“_Science is the ladder by which life may quickly ascend, but until
science recognizes a spiritual force as the one essential force, of which
all other forces are incidental phenomena, progress must be limited._”
“_We have purpose to progress beyond the vision of man, but even material
progress, to be constructive and permanent, must be governed by a vision
beyond the day. We are trying to extend that vision._”
I
Immediately after the first Lesson had been given, Cass telephoned that
the news from France was alarming. It was Saturday, March 23d. The great
German offensive of 1918 had begun two days earlier, and the Allied
forces were falling back, with appalling losses. I asked Mary K. whether
she could tell us anything about it.
“Yes. It is a force of destruction, momentarily victorious, but Germany
cannot win. She moves steadily toward her destruction.”
Remembering our differing conceptions of time, I asked: “Do you speak in
terms finite or infinite?”
“You will see her defeat soon, but the fight eternal will not be over
with the end of the Great War. That will be only a temporary lull, and we
shall have it all to do over and over, until conscious purpose ends it.
_Do not fear._” The emphasis is hers.
To be sure I had made no mistake, I pressed the inquiry again.
“You need not fear the end of the war. It is certain and inevitable.
Germany is doomed, and must work her way back to light. This is not
foreordained, but here we already see the end, and are looking toward the
battles that will still be raging when the countries of the world seem
peaceful.”
[Some weeks later, this confident prophecy was slightly modified in its
letter, though not in its spirit, when she said: “Unless the Allied
purpose is undermined by forces of spiritual disintegration, Germany is
doomed, but the fight must be kept up with confidence and consciously
united force and purpose.” This, however, merely emphasizes the teaching
of all the lessons, that constructive purpose cannot find expression in
passivity, that he who would live must fight, and that he who is not
actively striving for progress is arrayed against it.]
As has been said, my knowledge of philosophies is of the slightest, and
there is scarcely a suggestion contained in the first Lesson that was
not new to me and entirely foreign to my habit of thought. Therefore,
I sent a copy of it to Mr. Kendal, asking him to tell me whether the
cosmic theory there outlined was familiar to him. Conscious of Mary K.’s
summons, I took up a pencil.
“Tell Mr. Kendal the philosophers have perceived the truth in fragments.
This is to be the whole truth, as far as it can be understood on your
plane. It may sound, at moments, like a patchwork of philosophies,
because all—or most—of them have some truth. He will help you in this. He
found the truth in spite of philosophies, and it is part of his work to
help others find it because of one—a philosophy not dreamed, but lived
and proved and known. Therefore, not a philosophy, but a faith.”
The next day, we dined with friends of that Anne Lowe for whom I had
asked the first night Mary K. came to me, and from her long messages to
them, a few may be quoted.
“... It has always been easy for me to reach you, because you never
doubted that I was there. Doubt is one of the things we cannot reach
through. Doubt, bitterness, grief—all these are destructive forces.” To
a statement that they had felt deep grief, she returned: “You have not
had the kind of grief that would shut me out. You have shut out some
helpful forces, but you will do that no longer. It is because the force
may reach you through me that I can come. We are the same purpose, and
I can reach you freely. We can always reach those who are very near and
dear. Sometimes people are dear to us there who are not really near us
here. They do not need us, nor we them. It is an ephemeral relation. Love
lasts eternally. Please don’t ever forget that.... Listen to me. I cannot
always reach you as directly as this, but just as soon as you learn to
read my thoughts, as I now read yours, a messenger will not be necessary.”
Briefly she explained to them the eternal significance of the Great
War, the united purpose of Germany, and the failure of the Allies, thus
far, to comprehend the essence of unity. Elizabeth, one of her friends,
mentioned that it was like her to drop personalities for great issues,
and she replied:
“The reason that I told you the thing I did about the great purposes and
the eternal conflict is that I want you to realize a little of what it
is all for, and to help you recognize the great ends toward which your
problems lead. Build, build, never cease to build. Unite yourself to
anybody who is of your purpose. Keep as clear as you can from entangling
yourselves with forces of disintegration.”
Miss S——, a teacher, and a stranger to me, was present, and after a
little her brother took control of the pencil.
“You cannot realize how intimately we work together still,” was one of
his assertions to her. “You are a fine force for progress. You are being
and teaching the things we all work for here. Teach, above all, unity
of purpose. Never mind the method. Look to the goal. Building, light,
freedom, faith—these are what the forces of construction stand for, the
way to the great purpose. The forces of disintegration are gathering for
a tremendous fight. The Great War is one of the crises of civilization,
but the battle to come still is one of the crises of eternity. It is
for that we are preparing now. This is what we must say to all dear to
us and, through them, to as wide a public as we can reach.... It is a
great message that is to be given. To-day I only want you to be sure
that I know all you feel and all you have suffered, and that the more
confidently and freely you reach out to me, knowing I am there, the more
easily and surely I can reach you.”
Like the others, this man used the circle, which we were beginning to
perceive must signify more than joy, as we understand the word. For
example, on this occasion it was used thus: “You will look for me now,
listen for me, feel me near you, and the (O) will be as near your life
as it ever can be there.” After telling her of the frequent use of this
symbol, I asked him whether it had not a deeper significance—perhaps
completion, perfection, consummate unity, something joyous of this larger
sort, to which he replied in the affirmative.
A night or two after this, Cass suggested that we must make an effort to
get into touch with David Bruce, but I said that we had asked about him
several times, and that if he wished or needed to communicate with his
family he would undoubtedly let me know. Aware of Mrs. Bruce’s interest
in psychic phenomena, I thought they might have established communication
in some way. Within a few minutes I was conscious of a summons to the
pencil.
First came Mary K.’s strong signature. Then, very quickly: “David Bruce
is here, and wa....” There it ran off into nervous, illegible waves. When
I said I could not follow, and asked that the message be more slowly
given, it was resumed where it had been dropped. “... wants to talk to
~E~ ... Bess.” His wife’s name is Elizabeth, and naturally was in my
mind, but having written E, the pencil balked, delayed, crossed out the
E, and finally wrote “Bess,” firmly.
“Thank you,” was the response to my promise to arrange the interview. For
the first time it occurred to me that possibly Mary K. had given over
the pencil, and I asked who was writing, to be told quickly: “D. B.”
Mrs. Bruce came the next day to talk to him, and Mary K. told me,
before her arrival, to give her no details about the previous messages,
adding: “He will tell her.” And while his opening message to her merely
summarizes similar assertions previously received, it is interesting as
the first consecutive personal statement of the survival of individuality
in the eternal pursuance of constructive purpose.
“I am here with you, darling Bess, as I have been with you from the
start,” he began at once. “You have known it all the time, and I have
been able to reach you in a way that I can only describe to you as
spiritual.”
Here was the first veiled allusion, at first rather puzzling, to that
unknown force afterward mentioned by William James and others.
“We so long to tell you whom we love not to grieve. We are of you,
as you are of us. Even more closely than we were when I was visibly
with you. Perfect union is only possible to pure spirit. That will
come. Meanwhile, one of us is pure spirit, and both of us so much the
richer thereby. Once, in the beginning of things, you and I were the
same purpose. Purposes are eternal. They may be temporarily divided,
temporarily overcome by the forces of disintegration, which are forever
seeking to destroy, but forever each divided purpose answers to the call
of its own. You and I were one purpose in the first, and we shall be
perfectly reunited when you have joined me here. But while we were one
in the beginning, one with many others of our great purpose, we are now
eternally definite and separate individuals, but united as perfectly,
after the first life there, as if we had returned to one unit.... The
first message any of us send must be this one. That is the reason we can
come so freely now and tell so much.”
A little later, speaking of their children, he said: “All young people
have battles to fight and problems to solve. Don’t try to spare them
that. It is thus they learn life’s lessons, and the more they learn there
the readier they will be to do the fine and glorious work here.”
He had spoken before of being very busy, and now she commented: “He seems
so interested in the work!”
“Interested is not the word. It’s more like inspiration.”
“Was the passing difficult?” she asked.
“Not difficult at all. The pain ended with unconsciousness.”
“But you had no pain!”
“Yes, I had some—not expressed, nor quite definite. Difficult to explain
until experienced. Words do not convey the sensation. Not quite fear, not
quite pain, but a strange moment of suffering. Then consciousness again,
beauty, force, perfectly clear perceptions, but a period of something
approaching incredulity.” I mentioned Frederick’s statement that he had
been “dazed by the bigness of it,” and Mr. Bruce went on. “That’s it. The
bigness of it is indescribable, and so extraordinarily lovely and high
that it is not readily realized or grasped.”
She said she had dreaded to have him go alone, and asked whether some one
met him.
“Yes, we are very tenderly received. There is always a part of one’s own
purpose waiting.”
“Have you seen Jack?”
“Yes; he is still a little bewildered, but will soon be in fighting trim
again.” This young man had been killed in an accident.
“‘In fighting trim’!” she repeated. “How funny!”
“No, it isn’t funny. We fight perpetually, and love it. It is a wonderful
thing to fight with the great forces, and to know why. Most of those in
your life fight in confusion and doubt, and suffer. But here we unite
ourselves to a definite and constructive purpose, and the fight is
glorious.”
“Do you see Granny?”
“No. She has gone on to a life beyond ours. She will come back, some day,
and I will see her.”
“You have helped me very much by believing that I lived,” he told her, at
another point. “It is very hard for us to be put aside.... We know here
how intimately our life and yours are lived together, and the one almost
intolerable thing is to have our dear ones live and believe that we do
not. It defers things so.... It hurts us when the apparent separation is
made real.”
“I hope you won’t get so far beyond that I can’t catch up,” she said.
“Never! You will begin farther along than I did. We shall go on together
now, for eternity. Since you know that I am with you, and especially as
we live and work consciously together, we shall grow together.”
“Did I do all I could for you, at the last? Did you feel my fear?”
“No, I did not feel your fear. But when one knows that the step is
coming, there is one blinding moment of dread.... You kept me a little
while,” he continued, when she said that she had tried to hold him here,
“but the thing had gone too far.”
“Was there anything we could have done that was not done?”
“Nothing. It had to be.” But when she inferred that the time had come for
him to take up work in the next plane, he protested. “No. Nothing like
that is ‘intended.’ There is no foreordination. It is all a matter of
forces, constructive and destructive. My material energy was too little
to withstand the material forces of destruction. My flesh yielded. That
has no real relation to eternal force.... One serves one’s purpose, here
or there. I am doing better work here than I could have done there, but
that has no relation or part in death. It is entirely a physical thing.”
