men who return
from the front will return to these women, their mothers, wives and
sisters, I do not think that we shall lose in peace what we have gained
in war.
And now--remembering always that this book was written between
February, 1917, and February, 1918--you may read the “Last Letters from
the Living Dead Man.”
ELSA BARKER
New York, Easter Day, 1919.
LETTER I
THE GENIUS OF AMERICA
_February 3, 1917._
I WANT to write of America, land of my latest birth, land of the future.
Great is the road that the Genius of America may travel, and her feet
have already passed the early stages of it.
The Genius of America!
Each land is watched over and its children guided--guided and moved--by
a Genius.
Would you feel the Genius of America, go alone into the woods at
night, watch and listen and invoke. Perhaps the answer may come, its
recognition of you, your recognition of it.
If you are one of those who can hear the words which the Great Ones
speak in the silence, perhaps you will hear something with the ears of
your soul. If so, do not hasten to divulge the message, but treasure it
in your heart; for that which is treasured in the heart can sometimes
be felt and understood by the hearts of others.
If you are one of those who will serve willingly, the secret of your
heart may be shared in silence with those who can hear in the silence.
The hour approaches when the mission of this land may be manifested.
The hour approaches when the Genius of this land shall force its will
upon this land. That will not be an easy task. So many wills have
sought to wrest the reins from the guiding hand; so many eyes, looking
in so many directions, have seen so many goals. But there is one will
so strong that it can, when its hour is come, gather up the wills of
men as a strong wind gathers a mass of loosely-lying straws and sweeps
them along.
You know not the power of a will that has God behind it. You know not
the power of a purpose that has God behind it and the future before it.
Those who get in the way of the Genius of this land will be broken,
like straws that would resist the wind.
I have watched from my unseen place the labors of many. I have helped
unseen with my faith to strengthen the hearts of many. I shall wait now
unseen till the act of destiny is accomplished.
You who have followed me from my first gropings in the twilight of the
new life, before the clearness came; you who have followed me on my
journeys among the battlefields, both in and above the world, follow
me yet a little further, with your minds ajar for the entrance of the
truth I have to tell you, the advice I have to give you. For my advice
is disinterested as the rain, and my truth is offered as freely as the
light.
I have come a long way since I laid down my body a few brief years ago,
years of a crowded brevity, in which the world has moved as fast as I,
and sometimes with more pain. For he who knows the purpose of his pain
can bear it better than the child who knows only that he suffers.
I should have spoken to you before, but you would not let me. Child!
Would you stand in the way with your personal wishes, and your
shrinkings that are also wishes of a negative kind?
Blocked by your will to avoid this labor, I sought another entrance;
but it was too much encumbered by prejudices and preconceived ideas,
and all the litter of mental fragments that had accumulated through
years of residence in a creed-bound place. You who have dwelt but
briefly in many tents have no obstructions at your door, save such as
are placed by your will, and those I now sweep away.
I shall pass in and out, and speak to you as I choose.
LETTER II
FEAR NOT
_February 8, 1917._
DID I not tell you many months ago that the soul of Abraham Lincoln
kept watch above this land that he died to save from disruption, and
that he would keep vigil until America should have passed through her
next great trial? You questioned then what that trial would be. Do you
question now? And yet you do not know.
Slowly the months have gone by, receding into the past. When, in the
spring of 1915, you saw in vision the German Emperor in spiked helmet
standing opposite to Uncle Sam in his shirt-sleeves, did you not
suppose that it would come to this? You are wise to keep such visions
to yourself.
Do not fancy that this war will end without greater changes than the
world has ever known before. When I told you nearly two years ago that
the battle between the powers of good and evil had been won in the
invisible regions, I knew because my Teacher told me so; but do not
believe that the new age can dawn without greater trouble and greater
changes than you can now imagine. Birth is change and birth is painful,
and birth is bloody and exhausting. The pains that have gone before are
only the pains of labor.
The stars in their courses fight for the new race.
I have written of the bloody fields of Europe. Now I would write of
America and her future, her near and her far future; for the sun is
approaching the Eastern horizon and the dawn clouds are already tinged
with the coming day.
America, do not despair! Your destiny is assured. In the storms to
come, think of the freshness after the storm, when the ground shall
smell sweet and birds shall sing. For birds will sing to the children
of the new age.
In the midst of changes there will come a lull. The world will say, “It
is over, the old things will return, and all will be as before.” But
nothing will ever be exactly as it was before. In the lull you shall
draw breath, and make ready for other changes. Yes, many things will be
changed, even the hearts of men.
The world has known terror. Without experience of terror, without the
poise that comes from the facing of terror undaunted, the world could
not face the future without failure. Is there anything now, after
thirty months of war, that could surprise the world? Is there anything
that the world could not face?
Oh, remember that you are immortal, and that you who go out of life
will come back again, strengthened by the rest in the invisible! For a
change of place is a rest of consciousness. To those whose nerves are
weary, wise doctors prescribe a change. A rest in the invisible worlds
is more refreshing than a summer in the mountains. Do not fear death. I
passed through death, and I am more rested now than a strong man in the
morning. I would not go back to my old body. When I want a body again I
shall build a new one. I know the process of building, having built so
many before.
