tmrn'- ** !;'• r ■,-,;;■,:■; i,.,;!;i,- ■■ ^, Til f « 'WHO (MnfltMairti ' m^^MMilifilH^^^^^^H THEY WHO UNDERSTAND THEY WHO UNDERSTAJNI) BY LILIAN WHITING •'Be constant, happy soul, be constant and of good courage! For thou wilt be protected, enriched, and en- lightened by the greatest good ; and if thou dost not turn away, but perseverest constantly, know that thou offerest to God the most acceptable sacrifice." — Miguel Molinos. NON-REFERT cqWVAD ' Q3S BOSTON LITTLE, BEOWN, AND COMPANY 1919 JbrarY EDUC. PSYCH. ^ LIBRARY Copyright, 1919, By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved NorbDooti ^re20 bet up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushmg Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. THE belo\t:d and precious memory OF THE FLOWER OF AMERICAN YOUTH WHOSE HEROISM EXALTS AND CONSECRATES THE NEW FREEDOM THAT WILL INVEST A REMADE WORLD THUS TRANSFIGURED BY THEIR HOLY SACRIFICE — Lilian Whitino ' • The gift of God is eternal life through Jeius Christ, our Lord^^ 15839 CONTENTS Chapteb Paqs I The Gates of New Life .... 1 II The Unbroken Continuity of Experience 47 III Evidential Communication and Proof . 74 IV The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 109 V How to Develop Spiritual Recognition . 132 VI Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual Vision 153 VII "Here Am I, Lord; Send Me". . . 175 /f^.^, // .^. - . U i " There shall never be one lost good I What was, shall live as before ; The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound ; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round." — Bbowning in '^Abt Vogler." THEY WHO UNDERSTAND THE GATES OF NEW LIFE "... a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the Christ stand!" — Browning in "Saul." A GREAT spiritual awakening is over the world. "Where Christ brings His cross He brings His presence," and never was the intuitive turning of all humanity to God, in the face of sorrow, more evident than at the present time. We read a new meaning into the wonderful words, "God is our refuge and our strength ; a very present help in time of trouble." The words are a foundation of actual life; not merely nor even mostly consolation, in the ordinary sense, but a basis of the deepest reality on which to stand. We endure — as seeing the invisible. It is the world we do not see in which we live ; it is the forces of the unseen which sus- 1 ']' they' Who Understand tain all purpose. Nor is it only in hours of sad- ness and bereavement that we would turn to God ; our own poet of the spiritual life, the gentle and beloved Longfellow, has given true expression to an universal feeling in the lines : "Ah, when the infinite burden of life descendeth upon us, Crushes to earth our hope, and, under the earth, in the graveyard. Then it is good to pray unto God I for His sorrow- ing children Turns He ne'er from His door, but He heals and helps and consoles them. Yet it is better to pray when all things are pros- perous with us. Pray in fortunate days, for life's most beautiful Fortune Kneels before the Eternal's throne; and with hands interfolded. Praises thankful and moved the only Giver of blessings." A very present help in time of trouble, a help equally needed in time of joy, — in every supreme The Gates of New Life experience of life the soul turns intuitively and instinctively to the divine aid. The nature of this aid is constantly being more clearly revealed to us. It is also true that in the deepening spirituality of life man is more and more depend- ing on this aid. Our religious faith is becoming to us the most absolutely practical reliance. This deeper assurance springs largely from our increasing comprehension of the nature of life ; of the origin, the development, the conditions of progress, and the final destiny of the spiritual man which is the individual himself. To speak of the destiny of the soul as if it were something apart from the man, is misleading. Shall we not realize the simple and fundamental truth that we are, here and now, spiritual beings, dwelling in a spiritual world ; that it is the spiritual and not the physical w^orld to which we belong; that we are tem- porarily clothed with a physical body as the in- strument in correspondence with the physical environment in which we sojourn for a season? Yet, all the while, even during this sojourn, we are still the inhabitants of the spiritual world; a world of "discrete degrees", as Swedenborg They Who Understand points out, in which the ethereal is the next succeeding environment to the physical; after which we pass on to still finer and finer degrees of environment, even from glory to glory, as the apostle phrases it. Now, as we are here and in the immediate present an inhabitant of both the physical and ethereal realms; tethered to the former by the physical mechanism; related to the latter by virtue of the ethereal body in which we find ourselves when we withdraw from the physical body (as one would withdraw his hand from a glove), does it not seem luminously clear that those of our beloved who have thus with- drawn by the process we name death are still in close relations to us ? Never was there a time in human history when the question was so vital as now, when thousands of homes are desolated by the vanishing of son, brother, or husband in the tragic and terrible conflict which has been raging. Unless life and all its interests and purposes extend beyond the merely visible limits, what philosophy or consolation could we find? During the Boer War Archdeacon Wilberforce The Gates of New Life said, in a private letter to a friend : " ^^^lat do you think is the state of these great numbers of young Englishmen suddenly hurled out of life? Where are they? What are their first experiences?" When the present Archbishop of Canterbury visited the United States in 1906, preaching elo- quently in many churches, he asked, in one dis- course, " The life beyond, — what is it ? What is its relation to the life about us?" The Arch- bishop instanced this question as the first one that would rush to our lips if, for a single hour, we had full access to Him "who is the Source and Object of our faith." If that question were vital in 1906, what is it in this year of 1919, when it voices the thought that is in every heart? We are living in great moments. Supreme sacrifice is lifting humanity to the heights hitherto undreamed. But through what suffering, what sorrow of bereavement do we strive to behold a still nobler future! Are those homes made desolate; those hearts which cry, — " But oh for the touch of a vanished hand. And the sound of a voice that is still !" 