“Did —— make you nervous?”
“No mere man could make me fail to respond to your call to courage. I
knew and you knew, that it might be the end of life there; but there was
no possible thing that you could have done, mentally, physically, or
spiritually, that you did not do. It was your courage that kept me calm,
even through that dread moment; your spirit that met me when I woke here;
your tenderness that soothed my first bewilderment; your purpose that
roused me to better, broader, finer work than I had ever dreamed before.
It has been you—you and I, one always—that have helped and upheld me, as
your faith has enabled me to reach and uphold you.”
This interview took place in the afternoon, and with a good deal of
incidental conversation, covered several hours, leaving me very tired.
But after dinner the familiar summons warned me that my services were
again in demand. I took up a pencil, and Mary K. announced the second
Lesson, which followed rapidly, with the same unhesitating flow that had
characterized the first one.
II
Meanwhile, happy letters were coming almost daily from the Gaylord
family, and less frequently, but with expressions of equal conviction,
from Mr. Kendal.
Mrs. Gaylord had promised to spend Easter week with relatives, in a
Middle Western town, which she had not visited—indeed, had scarcely dared
to think of—since taking Frederick’s body there for burial; and the day
after the second Lesson was given she arrived in New York, where she
paused briefly _en route_, her elder daughter and son-in-law joining her
the next morning.
Although her train arrived late in the evening, we talked a little to
Frederick before separating for the night. We had been commenting on her
changed appearance.
“Mother dearest, you are not much differenter than I am,” he began, after
the usual signature.
“Why, Frederick!” she exclaimed. “Are you better, too?”
He made the enthusiastic little circle so often used. “(O) So much
better! You can’t guess how much better I am. It helps me as much as it
does you.”
“Were you at Mrs. Z——’s the other day?” she asked, referring to a visit
to a “medium,” of which I had not been informed.
“I was that, but she fell down on what I was trying to get over,” was the
reply. When his mother said she had not received what she expected on
that occasion, he returned: “Nor what we expected.... She’s all right,
as far as she goes.” He told her, also, that the woman accompanying him,
described by Mrs. Z——, had been his father’s mother.
“This is a nice, peaceful powwow we’re having to-night,” he commented,
when they had exchanged views concerning various personal matters. “I had
to work last time, but this time I’m here for....”
The pencil paused, and I asked: “For what?”
“Just for a good time, Mrs. L——. Sis is coming to the party to-morrow.
Hooray!”
A little later, when she expressed some uncertainty about her ability to
go through an Easter in K——, with all its sad associations, unshaken, he
warned her: “Don’t you go backsliding!” Continuing, she told us that his
last illness had developed just before Easter, and that in his desire to
give the family an unclouded day he had persuaded a friend to send them
a typewritten letter, which he signed, containing no intimation of his
illness.
“I’ll write you a letter this Easter with a lot more pep in it,” he
promised. “You go on and have your Easter presents, and flowers, and
eggs, and all, and when you begin backsliding, stop ... look ...
listen[7] ... and I’ll be on the crossing, ringing the bell.”
With an ejaculation of surprise, his mother told us that she had been
recently in the home of a traffic expert, whose large hall was strikingly
decorated with signs for the regulation of traffic.
“I believe that’s what he’s thinking of!” she exclaimed.
“Sure, you’ve got it! I’ll ask Sis to buy you a bell for me, to remind
you.”
This diversion had completely banished the gathering sadness of her
reminiscences, and she began talking of Washington, whence she had come,
saying that there seemed to be a good deal of pessimism in official
circles concerning war conditions. It will be remembered that the
bombardment of Paris, by a long-distance gun, began March 23d.
“There are lots of things Washington doesn’t know,” Frederick assured
her. “The end of the war must come soon.”
We wondered, as I had before, how much difference there was between his
conception of time, as indicated by the word “soon,” and ours.
“None of us can name the day and hour, but we see the inevitable end
coming soon. Germany knows she is weakened, but doesn’t know why. We do,
and we have told you. No nation on earth can fight this fight alone,
deserted by all purposes, both for good and evil, and with only one force
left—Fear.”
[Long afterward, Mary K. said to me, in this connection: “We see the
awakening purpose of forces for progress in your life, and are able to
help them in proportion to the vigor with which that purpose is put into
action. Germany, on the other hand, fights now with only physical power.
Eternal forces are implacably against her, and the forces of destruction
have abandoned her. She has no ally here now. Her unity is destroyed,
while ours is strengthening. The only danger, as far as the war is
concerned, lies in a weakening of actual purpose, forcefully expressed
in action. We are your allies, answering your call and inciting you to
endeavor. When Germany began this war she had superhuman strength,
which the world was unprepared to meet, but for every vibration of pure
constructive purpose among the Allied forces we have added two, and only
a weakening of your purpose can defeat us now. Every individual among you
who fails to strive for victory with all his strength invites disaster.”]
Frederick’s talk with his mother was brief that night, and when she
arose, to return to her hotel, he said: “Good night. I am going home with
you, if I may.”
This seemed to Cass and me a curious phrase, under the circumstances,
and we also commented upon his generous use of slang, especially in the
latest interview, wondering whether it were characteristic of him.
The next morning his sister, Mrs. Wylie, arrived with her husband, to
spend a day with Mrs. Gaylord in New York. It chanced that they had
been away from home for several weeks and had seen none of Frederick’s
manuscript, nor any copy of it. As she read—from the original roll—his
messages of the preceding evening, she constantly exclaimed: “How
characteristic!” and his closing phrase brought tears to her eyes.
She told me, then, that along with a copious use of slang, Frederick
had preserved an odd little formality of phrase, even in his closest
personal relations—a trait not common to other members of the family.
Later, in glancing for the first time through the typewritten record of
earlier interviews, again and again she expressed astonishment at the
characteristic quality of his phraseology, which had not been mentioned
to me before. Mrs. Gaylord had spoken of her vivid consciousness of
his personality, imbuing all he said to her, and had told me, during
the earlier days of this intercourse, more or less about his habit of
thought, but it is characteristic of her to ignore minor details, and
only when Mrs. Wylie arrived did I learn anything about his habit of
speech.
“Frederick,” he announced, when we invited communication, his bold
signature stretching across the whole width of the paper. “Hello, Sis!
This is too good not to be true! Hello, Dick!” This to Mr. Wylie, whose
marriage to his sister had taken place during the last weeks of his
illness. “Welcome home to the family! We’re all in it now, for good and
all. This is the thing we’ve all needed, I almost as much as the rest of
you, but I did know that sooner or later it must come, so I could bear it
better than you could.”
It must not be understood that all these communications came as
consecutively as they are presented here. There were frequent pauses;
sometimes because of our preoccupation in conversation; sometimes,
apparently, because of difficulties of transmission not explained.
Occasionally I stopped to verify a word or a phrase, asking if it had
been correctly taken, and with increasing frequency the pencil returned
without suggestion from me, to cross out false starts. Some of the
latter, which seemed significant, will be indicated from time to time.
The following message, however, came rapidly, without pause.
“We are all of kindred purposes. That’s the reason we cling to each other
so. Family hasn’t a thing to do with it. It was our good fortune to have
no forces of disintegration in our immediate group. We are all builders,
in one way or another. Not all in the same way, but all for the great
purpose. This is one of the things I have wanted to say to you. Don’t be
misled by transient relationships of that life. Respect them, but don’t
be eternally influenced by them, because when you get over here you’ll
find that some of the people you’ve thought you were most fond of have
simply dropped out. You don’t need them, nor they you. Find your purposes
clearly, and stick to them. We all have purpose, but not all of you there
have found out just what yours is. Find it, and follow it fearlessly.
There, that’s off my chest!”
Mr. Wylie spoke of the “upside-down stunt,” of which some one had written
him, and I said it had been done chiefly to convince me—to show me, in
Frederick’s phrase, “who was running it.”
“You know now who is running it,” he contributed, “but you’re certainly
formal with strangers!”
In the midst of some talk of ours, the pencil swung off with vigor,
writing, “Sis!” in huge script, like a joyous exclamation, ending in
strong circles. “Just wait till I catch Dad!” he went on. “And Babe, too!
All of us together! Margaret will have to forget her formality then, I
tell you!”
Mrs. Wylie mentioned the common impression that personality must be
transmuted by death into something remote and strange—that only the soul
survived. “Of course, we love the soul of any one dear to us,” she said.
“But, after all, the thing we know best, and therefore love best, is
the habit of thought—the characteristic mental attitude, and it is so
wonderful to find Frederick unchanged—just like himself.”
“Sure! Why not?” he returned. “You people must learn that this isn’t
‘like himself.’ It _is_ himself. Right here on the job.”
“Those words!” His mother and sister exchanged startled glances. Then
they told me that just before his long struggle for life on this plane
ended, when during six months his powers of recuperation had repeatedly
astonished surgeons and nurses, he opened his eyes, to find his father
bending over him, and whispered for the last time: “On the job.”
“I’ve always been on it since, too,” he rapidly assured them, “and
longing to tell you so. You never can know, until you try it, how we hate
to be left out. We’re on the job as you can’t even imagine, and it makes
us sort o’ sick that we can’t get it over to you of our own love and
purpose.”
He interrupted the talk following this with: “Trot along to lunch! I want
to start going and not stop. Get it over, do!”
So we trotted, and got it over as soon as possible, though throughout
the meal he insisted upon having a voice in the conversation, writing
messages on all the blank paper we had about us, and over the backs of
the available menu cards.
“You can’t lose me, and needn’t try,” he told me, and when I protested
that he was making it impossible for me to finish my luncheon, he
retorted: “You have a perfectly good left hand. Eat with that.”
Several times Mr. Wylie expressed his interest in what he called “the
upside-down stunt,” and when we were again seated about a writing-table,
Frederick “demonstrated.”
“Incidentally, Dick,” he mentioned, starting at my right and writing
toward my left, “you wanted to see this work. Well, here you are. This is
the way it is done.”
As this began, Mrs. Gaylord smiled, pulling her chair nearer to the
table, where she could watch every movement of the pencil.
“Sit up closer, Mother dearest,” Frederick continued, “and everybody
hold hands.” Looking slightly bewildered, she held out her hands to the
others. I said that he had used a figure of speech, but she thought he
had meant it literally, and we referred the question to him. “Yes, all
but your writing-hand,” he said; so we all joined hands, and I asked why.
