Chapter VI: Part III (1)

“_Science is the ladder by which life may quickly ascend, but until science recognizes a spiritual force as the one essential force, of which all other forces are incidental phenomena, progress must be limited._”

“_We have purpose to progress beyond the vision of man, but even material progress, to be constructive and permanent, must be governed by a vision beyond the day. We are trying to extend that vision._”

I

Immediately after the first Lesson had been given, Cass telephoned that the news from France was alarming. It was Saturday, March 23d. The great German offensive of 1918 had begun two days earlier, and the Allied forces were falling back, with appalling losses. I asked Mary K. whether she could tell us anything about it.

“Yes. It is a force of destruction, momentarily victorious, but Germany cannot win. She moves steadily toward her destruction.”

Remembering our differing conceptions of time, I asked: “Do you speak in terms finite or infinite?”

“You will see her defeat soon, but the fight eternal will not be over with the end of the Great War. That will be only a temporary lull, and we shall have it all to do over and over, until conscious purpose ends it. _Do not fear._” The emphasis is hers.

To be sure I had made no mistake, I pressed the inquiry again.

“You need not fear the end of the war. It is certain and inevitable. Germany is doomed, and must work her way back to light. This is not foreordained, but here we already see the end, and are looking toward the battles that will still be raging when the countries of the world seem peaceful.”

[Some weeks later, this confident prophecy was slightly modified in its letter, though not in its spirit, when she said: “Unless the Allied purpose is undermined by forces of spiritual disintegration, Germany is doomed, but the fight must be kept up with confidence and consciously united force and purpose.” This, however, merely emphasizes the teaching of all the lessons, that constructive purpose cannot find expression in passivity, that he who would live must fight, and that he who is not actively striving for progress is arrayed against it.]

As has been said, my knowledge of philosophies is of the slightest, and there is scarcely a suggestion contained in the first Lesson that was not new to me and entirely foreign to my habit of thought. Therefore, I sent a copy of it to Mr. Kendal, asking him to tell me whether the cosmic theory there outlined was familiar to him. Conscious of Mary K.’s summons, I took up a pencil.

“Tell Mr. Kendal the philosophers have perceived the truth in fragments. This is to be the whole truth, as far as it can be understood on your plane. It may sound, at moments, like a patchwork of philosophies, because all—or most—of them have some truth. He will help you in this. He found the truth in spite of philosophies, and it is part of his work to help others find it because of one—a philosophy not dreamed, but lived and proved and known. Therefore, not a philosophy, but a faith.”

The next day, we dined with friends of that Anne Lowe for whom I had asked the first night Mary K. came to me, and from her long messages to them, a few may be quoted.

“... It has always been easy for me to reach you, because you never doubted that I was there. Doubt is one of the things we cannot reach through. Doubt, bitterness, grief—all these are destructive forces.” To a statement that they had felt deep grief, she returned: “You have not had the kind of grief that would shut me out. You have shut out some helpful forces, but you will do that no longer. It is because the force may reach you through me that I can come. We are the same purpose, and I can reach you freely. We can always reach those who are very near and dear. Sometimes people are dear to us there who are not really near us here. They do not need us, nor we them. It is an ephemeral relation. Love lasts eternally. Please don’t ever forget that.... Listen to me. I cannot always reach you as directly as this, but just as soon as you learn to read my thoughts, as I now read yours, a messenger will not be necessary.”

Briefly she explained to them the eternal significance of the Great War, the united purpose of Germany, and the failure of the Allies, thus far, to comprehend the essence of unity. Elizabeth, one of her friends, mentioned that it was like her to drop personalities for great issues, and she replied:

“The reason that I told you the thing I did about the great purposes and the eternal conflict is that I want you to realize a little of what it is all for, and to help you recognize the great ends toward which your problems lead. Build, build, never cease to build. Unite yourself to anybody who is of your purpose. Keep as clear as you can from entangling yourselves with forces of disintegration.”

Miss S——, a teacher, and a stranger to me, was present, and after a little her brother took control of the pencil.

“You cannot realize how intimately we work together still,” was one of his assertions to her. “You are a fine force for progress. You are being and teaching the things we all work for here. Teach, above all, unity of purpose. Never mind the method. Look to the goal. Building, light, freedom, faith—these are what the forces of construction stand for, the way to the great purpose. The forces of disintegration are gathering for a tremendous fight. The Great War is one of the crises of civilization, but the battle to come still is one of the crises of eternity. It is for that we are preparing now. This is what we must say to all dear to us and, through them, to as wide a public as we can reach.... It is a great message that is to be given. To-day I only want you to be sure that I know all you feel and all you have suffered, and that the more confidently and freely you reach out to me, knowing I am there, the more easily and surely I can reach you.”

Like the others, this man used the circle, which we were beginning to perceive must signify more than joy, as we understand the word. For example, on this occasion it was used thus: “You will look for me now, listen for me, feel me near you, and the (O) will be as near your life as it ever can be there.” After telling her of the frequent use of this symbol, I asked him whether it had not a deeper significance—perhaps completion, perfection, consummate unity, something joyous of this larger sort, to which he replied in the affirmative.

