“You see, sir, we are all of the forces of Progress. We are all for

Light, and Building, and Justice, and Truth, and when one of us holds

back we are all held back. This is the first time it has been possible

to tell you all this. This is the first time we have been able to reach

you freely, in a way you could not mistake. But the people who have

preached the gospel of happiness as a curative force have not been

entirely wrong. They have not been wholly right. But the forces here

cannot possibly affect a tense and resisting mind as they can a relaxed

and receptive one. And the forces here are potent and eager and ready.

You know that must be true, because I am one of them, and the only change

in me—absolutely the only one, Dad—is that I have left the limitations

of the flesh behind and grown in perception and knowledge. I am the same

Boy,[8] plus the better things, and minus the limitations.

“Grandmother is the same, too—plus. She is sweeter, finer, broader,

more loving, than when you knew her. Just as she was, but expanded,

irradiated, deepened. That’s all that death means, so you see it isn’t

death at all, nor separation, nor anything but beauty, and greater love,

and wider opportunity, and higher ideals to live to.

“This is what we want to share with you. We can, now. You can have a

little of our knowledge, while still in that preliminary life. You can

help us and yourselves by realizing and living the purpose that is ours.

You have always lived it, but you haven’t always recognized it. Do that,

recognize it, recognize us, let us in as recognized and essential parts

of your life and hope and happiness, and I shall not need to tell you

that this is a true gospel. You will have proved it for yourself.

“Your son always,

“FREDERICK.”

We were all deeply moved. After a little, Mr. Gaylord asked: “Is there

anything more?”

Frederick began making circles, and his mother said: “He’s so happy!”

“Happy isn’t the word for it! I’m personified radiance and bliss! There

isn’t anything more to-night, except my love to all of you, always—and

to-morrow, and the next day, and all the days to come, we are reunited

and indivisible. That’s enough, isn’t it, sir? Good night. FREDERICK.”

VIII

The next day, that grandfather for whom Mr. Wylie had asked came briefly,

discussing purpose, like the rest.

“I didn’t half understand my own impulses there,” he said, “but I know

now that the best thing a man can do for other men—and for himself,

too—is to give them a chance to develop whatever is in them. Sometimes it

isn’t much, from the point of view of the intelligent man, but the fact

remains that it is force, and the more quickly it is developed the more

quickly the sum of the whole will be raised.”

He closed more personal assurances by saying: “There may be no way to put

it into words, but you may be sure I am watching, and helping, and being

helped, too, by your reaching toward our common purpose.”

When Frederick had taken over the pencil again, Mrs. Gaylord spoke of the

long message to his father the night before, to which he replied: “It was

only a beginning. This thing we have to tell you can’t be given, nor

yet accepted, in a day or a month. That letter last night was a sort of

foreword, just to get us all started even. The proof of the pudding is

coming later.”

Some more or less personal discussion followed, during which Mr. Gaylord

asked whether certain arrangements he contemplated making were wise.

Frederick replied that they were, as far as he could see, adding: “This

is hardly a time for making permanent arrangements, for while the end

of the war is certain, the economic conditions with you, following the

war, are impossible now to foresee. We have no way of knowing how that

struggle between labor and capital, power of foundation and power of

development, will end. That is one of the reasons we are so eager to get

all forces for true progress united now. There are thousands of laboring

men misled. Get them in for our work. There are hundreds of employers

ignorant or indifferent. Turn them out.”

Mr. Gaylord, who had not at that time read the Lessons carefully,

interpreted this as championship of the cause of labor as opposed to

capital. Some one else suggested that every one, employer or laborer, who

was not for united progress, should be “turned out.”

“Sure,” Frederick answered. “Turn out the unions, as they work now. Get

in unity, regardless of class.”

When Mrs. Gaylord inquired about a member of her own family, he replied:

“He has gone on, and I haven’t seen him. To some of us here there comes

a lessening of interest in your life, and an intensified feeling of the

importance of work beyond your plane. He has this interest, I hear, and

very rarely comes back now. There is a lot I want to tell you some time

about the differences and conditions of the many planes, but I can’t do

it now. The first work of those of us who have still close ties there is

to give you all we can of the possibilities and meaning of the life you

live. Some day I’ll tell you what I can of the life ahead, which as yet I

only aspire to.”

“I suppose there’s no use asking whether you inhabit space, or planes, or

stars?” Lois inquired.

“There are things that I can tell you later about those matters of

plane and future progress,” he said, “but there is so much that is more

imperative now that I am told not to tell more, at present, than the

immediate needs of your life require.”

“Do you feel any depression, when you realize the immensity of the

universe and the smallness of each individual?” was the next question.

“That’s a thing you’ve got to learn. There is no force that is not true

force, and no atom so small that its weight doesn’t count. If one atom

is for destruction, that means two atoms lost to construction, the one

that is against us and the one that balances it here, without any forward

movement.”

“Have you seen my father?” Mr. Gaylord asked.

“No. He is a healer now, and has come back from the plane beyond to help

the newly arrived find their balance. I have tried to get in touch with

him, but he is busy and I haven’t yet met him, but still hope to. Few

come back for any work here, and their greater knowledge makes them very

much in demand, just as a great surgeon is with you in times like these.”

Again the talk turned into more personal channels, and Mr. Gaylord asked

a specific question, affecting future arrangements.

“... Your choice will be influenced, probably, by many considerations,

as choice must always be in your life.... I can influence you in ways I

can’t define in words, but I can’t properly tell you how to choose—as

you know better than I. You taught me that, and it’s true. Every fellow

on his own feet.... Not that I’m not eager to help, sir. You understand

that, don’t you? But the way I can help most is by a close and constant

association and suggestion, that still stops short of definite expression

of choice for you. That is your privilege. Mine is to help you see the

way more clearly.”

“Do you know what we are thinking, at all times?”

“Not always. We read most of the thought of the sympathetic forces, and

some of everybody’s. I can’t always answer the thought I read, though I

can sometimes. But Margaret keeps up such a stiff guard, I can’t always

get over a thing she doesn’t know is asked.”

I said I was sorry for that, and did not understand it, as I thought I

had lowered all guards as far as he was concerned.

“You can’t understand all the barricades—and the limitations, too—of

consciousness. Sometimes I sneak one through on you, but you are from

Missouri, all right! You want to see the works before you admit the

applicant.”

After dinner, we talked a little about the publication of these

communications, and of the extent to which personal messages should be

quoted.

As soon as we gave him opportunity, Frederick said: “You people can’t

guess what it means to hear you talking about me, in the old, happy way.

I’ve missed myself terribly, you know.... You’ve been talking about

the book. If you’ll permit a suggestion from me, the plan of copious

quotation from all the interviews that have bearing on the big message,

as well as some characteristic extracts from the more personal messages,

under initials frankly substituted for real ones, is to my notion the way

to do it.... A good deal of what we have been allowed to say was because

this message was given through Margaret, and the rest of us have told

things that illumine and carry on the message for the world. We have all

wanted you of our own to know these things, but the channels through

which this has come to her have been chosen for her fuller conviction,

and to enable her to deliver this with greater force.”

In this connection, it is interesting to note that in every instance

when messages of importance have come, it has been during intercourse

primarily requested by those gone before, who have asked me to send for

the person here through whose co-operation the freest communication could

be established—Frederick writing more fluently to some member of his

family than to me alone, Mary Kendal to Mansfield, David Bruce to his

wife, and so on. Conversely, interviews arranged at the instigation of

persons on our own plane have been generally without satisfactory result.

“We who can tell it clearly, and whom she can absolutely identify,”

Frederick went on, “have had extraordinary fluency, and almost unlimited

authority to speak. We have spoken to our own, and through them to all

who will listen. Keep the personal part of all we have said as sacredly

to yourselves as you like, but my own desire is that the parts of my

messages that will carry conviction or comfort to people suffering in

ignorance of all this may be given to them through you—as your faith and

conviction will lead you to do, I know—not in your name or mine, but in

the spirit of light, healing, and progress we all serve.”

When this was construed as an intimation that he did not want his name

used, he returned: “I have no slightest objection. I have only a feeling

that this personal revelation belongs to you. Use it as you choose. I do

not ask anything, except that you share its essence with those who suffer

as you have suffered. Give them what will relieve them, and do it as you

think best.”

At this point, the question of publication was dropped, though he

returned to it the next day. A short pause followed. Then the touch

on the pencil changed, Frederick’s bolder writing being succeeded by a

smoother, more flowing, and exceedingly rapid script, in a message to Mr.

Gaylord from his mother, for whose early death he had never ceased to

grieve.

“—— dear, this is Mother.

“Frederick told me I could reach you at last. I have had always the

greatest desire to touch you, to tell you that your mother could not

leave you, could not cease to love you, could not leave off watching over

you, hoping for you, guarding your highest hopes and ideals. To have

known the darkness that fell upon you, and to be unable to lighten it,

or to soothe your anguish, made me as sad as one can be in this fine and

everlastingly expanding life. I knew that you must some day come back to

me, and into full knowledge of all that eternal life means, so I could

bear it.

“You have been always a joy and a source of great happiness to me, in

your splendid adherence to the things we know now to be the first and

fundamental principles of life. We did not know, when I was with you, all

the wonders and beauties of the eternal life we talked about. We thought

heaven was quite different from this. But it is heaven, in a much higher

and finer way than anything we dreamed of then, and to be able to come

back to you now—to my boy, through his boy—and tell you all this, is

almost as wonderful and blessed to me as it is to you.

“I have gone on to a life and a work I cannot easily explain to you now.

I have lost touch with the material things of your life. But you, your

purpose, your achievement of force, the love you have never ceased to

give me, the love with which you bless and are blessed by your family—all

these things I know, dear, and have always known.

“For so long, I tried to tell you not to grieve. We have been so close

together, in the ways that are real and infinite. Never grieve again,

dear son, for any loved one coming to this happy life. We do not leave

you. We do not part in any way, except the way of flesh. We are happy,

but can be so much happier if you know us with you and of you, and if you

can come to us in confidence and love and conviction of our life, as we

never cease to go to you.

“Your father wanted me to tell you this is from him as well as from me.