“Just to make us know more surely that we are all one and indivisible,
from now on through eternity. Easter resurrection for every one of us.
We are all born again, to some extent, by our communion in this way; I
more than you, because I have left the flesh behind. But to you has come
new life, new force, new purpose, new faith, through your touch with this
life of pure spirit. It is truly your resurrection. This is your Easter
message. Hail! And be happy ever after!”
I anticipated none of this message, and its tenor surprised me greatly.
Before I had recovered from my astonishment Mrs. Gaylord exclaimed: “That
must be the Easter letter he promised me!” Immediately he signed it.
“Frederick, to Mother and all of you.”
We spoke of the relation of this whole revelation to orthodox religion,
and some one said that it was not in accordance with the Bible.
“Yes, it is,” he contradicted. “You have never learned to read the
Bible in this light. The great prophecies have always been phrased in
the language, and more or less in the spirit, of the time in which they
were uttered. This is the first time in the history of the world when
physical science has been sufficiently advanced to enable us to tell the
people the truth in terms they would truly understand. Prophecies have
been veiled, apparently, not because the truth was vague, but because men
were not prepared to understand it in all its details. Nor are they now.
But this is to be the whole truth, as far as it can be understood now by
your prophets and people. And for the first time it is possible to give
it to you directly in this way, without pretense or mystery, book or
bell, a natural law operating naturally and freely, through an accredited
messenger who makes no claim to inspiration.”
In the course of our drifting talk his mother remembered that Mrs. Z——
had tried to convey a warning through her from Frederick to Mr. Wylie,
but had been unable to tell her what it concerned. After some effort
to discover its connection, suggesting possible journeys or business
ventures, Mrs. Z—— had finally said that Dick was about to do something,
she did not know what; but whatever it was, Frederick said he must not do
it. Mrs. Gaylord now asked Frederick what he had intended to say.
“She didn’t get my message. I was trying to tell him not to be fearful
about anything.” Mr. Wylie is sometimes prey to nervous apprehension and
worry. “It keeps us back and we can’t help him as we’re trying to do.
Open up, Dick! Let us in and we’ll all pull together.” This apparently
touched some situation unknown to me, for Mr. and Mrs. Wylie exchanged
glances, and instantly Frederick made his quick circles. “(O) That’s
it! Now we’re off! No, it isn’t incredible,” he added, replying to some
comment of theirs. “It’s the truest thing you ever heard. But Mrs. Z——
can’t get beyond externals.”
This seems to be a very good example of the way certain messages are
confused by the persons through whom they come. In this case, while the
intended warning was conveyed, a purely subjective and spiritual message
was so distorted, however unconsciously and unintentionally, that it was
given an objective and material significance.
Asked whether an acquaintance of theirs would be helped by a knowledge
of their intercourse with him, he said: “She is not ready for this
yet. Few people, comparatively, are free enough to accept it. It has
been forbidden by the church, ridiculed by the laity, and labelled
‘poison, don’t touch’ by neurologists and the scientific, half-baked
intellectuals.”
“Fake mediums have done a lot to bring it into disrepute,” Mr. Wylie
suggested.
“That’s the reason for some of it. Another reason, less obvious to you,
but equally potent, is that people who had the sensitiveness to be
messengers frequently lacked the purpose of truth fundamentally, and
though thinking they were honest, entertained devils unaware.... That is
the reason so many people have gone to pieces, mentally and physically.
The purposes of disintegration caught them and destroyed them. But this
time, we beat them to it.”
“All philosophies have had some foundation of truth,” he told us, a
little later, “or they would not have been permitted to live. This new
faith will be attacked by the disintegrating forces, in an attempt to
discredit it as a patchwork of philosophies. The new truths they will
ignore, or flatly deny. But this is the whole truth, as far as it can be
told now. Believe it, follow it, preach it, live it, and we shall truly
build that structure I told you of, Mother dearest, of force, light, and
sweetness—which is you. I seem to be doing a darned lot of preaching!”
“It isn’t like you, either,” his mother remarked.
“You see, we’ve got to get this over. It’s imperative.”
At that, she said it was like him, after all, because he had always
talked eagerly to the family about his “job,” whatever it might be,
adding: “Is it ‘imperative’ because of the war and the sorrow? Or because
the time is ripe?”
“It’s because there’s the very devil of a fight coming, and we’ve got to
gather every force we have, and unite it.”
“Is beating the Germans helping the constructive force? Or is the war
merely the awakening through suffering?”
“Germany has been united in purpose as a destructive force for many
years. They gave themselves deliberately, not as individuals, but as a
people, to what parsons call the powers of darkness. We know them to be
forces of disintegration, which found in Germany their strongest ally in
the civilized world. We’ve been fighting Germany and her purposes here
for years, I find. Suffering makes people readier to listen to truth, but
beating Germany was as necessary to the world’s health as sanitation to a
hospital.”
“That’s a clear and explicit statement,” some one said.
“We are perfectly definite and explicit about questions of eternal
purpose. The difficulty with most people is that they want to know how
much U. S. Steel will go up next Tuesday, or whether to give the baby
soothing-syrup.”
After some interchange concerning his father and younger sister, he said,
“I want to write them an Easter greeting.” So we got a fresh roll of
paper, and he wrote a brief but tender letter, which was sent to them
that night.
“Which one of us will be best able to do this?” Mrs. Wylie asked.
“... The time will come when this sort of thing is unnecessary. We can
talk without material aid.... We never know when the power is going to
develop. It’s much like an electric current. You never know it’s there
until you feel it—until your signal comes over the wire.... Try it out,
all of you. We know no more about who can do it than you do, except in
cases of extraordinary power.” Some time afterward, however, he warned
them of the dangers of attempting to handle this force, intimating that
great conservation of energy in other directions should accompany the
endeavor.
His mother spoke of his being happy, and he returned: “Perfectly happy
now, thank you. It’s the eternal thing, really started. I hate to have
this party break up, but anyhow it isn’t for long. I’ve been away longer,
when I lived there, than I shall be now, and we are all of us as sure of
the next meeting, and the next good time, as we were then.”
“He knows it is ending, and we must go to our trains,” Mrs. Gaylord said.
“Not ending at all. Beginning! _Hooray!_”
On that triumphant note they took their departure, Mrs. Gaylord westward
bound, the Wylies to New England; but, owing to a defective timepiece,
both missed their trains. Within an hour, Mrs. Wylie telephoned me that
her mother had caught—by the narrowest margin—a later train, hoping to
secure sleeping-accommodation after leaving, a dubious venture in these
days of diminished service and crowded trains. We arranged to dine and
spend the evening together.
Afterward, it occurred to me that Frederick might prefer to be with his
mother that night, and I asked Mary K. about it.
“Frederick has engaged his mother in (O) ...”
“What does that mean now?” I interrupted. “Bliss?”
“Yes ... and will come here to-night to see the others.”
III
Like the rest of the family, Mrs. Wylie feared the effect of the Western
visit upon her mother’s new-found tranquillity of spirit, and she
was also uneasy lest Mrs. Gaylord had been unable to secure Pullman
accommodations.
“Mother is all right and happy,” Frederick told us, in the evening. “She
is still reading her precious book”—a copy of his earlier interviews,
which she carried with her.
Some one asked whether he meant that her general condition was “all
right,” or that she was “all right” on the train.
“On the train. She’s blissful!”
This was verified a day or two later by a letter from Mrs. Gaylord, in
which she said: “I came away filled with strength and calm and joy.” She
also mentioned casually that she had found a vacant section on the train,
and traveled comfortably.
“How does purpose combat forces of evil?” Mr. Wylie asked.
“It is done by overpowering them, as the sun dispels mist, separating
them into smaller particles or units. And when that is impossible, by
driving them like clouds before a high wind. They work for evil, but can
be separated sometimes from the mass and united with constructive forces.
Only small fragments of the main forces can be so converted, at present.
Mostly we rout them.”
“Does an evil soul lose personality?” his sister questioned. “Is it
absorbed, or broken into fragments?”
“The individuality that finds its first expression in your life is never
absorbed or broken up. I speak of the forces of disintegration, composed
of more individuals than the greatest army, as being routed. We mass
ourselves and our purposes against them and theirs, when we fight in the
open here. But as has been explained in the Lessons, the very material
form you have was originally an effort to evolve a force not conquerable
by purpose alone. Both good and evil forces, in your phrase—constructive
and destructive, in ours—took possession of these concrete forms, and now
the bitterness of the fight is greatest where both forces are represented
in one individual. The only way we can fight that effectively is to sit
on the job, and try to call to the purpose that is ours more clearly and
appealingly, or more commandingly, than the other fellow does. That’s the
reason we are begging you now to work with us. A great crisis is at hand,
and we want you to meet it consciously in your life there, knowing its
nature, so that we can have your help, not only in withstanding material
onslaughts, like Germany’s invasions and brutality, but in things of the
spirit—the real things, the eternal things—so that together we may win a
real victory. The individual whose purposes are fundamentally destructive
is not damned nor lost. He is just delayed. Sooner or later he must
work his way up, and it is entirely up to him whether he does it sooner
or later—after he reaches this life, especially. In your life, he is
sometimes confused or misled. He pays for that, too—not pays, but makes
good for it, by working here for the development he had not sense enough
to take there. But his delay is brief, beside that of the essentially
destructive force.”
A little later, Mrs. Wylie spoke again of her uneasiness about her
mother’s visit to K——, and some one suggested telegraphing her that
Frederick had been with us that evening.
“Give her my love when you wire,” he directed, “and tell her I’m on the
crossing, still ringing that bell. Don’t you worry, Sis. I’ll go and stay
with her most of the time she’s there, and she’ll know it. I’ll come to
you, Easter, too, for a little while.... Tell Dad I’ll be taking care of
Mother. He needn’t fret about it.”
“Do you want me to look up ‘Bob’ and tell him about his little girl?” she
asked.
He replied, “Yes, do.” And when she asked if he could give her something
more definite than a Christian name by which to trace this unknown man
among his large and scattered acquaintance, he wrote the name of a Middle
Western city, adding: “You can find out from the fellows. All of them
know Bob.”