A night or two after this, Cass suggested that we must make an effort to get into touch with David Bruce, but I said that we had asked about him several times, and that if he wished or needed to communicate with his family he would undoubtedly let me know. Aware of Mrs. Bruce’s interest in psychic phenomena, I thought they might have established communication in some way. Within a few minutes I was conscious of a summons to the pencil.

First came Mary K.’s strong signature. Then, very quickly: “David Bruce is here, and wa....” There it ran off into nervous, illegible waves. When I said I could not follow, and asked that the message be more slowly given, it was resumed where it had been dropped. “... wants to talk to ~E~ ... Bess.” His wife’s name is Elizabeth, and naturally was in my mind, but having written E, the pencil balked, delayed, crossed out the E, and finally wrote “Bess,” firmly.

“Thank you,” was the response to my promise to arrange the interview. For the first time it occurred to me that possibly Mary K. had given over the pencil, and I asked who was writing, to be told quickly: “D. B.”

Mrs. Bruce came the next day to talk to him, and Mary K. told me, before her arrival, to give her no details about the previous messages, adding: “He will tell her.” And while his opening message to her merely summarizes similar assertions previously received, it is interesting as the first consecutive personal statement of the survival of individuality in the eternal pursuance of constructive purpose.

“I am here with you, darling Bess, as I have been with you from the start,” he began at once. “You have known it all the time, and I have been able to reach you in a way that I can only describe to you as spiritual.”

Here was the first veiled allusion, at first rather puzzling, to that unknown force afterward mentioned by William James and others.

“We so long to tell you whom we love not to grieve. We are of you, as you are of us. Even more closely than we were when I was visibly with you. Perfect union is only possible to pure spirit. That will come. Meanwhile, one of us is pure spirit, and both of us so much the richer thereby. Once, in the beginning of things, you and I were the same purpose. Purposes are eternal. They may be temporarily divided, temporarily overcome by the forces of disintegration, which are forever seeking to destroy, but forever each divided purpose answers to the call of its own. You and I were one purpose in the first, and we shall be perfectly reunited when you have joined me here. But while we were one in the beginning, one with many others of our great purpose, we are now eternally definite and separate individuals, but united as perfectly, after the first life there, as if we had returned to one unit.... The first message any of us send must be this one. That is the reason we can come so freely now and tell so much.”

A little later, speaking of their children, he said: “All young people have battles to fight and problems to solve. Don’t try to spare them that. It is thus they learn life’s lessons, and the more they learn there the readier they will be to do the fine and glorious work here.”

He had spoken before of being very busy, and now she commented: “He seems so interested in the work!”

“Interested is not the word. It’s more like inspiration.”

“Was the passing difficult?” she asked.

“Not difficult at all. The pain ended with unconsciousness.”

“But you had no pain!”

“Yes, I had some—not expressed, nor quite definite. Difficult to explain until experienced. Words do not convey the sensation. Not quite fear, not quite pain, but a strange moment of suffering. Then consciousness again, beauty, force, perfectly clear perceptions, but a period of something approaching incredulity.” I mentioned Frederick’s statement that he had been “dazed by the bigness of it,” and Mr. Bruce went on. “That’s it. The bigness of it is indescribable, and so extraordinarily lovely and high that it is not readily realized or grasped.”

She said she had dreaded to have him go alone, and asked whether some one met him.

“Yes, we are very tenderly received. There is always a part of one’s own purpose waiting.”

“Have you seen Jack?”

“Yes; he is still a little bewildered, but will soon be in fighting trim again.” This young man had been killed in an accident.

“‘In fighting trim’!” she repeated. “How funny!”

“No, it isn’t funny. We fight perpetually, and love it. It is a wonderful thing to fight with the great forces, and to know why. Most of those in your life fight in confusion and doubt, and suffer. But here we unite ourselves to a definite and constructive purpose, and the fight is glorious.”

“Do you see Granny?”

“No. She has gone on to a life beyond ours. She will come back, some day, and I will see her.”

“You have helped me very much by believing that I lived,” he told her, at another point. “It is very hard for us to be put aside.... We know here how intimately our life and yours are lived together, and the one almost intolerable thing is to have our dear ones live and believe that we do not. It defers things so.... It hurts us when the apparent separation is made real.”

“I hope you won’t get so far beyond that I can’t catch up,” she said.

“Never! You will begin farther along than I did. We shall go on together now, for eternity. Since you know that I am with you, and especially as we live and work consciously together, we shall grow together.”

“Did I do all I could for you, at the last? Did you feel my fear?”

“No, I did not feel your fear. But when one knows that the step is coming, there is one blinding moment of dread.... You kept me a little while,” he continued, when she said that she had tried to hold him here, “but the thing had gone too far.”

“Was there anything we could have done that was not done?”

“Nothing. It had to be.” But when she inferred that the time had come for him to take up work in the next plane, he protested. “No. Nothing like that is ‘intended.’ There is no foreordination. It is all a matter of forces, constructive and destructive. My material energy was too little to withstand the material forces of destruction. My flesh yielded. That has no real relation to eternal force.... One serves one’s purpose, here or there. I am doing better work here than I could have done there, but that has no relation or part in death. It is entirely a physical thing.”