He is doing a great work and cannot come to you now, but he knew that I

should soon come to say this, and he wants you to know that he, too, is

happier in your growing knowledge of our unceasing life, and unceasing

love, and unceasing upward growth.

“Your family are all dear to us as part of you, and therefore part of us.

It is a light increasing the light in which we dwell, to be at last in

this close communion with you. I will come again some time—many times—and

I want you always to think of me as loving you, keeping watch over you,

and living in you and yours.

“Frederick is splendid. You know that. Please be as sure that I am—and

your father, too—always so full of happiness in the thought and knowledge

of you and your love.

“Your loving MOTHER.”

IX

“I am with all of you as I never could be before,” Frederick said, the

next day, “because until we are realized and recognized the communion

can’t be complete. Now I can tell all of you lots of things you can

get without words or messenger. Sometimes you will know they are my

suggestions, sometimes you won’t. But the fact that I am closely and

intimately in touch with you is the important thing for all of us. The

recognition of my definite suggestion will come later, when you are more

accustomed to all this and have learned the little signals by which I

identify myself to you.”

“Can you tell us what those signals are?” some one asked.

“They are like the force I am, too subtle for scientific analysis or

description, but you’ll know them, all of you. This thing can’t be

developed in a minute, you know. Wait, and watch, and let the bars down,

and you’ll know me when I come, in a comparatively short time.”

“Can you tip tables with us?” Lois inquired.

“Yes, probably; but that’s a clumsy way of doing it. Some of you can run

a planchette. None of you are likely to get anything like this.... This

fluency of reception is hardly to be expected. We can talk, however....

You can always get me, for the essential intercourse, and somehow we’ll

get it across.”

“I want you to give your father something like the ‘stop—look—listen’

reminder to me,” his mother said.

“All right; but I can’t do it in cold blood. Let me cogitate, and I’ll

try to think up a password that can’t fail to accomplish the desired

effect. You and Dad are the same purpose in essentials, but your force is

differently applied and can’t be approached in the same way.”

“How far down in the scale does the possession of a soul go?” Mr. Wylie

asked, presently. “How about animals?”

“There is no such thing as soul, in that sense. All purpose is force. All

force personified is individuality. All individuality is eternal. The

development is unequal. The undeveloped force finds quicker development

here. But the force that has been developed to a point of intelligence in

your life, and is not actively put to work, goes down in the scale, is

deterrent, and has to work just as hard to get back as the force that

never has developed at all.”

“Where does the force animating babies come from?” I asked. “What was

little Dick before he was little Dick?”

“That’s what I want to explain, if I can. The force that manifests itself

in animals is a grade higher in force than the vegetable manifestation,

and that higher than inanimate stone and metal. The force of an animal

comes here, to swell the forces that become individual and human through

birth, but individuality begins with human consciousness. All force that

is not human may eventually become human, but there is no persistence of

individuality until birth as a human and more or less productive force

begins it. Animals do not produce anything but their kind. Only man

creates, and that is the eternal attribute.”

“Is there a struggle between purposes to enter a new-born human?”

“Many purposes are latent in every human being from birth. None is

in absolute possession. Life on your plane is one perpetual struggle

between the eternal warring purposes. No newly born child has chosen. The

training of a child should, from the first, be a preparation for battle,

for daily—almost hourly—choice. Diligence, vigilance, purpose to work

unceasingly and against all disintegrating influences, determination to

construct and to progress in spite of anything, mental, moral, physical,

or material—these are the essential things in training a child to live

forcefully and eternally.”

“What becomes of babies who die at birth?”

“They have undeveloped personalities and are developed here. We have

strong forces of Light and Truth devoted to their teaching.”

“When a man is consciously determined to construct, is he ever overcome

by disintegrating forces?”

“Sure thing he is, if he doesn’t fight. Sometimes he sways and recovers.

Read the Lessons. They’ll tell you more every time you read them. They

come from General Headquarters.... The arousing force of this message

is to be measured by conviction manifested in action. Again you are

respectfully referred to the Lessons.”

“It doesn’t seem fair that physical and nervous conditions should affect

one’s ability to resist or receive the forces,” Lois mentioned.

“It doesn’t. You just think it does. The forces of construction are

always eager to come in. The thing you call nervous exhaustion generally

comes from yielding to forces of disintegration. A person yields to one

or more of them, and then is sorry for himself because some doctor

doesn’t rout them. What he needs is to buck up and kick them out

himself.” Evidently he referred here to the nervous disorders arising

from mental disturbances, for the next day he emphasized the government

of physical forces by physical laws.

It was suggested that while many nervous disorders might be controlled

in their incipiency by the person suffering from them, they eventually

get beyond his control, and Frederick replied: “You think so; but there’s

always force where there’s personality, and if it can just be put up to

you, by yourself or another, that the choice in the end is yours and

nobody’s else, you can help yourself. In the end, you help yourself,

anyhow, unless you slide back to protoplasm of purpose. Get busy and buck

up, or backslide and slump. It’s up to every fellow for himself, and

every one who slips back impedes the way for somebody else.”

In the talk following this, some one spoke of the constant teaching of

brotherhood and regard for one’s neighbor as a vicarious gospel.

“Not vicarious,” Frederick corrected. “It is not vicarious to give the

other fellow a chance. No man is his brother’s keeper. No man has a

right to impede construction, unless he’s destructive. But it’s every

personality developed to its highest that makes the strong constructive

army. The weak should have a chance to develop, but no strong force

should yield its purpose. Nothing vicarious about that. Just common sense

and good organization.”

Mr. Gaylord—the successful head of a large manufacturing concern—asked,

with a twinkle: “Can you successfully run a business in accordance with

the principles laid down in these Lessons? Before you answer, I want to

say that I believe it can be done.”

“You’re right, Dad. It can’t be done easily, nor quite consistently, at

present, because of the complexity of modern business conditions. You are

all bound to some extent by association with some one else, whether by a

man, a directors’ board, an association, or a contributing concern. These

all limit, to a certain extent, your freedom of action; but fundamentally

the principle is practicable, and can gradually be put into consistent

practice by uniting with those of your own purpose, instead of with those

who seem expedient.”

That evening, Mrs. Wylie said that the repeated assertions of invisible

forces of construction and of destruction, alertly striving to influence

us, reminded her of the old theories of guardian angels and possessing

devils.

I think it was that night, too, though I made no record of it at the

time, that Mr. Gaylord said, when Frederick’s good night had been

followed by his customary signature: “I wish he’d sign the name I used to

call him by.” Efforts to obtain it then, however, were unsuccessful.

The next day—the last of my visit—Frederick said of a man of whom we

had been talking: “He hasn’t just found himself yet, but he will. He

likes to produce some things, and he will respond to the higher call

to build for the higher end. You can all help him, and yourselves, and

our whole purpose, by calling to the latent builder in him. He wants

to come in, but doesn’t know just where to start.... More effort, more

concentration, more force applied for purpose, is the thing to strive for

first. I can’t tell him how to build. That’s for him to choose.... You

can build together. Each of you helping the other, each of you bringing

effort, willingness, perception, force of various kinds. But first and

foremost, devotion to the purpose of progress, regardless of intervening

difficulties and discouragements. Habit is strong in every human force.

Remember that, and watch—watch for the little masquerading devils of

destruction. They are clever and subtle, and come in plausible guise.

Kick them out and work.... You said this sounded like the old stories of

possession by devils, Sis. It’s not that. The devils of old possessed a

man in spite of himself. The forces of destruction govern him only when

he permits them to. He can always be constructive, if he will. He may do

no more than carry bricks to the mason, but still he builds. The man who

has great opportunity must use it greatly. The little chap can use only

the force he has. Thus endeth this preachment.”

Lois asked whether he had been present at a moment when several members

of the family had been in great physical danger, and he replied that he

had come at once, from a great distance, in response to a summons from a

force “that is always with you when I am not.”

“There is always a connecting force between you and the free forces

here,” he explained. “We are always in touch that way. That is equally

true of the forces for destruction. The greater forces for good or evil

can be instantly summoned to reinforce your choice.”

This led to a discussion of prayer, in which certain members of our group

had lost faith.

“You can always summon help, if you call the (O) eternal constructive

forces to build with you,” he told us. “But most people pray for

physical or material aid. Physical forces follow physical laws. Forces

of eternity affect them to some extent, but do not govern them. Prayer

with other people is a sort of lying down on the Infinite and giving up

personal effort. The prayer that is most truly and promptly answered

is the one that begins and ends with a determination not to yield to

weakness, or fear, or the other disintegrating powers. Prayer implies an

open mind, and is too often made with a closed one. Not wilfully closed,

but fearfully, and therefore not truly open.”

“Physical forces, Mother, were too much for my physical resistance,”

he said, when she spoke of her effort to hold him here. “No amount of

prayer, or influence of the forces of eternal progress, could affect

that, beyond the extent to which it was affected. That is the reason it

was a long fight. The forces helped all they could. But the physical

thing is a minor thing, after all. The eternal thing is all that really

counts. And to be able to put you, whom I love so much, in touch with

the eternal while still in that preliminary life, is worth all that

I—and you—went through to make it possible. To be able to pass on this

knowledge to that life of yours is worth anything.”

“Isn’t the time coming when we shall be able to control our physical

condition better than we do now?” Mrs. Wylie asked.

“Yes, the mind—and what we call force in the eternal sense—has great

influence over personal physical force. It performs no miracles, but

prevents much yielding to what is really the forces of destruction,

trying to hamper and delay accomplishment of any constructive kind....

The forces of disintegration are the busy boys, and it takes force and

purpose and struggle to keep them out.”

“Is our decision to use your first name in the book right?” his father

asked.

“Yes, sir. I am very happy about that. It will identify me, and therefore

the message, to many people I should like to reach personally, and will

not identify you to the public at large. I should not like to have Mother

and the girls annoyed by publicity, but that was for you to choose.

The message, as you know, is important and general. But to a lot of

fellows I want to reach, Frederick will carry where Z. X. would fail to

convince.... Your attitude about the book pleases me, too.... You and

I both know the force of the primitive masculine feeling that a man’s

family is his own, and its affairs private and personal. This time, the

personal affair is also the eternal affair, vital and illuminating. And

the fact that I have been one of the channels through which this came,

that it was the search for me that made Margaret begin this work, must

not be confused in anybody’s mind with the fact that the message is more

than a message—it is a revelation. For that reason, you and I both will

gladly sink the personal reluctance and remember the purpose we serve.”

