A TIMELY INTERVENTION.
Varied as is this work on the astral plane, it is all directed to
one great end--the furtherance, in however humble a degree, of
the processes of evolution. Occasionally it is connected with the
development of the lower kingdoms, which it is possible slightly
to accelerate under certain conditions. A duty towards these lower
kingdoms, elemental as well as animal and vegetable, is distinctly
recognized by our adept leaders, since it is in some cases only through
connection with or use by man that their progress takes place.
But naturally by far the largest and most important part of the work is
connected with humanity in some way or other. The services rendered are
of many and various kinds, but chiefly concerned with man’s spiritual
development, such physical interventions as are recounted in the
earlier part of this book being exceedingly rare. They do, however,
occasionally take place, and though it is my wish to emphasize rather
the possibility of extending mental and moral help to our fellow-men,
it will perhaps be well to give two or three instances in which
friends personally known to me have rendered physical assistance to
those in sore need of it, in order that it may be seen how these
examples from the experience of the helpers gear in with the accounts
given by those who have received the supernormal aid--such stories, I
mean, as those which are to be found in the literature of so-called
“supernatural occurrences.”
In the course of the recent rebellion in Matabeleland one of our
members was sent upon an errand of mercy which may serve as an
illustration of the way in which help upon this lower plane has
occasionally been given. It seems that one night a certain farmer
and his family in that country were sleeping tranquilly in fancied
security, quite unaware that only a few miles away relentless hordes of
savage foes were lying in ambush maturing fiendish plots of murder and
rapine. Our member’s business was in some way or other to arouse the
sleeping family to a sense of the terrible danger which so unexpectedly
menaced them, and she found this by no means an easy matter.
An attempt to impress the idea of imminent peril upon the brain of
the farmer failed utterly, and as the urgency of the case seemed to
demand strong measures, our friend decided to materialize herself
sufficiently to shake the housewife by the shoulder and adjure her
to get up and look about her. The moment she saw that she had been
successful in attracting attention she vanished, and the farmer’s wife
has never from that day to this been able to find out _which_ of
her neighbours it was who roused her so opportunely, and thus saved the
lives of the entire family, who but for this mysterious intervention
would undoubtedly have been massacred in their beds half an hour later;
nor can she even now understand how this friend in need contrived to
make her way in, when all the windows and doors were found so securely
barred.
Being thus abruptly awakened, the housewife was half inclined to
consider the warning as a mere dream; however, she arose and looked
round just to see that all was right, and fortunate it was that she did
so, for though she found nothing amiss indoors she had no sooner thrown
open a shutter than she saw the sky red with a distant conflagration.
She at once roused her husband and the rest of her family, and owing to
this timely notice they were able to escape to a place of concealment
near at hand just before the arrival of the horde of savages,
who destroyed the house and ravaged the fields indeed, but were
disappointed of the human prey which they had expected. The feelings of
the rescuer may be imagined when she read in the newspaper some time
afterwards an account of the providential deliverance of this family.