“Did —— make you nervous?”

“No mere man could make me fail to respond to your call to courage. I knew and you knew, that it might be the end of life there; but there was no possible thing that you could have done, mentally, physically, or spiritually, that you did not do. It was your courage that kept me calm, even through that dread moment; your spirit that met me when I woke here; your tenderness that soothed my first bewilderment; your purpose that roused me to better, broader, finer work than I had ever dreamed before. It has been you—you and I, one always—that have helped and upheld me, as your faith has enabled me to reach and uphold you.”

This interview took place in the afternoon, and with a good deal of incidental conversation, covered several hours, leaving me very tired. But after dinner the familiar summons warned me that my services were again in demand. I took up a pencil, and Mary K. announced the second Lesson, which followed rapidly, with the same unhesitating flow that had characterized the first one.

II

Meanwhile, happy letters were coming almost daily from the Gaylord family, and less frequently, but with expressions of equal conviction, from Mr. Kendal.

Mrs. Gaylord had promised to spend Easter week with relatives, in a Middle Western town, which she had not visited—indeed, had scarcely dared to think of—since taking Frederick’s body there for burial; and the day after the second Lesson was given she arrived in New York, where she paused briefly _en route_, her elder daughter and son-in-law joining her the next morning.

Although her train arrived late in the evening, we talked a little to Frederick before separating for the night. We had been commenting on her changed appearance.

“Mother dearest, you are not much differenter than I am,” he began, after the usual signature.

“Why, Frederick!” she exclaimed. “Are you better, too?”

He made the enthusiastic little circle so often used. “(O) So much better! You can’t guess how much better I am. It helps me as much as it does you.”

“Were you at Mrs. Z——’s the other day?” she asked, referring to a visit to a “medium,” of which I had not been informed.

“I was that, but she fell down on what I was trying to get over,” was the reply. When his mother said she had not received what she expected on that occasion, he returned: “Nor what we expected.... She’s all right, as far as she goes.” He told her, also, that the woman accompanying him, described by Mrs. Z——, had been his father’s mother.

“This is a nice, peaceful powwow we’re having to-night,” he commented, when they had exchanged views concerning various personal matters. “I had to work last time, but this time I’m here for....”

The pencil paused, and I asked: “For what?”

“Just for a good time, Mrs. L——. Sis is coming to the party to-morrow. Hooray!”

A little later, when she expressed some uncertainty about her ability to go through an Easter in K——, with all its sad associations, unshaken, he warned her: “Don’t you go backsliding!” Continuing, she told us that his last illness had developed just before Easter, and that in his desire to give the family an unclouded day he had persuaded a friend to send them a typewritten letter, which he signed, containing no intimation of his illness.

“I’ll write you a letter this Easter with a lot more pep in it,” he promised. “You go on and have your Easter presents, and flowers, and eggs, and all, and when you begin backsliding, stop ... look ... listen[7] ... and I’ll be on the crossing, ringing the bell.”

With an ejaculation of surprise, his mother told us that she had been recently in the home of a traffic expert, whose large hall was strikingly decorated with signs for the regulation of traffic.

“I believe that’s what he’s thinking of!” she exclaimed.

“Sure, you’ve got it! I’ll ask Sis to buy you a bell for me, to remind you.”

This diversion had completely banished the gathering sadness of her reminiscences, and she began talking of Washington, whence she had come, saying that there seemed to be a good deal of pessimism in official circles concerning war conditions. It will be remembered that the bombardment of Paris, by a long-distance gun, began March 23d.

“There are lots of things Washington doesn’t know,” Frederick assured her. “The end of the war must come soon.”

We wondered, as I had before, how much difference there was between his conception of time, as indicated by the word “soon,” and ours.

“None of us can name the day and hour, but we see the inevitable end coming soon. Germany knows she is weakened, but doesn’t know why. We do, and we have told you. No nation on earth can fight this fight alone, deserted by all purposes, both for good and evil, and with only one force left—Fear.”

[Long afterward, Mary K. said to me, in this connection: “We see the awakening purpose of forces for progress in your life, and are able to help them in proportion to the vigor with which that purpose is put into action. Germany, on the other hand, fights now with only physical power. Eternal forces are implacably against her, and the forces of destruction have abandoned her. She has no ally here now. Her unity is destroyed, while ours is strengthening. The only danger, as far as the war is concerned, lies in a weakening of actual purpose, forcefully expressed in action. We are your allies, answering your call and inciting you to endeavor. When Germany began this war she had superhuman strength, which the world was unprepared to meet, but for every vibration of pure constructive purpose among the Allied forces we have added two, and only a weakening of your purpose can defeat us now. Every individual among you who fails to strive for victory with all his strength invites disaster.”]

Frederick’s talk with his mother was brief that night, and when she arose, to return to her hotel, he said: “Good night. I am going home with you, if I may.”

This seemed to Cass and me a curious phrase, under the circumstances, and we also commented upon his generous use of slang, especially in the latest interview, wondering whether it were characteristic of him.