6 They Who Understand are they to be left groping in chaotic darkness, hoping, trusting, yet feeling that they do not really know in what state are these gallant young lives that have passed, or in what relation to life still here? Can we know ? It is not too much to say that it is absolutely assured that we may penetrate to a considerable extent beyond the horizon line that divides the unseen and the seen. For this horizon line is not a fixed wall ; it is not a definite and immovable boundary ; it is a line that recedes as constantly before the increasing development of spiritual perceptions as does the horizon line of distance before the eye of the traveler. Scien- tific knowledge of the nature of the universe and the increasing power to lay hold of spiritual truth unite to reveal to man something of the conditions in which those who withdraw from the physical world find themselves. So we may question: After all, just what has happened? One who was on earth yesterday, so tenderly beloved and cherished, is to-day in the next succeeding environ- ment of our eternal and immortal life. What does this transition signify to him and to us? The Gates of Neiv Life First of all, we may be confidently assured it does not signify loss and loneliness and unbroken sorrow. To a marvelous degree death gives, rather than takes away. Spirit to spirit ap- proaches more closely than when both were limited by the physical mechanism. One is now liberated from this, and therefore more fully in command of his powers. When one comes to think of it, the physical body is a separation to a degree. How universal is the recognition of love far deeper than can be expressed in human language. How universal is the recognition of both feeling and thought that can never be fully translated into ordinary expression. _" We are spirits, clad in veils ; Man by man was never seen ; All our deep communion fails To remove the shadowy screen.** In this stanza and others in the same poem, Christopher Pearse Cranch, one of the spirits "finely touched but to fine issues", — one of that Cambridge group which included Lowell, Story, and that spirit of loveliness and love whom we 8 They Who Understand knew on earth as Charles Eliot Norton, — in these lines Mr. Cranch felicitously embodied a pro- found truth. In this part of life we are veiled to each other. We do not, at best, penetrate very far beyond the "shadowy screen." The tragedy of love is its possible misinterpretations. "How often," said Mr. Longfellow, "we call a man cold when he is only sad." As a matter of fact there may be a beautiful interlude in this period when one of the two closely conjoined by ties of affection is in the ethereal and one still in the physical world. There are thus three phases of companionship which are fairly clear to us: One when both are here in this part of life ; the second when one is in the ethereal and the other here; while the third, when both are again to- gether in the same environment in the next succes- sive stage of life, is becoming recognizable to us. We did not regard it as a cause for sorrow when, in the easy and happy days that preceded that fatal August of 1914, one held most dear left us for a time for a journey to Europe or to the Far East. The visible presence had temporarily vanished, but what added richness of life was The Gates of Neiv Life 9 shared I The interest and charm of the new experiences of the traveler brought their added interest and charm to the life of the one who remained at home. The analogy is unerring. The interlude of companionship between one in the unseen and one here may be, — indeed, it should be, — a period of peculiar uplifting and holy joy. One reason (perhaps the only reason) why it is not, is that the one left on earth is so plunged into grief, so submerged in sorrow, that the continual messages of thought and love cannot pass through the impenetrable gloom. Washington Irving said that sorrow for the dead was the only sorrow that we cherished; all other wounds we sought to heal, but this sorrow we regarded as one that we should not en- deavor to lessen. The words reveal to how signal a degree we have advanced between the time of Mr. Irving and our own. Even when grief is unassuaged, the one in sorrow now makes brave efforts to rise above it and be cheerful for the sake of others. During the past quarter of a century the change of attitude toward death has been very apparent. 