A long pause ensued, while we sat soberly about the table, waiting. Then

some one suggested that perhaps he wished us to ask questions.

“All I want is to talk like folks to the family,” he announced, with a

force and rapidity amounting to emphasis. “For the love of Mike, stop

thinking of me as different, and translated, and serious, and solemn! I

do preach a lot, I admit. That’s for reasons you know. But I’m just as

fond of a joke as I ever was, and I refuse to be set aside as a superior

being! Come on, now, count me in as the Boy, and out as a thing to be

treated with solemn reverence! I’m myself, and I want it recognized!”

After this, the talk drifted, much as it might have done had he returned

visibly after a long absence, touching here and there.

Presently Lois asked, referring to a friend in Europe: “Did you know H——

was married? And to an American woman?”

“No, I didn’t know that. He should marry a free force, like an American

girl. He was too blamed medieval in his feeling about females. We are all

a bit inclined that way, we men, but American women are doing a lot to

free force, the world over. They are more nearly free in purpose than any

other women in the world, more truly individuals—when they don’t abuse

it, and turn into dolls. American girls help women everywhere. They don’t

stand for any harem stunts. H—— will learn a lot of things he needs to

know, if she’s the real thing.”

Concluding a long reply to a personal question of his father’s, he said:

“Know that I am enjoying every pleasure you take, doubly, once for you

and twice for myself. There’s your watchword, Dad! One for myself, and

two for the Boy. Remember that every time you are worried, every time you

are tempted to overwork, every time you put off physical repairs, every

time you feel depressed, every time you need rest and relaxation and

pleasure, every time you play with Mother and the girls, every time you

renew your fellowship with other men—always remember: One for myself, and

two for the Boy.”

That evening, Mrs. Gaylord said that she had received a message about a

relative in the West, purporting to come from her brother on the next

plane, which she thought was not true, but one of her daughters told her

that a letter received the night before had verified it.

“Mother dearest, all messengers have that trouble,” Frederick warned her.

“There are certain things concerning details of your plane, that will

come to you through forces around you, that get confused in transmission.

That’s as near as I can come now to explaining what happens. Some day,

I can perhaps tell you more about it. But don’t let that disturb or

discourage you. The explanation is as natural as a deflected ray of

light, or an electric current grounded.[9] It is a part of the conditions

under which we work with your plane, and is never encountered regularly

or continuously. Certain detached experiences of that sort come to every

messenger. This one you mention was not one of them, but I tell you this

now, because the experience may come to any of you, including Margaret,

any day. The current gets mixed. That’s the best way I can express it.

But it doesn’t persist for any length of time.”

We talked about the force moving the pencil. Mr. Gaylord asked whether

I wrote the words, after receiving the message through my mind, and I

replied that the force, on the contrary, seemed to be applied to the

pencil from without—sometimes above my fingers, sometimes below them—my

only participation being to hold the pencil upright and to follow its

movement. Mrs. Wylie mentioned the theory that the message comes through

the subconscious mind, the muscles of the hand supplying the motive

power. We asked Frederick whether he could tell us anything about it.

“The subconscious mind is like the battery,” he said, slowly, “but the

connection is made through the hand. The motive power for the pencil

does not come, as scientists claim, from the subconscious mind, but

from the subtle force I mentioned, put into connection with the hand by

certain sympathetic and sensitive conditions of the subconscious mind.

The comparison is not exact. The force is not electric, and has certain

definitely distinctive qualities not to be expressed in any terms now

familiar to your plane; but in time words will be found—or coined—to

express this connection.”

Some weeks afterward, Mr. Kendal obtained a little additional information

about this unknown force from his wife.

In endeavoring to establish communication with Frederick, through a

pencil, one of his sisters had been overwhelmed by insistent, and

frequently unknown, personalities seeking expression, and had had some

rather violent and annoying manifestations of the force they employ.

“You mustn’t do too much of this writing stunt,” Frederick now advised

her, “unless you give up a lot of other things. You can’t burn your

candle of force at both ends. Margaret gave up a lot of outside

activities long ago. You are sensitive, and could do this in time very

freely, but the receptivity is decidedly a strain upon the messenger at

best, and if any amount of writing is to be done, you can’t do other

things, too.” After mentioning that she would probably be beset by “any

number of yearning forces,” he added: “So either say ‘not at home’ to

anybody but Uncle J—— and Bud ...”

I halted the pencil, supposing that he had intended to write either Boy

or Brother, and that there had been a mistake in transmission.

Lois glanced at the sheet, and ejaculated: “Buddie!”

“That’s the name I’ve been waiting for!” her father exclaimed.

The pencil then went on, completing the name as if no interruption had

occurred: “... die, or give up other things, or quit.”

Afterward, when it had been explained that certain members of the family

had called Frederick Buddie, Bud, or Buzz, variations of Lois’s baby

attempts at Brother, he added: “I’ve been trying to get that through, but

the Missourian held me to known names.”

At first, names came to me with little difficulty, but latterly—possibly

beginning with the Annie Manning episode—I have been generally unable to

transmit them. Some one asked Frederick the reason for this.

“Because names are specific,” he said. “She knows my name. She knew I

had a special name, besides. But while an idea expressed in familiar

words can be transmitted, however unfamiliar the idea, the definite and

specific spelling of an unfamiliar name is very difficult to get through,

especially if the messenger is a little nervous about it, or constantly

alert for possible mistakes. We can sometimes get it through, as I did

this, in a rush of other stuff.”

[A few days later, when I was very tired, receiving with difficulty,

and therefore questioning every statement made through the pencil, Mary

K. said: “You are the most mentally ... el ... elas ... el ... elastic

is not the word. Means elastic and masterful ... impregnable messenger

I ever tried to work through.... That is the reason names are almost

impossible to send through you. You try to get them, but the almost

invincible character of your mental resistance to deception makes it

difficult for us to penetrate where a doubt exists in your mind. A name

is specific to the highest degree, and resistance, however unconscious

and unrecognized, prevents its free transmission.”]

“You will come again, won’t you?” Frederick asked, as the hour of my

departure approached. “I have had a bully time talking to the family, and

I can do better work now, because they are all happier, and all with me

in conscious purpose. It’s true that every bit of conscious co-operation

with us helps us, as well as you. So that ‘One for myself and two for the

Boy’ is not bunk, Dad. It’s the real thing, for both of us.”

With a final brief message to every member of the group, the last of

these L—— interviews closed.[10]

X

The experience at L——, while stimulating, was also fatiguing, and for

several days thereafter I was tired and dull, receiving with difficulty

the few communications that were attempted.

Tuesday evening, April 23d, two of Anne Lowe’s friends wished to talk to

her, but were told that she was busy and could not come. Mary K. answered

some of their questions, concluding: “Anne sends love to you both, and

says please come again soon. She is sorry she can’t come now.”

After giving me the twelfth Lesson, Mary K. had said: “That is the last

formal lesson. The rest will be given in other ways.”

“You mean through interviews and personal messages?”

“Not entirely. You will be given signed letters, by great forces.”

Afterward, she mentioned these prospective communications sometimes as

“letters,” sometimes as “talks,” but Mary Kendal told us, May 13th, that

this intention had been temporarily abandoned, as sufficient material for

the book had already been given. Evidently this decision had been reached

only recently, however, for an attempt to give me the first letter was

frustrated on the 25th of April, and a second period of confusion and

partial control by invading forces ensued.

During the morning, Mary K. prepared me for this letter, in a

communication written quickly and easily, as follows:

“Men will ask the theory of the letters that are coming to them through

you. This must be explained.

“As the Lessons have been given to me to deliver to the world through

you, so the letters that are to come will be given to me by the forces

from whom they come. The reason that they come through me is that I reach

you more freely, when you are alone, than any other force known to you

and therefore commanding your confidence....

“The Lessons came from great forces combined. They represent unity of

all purposes, and were framed by the co-operation and agreement of the

greatest forces of each constructive purpose, to reach the consciousness

of men in general terms of your plane.

“The reason that these forces do not come to you personally is that not

all of them can reach you as freely as I do. Your simile of wireless

telegraphy is a good one. It does not fully explain the connection

between you and me, but is as good an explanation as the progress

of physical science enables you on that plane to follow. The full

explanation will inevitably be possible, as physical scientists are

already beginning to work toward it.

“You and I may be regarded as the receiving and sending instruments

through which forces here transmit their messages. You receive from many

other instruments, I send through others. But for impersonal messages you

and I are most completely in accord, and thus it is that these greater

forces use us as a means of communication. The first letter is ready now.”

It chanced, unfortunately, that I was called away, and when I was

prepared to take the letter, later in the day, almost two hours were

consumed in an attempt to write the name of its author, who was described

as “a leading educator.” Eventually I was assured that “Matthew Alden”

was correct, but, while the name was repeatedly written, I had a strong

impression that it was not what Mary K. had intended to write. Reminding

myself of previous difficulties in obtaining names, I tried to believe

that the delay and fatigue incident to this effort had contributed to my

doubt of its authenticity. But the doubt remained.

The long letter which followed was also received with great difficulty

and many delays, and proved, when completed, to be a verbose jumble of

platitudes concerning educational methods, with here and there a striking

phrase. It was signed, “Matthew Al....” By this time, I was excessively

tired and could obtain but one statement from Mary K. “You have not the

name right.”

Later in the evening, I took up a pencil, and it wrote: “Mar ... Matthew

Ald....” The name was not finished.

“Isn’t Mary K. here?”

“No. No, she will return.”

“She said she would be with me through this work.”

“She will again. Mary K....” Illegible lines followed.

“Is this Mary K. now?”

“No. Mary K. has gone. This is Mar....” Again the reply trailed off

indeterminately.

“Mary Kendal?”

“No. Mary K. has gone. Matthew.”

Eventually, failing to elicit any response from Mary K., I asked whether

Matthew had anything to say to me, and he replied with vague phrases, so

reminiscent of the “letter” that I impatiently gave up the attempt for

the day.

The next day, Friday, Matthew’s signature was the only one obtainable,

but I have no record of any messages. I think I refused to take them from

him. Saturday morning, I tried again.