The next morning his sister, Mrs. Wylie, arrived with her husband, to spend a day with Mrs. Gaylord in New York. It chanced that they had been away from home for several weeks and had seen none of Frederick’s manuscript, nor any copy of it. As she read—from the original roll—his messages of the preceding evening, she constantly exclaimed: “How characteristic!” and his closing phrase brought tears to her eyes. She told me, then, that along with a copious use of slang, Frederick had preserved an odd little formality of phrase, even in his closest personal relations—a trait not common to other members of the family.

Later, in glancing for the first time through the typewritten record of earlier interviews, again and again she expressed astonishment at the characteristic quality of his phraseology, which had not been mentioned to me before. Mrs. Gaylord had spoken of her vivid consciousness of his personality, imbuing all he said to her, and had told me, during the earlier days of this intercourse, more or less about his habit of thought, but it is characteristic of her to ignore minor details, and only when Mrs. Wylie arrived did I learn anything about his habit of speech.

“Frederick,” he announced, when we invited communication, his bold signature stretching across the whole width of the paper. “Hello, Sis! This is too good not to be true! Hello, Dick!” This to Mr. Wylie, whose marriage to his sister had taken place during the last weeks of his illness. “Welcome home to the family! We’re all in it now, for good and all. This is the thing we’ve all needed, I almost as much as the rest of you, but I did know that sooner or later it must come, so I could bear it better than you could.”

It must not be understood that all these communications came as consecutively as they are presented here. There were frequent pauses; sometimes because of our preoccupation in conversation; sometimes, apparently, because of difficulties of transmission not explained. Occasionally I stopped to verify a word or a phrase, asking if it had been correctly taken, and with increasing frequency the pencil returned without suggestion from me, to cross out false starts. Some of the latter, which seemed significant, will be indicated from time to time. The following message, however, came rapidly, without pause.

“We are all of kindred purposes. That’s the reason we cling to each other so. Family hasn’t a thing to do with it. It was our good fortune to have no forces of disintegration in our immediate group. We are all builders, in one way or another. Not all in the same way, but all for the great purpose. This is one of the things I have wanted to say to you. Don’t be misled by transient relationships of that life. Respect them, but don’t be eternally influenced by them, because when you get over here you’ll find that some of the people you’ve thought you were most fond of have simply dropped out. You don’t need them, nor they you. Find your purposes clearly, and stick to them. We all have purpose, but not all of you there have found out just what yours is. Find it, and follow it fearlessly. There, that’s off my chest!”

Mr. Wylie spoke of the “upside-down stunt,” of which some one had written him, and I said it had been done chiefly to convince me—to show me, in Frederick’s phrase, “who was running it.”

“You know now who is running it,” he contributed, “but you’re certainly formal with strangers!”

In the midst of some talk of ours, the pencil swung off with vigor, writing, “Sis!” in huge script, like a joyous exclamation, ending in strong circles. “Just wait till I catch Dad!” he went on. “And Babe, too! All of us together! Margaret will have to forget her formality then, I tell you!”

Mrs. Wylie mentioned the common impression that personality must be transmuted by death into something remote and strange—that only the soul survived. “Of course, we love the soul of any one dear to us,” she said. “But, after all, the thing we know best, and therefore love best, is the habit of thought—the characteristic mental attitude, and it is so wonderful to find Frederick unchanged—just like himself.”

“Sure! Why not?” he returned. “You people must learn that this isn’t ‘like himself.’ It _is_ himself. Right here on the job.”

“Those words!” His mother and sister exchanged startled glances. Then they told me that just before his long struggle for life on this plane ended, when during six months his powers of recuperation had repeatedly astonished surgeons and nurses, he opened his eyes, to find his father bending over him, and whispered for the last time: “On the job.”

“I’ve always been on it since, too,” he rapidly assured them, “and longing to tell you so. You never can know, until you try it, how we hate to be left out. We’re on the job as you can’t even imagine, and it makes us sort o’ sick that we can’t get it over to you of our own love and purpose.”

He interrupted the talk following this with: “Trot along to lunch! I want to start going and not stop. Get it over, do!”

So we trotted, and got it over as soon as possible, though throughout the meal he insisted upon having a voice in the conversation, writing messages on all the blank paper we had about us, and over the backs of the available menu cards.

“You can’t lose me, and needn’t try,” he told me, and when I protested that he was making it impossible for me to finish my luncheon, he retorted: “You have a perfectly good left hand. Eat with that.”

Several times Mr. Wylie expressed his interest in what he called “the upside-down stunt,” and when we were again seated about a writing-table, Frederick “demonstrated.”

“Incidentally, Dick,” he mentioned, starting at my right and writing toward my left, “you wanted to see this work. Well, here you are. This is the way it is done.”

As this began, Mrs. Gaylord smiled, pulling her chair nearer to the table, where she could watch every movement of the pencil.

“Sit up closer, Mother dearest,” Frederick continued, “and everybody hold hands.” Looking slightly bewildered, she held out her hands to the others. I said that he had used a figure of speech, but she thought he had meant it literally, and we referred the question to him. “Yes, all but your writing-hand,” he said; so we all joined hands, and I asked why.