Be joyous with me. A wise man once said that only the unendurable is
tragic. The world, and the souls of the world, can endure the change
that is coming. Have not wars prepared them for it? That is why wars
had to be.
America is rich. Her vaults are full of gold, her mines are full of
ore, and her fresh soil is full of richness. Shall she fear a future
in which labor can procure all things for the body, and faith can
procure all things for the soul? The history of this land is a history
of faith. Did not Columbus start across the trackless ocean, led only
by the star of his faith? Did not your ancestors follow, led by their
faith in the future? The past has gone back to God, it is safe as a
dead man; but the future is coming to you, and your faith shall make it
sure.
Fear naught. In the early days of this land your forefathers slept in
quiet, though the red man lurked in the forest, and hunger lurked in
the failure of harvests, and men and children could only be winter-warm
when trees had been felled for fuel. Now you fear famines of coal? The
earth is heavy with coal. You fear famines of wheat, when your muscles
grow fat for lack of exercise. They who came first to this land had
varied reasons for fear, but you have no reasons for fear. Labor is
sweet. The child who makes labor of play can vouch for the truth of
that saying. Can you not then make play of your labor? When I was a
child I built houses of blocks. I longed to be building. I dug ditches
in the garden. I made boats of chips and sailed them on a puddle. I
planted seeds.
And learning? In the libraries of the world and in the brains of men
is stored the learning of the ages. The new age will not lack the
archives of all ages. Though paper is less enduring than parchment, it
will last over into the new age. Fear not.
By hints I convey to your mind that many changes will come. What then?
All progress is change. Go out with it to meet the future, with a smile
on your face and a song on your lips. The future wears a rose in its
buttonhole, as your Vagrom Angel would say.
LETTER III
THE PROMISE OF SPRING
_February 17, 1917._
WHEN you learn to think of life as a whole, of which you are a part
containing in yourself the potentialities of the whole, then you
will look upon these great changes with joy. The One must sometimes
sacrifice itself to Itself, and by elimination secure a new lease of
life. The whole--call it the race, or the earth-spirit, or what you
will--may grow too fat and lazy, as a man may grow too large to move
about with ease, and then by war among the organs, by fever, fasting or
remedies, the equilibrium is restored, and he starts again a new man,
ready to face the future.
Grim, does it seem? But who told you that the purposes of life were
always smiling? In the deeps of the earth and in the deeps of man are
dark substances.
The cold of winter is a hardship for those who expose themselves to the
elements; but winter is the ebb-tide of that changing sea of life whose
flood-tide is the summer. Rhythm, always rhythm.
I would not have you discouraged by the winter of the race, for the
spring will come and the roses will bloom again. March winds! They are
followed by April showers and Mayflowers. We are now in February.
When the skies are dark and the snows fall, we gather round the fire
and think of the future, when the flowers shall bloom again and green
grass shall cover the earth and birds shall sing in the trees. The sun
“crosses the line” in March when the winds blow, and enters the sign
of the Ram, and the Zodiac is traversed again by the great light-giver
the Sun. Do you shiver and grow afraid when the Equinox approaches?
The soul, too, has its winter of materialism and its ideal spring.
I have looked at the world from the outside, and I see no cause for
despair. I have looked at the soul from the inside, and I see great
cause for rejoicing.
You look forward to the end of the war, but the soul must battle to the
end of its journey. So long as the soul is cased in matter there will
be wars enough, for the greatest struggles are the soul’s struggles
with itself. I have told you this before. Sometimes it goes out to
fight, sometimes it goes in; the sword will not rust in the scabbard.
Think less of yourself and think more of the race. You lose the vision
of the whole by regarding too closely the parts, by regarding too
closely yourself that is only one of the parts. Think of yourself as
the race, and think of the race as yourself; then yourself becomes the
race, and the race becomes yourself; “the Universe grows I.”
There was once a God so great that the cells of his body were minor
gods. You may become so great that the cells of your body will be glad
to sacrifice themselves to your welfare. By renouncing the will to
live, you may make yourself immortal. By renouncing the will to joy,
you may become joyous.
Once I desired to be a great man. Now when I only desire that Man shall
be great, I have increased in stature myself.
Once I desired to be loved; but now when I love for love’s sake and not
for my own sake, I am loved by a multitude. Surely I found my life by
losing it, and the words of the Master were justified.
I look down at the world as I once looked down at my garden. I see that
the grass is sprouting and I know that seeds are in the ground. I have
planted seeds in the hearts of men that shall germinate and reach up
towards the sunshine, for I had faith in the spring.
For a while I have left Europe to itself, and have come back to the
land I love best. I have journeyed from State to State, and have
watched the wills of our legislators. They too are aware that a Force
is at work through them. They feel the responsibility of their place,
they feel themselves as moving parts of the great whole whose name is
America. The Flag is the symbol of their consecration.
I have walked in the woods, where the spirits of the land fore-gather
for counsels which the newspapers do not report. They too are aware of
their consecration. They strengthen you with their faith. When I lived
as a man in America I did not know America. To know the meaning of home
we must wander.