“Matthew ald....”

“I want Mary K. Why isn’t she here?”

“Mary K. will be ~ret~ ... eternally with you.”

“Then isn’t she here now?”

“No, she was called away. She will come back soon.”

“Was that letter from the ‘educator’ yours?”

“No, I am not a force for light. I am for truth and healing.”

“Did you deliver it to me?”

“No.”

“Then why was your name given before it?”

“Mary K. ~to~ ... ~taken~ ... ~told~ ... ~took~ ... tried to tell you I

was here and would guard you. She will return soon.”

“Do you know about the letter? Did she give it to me?”

“Not all of it. She will explain. I am just Mary K.’s ~tatl~ ... ~to~ ...

~tr~ ... ~tried~ ... trained substitute.”

Asked how he could be her substitute, when admittedly not of her

purpose, he said: “Healing is her purpose and mine, and truth the best

guard.”

At this time, the Farrow mystery was still unsolved. Not until after this

second prolonged experience was I given any explanation of these attacks

by opposing forces, or of the conditions governing such struggles, and

while I was less disquieted than upon the first occasion, I was still

puzzled and uneasy, strongly suspecting interference of some kind.

That afternoon, Mrs. Gaylord and one of her daughters, passing through

the city, came in for a brief talk with Frederick, and while there was at

first some interference, he was soon writing with his customary clarity

and vigor.

When his sister asked about a personality aggressively demanding

utterance through her pencil, he said: “Not much! Don’t give in to

him.... Don’t you let anybody you don’t know tell you anything. It may

be true and it may not, and it’s not a game to play any more blindfolded

than you have to be. You have to take a good deal on faith, at best.

Identify anybody who comes, as far as possible.”

“Can you tell me from whom that ‘letter’ came?” I asked.

“That letter got deteriorated in transmission. It short-circuited, so to

speak, and was somewhat damaged. The next, we hope, will be better.”

After my friends’ departure, I caught Mary K. briefly, when she told me

the source of the letter she had tried to deliver, adding that it had

been too much interrupted. “Other forces tried to intervene and dominated

you temporarily,” she said, after which the pencil wrote only “Ma ... Ma

... Ma....” sometimes surrounding the letters with two reversed circles.

I suggested Maynard, but the answer was, “No ... Ma ... Ma ... Matt....”

“I am not a disintegrating force,” was the reply to my accusation. “I am

Mary K....”

“Mary K. back?”

“... no ... her substitute. Mary K. will return soon.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes. Mary K. is here.” This was followed by Mary K.’s characteristic and

vigorous signature. “You should know me.”

“It seems easy for the others to masquerade,” I mentioned.

“Not to your touch,” she returned, indicating a means of identification

that I had hesitated to trust.

“Why do you leave me?” I demanded.

“You know I have followed light, healing, and justice all my life,” was

her retort. “Why doubt me now? I leave you that ... Ma ... Ma ... Ma ...”

By a curious coincidence, the names of several persons connected with

these communications begin with those two letters—Mary K., Mary Kendal,

Mansfield, Maynard, Margaret—and I suggested each of them in turn, before

it occurred to me that “M. A.” signified Matthew Alden, the usurper.

That evening was spent with Anne Lowe and her friends—Anne in one of her

whimsical moods, jesting most of the time, with occasional more serious

moments.

Speaking of a dog for whose death they had grieved, she said: “He came,

and grew into a better force, and some day he’ll make an adorable baby.

Part of him, anyway. He was almost human. Every force goes on to a higher

one—unless it slides back. In the end it’s got to go on, so why fret

and fume about a step either way? Whichever way it is, it’s one step

nearer the end, and the end is inevitable and fine. If people must have

coasting, let them coast. They’ll begin climbing that much sooner.”

“Matt ...” was written once, but with one voice we refused to talk to

him. Mary K. followed, with a reference to a promise she had made to

Ruth, several weeks before. Then Anne again, with an apparently clear

connection.

Sunday, I was unable to get anything from Mary K. I was told she was

away, doing my work. Monday morning, M. A. told me that Mary K. would be

“through with the task soon,” and wrote various phrases intended to be

misleading. In my note-book, at this point, I find the following entry:

“I am beginning to get M. A.’s messages a little more freely, but they

are still slow and difficult.”

Upon the departure of a visitor, late in the afternoon, I was conscious

of a strong summons, and of a strange sense of turmoil and commotion.

When I took up the pencil, the applied force was very strong at moments,

then ceased utterly—sometimes sharply, in the middle of a word, or with a

letter only half formed. Occasionally, the pencil was dragged down until

it almost lay flat on the paper, and cancelations were frequent.

“Matthew Alden is ~destructive~ ... Ma ... M. A.... Matthew is destr....

des ... ~de~ ... disturbed about Mary K. She means to be the force ~de~

... to ~have~ ... han ... handle you, but she ~destr~ ... has not ~done~

... been ~here~ ... held to her purpose, and has departed to the other

side of the world. She must be held firmly to her purpose.”

Knowing Mary K.’s steadfastness in all things, I said that this was

absurd.

“She will be ~pursued~ ... ~bett~ ... forced to strong pleading to be

allowed to do the rest of the letters. She should be having a following

of our forces. She has been detained for a long time. Matthew Alden ...

is having a battle.... Matthew has been defeated and ... M. A.... Matthew

is de ... det ...”

Bewildered and irritated, I demanded: “What does this mean?”

“Means that the ~powers~ ... forces of ~de~ ... construction are

defeated. We have been beaten.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” I said. “Or do you mean the military

forces? Is Germany winning a battle to-day?”

“No, that is the least of it.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Germany will win?”

“Yes, we are defeated. Her forces have reassembled, and have helped her

slaughter ours.” Again I said I did not believe it. “M. A.... Matthew is

doing his best.”

“You said he was defeated.”

“He lost a fight.”

“If you are Mary K.’s substitute, why doesn’t she come to the rescue?” I

asked.

“She didn’t. She believes Matthew held out.... Message from Mary K.

Margaret, I do.... I do fight for you.” I asked if Mary K. were writing.

“No. Go to high forces for help. Only be forceful for us first. Mary K.

will do her best for forces of light and progress. Matthew is better and

danger is passing. ~M. A.~” I demanded Mary K. “Not this time. All the

forces have gathered.... She ~should~ ... said be forceful.”

Saying that the whole thing seemed absurd, I asked whether it had to do

with Germany and the war, or with the book and me—provided it had to do

with anything, which I began to question.

“It is the ~flander~ ... it is the ~battle~ ... book, not the ~godse~ ...

god sent war.”

Amazed, I questioned: “Is God-sent war right?”

After some delay—when one of the numerous blanks occurred, all force

being withdrawn from the pencil—the impression of tumult instantly

ceased, leaving a sense of sudden quiet and peace. Then—“Mary K. Mary K.

Mary K.”

“That feels like Mary K.,” I said.

“It means Mary K., too.”

“What did all that mean?”

“Meant that the forces of disintegration have had control of you for

days, at moments. Matthew was a force for fear.”

When I asked whether she had been away she wrote quickly: “No, not

for one instant. He held me back, and called to your fear in accents

of truth.... We have the forces all about us, and sometimes we are

overpowered and compelled to let them through temporarily, but they can

always be fought away in time.”

Brisk circles of affirmation followed my suggestion that possibly this

explained the Farrow episode, and she made the statement previously

quoted: “We had a terrific struggle for you then. We told you the truth,

but the other forces controlled the pencil.”

Weeks afterward, I asked her to explain more fully this dual control, and

her reply seems to me singularly illuminating.

“The connection with the pencil has no influence on your consciousness.

We may control the consciousness, through purpose and its unity, even

though other forces control the material instrument.”

This seems not only to show why these messages are written sometimes

with and sometimes without the messenger’s previous knowledge of their

content, but also to offer a possible explanation of phenomena of a much

wider range.

To my great surprise, Mary Kendal announced herself a day or two after

this, having preceded Mansfield, she said, because I was “fairly

beleaguered by the enemy” in an attempt to prevent the publication of the

message.

In spite of this reinforcement, however, M. A. persisted in attempts to

engage my attention. On one occasion, he invited me to “try a little

change” and talk to him. On another, he asked me to let him write, as he

had “a long story to tell” about my husband, who was out of town. Again,

he assured me that I had disappointed “them,” that “they” felt that I

had failed as a messenger, and that Mary K. had departed permanently.

Still again, when confusion seemed to have overtaken the book project, he

declared, quite frankly: “We have stopped you now. M. A.”

No longer troubled by these intrusions, however, I never permitted him

to use the pencil after his identity had been discovered. Occasionally

I was deceived for a moment, and not infrequently it was his failure to

complete a sentence or a word that betrayed him.

“He defeats himself by his fear, like all cowards,” Mary K. said, one

day, and when I mentioned that his messages lacked continuity, she

returned: “No coward is consecutive. How could he be?”

These were by no means the last of the encounters with Matthew. Mr.

Kendal arrived on the 7th of May, and a night or two later, when several

of those interested in these communications were together, M. A. made

his appearance again. For some time his initials followed every attempt

to establish communication with our invisible friends, but eventually we

obtained Mary Kendal’s clear signature, and a message, slowly written,

with frequent pauses, during which the personality striving to oppose her

was gradually overcome. M. A.’s erratic touch was occasionally evident,

lessening in strength as Mary’s steady, gentle control increased.

“Come on,” she said, finally. “We are ready for a little fun now, and

we will leave the more serious matters until we have more truly a clear

field.”

Accordingly, we abandoned our intended inquiry, for the moment, resorting

to persiflage, in which she took an active part, writing with increased

fluency.

“Laughter is a constructive force, children,” she told us, when things

were going smoothly again. “Remember that when you fight fiends.... If we

keep our touch close, and laugh like that, with real mirth, they can’t

get in.”

Later that evening, Anne Lowe came for a moment, just to tell us, she

said, that we had made a step in learning what laughter that is from the

heart will do. “It is protective, constructive, curative, and the devil

for devils. They can’t get over, or around, or through it. That’s your

best weapon and your best protection, aside from fundamental purposes.

Use it, and more power to your—what is it you laugh with? Diaphragm, or

what?”