“Just to make us know more surely that we are all one and indivisible, from now on through eternity. Easter resurrection for every one of us. We are all born again, to some extent, by our communion in this way; I more than you, because I have left the flesh behind. But to you has come new life, new force, new purpose, new faith, through your touch with this life of pure spirit. It is truly your resurrection. This is your Easter message. Hail! And be happy ever after!”

I anticipated none of this message, and its tenor surprised me greatly. Before I had recovered from my astonishment Mrs. Gaylord exclaimed: “That must be the Easter letter he promised me!” Immediately he signed it. “Frederick, to Mother and all of you.”

We spoke of the relation of this whole revelation to orthodox religion, and some one said that it was not in accordance with the Bible.

“Yes, it is,” he contradicted. “You have never learned to read the Bible in this light. The great prophecies have always been phrased in the language, and more or less in the spirit, of the time in which they were uttered. This is the first time in the history of the world when physical science has been sufficiently advanced to enable us to tell the people the truth in terms they would truly understand. Prophecies have been veiled, apparently, not because the truth was vague, but because men were not prepared to understand it in all its details. Nor are they now. But this is to be the whole truth, as far as it can be understood now by your prophets and people. And for the first time it is possible to give it to you directly in this way, without pretense or mystery, book or bell, a natural law operating naturally and freely, through an accredited messenger who makes no claim to inspiration.”

In the course of our drifting talk his mother remembered that Mrs. Z—— had tried to convey a warning through her from Frederick to Mr. Wylie, but had been unable to tell her what it concerned. After some effort to discover its connection, suggesting possible journeys or business ventures, Mrs. Z—— had finally said that Dick was about to do something, she did not know what; but whatever it was, Frederick said he must not do it. Mrs. Gaylord now asked Frederick what he had intended to say.

“She didn’t get my message. I was trying to tell him not to be fearful about anything.” Mr. Wylie is sometimes prey to nervous apprehension and worry. “It keeps us back and we can’t help him as we’re trying to do. Open up, Dick! Let us in and we’ll all pull together.” This apparently touched some situation unknown to me, for Mr. and Mrs. Wylie exchanged glances, and instantly Frederick made his quick circles. “(O) That’s it! Now we’re off! No, it isn’t incredible,” he added, replying to some comment of theirs. “It’s the truest thing you ever heard. But Mrs. Z—— can’t get beyond externals.”

This seems to be a very good example of the way certain messages are confused by the persons through whom they come. In this case, while the intended warning was conveyed, a purely subjective and spiritual message was so distorted, however unconsciously and unintentionally, that it was given an objective and material significance.

Asked whether an acquaintance of theirs would be helped by a knowledge of their intercourse with him, he said: “She is not ready for this yet. Few people, comparatively, are free enough to accept it. It has been forbidden by the church, ridiculed by the laity, and labelled ‘poison, don’t touch’ by neurologists and the scientific, half-baked intellectuals.”

“Fake mediums have done a lot to bring it into disrepute,” Mr. Wylie suggested.

“That’s the reason for some of it. Another reason, less obvious to you, but equally potent, is that people who had the sensitiveness to be messengers frequently lacked the purpose of truth fundamentally, and though thinking they were honest, entertained devils unaware.... That is the reason so many people have gone to pieces, mentally and physically. The purposes of disintegration caught them and destroyed them. But this time, we beat them to it.”

“All philosophies have had some foundation of truth,” he told us, a little later, “or they would not have been permitted to live. This new faith will be attacked by the disintegrating forces, in an attempt to discredit it as a patchwork of philosophies. The new truths they will ignore, or flatly deny. But this is the whole truth, as far as it can be told now. Believe it, follow it, preach it, live it, and we shall truly build that structure I told you of, Mother dearest, of force, light, and sweetness—which is you. I seem to be doing a darned lot of preaching!”

“It isn’t like you, either,” his mother remarked.

“You see, we’ve got to get this over. It’s imperative.”

At that, she said it was like him, after all, because he had always talked eagerly to the family about his “job,” whatever it might be, adding: “Is it ‘imperative’ because of the war and the sorrow? Or because the time is ripe?”

“It’s because there’s the very devil of a fight coming, and we’ve got to gather every force we have, and unite it.”

“Is beating the Germans helping the constructive force? Or is the war merely the awakening through suffering?”

“Germany has been united in purpose as a destructive force for many years. They gave themselves deliberately, not as individuals, but as a people, to what parsons call the powers of darkness. We know them to be forces of disintegration, which found in Germany their strongest ally in the civilized world. We’ve been fighting Germany and her purposes here for years, I find. Suffering makes people readier to listen to truth, but beating Germany was as necessary to the world’s health as sanitation to a hospital.”

“That’s a clear and explicit statement,” some one said.

“We are perfectly definite and explicit about questions of eternal purpose. The difficulty with most people is that they want to know how much U. S. Steel will go up next Tuesday, or whether to give the baby soothing-syrup.”

After some interchange concerning his father and younger sister, he said, “I want to write them an Easter greeting.” So we got a fresh roll of paper, and he wrote a brief but tender letter, which was sent to them that night.

“Which one of us will be best able to do this?” Mrs. Wylie asked.