This seems to be a case of marked deflection of ray, to use Mr. Kendal’s
simile, for up to the day when this manuscript goes to the printer the
Gaylord family have been unable to identify “Bob,” although there was
a confused intimation, late in April, that Mrs. Z—— had made a mistake
in the name, and a suggestion that the surname was Roberts. It is not
impossible that this was one of those wily incursions of disintegrating
force, with intent to confuse, to which we afterward grew accustomed.
On Friday and Saturday of that week (March 29th and 30th), there were
interviews of great interest, but of too personal a character to be
extensively quoted.
Replying to the inquiry of a man for his father, Mary K. said: “He was a
great force here, but has passed on into the life beyond ours. He can and
will return to talk to you, but not immediately.”
“Tell G—— the constructive forces are working for him, as he for them,”
was the answer to questions about a man in this life. “Temporary
disappointments are unimportant. Do not fear. We build together, and
surely. The result is certain and for his purpose—progress, light, and
justice. His individual concern is to have faith, follow his purpose,
and trust us. The only failure possible comes from admitting doubt,
disintegration, and fear.”
An expression of anxiety concerning another man on this plane was met
thus: “N—— has felt his own purpose stirring a little.... A perfectly
good purpose when he finds it. He has had many forces fighting, within
and without. He will wake when this message is given to the world. He is
too intelligent not to recognize truth as obvious as this will be.” Some
one asked when this would occur. “When Margaret completes the book she
will publish soon.” This was the first intimation of the way in which I
was expected to carry out Mary K.’s instructions to make this experience
known, concerning which we had wondered not a little.
It was suggested that a member of this person’s family might help him,
from the next plane, but this was said to be impossible, as they were not
of the same purpose.
“The family connection is nothing here. His own purposes know him, both
good and bad, and they are fighting it out. He has answered first one,
then another. But fundamentally he is for justice. He will answer to that
in the end.... Sometimes he will shut it all out and yield to the forces
seeking to destroy him, but he will fight in the end for freedom and
justice.”
“She is not of our forces,” was the reply to an inquiry about an artist
who left this life twenty years ago. This was crossed out, however, and
“not mentally free” substituted.
When I was alone, I asked Mary K. about this woman, and she returned:
“She is not a destructive force, but is deterrent. She is working out
problems not met when she should have met them, and is fighting for
growth, just as she soon or late will fight for progress. She fights for
herself, her own growth, and not for progress in the larger sense.”
Afterward, I learned, from some one who knew her well, of this woman’s
devouring and unquenchable ambition for supremacy in her profession.
Whimsical Anne Lowe, writing to three friends of her continued
association with them, said: “Believe—_know_—that we are a positive
force, and united we stand, hurrah! Our faith helps all beneficent
purpose. Its force is freed and multiplied by the sum of your
participation.”
“I wonder if she could tell us what our purposes are?” Elizabeth said.
“Yours is Progress, Ruth’s is Light, Katharine’s is Healing and Light.
You are blended. Elizabeth to push, Ruth to illumine and interpret,
Katharine to understand and soothe.”
Ruth said, wistfully: “Then all I can do is to shine?”
“Interpreters are really prophets,” she was told. “That is all the
greatest prophets ever were. You are of their purpose, so cheer up!”
Interrupting a little discussion as to whether dominant purpose is born
in us or developed, she said: “We are born with many purposes, latent and
striving, but as we live we make daily choice.”
That evening, our old friend Maynard Holt came for a long talk. After
some entirely personal exchange, Cass spoke of Maynard as having been, in
this life, a believer in individualism.
Beginning with some allusion to former discussions between them,
concerning what he called “the temporary manifestations of Socialism,”
Maynard replied: “Now I can tell you definitely that the salvation of the
civilized world is dependent on the independence of the individual....
It’s a big and glorious period in eternal history. The time has almost
come for the open fight. Prepare your ground carefully, and gird up your
loins for combat. It’s coming.”
A little later, in a similar connection, he said: “The conscious
co-operation of purpose is the only sound principle of Socialism. That is
eternally sound. And now that we are consciously and forcefully working
in harmony with the great and eternal purpose, they can’t stop us.”
“Has this new opportunity of communication with this plane made you over
there happier?” he was asked.
“It has opened an entirely new channel to us here in this part of the
world. In the Far East, we have the channel, but no hard-pan to support
the stream. Here science gives us a foundation from which to work, but
we have had no channel through which to reach it.... Everywhere in the
civilized world the minds of intelligent people have turned to this.
There is reaching and questioning and longing, and a dawning faith.”
At this time I did not know how frequently belief in the possibility
of communication with those in a life beyond is accompanied by an
inclination toward the Oriental philosophies, but Maynard’s allusion
to the Far East was given greater significance by the replies to later
questions.
To an inquiry concerning the possible influence of these teachings in
Germany, he returned: “They are a philosophical and abstract-minded
people, and they’ll be hunting a plausible and satisfactory explanation
of themselves before long. And this is less uncomplimentary than the
others will be, besides having the undeniable advantage of being true,
which they will have learned, by that time, to appreciate.”
“Can’t those with eyes, ears, and understanding learn wisely to control,
lead, and uplift the mass?” Cass asked. “In Russia, for example?”
“Don’t be in such a hurry. There’s all eternity, and evolution is slow.
But the mills of the gods grind on, and the grist is sure. The Russians,
like the Germans, must climb their own hills. America has a few to climb,
too. This will help many, uplift a few, escape the mass, but leaven the
whole. There is no millennium at hand. This is just a light by which
the path is made more clear. It will influence many thousands, in many
countries, but the inert mass must work its way on, through the old
channels of evolution, made easier by knowledge and by experience of
those ahead, but not to be evaded or avoided by any miracle.”
“But it will bring conscious purpose and effort to bear in helping this
evolution?”
“Surely. It is a message eagerly awaited and desired.”
Later that evening, I asked Mary K. whether she could tell me anything
about the book Anne Lowe had said I was to publish.
“Yes. It must be ready for publication by Fall.”
“Evidently sordid, material details of book manufacture escape your
attention,” I said, laughing. “This is the thirtieth of March, and you
have not yet given me all the material for your book. When you have
done that, it still must be edited, assembled for publication, copied,
accepted by publishers, printed, and sold. Perhaps you don’t know that
salesmen for publishing-houses begin taking orders for Fall publications
in June, and generally carry sample copies of the books with them?”
She said I would have the necessary material in a month or six weeks,
and that editing would “take another month,” from which it is evident
that no eight-hour law is operative on her plane. She also advised me to
see publishers at once, tell them what was happening, read them parts
of communications already received, and arrange for Fall publication,
conditional upon their satisfaction with the completed manuscript—which,
not without misgivings concerning such procedure, I immediately prepared
to act upon.
A night or so later, Maynard Holt came again, with his mother, who said:
“Maynard brought me to call.”
When we asked if she worked with those on this plane, she replied: “Yes,
but also with undeveloped purposes, here before their time.”
Returning to the subject of Russian upheaval, Maynard said: “They are
goners for some time, now. It will take them long to assemble their
purposes again constructively.”
“If you had been here,” Cass asked, “would you have viewed the Russian
situation and its effect on the world as you do now?”
“Not quite, I think. We see farther ahead, and have sounder premises from
which to argue than you’ve ever had there.”
“This plan, of course, includes all the people of the world,” Cass
continued. “Are those who leave here undeveloped, still undeveloped
there?”
“There is a large and growing population here of the undeveloped,” was
Maynard’s reply, “which is one of the lesser reasons for our keen desire
to purposize the world.”
IV
“What place have the unfit on your plane?” we asked Mary K., at the
conclusion of the sixth Lesson.
“No place. They are errors of development, and have a long struggle ahead
before they can reach the degree of development that should have been
theirs in your life. They are fusions of weak purposes, and should not be
permitted to hold back the strong and the fit. Development will come to
them slowly, at best, but more quickly here than there.”
“In the present stage of our development, is there a sufficient incentive
to progress, without hope of material gain or personal improvement?”
“Any material gain that is for the constructive purpose is a force for
light and progress in the larger sense. Material gain is deterrent only
when purpose is its price. Personal ambition is an incentive always.
When it is for personal gain, at any price, it is deterrent. When it is
ambition to serve a great purpose worthily, it becomes a constructive
force, to which material gain adds only more constructive force.”
“Have you all history spread out before you? Or are you taught after you
get there?”
“We have a grasp of results, not easily understood in your life. It
is like seeing a landscape from a high and distant hill. The salient
features are easily distinguished.”
“Are these messages for all people? Or only for civilized people? Do they
come from Christians on your plane?”
“This is a message to the civilized world.... Jew or Gentile, Christian
or agnostic, all men are brothers in the larger sense. Uncivilized little
brothers will grow, or come to this freer plane to join their larger
purposes.”
“Then from whom do these Lessons come?”
“From great constructive purposes. There is no sect or creed, color or
prejudice, here.”
Saturday, April 6th, Mrs. Bruce came again to talk to her husband, and
he thanked her for a public gift which she had just made in his name,
promising such co-operation in the work it promoted as could be given
from his plane. She said that she had felt suddenly impelled to make this
contribution, and had acted at once upon the impulse.
“You all feel impelled to work with us as soon as you realize we are
here near you,” he told her, “and the things we can do together are as
yet undreamed in your life.”
She spoke of his former interest in the arts, which he said he had left
behind as “material manifestations.” Discussing the relation of artistic
expression to constructive purpose, he said: “Art, when it is a real
interpretation of life, is a high and noble thing, but the art that is
merely self-expression is a disintegrating force. Too much of it is that
now.”
At that time, she had read none of the Lessons, and he told her of the
seven purposes of construction, continuing: “To purpose of any nature
only similar purpose calls, and when the call is heard there is no
choice but to answer. No choice after the call has been admitted to
consciousness. It may be shut out and denied, but once listened to,
whether for construction or for destruction, the answer is bound to come.
That is why we so insistently urge the discovery of purpose and the
beauty of construction. Character, as you understand it, results from the
purposes admitted to consciousness. Not always recognized, but always let
in.”
He had some difficulty in getting one word written, and she spoke of his
erasures of wrong starts as extraordinary and unusual.
“Not a bit unusual, if you think how often the words of your languages
fail as convincing and accurate symbols. You often correct them
yourselves. A translation may be made in any of several ways, depending
on the reactions of the translator to certain symbols. So, when Margaret
reacts freely, we let it stand. When she fails, wholly or in part, we
correct it.”