The next night, when conditions were normal from the first, we asked Mary

Kendal about this incident, and she said: “It was just a massed attack,

which will occur from time to time. They will fight as long as they

exist, but the virulence and violence of their present efforts is due to

our united attack on them.”

An interesting and illuminating variation of these occasional sorties

occurred during an interview between a man of whose personal relations

and interests I have only the most casual knowledge, and a personality on

the next plane whom I knew not at all.

The first messages to him, as to most of the others, concerned purpose

and its unity. Apparently not convinced of the authenticity of their

source, he repeatedly asked for an intimate, characteristic, personal

message. Not receiving it, he asked a question relating to an entirely

imaginary situation—“just to see,” as he afterward explained.

The question was answered in detail, immediately followed by the

statement, “Phil fears too much.”

Suspecting interference, from the peculiar movement of the pencil, I

asked him who Phil was, and when he replied that he knew no such person,

I demanded to know who was writing.

“M. A.” This signature was not complete, but the reply to a question

in this connection, purporting to come from Mary K., was followed by

a vigorous repetition of M. A.’s initials, inclosed in two reversed

circles—his characteristic signature when in full control of the pencil.

My visitor then admitted that he had asked a fictitious question,

but attempts to learn who had answered it resulted in contradictory

assertions from various sources, and knowing the difficulty of

re-establishing a connection once effectually broken, I refused to

continue the interview.

“The integrity of the seeker,” Mary K. said, the next day, “is the

messenger’s only protection from disintegrating force during an

interview. These forces should be persistently repelled, not invited.

Ignorance of their presence and power frequently opens a way for them,

as in this instance. Absolute sincerity and candor are essential to

the maintenance of a connection with constructive forces, in these

interviews.”

“Forces of disintegration do not wait to be invited,” she asserted,

on another occasion. “They constantly attack, and seize the first

opportunity to take possession. We, also, watch and call, and enter where

we can. But the idea of original sin is so strongly implanted in the

minds of most men, that an assumption that disintegrating force can only

enter where it is invited is inevitable. It must be clearly understood

that attack by forces of disintegration does not imply weakness, or fear,

or sinful desire. It implies only a desire on the part of the attacking

force to destroy. That there are individuals given to disintegration is

another matter. Those most desirous of construction and progress are more

often attacked by persistent, massed forces of destructive purpose. To be

conscious of this is to be protected, to some degree. For that reason, we

urge the publication of these truths, that the struggle may no longer be

waged in ignorance and doubt and confusion.”

“Does ‘massed forces of destructive purpose’ imply some combination, or

co-operation, or co-ordination, among disintegrating forces?” Mary K. was

asked, at another time.

“Yes, they combine every appealing force, as we do. One man may answer

to doubt, fear, cupidity, and envy. Another to malice, doubt, and lust.

Any forces that can reach him mass themselves in attack and call on their

purposes in him to respond.”

“Then there must be a considerable degree of intelligence among them. You

said they would become constructive when intelligent.”

“When intelligent enough. I never meant to imply that the purposes and

forces of destruction are unintelligent. They are not fully intelligent.

They are not balanced, not fully animated. All forces of construction

comprehend destruction. No forces of destruction comprehend construction.

They are intelligent and wily in destruction, but fail to apprehend its

futility.”

“Are they what we on this plane call uneducated, unlearned, ignorant in

that sense?”

“They are sometimes found on your plane among the highly educated,

learned, and powerful. Here we regard them as undeveloped forces, to be

fought unceasingly until they consent to become constructive.”

“You don’t call that coercing your brother, do you?” I asked.

“No, we do not compel them to construct, if they would destroy by

preference. We oppose them until they perceive that they must fail, and

seek light. Then we accept them, instruct them, and are stronger....

The forces opposing us have no faith, hence no knowledge of a future.

They dread destruction, fear the end of existence, deny a future, and

constantly seek to destroy the inevitable.”

In this connection, Mr. Kendal once asked Mary: “What do the evil forces

think they’re trying to do? Have they lost the great primary idea? Was

there a great primary idea? Or are they just bandar-logging it around

in a chaotic forest of spiritual upas-trees, screaming at anything they

happen to see?”

“There was no great primary idea of destruction,” she returned. “A lot of

idle force gathered together, and finding itself behind the procession

in strength, radiance, and beauty, began envying and coveting and

backbiting, and from that to destruction is a logical and inevitable

progression. Why is anybody among you envious, or malicious, or cowardly,

or destructive? There is no great idea behind it. They see they are

behind somebody else in something, and instead of developing what

constructive power they have of their own, they, hate the person who has

more and try to destroy him, or his reputation, or his property. There

you have concrete examples of all the idea there is in destructive

purpose. It’s spiritual unintelligence.”

“Why did they quit Germany?” he asked, then. “Isn’t the apotheosis of

such personal and deterrent and soul-driving and dominating purposes just

their caliber?”

“They see the forces of progress gathering among you, and know that

they cannot win through Germany. She still follows their methods, but

without their help, while every vibration of progressive and co-operative

purpose among you enables us to help you more. So they have left her to

the fruits of their union, the consequence inevitable, and hatch fresh

mischief themselves.”

XI

On the evening of his arrival, May 7th, Mr. Kendal asked his wife whether

she could stay with us during his visit to New York, and she replied

that she would outstay him, unless the forces attacking me were defeated

before his departure.

“It really helps, then, for us to get together here,” he inferred.

“Yes, indeed, it helps. All combination of force adds by the sum of its

participation to the original amount of force combined.”

Taken in conjunction with other, similar assertions in this

connection—“Its force is freed and multiplied by the sum of your

participation”; “For every vibration of pure constructive purpose among

the Allied forces, we have added two”; “Force united is more powerful by

half than similar forces separately striving”; etc.—it seems probable

that these expressions were intended as figures of speech, emphasizing

the increased potency of united purpose on our plane and the ability of

the free forces to reinforce it in proportion to its actual vitality,

rather than as mathematical statements of the exact degree to which this

reinforcement and co-operation may be carried.

Mentioning that sometimes they seemed to make a distinction between

purpose and force, and again to use the terms interchangeably, Mr. Kendal

said he would like to know the character of each. “Is purpose like the

direction of an electric current, and force like amperage and voltage?”

he asked. “Or is purpose the road, and force the velocity in following

it? Is purpose qualitative, and force quantitative? Is the distinction

between them along some of these lines?”

“It is along all those lines,” was the reply. “Purpose is the force that

draws. Force is the purpose that pushes.”

Like various others to whom these messages first came through me,

Mr. Kendal had been trying, with some success, to obtain direct

communication. Mary facetiously described his pencil as “a good burro,”

and mine as “a real hawse.” I had thought this dialecticism differently

spelled, but he reminded me that “hoss” belonged to New England, and

“hawse” to Mary’s native state, Kentucky.

While the pencil-point rested idly on the paper, we talked about the

sensations accompanying its movement, and about the probable direction

of the force propelling it. To him, the impulse seemed to come first

and chiefly through the consciousness; to me, it seemed a physical

force externally applied to the pencil, notwithstanding occasional

consciousness of what the message would be; but we were agreed that it

was difficult, at first, to be sure that the impulse was not in some

unrecognized way our own.

“It has been amusing to us to see you two struggle against our psychical

intrusions,” Mary remarked, at this point. “We do push the pencil. We

also reach the mind. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other, is what does

the trick. It is easier for us to impress the mind, but harder for you to

recognize that suggestion as ours. You think it’s your own, and fight.

Margaret is even more resistant than Manzie—perhaps because she has more

responsibility to other people.”

“Are present conditions—the gathering of the clans for the coming

struggle—going to enable many people to do this, who have never done it

before and otherwise would have been unable to do it?” he asked.

“Yes; but the danger of that is that the other forces will find their own

channels, and steal and defile some of ours. So we can’t advise people

to experiment, unless they can absolutely identify the force here, and

only a few, comparatively, can do that.”

He said that he had hesitated to ask questions of his own pencil, being

unwilling to go too far in this until he had checked it up through me.

“He’s scairt,” she teased, before he had fairly started to speak. “You

don’t trust yourself or me.”

Laughing, he retorted: “That’s another!”

“You are right to be careful,” she went on, serious again. “It’s a

dangerous adventure, unless you keep your balance, follow your own

purpose, keep close tab on the force handling the pencil, and lean on it

only spiritually. The minute advice in material things is sought, that

minute there is danger.”

“There’s no danger that anybody can impersonate you and fool me,” he

declared.

“Never! The danger is that somebody might lie to you about me; or if

you cease to stand on your own feet and make your own choice in matters

of your plane, only then somebody might impersonate me for a moment.

Sometimes I can tell you those things, but the habit of depending on them

is bad for you.”

A night or two later, beginning with a reply to a question concerning

another subject, she returned to the discussion of the force used in

conveying these communications—“a force compared to which electricity

is like spring water,” she said—declaring, like Frederick, that its

explanation is still impossible in terms of our plane.

“There is a vital and potent force, not yet isolated—and hardly

discovered—by your most advanced scientists,” she told us. “It has

characteristics and attractions not explainable until its discovery and

analysis give rise to a new set of words. There is no adequate comparison

that may be used to indicate its force, or the conditions and degrees

of its variations. It has some resemblance to electricity, yet the

comparison in certain cases would be misleading.”

“I am talking about the force we use in moving this pencil, and to some

extent in affecting your thought,” she continued, when Mr. Kendal had

mentioned certain recent scientific experiments of which he had read.

“The scientists have long associated the power of thought with the brain,

and have seriously argued that, as we could not be seen, measured,

weighed, or condensed, we did not exist. We do. And we have a force at

our command that cannot be explained, as yet. It can only occasionally

be demonstrated as clearly as this. Electricity is the most likely to

impress the man in the street as a comparison, but to argue from that as

a premise would lead to misconception. At present, it must be accepted as

a recognized but not understood force, only dimly perceived, as for years

electricity was.”

“Does it help, if we emphasize what we know of static electricity, as

well as thinking of the comparison in terms of electric current? A static

force in your plane, perhaps?”

“Yes, that helps; but the static force is in your plane, quite as much

as here. We have more knowledge of the current, to continue the simile,

but encounter static conditions both here and there, as well as counter

currents here.”