“... The time will come when this sort of thing is unnecessary. We can talk without material aid.... We never know when the power is going to develop. It’s much like an electric current. You never know it’s there until you feel it—until your signal comes over the wire.... Try it out, all of you. We know no more about who can do it than you do, except in cases of extraordinary power.” Some time afterward, however, he warned them of the dangers of attempting to handle this force, intimating that great conservation of energy in other directions should accompany the endeavor.

His mother spoke of his being happy, and he returned: “Perfectly happy now, thank you. It’s the eternal thing, really started. I hate to have this party break up, but anyhow it isn’t for long. I’ve been away longer, when I lived there, than I shall be now, and we are all of us as sure of the next meeting, and the next good time, as we were then.”

“He knows it is ending, and we must go to our trains,” Mrs. Gaylord said.

“Not ending at all. Beginning! _Hooray!_”

On that triumphant note they took their departure, Mrs. Gaylord westward bound, the Wylies to New England; but, owing to a defective timepiece, both missed their trains. Within an hour, Mrs. Wylie telephoned me that her mother had caught—by the narrowest margin—a later train, hoping to secure sleeping-accommodation after leaving, a dubious venture in these days of diminished service and crowded trains. We arranged to dine and spend the evening together.

Afterward, it occurred to me that Frederick might prefer to be with his mother that night, and I asked Mary K. about it.

“Frederick has engaged his mother in (O) ...”

“What does that mean now?” I interrupted. “Bliss?”

“Yes ... and will come here to-night to see the others.”

III

Like the rest of the family, Mrs. Wylie feared the effect of the Western visit upon her mother’s new-found tranquillity of spirit, and she was also uneasy lest Mrs. Gaylord had been unable to secure Pullman accommodations.

“Mother is all right and happy,” Frederick told us, in the evening. “She is still reading her precious book”—a copy of his earlier interviews, which she carried with her.

Some one asked whether he meant that her general condition was “all right,” or that she was “all right” on the train.

“On the train. She’s blissful!”

This was verified a day or two later by a letter from Mrs. Gaylord, in which she said: “I came away filled with strength and calm and joy.” She also mentioned casually that she had found a vacant section on the train, and traveled comfortably.

“How does purpose combat forces of evil?” Mr. Wylie asked.

“It is done by overpowering them, as the sun dispels mist, separating them into smaller particles or units. And when that is impossible, by driving them like clouds before a high wind. They work for evil, but can be separated sometimes from the mass and united with constructive forces. Only small fragments of the main forces can be so converted, at present. Mostly we rout them.”

“Does an evil soul lose personality?” his sister questioned. “Is it absorbed, or broken into fragments?”

“The individuality that finds its first expression in your life is never absorbed or broken up. I speak of the forces of disintegration, composed of more individuals than the greatest army, as being routed. We mass ourselves and our purposes against them and theirs, when we fight in the open here. But as has been explained in the Lessons, the very material form you have was originally an effort to evolve a force not conquerable by purpose alone. Both good and evil forces, in your phrase—constructive and destructive, in ours—took possession of these concrete forms, and now the bitterness of the fight is greatest where both forces are represented in one individual. The only way we can fight that effectively is to sit on the job, and try to call to the purpose that is ours more clearly and appealingly, or more commandingly, than the other fellow does. That’s the reason we are begging you now to work with us. A great crisis is at hand, and we want you to meet it consciously in your life there, knowing its nature, so that we can have your help, not only in withstanding material onslaughts, like Germany’s invasions and brutality, but in things of the spirit—the real things, the eternal things—so that together we may win a real victory. The individual whose purposes are fundamentally destructive is not damned nor lost. He is just delayed. Sooner or later he must work his way up, and it is entirely up to him whether he does it sooner or later—after he reaches this life, especially. In your life, he is sometimes confused or misled. He pays for that, too—not pays, but makes good for it, by working here for the development he had not sense enough to take there. But his delay is brief, beside that of the essentially destructive force.”

A little later, Mrs. Wylie spoke again of her uneasiness about her mother’s visit to K——, and some one suggested telegraphing her that Frederick had been with us that evening.

“Give her my love when you wire,” he directed, “and tell her I’m on the crossing, still ringing that bell. Don’t you worry, Sis. I’ll go and stay with her most of the time she’s there, and she’ll know it. I’ll come to you, Easter, too, for a little while.... Tell Dad I’ll be taking care of Mother. He needn’t fret about it.”

“Do you want me to look up ‘Bob’ and tell him about his little girl?” she asked.

He replied, “Yes, do.” And when she asked if he could give her something more definite than a Christian name by which to trace this unknown man among his large and scattered acquaintance, he wrote the name of a Middle Western city, adding: “You can find out from the fellows. All of them know Bob.”

This seems to be a case of marked deflection of ray, to use Mr. Kendal’s simile, for up to the day when this manuscript goes to the printer the Gaylord family have been unable to identify “Bob,” although there was a confused intimation, late in April, that Mrs. Z—— had made a mistake in the name, and a suggestion that the surname was Roberts. It is not impossible that this was one of those wily incursions of disintegrating force, with intent to confuse, to which we afterward grew accustomed.