In view of later statements concerning the force used in these
manifestations, I assume this to mean, not that I make the translation
mentioned, but that certain symbols used in translation are sometimes
difficult to convey through me. Frequently other words have been
substituted for those originally begun, when there was trouble in
writing them. Another explanation of these occasional difficulties of
transmission was suggested afterward, first by Frederick and later more
explicitly by Mary Kendal.
“Do you see us visibly?” Mrs. Bruce asked.
“Yes, of course. We see all you do, and more. We see motives, where you
see appearance.”
[Long afterward (May 26th), Mr. Kendal asked Anne Lowe whether she could
see sunsets, and she replied: “No, but we see their equivalent in dawn of
purpose.”
[She had previously expressed approval of a room, which had been
arranged with great care for one dear to her, and he asked whether she
saw its physical details, or only its effects upon the minds of persons
entering it, to which her answer was: “We never see material things. We
see their significance.”
[Similarly, Mary K. said (May 31st), “We read your thought frequently,
and always perceive motive, intention, and the mental and spiritual
significance of your reactions to material things, in themselves
unimportant. So we say we see the thing itself, because we perceive its
essential significance.”]
Mrs. Bruce said her daughter wanted to know whether dogs continue to
exist after life here, feeling that they must.
“They do not come as animals, exactly. But there is no manifestation of
force that is not purpose, and purposes are united and gather here, in
ways not possible for you to understand, in the progress toward the great
purpose.” Ten days later, Frederick stated this more explicitly.
After a pause, Mr. Bruce said: “We are so full of our fine but tremendous
task here, at this great moment of crisis, that I’m afraid I’m not very
entertaining. We talk shop to you, because that is the reason we can come
so freely now.”
“You refer to the great crisis?” she asked. “Not to our present crisis
here?”
“Germany is bereft of all purpose. Purposes of destruction have left her.
She has one sole, frantic force remaining—fear. After that, destruction,
long followed, will turn and rend her, and fear will be lost in despair.”
“Aren’t there some good Germans?” she suggested, adding that their
daughter thought it unfair to condemn a whole people for the sins of some
of them.
“Many good Germans have admitted to consciousness the call of destructive
purposes, and have for the moment joined forces against us. For many
years this preparation has been going on. No German who has ever admitted
the forces of disintegration is quite free from them now. There were some
officers who took their own lives and faced the consequences, rather
than join forces with the dominant purpose of their people. No person
can live in Germany now who is not party to disintegration. No German
lives in the world, who still calls himself German, who is not party to
disintegration.”
“You say they have ‘joined forces against us for the moment,’” I
mentioned.
“Some of them will see light, and build forcefully for true progress.
Some of them will destroy while they live. Some will be for years
deterrent, and the end is impossible to foresee.”
A day or two after this, when I was alone, I asked Mary K. what Mr.
Bruce meant by saying that once the call of purpose is admitted to
consciousness, there is no choice but to answer.
“He meant that your personal struggle is only with the purposes admitted
to consciousness. All forces are constantly trying to reach you, to
enlist you for the great struggle. Once admitted to your consciousness,
you have no choice but to answer, and the struggle between opposing
forces is fought with your help. Many waver between the two, now lending
aid to this one, now to that. A few choose instantly; some to progress,
some to delay, some to build, some to destroy. This is what men call
character.”
“He said also that no German who has ever admitted to consciousness the
forces of disintegration is quite free from them now. Why?”
“Because there is in your life, as here, a group loyalty. But whereas
here we are grouped by purpose, there you are grouped largely by
geographical location. And any German who justified this war in the
beginning is party to disintegration to some extent still. His group
loyalty holds him, though his purpose protest. That will be the final
test. Purpose, or finite loyalty to finite group.”
One or two interesting statements were made, about this time, during an
interview with the widow of a well-known New York surgeon.
“Your husband’s work is healing still,” Mary K. told her. After
enumerating the constructive purposes, she continued: “Healing was always
his purpose, and he follows it still, with all his great force. He has a
freer field here, and fulfils his purpose fully. That is the reason he is
unable to be here to-day. The Germans are liberating many bewildered and
fear-stricken souls, and all our great healers are held by their need.”
When we spoke of ways of finding happiness she said: “Who fears the
purpose he should serve with force destroys it. Fear not. Find it, serve
it, and happiness of a positive kind will find you.... Your force is
scattered among many latent purposes. Find the dominant call of Progress
to your soul, and follow that, leaving the rest behind.”
Again, a day or two later, the present preoccupation of healers on the
next plane was mentioned, when I asked Mary K. whether a certain woman
would come at a given time to meet friends who had asked for her.
“She may. I shall try to have her here,” she said. “Her work is healing,
and all our healers are working constantly.... She was an artist with
you, and somewhat deterrent. She has found a new purpose.”
The day before the last Lessons were given, Maynard Holt, explaining
to a friend the seven purposes, said: “Every Human being who is for
progress and construction serves one or more of these purposes. It is by
them that what you know as human force is ultimately grouped for eternal
advance. Our effort now is to unite all forces for Progress in conscious
co-operation.” After speaking of Germany’s unity of purpose, he went on:
“She is, and has been for years, the center of forces and purposes of
disintegration in your life. She is, in theological parlance, the ally
of his Satanic Majesty. We have learned here that there is no evil, per
se. There is only purpose, constructive or destructive.... But the forces
of disintegration are gathering for a battle of wits and morals, and we
are emulating Germany in just one thing.... We are preparing. We want
you to wake up and realize what is going on. We want every one of you to
find and recognize not only your own purpose, but the other fellow’s.
Find out who is for progress, and who merely camouflages disintegration.
Conscious co-operation of constructive purpose is warranted to beat the
devil. He can’t defeat it, nor yet delay it. (O) _That_ is what it means
to all of us.... Come on in. The water’s fine!”
V
As has been said, our invisible friends have seemed somewhat hazy in
their perceptions of time and place and of mundane details generally, and
they have shown no inclination to concern themselves with our trivial
personal affairs. When pressed for specific statements about small
details, their replies have been sometimes in exact accordance with
the fact as we have perceived it, sometimes not, but they have rarely
diverged widely from the truth. In the larger matters directly related
to spiritual unity and growth they have been correct, as when Mary K.
explicitly stated, March 23d (already quoted), that the German offensive
then in progress and up to that time successful would ultimately fail.
On one occasion, apropos of certain questions her husband had asked, Mary
Kendal said: “We are not here to satisfy intellectual or any other kind
of curiosity. If we were not sure you would use this information for
construction, we wouldn’t fuss about it—except you and I, Manzie.”
Several times during March and April, however, Mary K. gave me correct
and specific information about various minor affairs, and these incidents
are mentioned here because I have been asked repeatedly whether such
statements had been made and verified, rather than because undue
importance is attached to them.
For example, hastening to an appointment one morning (March 29th), I
carelessly left my muff in a taxicab. Discovering the loss an hour later,
I telephoned to the cab company, to be told that no report had been
received from the cabman, but that they would try to locate him at one of
their various stands. It was arranged that I should call at their office
for it late in the afternoon, had it been found.
During luncheon, which I took at a restaurant, Mary K. indicated that she
had something to say, and on the back of an envelop wrote: “Your muff is
found for you.” Two hours later, when I reached home, the muff had been
returned by the cabman.
Another incident, less accurate in detail, but substantially correct,
concerned Mr. Kendal and my record-book. Having had, during his brief
stay in New York, no leisure in which to read the record—which then
contained only the genesis of this experience, Frederick’s first
interviews with his mother, and some messages from Mary Kendal not
included in my letters to her husband—he had taken the book away with
him (March 20th), and three or four days later I began looking for its
return. When, on the 29th or 30th (exact date not noted), it had not
arrived, I asked Mary K. whether she knew anything about it, and she
replied that it had been sent and would probably reach me that day. At
that time the record, wrapped and addressed, lay on his desk, where he
had left it with instructions that it be mailed when he left home for the
Easter week-end. It had been overlooked, and he found it there when he
returned on the following Monday. Apparently Mary K. perceived only his
intention and belief that it was on its way to me.
On the 1st of April she told me that a letter concerning these
communications, then several days overdue, for which I waited with great
anxiety, had at last been written.
“Really written?” I asked. “Or is this one of those successfully started
things you regard as accomplished?”
“Really written.”
At the same time she promised me other letters, from persons
specifically named, and gave me certain information concerning a member
of the Gaylord family.
Two days later, when none of these letters had appeared, I said, “Where
are those letters you promised me?”
“The letters are coming, fearful and wonderful messenger,” she humorously
assured me. “You have not made a ~m~ ... ~fr~ ... ~friend~ ... ~free~ ...
fantom (O) friend in vain.”
Laughing, I asked: “Is ‘fantom friend’ right?”
She said it was.
Half an hour later the long-delayed letter arrived, and as she had told
me, it was dated April 1st. The other letters came later the same day,
the one from Mrs. Wylie verifying the information already given by Mary
K. about a member of her family.
On Monday, April 1st, I sent a copy of Frederick’s recent interviews
with his mother and sister to Mrs. Gaylord at K——, hoping that it might
reach her by Wednesday morning. Wednesday night Mary K. told me that an
expected letter from Mrs. Gaylord had not been written, adding: “She
waits for the record.” A week later, after a happy visit in K——, Mrs.
Gaylord returned to her home and notified me that she had not received
the manuscript from me. Fearing that it had been lost in the mails, I
asked Mary K. about it, and was told that it would be received. This was
repeated at intervals covering several days.
When, on Monday, April 15th, two weeks from the day it had been sent, it
was missing still, I told Mary K. that it must have been lost.
“They shall have it soon,” she said. “It is not lost, but delayed.”
“Shall I make a duplicate for them?”
“You must trust us.”
“You are positive that it will arrive?”
“Yes, it will.”
It was delivered to Mrs. Gaylord the following day, April 16th.
On one occasion I asked Mary K. about a woman for whom I had been
requested to arrange an interview with a person on the next plane, but
about whom I knew nothing whatever.
“She is deterrent,” was the reply, and during the subsequent interview,
for the first time since the beginning of this experience, I encountered
an individual whose outlook and desire was limited to the narrowly
personal.
One of the most striking of these examples of specific information
occurred on the night of Tuesday, April 2d, the day of the Senatorial
elections.
Cass said: “Ask Mary K. whether she will answer a specific, mundane
question for me.” When she had written her name and indicated her
willingness, he inquired: “Who was elected in Wisconsin to-day, Lenroot
or Davies?”