This would seem to offer reasons—in addition to David Bruce’s explanation

of the difficulties of translation when the messenger’s reaction to

certain word-symbols fails—for occasional delays in the transmission of

these communications.

“Margaret hasn’t tried us yet with an antagonistic force on your plane,”

she said, on another occasion. “We don’t do it this way when the forces

there are not harmonious.”

“Is your forward sight much greater than ours?” her husband asked. “Or is

it, in relation to other planes, about what ours is in regard to yours?”

“We can see the end as you have not even dreamed it yet, but our detailed

knowledge is limited to two or three planes beyond ours. Even here,

development is uneven, and some of us see farther than others. We are

far from omniscient or omnipotent. We have advanced beyond you, our

individual purposes are clear where yours are confused, we know where we

are bound and why, we see much farther ahead than you can, and we work

in three planes—yours as teachers, ours as laborers, and the next as

students.”

Referring to the statements about Russia, of which we had told him,

he asked whether there were the same relative differences of opinion

and judgment among them as among us, as to psychological policies to

be pursued for the Great Purpose, and as to the applications of those

policies on this plane.

“There are some differences of perception. Light, for example, sees

shadow and desires to dispel it. Truth sees error and wishes to correct

it. But, broadly speaking, the opinions are the same. The impediments

in the path of progress are many. Each purpose deals with its own;

Light with darkness, Truth with error, and so on. Each may work in the

same field, even in the same individual, but here we work for the same

ultimate purpose. We do not disagree. Each follows his own work, and

recognizes the other’s field.”

“We have a united policy,” she said, at another time, “but each our

individual application of it in personal relations and messages like

these. It is all intended to enlighten and inspire you, but only in

certain fundamental and specific matters are we instructed what to say.”

“Can you determine time there, by other than the memory of it here and by

close inspection?” was another question.

“We have no time here, in your sense. We watch you, and remember, but we

lose track of you, sometimes.”

Mr. Kendal then said—explaining his phrase, “close inspection”—that he

thought they saw time dimly, as we see through water or through fog.

“Is memory with you as acute as answers to some of these questions seem

to indicate?” one of us inquired.

“Not of material things, generally. We don’t pay much attention to them,

unless they interfere with purpose. Just now they are interfering a good

deal—or were, before the war, which is itself a material manifestation

of purpose.” We said that we should have thought this interference in

full force still, and she continued: “The real interference, from our

point of view, came before the war, when the world outside of Germany

was too much occupied in pursuit of material things to see what was

happening. They failed even to see Germany’s intention. Much less did

they discover their own danger, of which Germany’s purpose, materially,

was the least. The war woke them up by degrees, fortunately, or there

would be no use telling them this.”

A question concerning the possibility of communicating with a person

recently departed from this plane, was met with the statement that he had

“free communion” still to learn. This expression had been used several

times by others, and now I asked: “Mary, what is free communion?”

“You don’t think we vocalize our talk, do you?”

Mansfield suggested that when a man found himself suddenly without his

material veil, he must be at a loss how to proceed, and asked whether

that was what she meant.

“Not entirely. The veil isn’t missed particularly, but there is a ...

a....”

“Difference of medium?” he asked. “Like a water-color artist who can’t

paint in oil?”

“That’s it.”

“Referring to your assertion in March that truth is absolute,” he said,

“is not truth itself relative on this plane? Truth as a statement of

eternal law is absolute, but when applied to concrete facts and ideas, it

changes from time to time? That is, a concrete statement which expressed

the relations of certain mundane conditions to the eternal verities in

B.C. 1000, would not necessarily be a correct statement of the relations

of corresponding conditions to those verities in the year 1900 A.D.”

“That is the idea on which this whole revelation is based,” she returned.

“These things have always been true. They would not have sounded true in

the year one, any more than a lot of the ‘truths’ of that day are true

now.”

A night or two after this, he said he would like more light on the

practical application of these principles, especially those in relation

to freedom. “How, for instance, would you go about helping a school?” he

asked. “Take, as concrete examples, a University like ——, its Faculty

held in subjection by hidebound trustees, and the proposed People’s

University, to be governed from day to day by plebiscite or referendum,

with no defined policy for procedure beyond a general idea of freedom.

‘You may lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.’ Should

the construction of the trough be left to chance, or should it be planned

carefully? In other words, should mundane provision and prevision be

employed in building it?”

“It has been said already that men must first learn to think, and

to govern themselves, before they can be free.” It was Mary K. who

answered. “If experience were not taken into consideration, progress

would be impossible. Mundane prevision and provision is essential to all

constructive activity on your plane. Opinions will differ as to ways and

means of applying principles of progress. The first way to help a school

is to establish unity among the teachers. Not only unity of purpose, but

a certain large unity of method, that one may not tear down what his

brother builds. Ideals of freedom have been confused by men resenting

the first law of freedom—discipline. Lack of discipline, carried to its

logical conclusion, would return the world to chaos. The school that is

free in its teaching must be carried on by disciplined teachers, united

in a purpose of progress clearly recognized and agreed upon, to teach

discipline that the minds of men may dare to be free.”

“The idea underlying that, I take it, is that as the athlete whose body

is thoroughly trained and co-ordinated dares to jump an abyss, without

fear of falling, so the man whose mind and spirit are disciplined can

jump an intellectual abyss, without losing balance or sanity.”

“Yes. And as a man trained to carry great weights on his shoulders must

be trained to it from youth, so the man who would carry government and

freedom of thought must train his mind to carry its weight—not alone to

hold it briefly, but to carry it on.”

“Is it true, then,” he asked, “that safe freedom and constructive freedom

are only possible after prior discipline and self-control?”

“How can undisciplined freedom be safe or constructive? It makes the

wilderness. It makes the jungle. It makes the uncharted and devouring

sea.”

XII

One day, about the middle of May, discussing these manifestations over a

luncheon table, a man who described himself as “a sympathetic agnostic”

mentioned that while all those on the next plane reported that they were

busy, none to his knowledge had told just what they were doing.

At that time, we had received several statements concerning their

activities. Frederick had spoken of his efforts in connection with “a

pro-German newspaper editor.” Maynard Holt’s mother had told us that

she worked “with undeveloped purposes, here before their time.” It had

been said of a famous editor: “He is for Justice.... He is one of the

forces determining the grouping of the newly arrived.” Anne Lowe had

said: “I handle children. Some of them thought they were grown up when

they left you.” And the work of the healers, in receiving and soothing

“war-stricken forces,” had been repeatedly mentioned.

However, with the comment of the “sympathetic agnostic” in mind, we

asked Mary Kendal, apropos of some allusion to the healers on her plane,

whether she could tell us of their work in detail.

“You have already seen that our ability to be specific, even about

things here, is dependent on your ability to understand conditions of

our plane,” she reminded us. “As fast as we can, we give it to you. But

as well explain the operation of wireless telegraphy to an illiterate

‘cracker,’ as to try to explain healing, as we understand and practise

it, to the person unprepared by thought and study of these truths.”

The next day, in another city, Frederick, writing through a member of his

family, said that he had been doing some work in developing some spirits

who had “let their lowest tendencies be their guiding force.”

“They were men who were very unhappy, because they had left the world

before they were ready, and did not know what this life meant,” he said.

“Had they recently gone over?” he was asked.

“Yes, not very long on this side. They were so bewildered that they

thought they were in some kind of dream that they could not wake from.

They had been sick, but not long enough to let them get any idea of

death, or light after death, so they were sorry to come over.”

“Do they call you teacher?”

“No, just a friend.”

Replying to a question about a specific activity on this plane, he said:

“I can tell you that a lot of those things that seem bewildering are not

important enough to be doing what we call work here.”

“What do you call work?”

“Conscious development of spiritual forces.”

A month later, a question about a woman known here as a sculptor brought

the following reply from David Bruce.

“She is working with a development of the purpose of production, which is

the foundation that underlay her work there. She is producing force by

developing the undeveloped producers.”

Probably the most specific information yet received by any of our small

group concerning the practical application of these principles to the

affairs of our plane, came through Maynard Holt.

“My work lies principally with business men on your plane,” he said,

one day, to a family connection. “We are much concerned about the lack

of co-operation among persons of constructive tendencies, and my own

job is to apply this force we cannot fully explain to you, in any way

that will influence men or women toward co-operation. Sometimes we use

it to suggest a new idea. Sometimes we use it to so direct apparently

consequential circumstances and events that the person we wish to

influence gets an object lesson.”

In support of this is a statement of his made in April. While writing a

long message, most of which was intimately personal, he indicated his

interest in business conditions, and urged a greater and more far-seeing

co-operation among business men. In the midst of a sentence the pencil

stopped, creating a long delay. Failing, after repeated efforts, to

transmit the word he had attempted, he drew a series of singularly

uniform arches across the whole width of the paper.

After puzzling over it a moment, I drew a line above the arches, and

said, perceiving no significance in the symbol: “That looks like a

viaduct.”

“That’s what I mean,” he resumed, vigorously, and proceeded with an

elaboration of his theme, comparing co-operation to a viaduct.

“In the end, the forces for progress will cross to all lands by that

viaduct,” he continued, “and those who balk and refuse it will be

diverted and delayed by following old paths through the tortuous chasm

of competitive destruction. Not that we discourage competition. The

individual organization, like the individual man, must follow its purpose

and develop its force, but ... competition at its best is entirely

friendly and constructive. Boys have it taught them in the simplest

form in college sports. There it is personal, but co-operative in the

development of college spirit. Each man does his best for himself and

his own record, but loyally and cheerfully supports against opposing

forces the more successful man who is of his own group. With increasing

responsibilities, temptations and difficulties increase, but experience

should bring ability to meet them. The code of school and college forces

may be developed and applied to business and productive forces. This is

the first application of college training to competitive business.”

Afterward, when Mr. Kendal had expressed his cordial sympathy with the

theory of co-operation, widely applied, Maynard said: “That’s where the

college team has won and the union has failed. The union was good in

conception, but has made for the suppression of individual development,

where the college team encourages it.”