On Friday and Saturday of that week (March 29th and 30th), there were interviews of great interest, but of too personal a character to be extensively quoted.

Replying to the inquiry of a man for his father, Mary K. said: “He was a great force here, but has passed on into the life beyond ours. He can and will return to talk to you, but not immediately.”

“Tell G—— the constructive forces are working for him, as he for them,” was the answer to questions about a man in this life. “Temporary disappointments are unimportant. Do not fear. We build together, and surely. The result is certain and for his purpose—progress, light, and justice. His individual concern is to have faith, follow his purpose, and trust us. The only failure possible comes from admitting doubt, disintegration, and fear.”

An expression of anxiety concerning another man on this plane was met thus: “N—— has felt his own purpose stirring a little.... A perfectly good purpose when he finds it. He has had many forces fighting, within and without. He will wake when this message is given to the world. He is too intelligent not to recognize truth as obvious as this will be.” Some one asked when this would occur. “When Margaret completes the book she will publish soon.” This was the first intimation of the way in which I was expected to carry out Mary K.’s instructions to make this experience known, concerning which we had wondered not a little.

It was suggested that a member of this person’s family might help him, from the next plane, but this was said to be impossible, as they were not of the same purpose.

“The family connection is nothing here. His own purposes know him, both good and bad, and they are fighting it out. He has answered first one, then another. But fundamentally he is for justice. He will answer to that in the end.... Sometimes he will shut it all out and yield to the forces seeking to destroy him, but he will fight in the end for freedom and justice.”

“She is not of our forces,” was the reply to an inquiry about an artist who left this life twenty years ago. This was crossed out, however, and “not mentally free” substituted.

When I was alone, I asked Mary K. about this woman, and she returned: “She is not a destructive force, but is deterrent. She is working out problems not met when she should have met them, and is fighting for growth, just as she soon or late will fight for progress. She fights for herself, her own growth, and not for progress in the larger sense.”

Afterward, I learned, from some one who knew her well, of this woman’s devouring and unquenchable ambition for supremacy in her profession.

Whimsical Anne Lowe, writing to three friends of her continued association with them, said: “Believe—_know_—that we are a positive force, and united we stand, hurrah! Our faith helps all beneficent purpose. Its force is freed and multiplied by the sum of your participation.”

“I wonder if she could tell us what our purposes are?” Elizabeth said.

“Yours is Progress, Ruth’s is Light, Katharine’s is Healing and Light. You are blended. Elizabeth to push, Ruth to illumine and interpret, Katharine to understand and soothe.”

Ruth said, wistfully: “Then all I can do is to shine?”

“Interpreters are really prophets,” she was told. “That is all the greatest prophets ever were. You are of their purpose, so cheer up!”

Interrupting a little discussion as to whether dominant purpose is born in us or developed, she said: “We are born with many purposes, latent and striving, but as we live we make daily choice.”

That evening, our old friend Maynard Holt came for a long talk. After some entirely personal exchange, Cass spoke of Maynard as having been, in this life, a believer in individualism.

Beginning with some allusion to former discussions between them, concerning what he called “the temporary manifestations of Socialism,” Maynard replied: “Now I can tell you definitely that the salvation of the civilized world is dependent on the independence of the individual.... It’s a big and glorious period in eternal history. The time has almost come for the open fight. Prepare your ground carefully, and gird up your loins for combat. It’s coming.”

A little later, in a similar connection, he said: “The conscious co-operation of purpose is the only sound principle of Socialism. That is eternally sound. And now that we are consciously and forcefully working in harmony with the great and eternal purpose, they can’t stop us.”

“Has this new opportunity of communication with this plane made you over there happier?” he was asked.

“It has opened an entirely new channel to us here in this part of the world. In the Far East, we have the channel, but no hard-pan to support the stream. Here science gives us a foundation from which to work, but we have had no channel through which to reach it.... Everywhere in the civilized world the minds of intelligent people have turned to this. There is reaching and questioning and longing, and a dawning faith.”

At this time I did not know how frequently belief in the possibility of communication with those in a life beyond is accompanied by an inclination toward the Oriental philosophies, but Maynard’s allusion to the Far East was given greater significance by the replies to later questions.

To an inquiry concerning the possible influence of these teachings in Germany, he returned: “They are a philosophical and abstract-minded people, and they’ll be hunting a plausible and satisfactory explanation of themselves before long. And this is less uncomplimentary than the others will be, besides having the undeniable advantage of being true, which they will have learned, by that time, to appreciate.”

“Can’t those with eyes, ears, and understanding learn wisely to control, lead, and uplift the mass?” Cass asked. “In Russia, for example?”

“Don’t be in such a hurry. There’s all eternity, and evolution is slow. But the mills of the gods grind on, and the grist is sure. The Russians, like the Germans, must climb their own hills. America has a few to climb, too. This will help many, uplift a few, escape the mass, but leaven the whole. There is no millennium at hand. This is just a light by which the path is made more clear. It will influence many thousands, in many countries, but the inert mass must work its way on, through the old channels of evolution, made easier by knowledge and by experience of those ahead, but not to be evaded or avoided by any miracle.”

“But it will bring conscious purpose and effort to bear in helping this evolution?”