“Are you there?” I questioned, when no reply came.
“Yes.”
After another delay, when the pencil wandered lightly and aimlessly,
she wrote: “Lenroot.” Supposing that she had finished, I put the pencil
aside, but she summoned me again, to add: “Lenroot elected by latest
count. Close in some places. We consider him elected.” Cass looked at his
watch. It was five minutes past twelve.
The next morning our papers announced Mr. Lenroot in the lead, with final
returns not yet received, and not until Cass reached his office did we
discover how truly “exclusive” our information had been. He learned
then that the suburban editions of several New York City papers, which
probably went to press about the time we talked to Mary K., practically
conceded the election to Mr. Davies, reporting him ahead by returns then
available.
Of many other specific statements that were either absolutely correct,
or so nearly correct that Mr. Kendal’s theory of a difference of
perceptive method might easily account for the error, one is notable.
On Sunday, May 19th, I asked Mary K. whether she could tell me anything
about the projected German drive.
“Yes. It will be fierce, but futile. All forces here see her doom, and
the war will last only as long as unsupported human endeavor can endure
against eternal purpose. Germany has no ally here. The forces that have
impelled her for these many years are overpowered by world-purpose, and
have left Germany to her destruction, while they prepare to destroy the
finest spiritual fruits of victory.”
Similarly, while writing to friends at the front of our entire confidence
in the outcome of the Picardy drive then in progress, May 30th, I paused
to ask Mary K. whether she had anything more to say about the war.
“Only that we are the victors. Germany does not win this drive, either.
Our forces rally, and the end is near. Defeat this time will leave them
despairing and afraid.”
To this Maynard Holt added, “All the forces have withstood the blow and
gather for the final and decisive defeat of Germany.”
VI
The actual existence of intelligent, invisible forces, constantly doing
battle for and against spiritual progress, through possession of what
we are wont to call our souls, was at first difficult for me to accept
literally, the idea being in direct opposition to my whole mental
tendency. While the theory was interesting, it seemed hardly credible
in its specific, individual application. However, I was soon given a
manifestation of the strength and pertinacity of the disintegrating
forces, which—although it ultimately strengthened my conviction, proving
highly corroborative—threatened for a time to end this effort, as far as
I was concerned.
The last two Lessons were given to me on the 12th of April, and it had
been arranged that Mr. T——, the representative of a publishing-house,
should come on the evening of the thirteenth for a demonstration of the
communication with the next plane. From the day this arrangement was
contemplated, frequent assertions were made under Mary K.’s signature,
concerning Mr. T—— and his attitude toward this experience, many of which
were afterward proved untrue, and all of which I doubted, notwithstanding
repeated proofs, already quoted, of her general correctness of statement.
Day by day these messages grew more confusing, and I less able to account
for them by any theory then formed. That a deliberate “drive” by malign
powers was in progress never occurred to me, and would have seemed too
absurd to credit, even had I thought of it.
As there seemed to be no close tie between Mr. T—— and any of those from
whom he had expressed a desire to hear, no great eagerness on either side
to complete a circle of which each was a part, I felt that the interview
might present difficulties not encountered before, and resolved to do no
writing during the day, reserving my strength for the evening’s work.
In the morning, however, I had occasion to ask Mary K. for some brief
information. Beginning, as usual, with her signature—somewhat haltingly
done—the pencil wrote quickly, but erratically: “Mr. Farrow is dead.”
This man is a business associate of Cass’s, living abroad.
Startled, I thought I must have taken the message incorrectly, but it was
repeated.
“Mr. Farrow is dead. Cass will hear later.” When I insisted that this
could not be true, it was reiterated. “Yes, he is here, and ~b~ ...
~blon~ ... ~latter~ ... bewildered. Mary K.”
Our personal relations with Mr. Farrow, while pleasant, have never been
close, being based entirely upon a business connection, and my affections
were in no way responsible for my resistance to this announcement, nor
would our personal affairs have been in any way influenced by his death.
But I did not believe it.
“Farrow is here with us. May ... Mary K.” This signature was slow and
irresolute, beginning as Maynard and ending as Mary K., but lacking the
firmness of either—an indecision and inconsequence characteristic, I have
since learned, of disintegrating force in these invasions.
“Was he killed in an accident?”
“No. Pneumonia. Maynard. Tell Cass.”
“Shall I telephone to Cass now?”
“No. I am watching over him. Maynard.”
The use of the word “dead” in this connection was surprising, since the
whole trend of former communications had been toward elimination of the
idea of death. Once more I asked Mary K. if they were sure there had been
no mistake.
“Yes. He is dead to your life.”
“You mean Farrow of P——? Not his brother? Or his son?”
“Yes, P——. It is true. You will hear soon. Cass must go there.”
I telephoned to Cass, saying nothing of this experience, and found him
in good spirits, proving that he had not heard of Mr. Farrow’s death.
Returning to the pencil, I told Mary K. I did not believe the information
was correct.
“Yes, he is dead. A telegram on the way to Cass. He will receive it soon.
Before one o’clock.”
Some time later, having heard nothing from Cass, I told Mary K. again
that there had been a mistake.
“No, it is true. Mr. Farrow of P—— is here with us. Cass will know in a
few minutes. He will telephone.”
I warned her then that my faith in her veracity was at stake, and that
while I could not doubt that Frederick, Mary Kendal, Maynard Holt, and
others, had communicated through me, I could not take the responsibility
of publishing anything she had told me unless I could trust her in all
things, adding: “If this is not true how can I be sure that any of it is?”
“Mary K. It is true. Don’t doubt.”
I said I had no wish to doubt, but that unless this message came from
some other than Mary K., I could not believe her again, if it proved, as
I was sure it would, to be untrue. I began to suspect that disintegrating
forces were at work.
“It comes from the constructive force. Be confident. It perplexes you.”
Later experience has taught me that while either force may be in complete
command at moments, during these struggles for control, not infrequently
a message begun by one is finished by the other. During the three days
of this first persistent attack, however, I held no key to the mystery,
and the occasional clearly constructive and characteristic messages from
Mary K. and Maynard Holt merely added to my bewilderment and dismay. Yet
never for one instant during those three days did I accept the repeated
statements of Mr. Farrow’s death as true. Weeks afterward, Mary K. told
me why I was not deceived.
Since that time, too, I have learned more clearly to distinguish
personality by the degree and quality of force applied to the pencil,
which varies greatly with individuals, though it sometimes varies in the
same individual at different times. But in the first experience it did
not occur to me to apply that test of identification.
All that Saturday afternoon the argument went on at intervals, I
insisting that Mr. Farrow was not dead, the pencil reiterating that he
was.
At two o’clock Maynard said: “Believe in us, Margaret. We can help you
better.” It is evident now that this referred to the conflict with the
disintegrating force, but at the moment I misunderstood it and reminded
him of the many specific and inaccurate statements made, during the past
few days, regarding the man who was coming that evening by appointment,
asking if this were more misinformation of the same sort, to which the
reply was: “No, Farrow is here. He is dazed, but will be taken care of.”
An hour later, I returned to the pencil, begging them to tell me, before
definite information reached me from other sources, that there had been a
mistake.
“Mary K. You must not doubt. We shall lose control of you if you do.”
When I said that what I sought was truth, she said: “I know, but you
doubt our control, and weaken it.”
“I also doubt my own correctness.”
“You are correct.” As, indeed, I was. Her message reached my
consciousness.
At three o’clock the insistence that Mr. Farrow was dead continued,
and attempts were made to explain former inaccuracies, on the plea of a
difference in plane, creating “errors in terms of finite space.”
Shortly before five, it was said that Cass had received news of Mr.
Farrow’s death, and was on his way home. A few minutes later Mary K.
warned me again.
“You must not doubt.... You can’t be a messenger without faith.”
“How am I to know when you are telling the truth and when it is error?”
“The truth is the truth, and you must learn to differentiate between the
planes.” I suspect that she intended the last word to be “forces,” and
that control was wrested from her before it was written.
Resenting the whole confused situation, and entirely unable to account
for my conviction that this message was false, I said: “If Cass tells me,
when he comes home, that Mr. Farrow is dead, I will believe anything you
tell me in future. If he is not dead, I’ll have nothing further to do
with you or your book.”
“Mary K. You will go on with our work. He is dead.”
At this point, Cass arrived. He said that he had received neither letter
nor cablegram from Mr. Farrow for ten days, although an expected and
important letter from him was some time overdue. This seemed to lend
color to the report of his death, but my conviction was unshaken.
From the beginning of these communications with the next plane, although
at times excessively fatigued, I had enjoyed an increasing mental
serenity, but with the first announcement of Mr. Farrow’s death, this had
given way to the peculiar nervous instability and apprehension invariably
accompanying these mischievous invasions.
By night my mind was in a turmoil and my nerves on edge, my confidence
shaken, my faith in the balance—which did not lessen the difficulties
of an interview prompted chiefly by intellectual interest. Establishing
connection with an unfamiliar personality is not easy, at best, and
frequently some time is required to obtain free communication. On this
occasion, instead of devoting the evening to perfecting one connection,
several persons were called, all but one responding, and the messages,
with one or two exceptions, were unsatisfactory. There were vain and
fatiguing efforts to write a name unknown to any of us, and most of the
efforts to obtain specific evidential data were unsuccessful. Whether
this was due to my own lack of confidence, to interference by the
enemy, or to the fact that at no time have the individuals communicating
through me concerned themselves with personal and specific details—except
occasionally, for my own greater conviction—I do not know.
At midnight, when this interview was over and we were alone, although
wearied to the point of exhaustion, I asked again about Mr. Farrow,
receiving the same reply, with a variation to the effect that the
cablegram announcing his death had been delayed by the censor, and with
occasional phrases of appeal and encouragement—merely intensifying my
bewilderment—from Mary K. and Maynard.
“Are you sure you haven’t been away and let in disintegrating forces?” I
asked Mary K.
“No, we have been here. They can’t touch your purpose. Don’t fear. You
will be perfectly reassured soon,” was her reply, which, had we but
recognized it, was an intimation that disintegrating forces had been in
partial control in spite of all effort to overcome them.
Again I asked why the word “dead” had been used, and was told: “That is
what the cable to Cass says.” Which manifestly did not explain.
Sunday morning, Maynard Holt’s familiar signature came at once, followed
by a long, personal message to a friend who was present, steadily
written, and pointed by an occasional characteristic turn of phrase,
indicating a clear and uninterrupted connection.