Later still, following a conversation concerning national economics and

international commerce after the war, he said:

“Co-operation is moral. Commercial supremacy is material. Material

success is constructive only if permanent, and permanent only if

constructive. Until co-operation for permanent progress becomes a

principle of international as well as national purpose, there will be

little actual progress toward permanent peace, or lasting prosperity.

“As the college boy works first for his own power, but most for his team,

and first, last and all the time for clean athletics, so the business man

should work first for his unit, definitely for his country’s welfare, but

first, last and always for clean co-operation with all who make for the

world’s progress.

“The exponents of national supremacy at the expense of world progress are

exactly in the position of the exponents of personal prosperity at the

expense of national welfare. The situations are analogous to a degree as

yet comprehended by few men.

“It took many years to convince the manufacturer that increased

production would follow shorter hours and improved working conditions. It

took many years to convince merchants that decreased cost and increased

profit followed combination of forces. It took some time to convince

financiers and manufacturers that success, not failure, would follow the

co-operation of competing concerns in the foreign field. Yet it is now

recognized that all these things are true and practicable. No less—even

more—is it practicable to unite world forces of progress in commerce as

they are united now in war, the fight at all times being for construction

and development, against destruction and regression.

“This cannot be done in a day or a year, but this is the goal toward

which enlightened forces should move. It may sound Utopian now. So did

model factories and tenements, a few years ago. Their advocates were

scoffed at and discredited. Now, the manufacturer who fails to provide

healthful working conditions for his operatives is called short-sighted

and pig-headed, and cheats himself twice, while cheating his employees

once.

“Co-operation is the basic principle of all progress, and the point at

which it stops is the measure of strength of man or nation. The nation

that refuses to co-operate for progress is a nation confessing itself

deterrent.”

Again, in June, Maynard returned to this subject, saying that men must

become “strong enough to let the other fellow live and prosper, without

fearing him.” After mentioning “fear of what may come, or lust for what

may be seized,” as motives making for destruction, he added: “Neither is

constructive or progressive, and neither can win in the end.”

“We have purpose to progress beyond the vision of man,” he went on,

“but even material progress, to be constructive and permanent, must be

governed by a vision beyond the day. We are trying to extend that vision.

“Co-operation in individual enterprise has succeeded. Co-operation

in national enterprise would succeed no less. More and more, men are

recognizing the value of united effort in commercial enterprise, however

long it took the truth to dawn. Must other centuries pass, other wars be

fought, other dynasties rise and fall, before the larger truth ushers in

a new day? Will co-operation in business, co-operation in war, teach them

to study and practise co-operation in world welfare and progress? Will

they learn that it is not only in war that a weakened Belgium means an

endangered England, that a hungry France means short rations in America,

that a link weakened means the chain weak?

“How many times must this premise be demonstrated before the argument is

carried to its logical conclusion, and national co-operation, free and

voluntary, provide for the good of one by protecting and developing all?

“This is not a Utopian fantasy. It is common sense.”

XIII

Talking about the Lessons one day, Mr. Kendal mentioned his impression

that Zoroaster had said something approaching the first one in theory,

and then asked, a whimsical gleam in his eye: “Mary, has Professor James

said anything about Zoroaster in this connection?”

“Manzie, Mr. James has no philosophical library here to refer to,” was

the prompt retort. She told us, however, that he would soon come himself

to talk to this former pupil of his, adding a characteristic glint of

humor in the assurance that he would then give “a demonstration of a

philosopher simplified to a force.”

A night or two afterward (May 13th), she announced: “Manzie, here is Mr.

James.”

There was a brief delay, and when the pencil moved again, it was with a

changed application of force and a new movement, the first words being

personal. Referring to an early period in his own investigation of

psychic phenomena, he said:

“Youth, in its nearness to inspiration, sometimes sees more clearly than

age, with its academic dependence upon theory and precedent and what men

call the wisdom of experience. When this wisdom is based on perception,

conscious or otherwise, of eternal purpose, it transcends the vision of

youth. But when it is based on perception of physical phenomena and the

accumulated theories of other men, youth has an inspiration and a faith

that leads it, all unknowing, to the brink of great mysteries.” This

was followed by an allusion to those “befogged in precedent, physical

phenomena, and intellectual theory,” who were “unable to follow where

they should have led.”

“There has seemed to be a good deal of genuine feeling underlying the

humorous persiflage through the pencil about the scientific state of

mind,” Mr. Kendal suggested. “Hasn’t the time come when we can reach the

scientific type of mind? And isn’t it worth while to do so? And if so,

what is the best psychological line of attack?”

“The scientist is not by any means hopeless, but like many men in

your plane, he is overbalanced and therefore unbalanced by physical

considerations. Physical phenomena are of vital importance in your life,

and their study and analysis has led to a degree of material progress

which would have been incredible to the third—and all but incredible to

the second—generation back. It is only because scientists have persisted

in the study of physical phenomena that you are enabled to understand in

some part what is now being given you. The misapprehension has been that

physical phenomena alone could be recognized. Those who have believed

that have denied the existence of the greatest and most persistent of all

forces. Attempts to explain spiritual phenomena by physical formulæ have

been found unsuccessful by every one save those who took refuge in denial

of the thing that moved them to deny, the eternal and indestructible

purpose.

“When to their laboratories scientists bring perception of spiritual

phenomena exceeding any material manifestation known to man in strength

and significance, then they may hope to discover and develop a force

beside which all known forces are insignificant. Science is the ladder

by which life may quickly ascend, but until science recognizes a

spiritual force as the one essential force, of which all other forces are

incidental phenomena, progress must be limited.”

“Then, generally speaking,” Mr. Kendal said, “perhaps the most effective

appeal to scientists would be the appeal to scientific ambition.”

“Always the most effective means to win any man to anything is to appeal

to his purpose. If it be personal, appeal to his vanity. If it be

progressive, appeal to his eagerness. If it be intellectual, pique his

curiosity. Scientists, like others, are divided in purpose.”

“We have been much interested in the decisive definiteness with which

our friends on that plane have been able to classify the purposes of

persons here,” Mr. Kendal mentioned. “Is this as clear to you as physical

characteristics are to us, and as quickly determined?”

“Yes, and in much the same way. We see motive and intention and their

variations as you see physical appearance, vitality and its variations.

We see disintegrating moral factors more clearly than you see physical

ills. We judge of purpose by its vitality and persistence under strain,

precisely as you judge of physical health by its vitality under strain

and by its persistence in spite of occasional disease.”

“Then you see disintegrating force as the scientist sees germs?” Cass

inquired. “As disease?”

“No, we see them as foes. I speak here only of the way we judge purpose.

There is no diseased purpose. There may be struggle between more or less

intelligent forces, but in using the simile of physical health, I did it

in a limited sense.”

“Is there an inherent reason for the different types of philosophies?”

Mr. Kendal now questioned. “That is, the Nirvana-oblivion type in

the Orient, as contrasted with the hell-fire-and-brimstone type in

the Occident. If inherent, is its cause geographical, intellectual,

biological, or what?”

“A little of all of them. Philosophies are the outgrowth of conditions,

physical, moral and geographical—and therefore to some extent

biological—to a much greater degree than is generally recognized. It has

been said that food makes the man. To a greater degree, environment makes

the philosopher.”

“May we publish this as coming from you?”

“Certainly. I am here for that purpose.... Light and Progress are my

purposes, and teaching still my work.”

After a few lines of purely personal significance, this was signed:

“William James.”

XIV

Of the messages that may be quoted, there remain only a few detached

statements, removed from their personal context, but reproduced because

of their general interest or significance.

“Don’t worry about C——” was one bit of specific advice, given in March,

before any of the Lessons had been received. “She will have her troubles,

but she must dree her own weird. You might save her some pain, but life’s

purpose may not be taught. It must be fought for, with blood and sweat.

Let C—— get her wounds in her own way. You may then soothe the pain.

But don’t try to spare her the fight. That has to do with the larger

questions of life and eternity.”

“‘Life’s purpose may not be taught,’ but the laws underlying the search

for it may be?”

“Of course. We are trying now to wake the world to consciousness that

these laws exist. Most people, broadly speaking, have forgotten them, in

the general contempt for laws where they are not enforced, and in the

general hatred of them where they are enforced in oppression and fear.”

A few days later, another person, writing of another and much younger

girl, said: “She may have a hard time over the conflicting purposes.

Everybody does. But with you to give her a foundation, I do not fear for

her.... Her struggles will only make her stronger. Do not try to save her

from pain. Remember that it is her mother who says this. Let her meet

life fully and work her way upward. She will always yield in the end to

the sublime purpose.”

On a later occasion, this same person said: “We help all we can, but even

when you want us to, we are unwilling to hold back the larger and vital

development in order to hasten some smaller conclusion. Even when the

small conclusion is important to you, it must be your own choice that

helps you; and if the choice is wrong at the moment, it still helps in

the end.”

“She’s too sympathetic for her own good,” was said of another young

woman. “She’d do the vicarious atonement act for all creation, if she

could. What she needs is to have this purpose business driven into her.

Every fellow has to do his own fighting, and his own atonement, and

his own climbing, and take what’s coming to him while he does it. She’s

always trying to soften the path and take the swipes herself, and it

can’t be done. She gets the blow and the strain and the struggle, all

right, but it impedes her and gets the other fellow nowhere. It helps

nobody to save them the consequences of their own choice. The way to help

is to call to their constructive purpose and give them a chance. If they

choose not to take it, then let them take all the consequence that’s

coming. If that doesn’t teach them, there’s nothing more to do, except

to turn them over to somebody who can arouse their purpose, if they have

any. Anyhow, making a buffer of yourself just batters up good material

for no gain in force or purpose.”

Again, another person to another group. “Let any fighting force do his

own fighting. Suggest, enlighten, encourage, but don’t try to carry the

burden of another’s life. You can’t hurry their development, and you

impede your own and that of others of your own purpose.... You are like

the fellow in the fable, who finished by carrying not only the pack, but

the donkey, too. It’s a very sweet and unselfish disposition, but do

you think it improves the donkey for his station in life? Not that I’m

calling S—— a donkey, but like all mankind, he carries a pack. You can’t

carry both, and he won’t learn to apply his force evenly here if you do

it for him there. Lots of people develop unevenly and have to even up

somewhere. Why delay the process by vicarious labor, especially when it

only exhausts you and doesn’t develop his muscles any? Selah!”