“Surely. It is a message eagerly awaited and desired.”

Later that evening, I asked Mary K. whether she could tell me anything about the book Anne Lowe had said I was to publish.

“Yes. It must be ready for publication by Fall.”

“Evidently sordid, material details of book manufacture escape your attention,” I said, laughing. “This is the thirtieth of March, and you have not yet given me all the material for your book. When you have done that, it still must be edited, assembled for publication, copied, accepted by publishers, printed, and sold. Perhaps you don’t know that salesmen for publishing-houses begin taking orders for Fall publications in June, and generally carry sample copies of the books with them?”

She said I would have the necessary material in a month or six weeks, and that editing would “take another month,” from which it is evident that no eight-hour law is operative on her plane. She also advised me to see publishers at once, tell them what was happening, read them parts of communications already received, and arrange for Fall publication, conditional upon their satisfaction with the completed manuscript—which, not without misgivings concerning such procedure, I immediately prepared to act upon.

A night or so later, Maynard Holt came again, with his mother, who said: “Maynard brought me to call.”

When we asked if she worked with those on this plane, she replied: “Yes, but also with undeveloped purposes, here before their time.”

Returning to the subject of Russian upheaval, Maynard said: “They are goners for some time, now. It will take them long to assemble their purposes again constructively.”

“If you had been here,” Cass asked, “would you have viewed the Russian situation and its effect on the world as you do now?”

“Not quite, I think. We see farther ahead, and have sounder premises from which to argue than you’ve ever had there.”

“This plan, of course, includes all the people of the world,” Cass continued. “Are those who leave here undeveloped, still undeveloped there?”

“There is a large and growing population here of the undeveloped,” was Maynard’s reply, “which is one of the lesser reasons for our keen desire to purposize the world.”

IV

“What place have the unfit on your plane?” we asked Mary K., at the conclusion of the sixth Lesson.

“No place. They are errors of development, and have a long struggle ahead before they can reach the degree of development that should have been theirs in your life. They are fusions of weak purposes, and should not be permitted to hold back the strong and the fit. Development will come to them slowly, at best, but more quickly here than there.”

“In the present stage of our development, is there a sufficient incentive to progress, without hope of material gain or personal improvement?”

“Any material gain that is for the constructive purpose is a force for light and progress in the larger sense. Material gain is deterrent only when purpose is its price. Personal ambition is an incentive always. When it is for personal gain, at any price, it is deterrent. When it is ambition to serve a great purpose worthily, it becomes a constructive force, to which material gain adds only more constructive force.”

“Have you all history spread out before you? Or are you taught after you get there?”

“We have a grasp of results, not easily understood in your life. It is like seeing a landscape from a high and distant hill. The salient features are easily distinguished.”

“Are these messages for all people? Or only for civilized people? Do they come from Christians on your plane?”

“This is a message to the civilized world.... Jew or Gentile, Christian or agnostic, all men are brothers in the larger sense. Uncivilized little brothers will grow, or come to this freer plane to join their larger purposes.”

“Then from whom do these Lessons come?”

“From great constructive purposes. There is no sect or creed, color or prejudice, here.”

Saturday, April 6th, Mrs. Bruce came again to talk to her husband, and he thanked her for a public gift which she had just made in his name, promising such co-operation in the work it promoted as could be given from his plane. She said that she had felt suddenly impelled to make this contribution, and had acted at once upon the impulse.

“You all feel impelled to work with us as soon as you realize we are here near you,” he told her, “and the things we can do together are as yet undreamed in your life.”

She spoke of his former interest in the arts, which he said he had left behind as “material manifestations.” Discussing the relation of artistic expression to constructive purpose, he said: “Art, when it is a real interpretation of life, is a high and noble thing, but the art that is merely self-expression is a disintegrating force. Too much of it is that now.”

At that time, she had read none of the Lessons, and he told her of the seven purposes of construction, continuing: “To purpose of any nature only similar purpose calls, and when the call is heard there is no choice but to answer. No choice after the call has been admitted to consciousness. It may be shut out and denied, but once listened to, whether for construction or for destruction, the answer is bound to come. That is why we so insistently urge the discovery of purpose and the beauty of construction. Character, as you understand it, results from the purposes admitted to consciousness. Not always recognized, but always let in.”

He had some difficulty in getting one word written, and she spoke of his erasures of wrong starts as extraordinary and unusual.

“Not a bit unusual, if you think how often the words of your languages fail as convincing and accurate symbols. You often correct them yourselves. A translation may be made in any of several ways, depending on the reactions of the translator to certain symbols. So, when Margaret reacts freely, we let it stand. When she fails, wholly or in part, we correct it.”

In view of later statements concerning the force used in these manifestations, I assume this to mean, not that I make the translation mentioned, but that certain symbols used in translation are sometimes difficult to convey through me. Frequently other words have been substituted for those originally begun, when there was trouble in writing them. Another explanation of these occasional difficulties of transmission was suggested afterward, first by Frederick and later more explicitly by Mary Kendal.

“Do you see us visibly?” Mrs. Bruce asked.

“Yes, of course. We see all you do, and more. We see motives, where you see appearance.”