When this had been finished, Cass asked, “Shall I go to the office for
that cable?”
“It is not there.”
“It’s all a mistake?” I urged.
“Farrow is here.”
But I knew he was not there. Had he been present in the flesh, I could
not have been more certain that he had not left this plane.
All day we discussed the bearing of these persistent
misstatements—provided they were misstatements—upon the experience as a
whole, and I was oppressed, in addition to my personal disappointment,
by a sense of my responsibility to those others to whom this new faith
had brought active happiness and hope. I had arranged to go to L—— on
the following Tuesday, to spend a few days with the Gaylord family;
Mr. Kendal expected to arrive in New York a week or ten days later,
anticipating further communication with his wife; and various other
appointments were pending. But though I could neither question the
authenticity of former personal communications, nor deny the constructive
quality of the Lessons, I felt that I could not continue to act as
intermediary if it were possible for persons like Mary K. and Maynard to
lend themselves to this sort of thing, nor could I encourage others to
hold a belief after it had become impossible to me.
In the afternoon, Mary K. told me to go to L—— as soon as possible. When
we asked about Mr. Farrow, Maynard’s signature preceded the message.
“He is here. Why don’t you accept it?”
“I don’t know why I can’t,” was my reply. “Why don’t you convince my
mind, as you have at other times? Why don’t you make me feel it? I can’t
believe it’s true.”
“You have the statement of two friends.”
“You’ve been mistaken before in specific statements.”
“Only in those relating to dimensions of finite space, which we are
unable to gauge accurately.”
That evening, Mary K.’s signature came first. “You must see how foolish
it was to mistrust us,” the pencil wrote. “Mr. Farrow is here, and Cass
will learn of it soon.”
“Unless you take refuge again in that difference of plane,” I commented,
rather bitterly. “Why don’t you remember it before, instead of after, the
error it creates?”
“Because you should not distrust us.”
“But why not encourage me to trust you by remembering that difference of
plane in the first place?” I insisted. “Why be so explicit about things
you know may be inaccurately stated?”
“I do not deceive you intentionally. We feel that a thing certain
of accomplishment is done, and are frequently misled into premature
statements by the strength of intention, or purpose, or movement in a
given direction. We are accurate from our point of view, and not always
able to gauge yours.”
Admitting this to be conceivable, I said: “Now tell me about Mr. Farrow.”
“Mr. Farrow is here with us. When Cass gets to the office in the
morning he will find the truth.” Again the signature was hesitating and
indefinite, first Maynard, then Mary K. I felt that neither of them wrote
it, but could not reconcile the frequent constructive statements, urging
faith and continuance of this work, to destructive purpose, nor could I
understand why, if Mary K. and Maynard were present, they did not warn me
of false statements by malign forces, provided such were the case.
Monday morning, the situation was unchanged, save that the statements
were slightly elaborated. Repeatedly I asked whether they were not
confusing Mr. Farrow with some other member of his family, or whether
they had accepted serious illness as death.
A curious statement followed this suggestion, under Maynard’s signature.
“Farrow is both here and there. He is here in essence, there in body....
He is both here and there for some time after death.”
Immediately afterward, however, when I said that this sounded
preposterous, Mary K.’s name was written, with: “Mr. Farrow is here. He
is dead to you. Actually now dead. Go to L—— at once.”
“I can’t go to L——, with affairs in this state,” I told her.
“You will know soon. Wait.”
Maynard followed, with an appeal to “have faith,” adding: “It will be
clear soon.”
This went on, at intervals, until after two o’clock, when I had promised
an interview to a woman who had not visited me before. Fully resolved to
tell her that I could take no messages for her, I made one last attempt
to obtain the truth before her arrival—this time with partial success.
“Maynard. It is a mistake ...”
At that moment, my guest arrived. I told her that I might be unable to
get any satisfactory communications for her, but her daughter, who left
this plane years ago, came at once, writing steadily and clearly, with
the exception of one brief interruption. She told her mother of the seven
purposes and their meaning, urging her, as had all the others, to put
herself consciously in touch with constructive purpose, and to open her
mind and spirit to those on the next plane who were eager to work with
her.
When I was again alone, I returned to the pencil, which wrote quickly and
strongly: “Maynard. It is a mistake about Farrow. The ...” Here again
the opposing forces evidently gained control. “Farrow here, but not your
Farrow.”
“Then why have you insisted that he was our Farrow?”
“He led us to think so.”
I said with some emphasis that I wanted a better explanation than that.
“Maynard. You are messenger for us only if you trust us.”
A fortnight later, after a second, similar experience, Mary K. told
me, when I asked about this first confused period: “We had a terrific
struggle for you then. We told you the truth, but the other forces
controlled the pencil.... The forces of disintegration compelled us for
the moment. We were not theirs, but they overpowered and used us.”
Early in June, while preparing this manuscript, I asked her: “Was it you
who wrote, ‘You must not doubt. We shall lose control of you if you do’?”
“Yes. We were fighting for your faith.”
“Can you tell me why you did not explain then—why you have never
explained—that the enemy had control?”
“We have certain limitations in conflicts of this nature.... In actual
conflict we can only affirm. Remember that.... When attacked by
disintegrating force, the only way we can help you is to call to your
purpose and to affirm our own. In your individual struggle we may not
interfere, even when it concerns our work. You must believe or doubt,
according to your own choice.... We cannot tell you that disintegrating
forces threaten you, until you have recognized them. Then we can help
you repel them. Always we call to you and try to encourage you.... You
must make your own choice and your own deductions, and learn in that way
to discriminate between the forces appealing to you. Details of your
personal struggles may not be explained. They are your development.”
Knowing nothing of all this in April, however, I insisted upon a detailed
explanation of the Farrow mystery, and again the disintegrating forces
played upon my doubt and bewilderment, elaborating excuses for the
mistake, in Maynard’s name.
Refusing to accept any of these ingenious but illogical assertions,
I contended that they were unfair to me, having first specifically
volunteered this erroneous information, which they now attempted to
account for by obviously specious explanations.
“We volunteer information pertaining to the message we have for the world
through you.”
This, it will be perceived, was an affirmation indirectly disclaiming the
Farrow messages, but I did not so recognize it, and reminded them that
they had reproached me for not trusting them in this matter.
“You are logical within your limits,” was Maynard’s only reply to that.
“And you still expect me to go on with your work?”
“You have had many manifestations of our force,” Mary K. returned. “Mr.
Kendal will show you how this occurred.”
When I mentioned, with some heat, that some one would have to show me, as
they had asked me to shoulder a heavy responsibility in this matter, she
said: “You are puzzled and frightened, but knowledge of our constructive
work through you should decide your action.”
Remembering how fear and grief and despair, in certain cases, and cynical
indifference in others, had been banished from the lives of the men and
women to whom these messages had come, I conceded the constructive work.
“Then come along and build.... You are unable to distinguish the
difficulties under which we work. Many messengers have failed to convey
the message we have tried to give.... Many mistakes happen with the best
messengers.”
“Was this my mistake?” I asked.
“No. You make only one mistake, so far. You shut us out by doubt. Don’t
doubt. We are all working for the same great end.”
Eventually, although far from satisfied about the Farrow affair, I
decided to go to L——, feeling that if disillusionment must come to the
Gaylord family, it would better come now than later, but still hoping
that some explanation would be given while I was with them. In this I was
disappointed. Not until a fortnight later did I even begin to understand
it. But after the first interview with Frederick at L——, I wrote Cass
(April 17th): “If ever I had any doubts about the truth of this, they are
gone! Somebody did something I don’t understand, but this is _real_.”
I have given this experience in some detail, not only because it
corroborates the statements that malevolent and crafty forces are about
us, striving to thwart progressive effort, but because it seems also
to offer at least a partial explanation of the inconsistencies and
contradictions that long have baffled and discouraged investigators of
psychic phenomena. Obviously, until the identity and character of the
invisible communicating personality have been established and clearly
recognized, and the purpose prompting the communication manifested
through a series of experiments, it is unsafe to rely upon information
received in this way. And it is equally obvious that forces of
disintegration could scarcely find a more fruitful method of implanting
in the human mind doubt and cynicism concerning the possibility of
obtaining authentic and enlightening revelations from planes beyond,
than by contradicting and confusing such messages, or by deliberately
misleading the applicant for information.
Later experience brought further demonstration of the diligence of the
sinister purposes, together with greater knowledge of ways to defeat
them.
VII
Before beginning the Gaylord interviews at L—— (April 17th), Mary K.
asked me not to tell the family the details of the Farrow episode.
“Are you ever going to explain that clearly?” I asked.
“Not until you know more about these conditions.”
That night, for the first time, I saw a photograph of Frederick. During
the year of her grief and despair Mrs. Gaylord had been unable to bear
the added poignancy of a portrait’s suggestion, and only when I arrived,
to manifest his actual presence in the family circle, was the hidden
photograph—a singularly lifelike and virile reproduction—brought to light.
“Hooray!” he began, after the customary signature. “Here we are again,
all of us together at last! Dad! (O)” It will be remembered that this
was the first time that either his father or his younger sister, Lois,
had witnessed these manifestations. “You have been the one I wanted
most, after Mother. The girls I knew I could get sometime, for this is
the future for everybody with purpose, and I knew they’d come to know
me again soon. But you and Mother dearest I had to have (O) right now.
You both need this knowledge and intercourse as much as I do. The fuller
development that comes there with age and experience, and here—where
there is no age except experience, makes me nearer to you and Mother in
feeling and outlook than I am to the girls and Dick. Not that I am not
one with all of you. But being here has showed me the reasons for the
things—protective, overseeing, far-seeing things—that you stand for, and
have learned there through your experience in that preliminary life. So
we are a lot nearer of an age than we used to be. Now we are off together
again, and there is no reason, unless somebody backslides, why we can’t
keep step through the countless aeons of eternity.... Mother dearest,
this time I sure am in. Thank you for putting me on the mantel. I like
it. Coming home is lots happier business now. It used to make me sorry to
see you all so sad. But this is bully!... Dad, look happy for the boy!
He’s here for keeps now.”
Mr. Gaylord had generally spoken of Frederick, during his life here, as
“the Boy.” I had never heard him use any other name.
“Can you give your father the proof of your presence that you give me?”
his mother asked. “Not only by writing, but by the feeling in his heart?”