“You can train O—— to carry physical temptations, if you begin early,”

a man said, writing of his nephew. “Don’t let him yield to impulse or

desire when it is destructive. Make him build his body first, as a boy.

Make him respect it and its promise. That’s a bully thing for a boy to

know at the beginning. He reasons from that to other things. A boy is a

brute first, but a thinking brute. If he respects the flesh, he respects

all things in time.”

“What is my purpose?” a young man asked, one day.

“Building. You are going to be ‘him that hath.’ Build with your

possessions. Begin the foundation now. Build.... Build as a producer, or

as a healer, or in any way that makes for progress, keeps you growing,

develops forces for construction, and gives the other fellows a chance to

do their best also.... Not for yourself alone, but for all who may climb

by your ladder of opportunity.”

Maynard Holt, writing to a friend here, spoke of him as a good fighter,

and when this person said that he would not have been able to fight

at all, but for the little hand of a lady on the next plane, Maynard

returned: “I know you fought hard, though in darkness, before you found

that hand. That’s one reason we count on you now. A man who will fight

continuously in darkness is a ... a ...” The pencil paused, and after

futile efforts to proceed, retraced its path, apparently to cross out

again and again the last letter. We were talking and paid no attention to

its movement, but when it ceased again, we discovered that Maynard had

drawn a five-pointed star. Then he proceeded: “... luminary of force

himself, when light breaks.”

There were many interesting characterizations, both of persons on this

plane and of those on the next.

“E—— is a fine force, but A—— is a force multiplied and refined to

power,” was said of one couple.

A striking example of the determination of our “fantom friends” to convey

their meaning despite obstacles, was indicated when some one had told me,

during an interview, of a boy’s objection to his mother’s activity in one

of the recent “drives” connected with war work, on the ground that it

“made her conspicuous.”

“M—— is an entirely tra ... trem ... tr ... normal and tra ... tremulous

youth, where his mother and sister are concerned,” was his father’s

humorous comment.

Apparently, in this case, the connection was imperfect, no intimation of

his meaning reaching me, and only by altering the form of his sentence

was he able to get it written.

“Miss T—— has much to learn and much to suffer before a teaching based

on unity of force or purpose will reach her forcefully,” we were told,

on another occasion. “She must learn the shallows of self before she

can sound the depths of individuality, in the larger and eternal

interpretation of the word.”

Following one of the numerous discussions of Germany and her purposes,

a question about a man of German parentage brought this reply: “B—— is

American. The national taint of docility is not in him.”

The meaning of purpose and its application was stated many times in many

ways. One of the most characteristic of these expressions came from a

famous humorist.

“There are things brewing here and among you there,” he said, “that are

going to make the wars of the tribes of Hohenzollern, Hapsburg and

Mephisto look like a village prayer meeting. The carnage of Verdun and

Mons and the whole show since his little nibs was assassinated is a

picayune proposition compared to the losses of time, purpose, force and

saving grace that we’re all going to feel, if we can’t wake you people up

to pull together against the devil’s crew.”

Some one asked whether a husband and wife, not too congenial in this

life, were together there, and was told that he was “flocking with birds

of his own feather,” and that she had “peacefully and tranquilly found

her own.” Another member of this family group was with neither of the

others, it was said, “because she found her very own, for which they were

only a substitute.”

“Have you seen Jim? Is there any feeling about his wife’s marrying

again?” was a question which will interest many persons.

“Jim is here and very happy. He has no resentment, and wishes Alice to be

happy. They are both of the forces of progress, but not of just the same

purpose. They harmonize, but do not touch.”

Again, some one asked whether one party to an uncongenial marriage

regretted the other’s rejoining him so soon.

“She didn’t,” was the reply. “He hasn’t seen her yet, and won’t. He is

willing to work with her purpose, but not eager to touch her force.”

“What about Laura?” a woman asked.

“She is coming to us soon, but do not be afraid, dear. She will be

tenderly met and guided, and will be much nearer you all, much happier

and more helpful, than she is now. Never grieve again for death. It is

birth, and so happy.”

Within a few weeks, this came to pass.

When I asked Mary K. for a message for a mother bereaved by war, she

said: “Tell her we will send for her when he has grown accustomed enough

to talk to her. Tell her that he is cared for tenderly and guided, and

that she must not grieve. She hurts him and herself. Make her understand

that she can help him by knowing that he lives and loves her and is near

her, and that it is part of her work as a mother to help him in this ...

to find his purpose more quickly through her love.”

We were afterward told that he had not yet learned the “free communion,”

but that from the moment his mother began to “lift her spirit to meet

his,” this young man’s development was hastened.

Frequently, when telling about these revelations, I have been asked:

“What do they say about reincarnation?”

“There is no possible reincarnation,” Mary K. said, when I referred

the question to her. “That is a dream of the Orient. The idea of

reincarnation is regressive. Not destructive, but deterrent. Not

progressive. It is born of bodily desire.”

“Is it like the desire of old men for youth?”

“More. It is a mask, covering material desire with spiritual semblance.

It is taught from this plane by deterrent or partly deterrent forces,

lacking free vision.”

In another connection, but with similar meaning, David Bruce said: “Some

persons hide their love of the flesh by an exaggerated expression of

spirituality, and then think of ways of insisting on the flesh.”

Similarly, writing through her husband’s pencil, Mary Kendal said, when

he asked her what had become of persons like Cæsar, Luther, Cobden,

Archimedes, and others in general: “There is a great difference in the

length of time people stay in this plane nearest to that of the earth,

which depends not only on the stage of development which they have

attained when they come here, but also on the character of work they

are best fitted to do. If they can be of more use in direct or indirect

contact with your plane, they stay here sometimes many years, as you

measure time; but if they are retarded in their development when they

arrive here, they have a long road to travel before they can go on to

any other plane. There is no such thing as transmigration of souls as

you understand it, but that idea is akin to what actually does happen,

in the sense that such individualities have to pass through stages of

development which are relatively inferior in status to those that they

might enter into, coming from your plane, if they had made greater

progress there, or had fought a better fight on that plane.”

When he said that his idea in asking about specific individuals was

to get concrete instances by which to check up the general law, she

returned: “The danger in that is that your idea of what those individuals

really were is very apt to be wrong, and starting from wrong premises

you could hardly avoid reaching wrong conclusions.... Martin Luther was

a mixture of purposes. He did great work for progress in fighting the

conventions and binding tendency of ecclesiasticism in his times, but he

had personal motives which were deterrent, and which he spent a long time

in working out when he left that plane.” Of Napoleon she said: “There

have been few instances of greater prostitution of great talents and

great opportunity in history, and he paid—and is paying—the penalty, or

the consequence.”

To the many inquiries as to how direct communication may be established

between persons here and the dear ones gone before, this message of David

Bruce’s to his wife contains the briefest and most comprehensive answer.

She said: “I wonder what he’s going to tell me?”

“I’m going to tell you to be calm and serene of spirit, no matter what

seems to be happening to disturb you. Most of the disturbing factors of

individual life on your plane are ephemeral—things of the moment and of

the place. Others are more important than they seem. I am not always

able to tell you about them. It delays you, instead of helping you, when

the decision is not your own. One way that I can truly help when you are

troubled is by what we can best describe as the free communion. When you

are perturbed in spirit and full of doubt, it is difficult for us to

reach you.... Open the door of spiritual force to forces here, and we

can always help. That is what we hope to establish as a recognized truth

in your life there. That a force as yet unknown to science is operating

between the planes, and can be developed and used in your life there—to

a less degree than in ours, but still with great effect. It is for this

that we work in this communion, which is more definite to you now and

less so to us. We know the limits to which material manifestation like

this is confined, and are eager to teach you gradually the freer and

fuller way.”

XV

“A thought that will occur to many persons is that the truths we endeavor

to teach are not entirely new.

“Truth is fundamental and eternal. There is no new truth; there is only

new understanding and application of truth that has always existed. No

great teacher has ever told new truth. No great teacher has ever told

truth in a new way, until the older teachings had begun to lose their

hold on the minds of men. No great teacher has ever found an audience

for his new interpretation of truth, until the minds of men had groped

through darkness toward a light dimly perceived, if at all.

“The time is ripe now for the crystallization of new application of

eternal truth. Men hunger for bread of the spirit, and thirst for the

waters of eternity. This is the answer of eternal forces to their search,

and it comes, for the first time, not through a teacher or a prophet, but

through a human instrument sensitive to a high degree to the influence

of the force that is life’s motive power.

“There are many conditions affecting the application of that force in

these communications, that cannot now be explained; many conditions

influencing its direction, that you do not understand. Some day your

scientists will discover and prove by experiment certain laws now

unrecognized, and these days of doubt and scoffing will disappear in a

past filled with denial and discouragement of almost every discovery now

called modern and progressive.

“Two things only we have striven for through you: to prove to a group

of intelligent persons that this force exists and may be practically

applied between your plane and ours, and to warn mankind of the nature

and eternal import of impending struggles. We have more to tell when they

are ready to listen, and upon the choice of them who hear this truth the

immediate progress of the world depends. It is a warning to unite and

prepare for combat.

“This is the truth. Heed it.

“MARY K.”

_June 13, 1918._

THE END

FOOTNOTES

[1] These names occurred to me, because these three persons left us

within a twelvemonth, about three years ago, and all were either friends

or closely identified with friends of ours.

[2] I now believe that this was Annie Manning’s first interruption.

[3] I had asked whether she knew any of the three persons previously

mentioned, and each time she had replied in the negative.

[4] Her husband, Mansfield Kendal.

[5] I have since learned that this was characteristic of him. His letters

home frequently began: “Dear Family.”

[6] Several hours later I read Cass’s letter and telegram to his

physician, who advised me to go at once to Atlantic City.

[7] Each of these words was written in larger script than the preceding

one.

[8] Later developments make it seem probable that this was an attempt to

write the familiar diminutive for which his father afterward asked, and

that my “too rigid vigilance” shut out the suggestion.

[9] Short-circuited?

[10] In describing Frederick’s pyrotechnical “upside-down stunts” and

the later “trimmings,” the great facility with which they were executed

should have been more strongly emphasized. They were all written with

extraordinary rapidity and firmness.