“I will in time. Remember, he hasn’t yet grown used to this communion. It
hits everybody hard, at first, and this fluency is inconceivable to any
one who has not seen and felt it at first hand. Give us time to get used
to it, and Dad will be as fully in touch with me and my life as he ever
was when I lived there. The shock and grief of my supposed departure are
taking force from him still, but he’ll see, just as you have, that I am
the better and bigger for this one great experience, and that I never was
so deeply and truly a part of his life.... Come on, now everybody talk!
I sure do preach, but you called the turn the other day, Mother dearest.
It’s my job to get this across, first to you who are my own, and through
you to every one you can reach. It’s all our jobs.”
Both Mrs. Gaylord and Lois had had some success in establishing
communication with the next plane, through the pencil—obtaining detached
words, and some names. And the former now asked: “Where were you Sunday?
I tried to get you.”
“I had a big job, attacking a pro-German newspaper editor in South
Africa. He didn’t give in, either, but we’ll get him yet. He doesn’t
fight openly. He poses as a Pharisee, but he’s really pro-German, and
thanks God he is like other Germans.”
Lois asked whether there are any pro-Germans where he is, and he replied
that disintegrating force is “pro-anything that destroys.”
During his last illness, one of his diversions had been to plan with
his father a long journey they were to take together when he should be
convalescent. Now, after a pause, he wrote slowly and distinctly, as if
to emphasize the deliberation of his intention:
“Dad, do you remember that trip we were going to take? You take it with
Mother some day, and I’ll go with you, and we’ll do all the things we
planned. And I can tell you, if you will just let me in and listen, all
the things you want to hear. We don’t need a messenger, you and I, but as
long as I can’t get to you any other way, I’ll use one. I can help you
actually—physically, mentally, spiritually, materially—as for so many
years you helped me. It was due to you and Mother that I got such a good
start here. Now I am here, it is for all of us still, as it always was.
But it’s my turn to lift a little. You carried me for years. Let me come
in again now, as a real, existing, active, growing force—your son, sir,
wanting to be nearer and more intimately yours than ever. You go on and
take our trip, and I promise I’ll go with you. Frederick.”
A little later, he said: “I wish there could be any way of showing you
visibly the radiant force I am, now that we are all united. You have to
be translated to this plane before you can understand what it means to be
brought back into the family circle. Not all families, but ours. We are
all of kindred purposes, and there’s no separating us.”
“I wish you’d do some of your ‘stunts’ for Father,” Lois suggested.
“All right. If you want stunts, here is my best one.” This was written
briskly, upside down and backward from my position. “Dad, this is the way
I wrote the letter to you and the girls. Here’s another, with my love and
greeting. I said I’d do this with trimmings. This is the beginning.”
We gave him fresh paper, and he wrote rapidly, in winding circles,
starting at the edge of the table and finishing at the center: “Now I’ll
do it this way, all around the family circle. All of you in, and I am not
left out.” Diagonally across the whole in bold script, “Frederick.”
In moving the paper again, it was torn a little. Mr. Gaylord made some
suggestion as to the way it should be handled, and Lois humorously
complained that he was “always interfering with other people’s purposes.”
Beginning at the upper right-hand corner of the table, Frederick wrote
along the edges, and then in circles toward the center, as indicated in
the diagram:
[Illustration]
“Don’t you mind, Dad. Let them laugh. You and I will be laughing at them
presently, from all four points of the compass.” Again his name was
signed diagonally across the whole.
“I always did like circuses, and I can be a four-ringed one now, all by
myself, if I have a sympathetic audience,” was his next achievement,
done once more in circles from edges to center, but this time his name
was signed in the center, in small script, surrounded by a flourish.
When again a clear surface offered, he drew a large circle around the
edge of the table—the symbolism of which, curiously, occurred to none of
us until the next day—and then ran to the center, to circle toward the
edge: “All of us together again, and all being happy in the consciousness
that this is real and eternal union, and that from now on we are going to
keep our family circle intact.”
Some one suggested that unquestionably he was keeping his promise to “do
it with trimmings,” and in an intricate pattern, impossible to describe
clearly, he replied: “Sure! I’m doing all the trimmings I can think of,
and after a minute or two I’ll think of more.”
By this time the astonishment and curiosity aroused by these performances
had perceptibly lowered the emotional pressure, and the interview again
proceeded more normally.
Not unnaturally, in this first family reunion Frederick’s messages were
chiefly personal. Frequently, in pauses, he made enthusiastic little
circles, as has been his custom from the first, and I asked him whether
it was the circle of infinity, all-inclusive.
“Yes, partly. Put out all disturbing factors and all forces of
disintegration, add more to eternity and infinity—and that is the circle.”
“Good night,” he said, a little later. “I’ll stay here to-night and as
long as Margaret stays. You’ll talk often, won’t you?”
The next night, he began with a suggestion that the rest do the talking,
adding: “I’ll listen and answer questions.” After some discussion
of purpose, in its personal application, and inquiries concerning
other members of the family on his plane, Mr. Wylie asked whether his
grandfather could talk to him in this way.
“I can get him, I think, by to-morrow,” Frederick replied. “He’s
sheltering a lot of poor, undeveloped wretches who have come out of
conditions not making for fitness or growth. He teaches, and urges, and
offers them opportunity, and is too busy and helpful to come away often.”
After this had been written, I was told that this man, during his earthly
life, had devoted time and money to providing opportunity for others;
never offering charity, but building roads that the unemployed might
have work, exchanging some commodity needed by a poor man for some other
of which he had enough and to spare, and always encouraging his less
fortunate fellows to retain and develop their self-respect.
Of another on his plane, now a healer, Frederick said: “I haven’t seen
him. Every healing force here, as with you, is occupied with war-stricken
forces. They come so dazed, and sometimes terrified—and almost always
startled, if they come from battle. And all our healing forces are
required every minute.”
This reminded Mrs. Gaylord of an experience of her own, a few days
before, when her pencil had written detached words, suggestive of battle.
“Lost ... many lost ... another dead ... shot ...” etc. She asked whether
this came from a friend, and was answered in the negative. To her
inquiry, “Did you live here?” the reply was: “Near.” She asked for the
name, and it was written clearly, “K——.” A few days later the name of
Lieutenant K——, of a neighboring city, headed the American casualty list.
“K—— caught his one chance before his consciousness dimmed,” Frederick
commented. “He is now too bewildered to talk. Just after what people who
don’t know call death, there is a moment of singular clarity and vision.
He happened to catch you in that moment.”
We fell to wondering, then, whether these messages could be flashed to us
from a distance, or whether the person communicating must be present,
and I asked Frederick whether he could send me a message from a distance.
“No, but we travel in a flash.”
We who had had some experience in receiving these communications spoke of
the fear we all had lest we might unconsciously influence the pencil, at
times, to write our own imaginings.
“You people have such a fear of imagining things that you shut out a
lot we try to tell you,” Frederick interpolated. “We can’t get through
doubt, bitterness, resentment, or selfish grief. Fear can be conquered,
but doubt shuts the door in our faces. Please relax a little of this too
rigid vigilance, and at least entertain the idea we are trying to put
over.”
“Do I shut things out by too much vigilance?” I asked.
“You bet you do! But you do it for the best of reasons. You can’t take
chances of giving the wrong message.”
To a question about the desire of others on his plane to communicate with
those here, he replied: “They are all eager to get in touch, just now.
Every one of us here is pulling every thread of connection he can there,
because this is a critical time and because never before in the world’s
history have so many people been reaching out for the thing that means
co-operation and progress, in the biggest and broadest sense, if we can
only reach them and convince them that we are all working together, and
that we here can help if they will let us.”
Mr. Wylie spoke of some one whose “make-up,” he thought, might enable him
to receive these communications.
“Make-up has a lot to do with it,” Frederick returned, “but the peculiar
quality of following accurately a thought put forth by a force so
subtle that science has failed to detect it is a thing that none of you
recognize until it has demonstrated itself.”
Some one asked about a prominent politician, whom Frederick had known
well in this life, and he replied: “—— is working his way back to a place
in the forces of Production. He had a great opportunity, and used it for
personal ends, and now he is learning how to use it for Progress. He
is not destructive, nor even deterrent. He is a fine force, delayed a
little.”
“Have you ever seen my mother and father?” Mr. Gaylord asked, thereby
eliciting the most rapidly written communication—with the possible
exception of one coming the next night—that I have ever taken, the force
moving the pencil being so strongly applied, at moments, that the
instrument was almost pulled out of my fingers.
It should be explained that in this appeal to his father Frederick was
addressing neither reluctance nor doubt, but a certain mental tensity,
resulting from deep emotion, deeply repressed.
“Yes, I had Grandmother at Mrs. Z——’s one day,” he began. “She is very
anxious to talk to you, but she has gone on to a life, or a plane, beyond
the one I am on, and I can’t always reach her. I hope to get her some
time before Margaret goes home.... She never wholly left you, any more
than I have. She tried for years to tell you she was there, and she wants
to come back as soon as possible and tell you herself that there is no
death, no separation, no cause for pain, or grief, or fear, or sadness of
parting, except as it is made in the hearts of those who do not know the
truth.
“We are nearer to you than you are to each other, Dad, and we can prove
it, if you will let go of yourselves and take hold of us. We want to
come to you. We do come to you. We try and try to tell you that there
is nothing to grieve about, nothing to dread. Only love, and hope, and
growth, and beauty of completer union. But we can’t do it alone. We
must have a free heart, a free mind, a free hope to come into. Give us
that, and we will show you that we are more truly your own—not your own
flesh and blood, but your own purpose and force, which was one in the
beginning, and will inevitably be one in the end. We want to make it one
now. Don’t you, Dad? Won’t you try to let the bars down and take us in?
We’ll come, and we’ll all be happier than you’ve ever been in all your
life yet, because the Eternal Purpose is Unity, and we can begin it right
here and now, if you there will join us and be part with us, as we with
you, of the glorious and happy and (O) irresistible movement toward the
great end—which, after all, is not an end, but an eternal and infinite
growth toward bigger things.
“It is a big gospel we are giving you, sir; a man’s gospel; a gospel of
hope and beauty and construction. And I am asking you to let me come
in again to your every-day life, to let the dread and misgiving and
unhappiness go, to think of us here—all of us who are yours—as still
yours, still with you, still loving and working and hoping with you and
for you; and if you can do that, I promise you we shall all be happier
than any of us have ever been before.