10 They Who Understand Perhaps no one who was present at the last rites for Phillips Brooks (January 26, 1893) can ever fail to remember that the entire spirit of the service was that of a sacred festival. There was such spontaneous recognition of the immortal qualities of the man that there was no room for mourning. It was felt by all that there was little of his life that could die. Those who have been privileged to hold close companionship with the noble and the lofty cannot regard their transition from this phase of life as any finality of separation. In all ages and in all nations the great of soul have transcended death. The Reverend Doctor Ernest Stires, rector of St. Thomas's in New York, thus speaks in a recent discourse of this transition : "How very stupid we are about death I The day that brings God's summons is our real Commencement Day. All our earthly life is an education, a preparation, for a larger career. The best that we have done here is valuable not merely for its contribution to earthly life, but for the training for the higher service." Doctor Stires added: The Gates of New Life 11 " Hold fast to your comforting idea of God ; keep your inspiring vision of life's meaning ; have beautiful dreams of the joy of dear ones in the Life Eternal ; and remember that all our ideas, our visions, our dreams are true only as they may be beautiful and strengthening; and that at the point of their fairest beauty they are yet short of the glorious facts, for the realities of God transcend man's highest hopes." This interlude is one that has come into thousands of homes from which the brave and gallant youth of our country have gone forth to return no more. "This will be known as the age *when knighthood was in flower'," Doctor Stires has also said, — the age in which the spirit of youth responded to the voice and the vision. "Life runs large" in the inspiration of a Cause when to the young man there comes that "voice without reply", and he hears, — " 'Tis man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die. " It is a spiritual awakening to this young knight- hood. 12 They Who Understand "I think I should go mad if I did not cherish faith in the justice of things, and a confident belief that death cannot end great friendships," wrote Robert Sterling, who won the Newdigate prize at Oxford for his poem, "The Burial of Socrates", and who was killed at the front on St. George's Day of 1915. This boy-poet, whose sojourn on earth had been less than twenty-two years, and Alan Seeger, who knew that he had "a rendezvous with death", and who went for- ward with joyful courage, are two, typical of multitudes. These young men who enter on the next phase of life are aglow with noblest enthusiasms; they are spiritually alive; they are in readiness to lay hold on progress as is the youth who enters the university filled with enthusiasm for learning rather than with indiffer- ence to his privileges. "He in whom the divine light has not awakened is virtually asleep in the spirit, and therefore cannot act upon spiritual things any more than a man asleep can act upon material things," says an Oriental writer. The conditions in which these young men pass into the unseen render them spiritually awake and The Gates of New Life 13 alert. They compassed more than the ordinary spiritual progress of a lifetime within the brief period of their entrance into a conflict which aroused all holy enthusiasm. This fact, alone, is one of infinite significance, ^^^lat new meaning has their transition? One aspect of this signifi- cance is that study and research into spiritual truth has quite established the actual fact that the higher spirituality achieved during the physical tenure of life renders the spiritual man far more free and buoyant on his entrance into the ethereal realm. The analogy may be found in that of one entering on this life with unimpeded vision rather than blindness. After all, just what has happened ? One who, so tenderly beloved and cherished, was here yesterday, sharer of our familiar conditions, is to-day in the conditions just succeeding our own ; he has withdrawn from these. Yesterday he was in the physical realm. To-day he is in the ethereal realm. What does this transition signify to us, or to him? The tragedy of the War has brought home to us these questions in a way that becomes a vital 14 They Who Understand issue. Where are they, — the gallant young soldiers who offered their earthly lives with abounding heroism for the great cause of human freedom? In The Nation, under date of July 18, 1918, occurs this paragraph : " Of the spiritual questions raised anew by the Great War, none is attracting more attention than that of the immortality of the soul. The enormous loss of life on the battlefield, the un- fulfilled character of the lives thus abruptly ended, the hunger of those left behind for reunion with ^the loved and lost' combine to quicken and deepen the perennial interest in the problem of survival after death. Of the various phases of this interest in immortality, none is more striking than the renewal of discussion of spiritualism, psychical research, and kindred matters." The question of the immortality of the soul I To those whose faith in immortality is as absolute as their existence, the idea of its being a "ques- tion", a debatable problem, is almost untenable. Yet that to a large proportion of humanity it still is such must be recognized. The "will to The Gates of New Life 15 believe" does not alone create faith. That seems to be a conviction with or without which one is born. One has faith as he has his very existence ; or, — he has not. Nor is it a question of ethics or morals. It is, apparently, a question of the degree of one's spiritual development, of the opening of the spiritual nature. IMultitudes of people, of flawless integrity and beneficent life, do not yet find themselves with this absolute and unquestioning conviction. And as Tennyson so justly says, — " There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds." There is no virtue in professing a belief, a con- viction, that one does not feel. Quite the con- trary. Let us be honest with ourselves. Let us search, — not for argument to sustain any favorite or preconceived theory, but for truth alone. Yet as Frederic W. H. Myers has said, there is, doubt- less, in each of us "an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than one knows ; an individu- ality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation." Few are 16 They Who Understand the persons who are mentally satisfied to deny the possibility of immortality, even though they declare that they perceive no evidence for it. Very few persons find themselves resting con- tentedly with a negative conviction. They "hope" it is true, even while, in the same breath, they may declare that they see no reason to justify this hope. In a way there seem to be three classes of attitude; that which believes unquestioningly from intuitive recognition sup- ported by religious faith; that which has come to be convinced by evidence, — the evidence of survival by means of communications and messages from beyond ; and that which is quite ready to be convinced, if the evidence seems to them suflSciently undeniable. To no one of these attitudes can any objection be made. For they are all honest and sincere. For more or less varying periods the matter is not, to many, the most vital issue of life. All at once through a great bereavement it becomes such. The heroic young son, brother, or husband has suddenly met death on the battle- field. Or, in some other manner, some one The Gates of New Life 17 dearly beloved has vanished into the unseen. Then love is on the alert to penetrate the mystery. First of all let us realize that nothing evil has happened. This change whose process we call death is simply that the spiritual man, the real being, one's self, so to speak, withdraws from the outer physical tenement, just as the hand is withdrawn from a glove. The spiritual being which is the man himself is temporarily clothed with a physical body for his use while he is in the physical world. It is this which relates him to the physical world ; which enables him to come into touch with it. It is the instrument, the mechanism, that provides for the spiritual being his means of acting on and with physical forces, just as the piano, the violin, the pen, the type- writer, enable the musician to audibly embody his music, the writer to make visible expression of his thought. The physical body is that wonderful and perfectly adapted mechanism, or instrument, by which alone the spiritual being can come into relations with, and by means of which he may effectively accomplish achievements in the physi- cal world. It is no more the man hknself than 18 They Who Understand the glove is the hand ; or than the piano is the musician, or the pen the writer. Shall we not clearly recognize this truth, first of all? The man has withdrawn from his physical sheath. At best, it was only designed for temporary use. Somewhere within a hundred years, as a usual thing, we all withdraw from these sheaths. And then ? Then we enter on the life more abundant. But just what does that inspiring phrase signify ? Is it merely a vague term whose meaning cannot be clearly grasped ? Not so. The physical body, while its use is to permit the man to relate his energies to a range of objective achievements, yet limits his expression. He has far greater capabilities than can thus be expressed, as a great musician cannot adequately express his music by a piano limited to four octaves. The spiritual man then, the real individual, has far more to express than the limited mechanism of the physi- cal body allows him to transmit through its means ; therefore, when he has withdrawn from it he experiences a sense of freedom, of an exhilara- tion of energy, of a power undreamed of before. The Cafes of New Life 19 The first sensation, as a rule, is that of a fairly rapturous and ecstatic deUght. We know this by the vast accumulation of testimony that cannot be either doubted or denied. From the assurance of Jesus, the Christ, to the present time, its volume has been increasing. The ethereal body (which is now free from the limi- tations of the outer physical body) is in cor- respondence w4th the ethereal environment, the realm just succeeding that in which we now live. What is the nature of this environment? Is it something so strange, so incomprehensible to our present conceptions, that we can form no idea at all of it? Not so. Jt is perfectly natural. It is in a perfect continuity of relation to our present environment. It has been called a replica of the physical world. But, instead, the physical world is a lesser and feebler replica of the ethe- real. Because the latter is the more real. The ethereal is the realm of causes. The physical is the realm of effects. As life progresses it grows more real and more significant, as the life of the man or woman is more real and significant 20 They Who Understand than the life of the infant. But, holding the analogy still further, as the infant merges into childhood, youth, maturity, age, without any startling change from day to day, progressing by a system of perfect and unbroken continuity, so, in this absolutely unbroken continuity, does the life in the physical world merge into that of the ethereal world. There is no definite line of demarcation. It is the unbroken continuity of evolutionary progression. The man who shared our life yesterday in these familiar surroundings shares our life to-day in his new environment. He, in his essential self, is unchanged. But he has entered on a larger round of possibilities and of opportunities for his expanding powers. His first sensation is that of an incommunicable joy. This ecstatic sense of freedom ; this intense interest of a new and boundless range of life, — not separated from the order of life he has just left, but including that and beckoning on to that which is infinitely greater, — how beautiful and how joyous it is ! With one possible exception ? Alas, it is almost always an exception, and that is the grief of those dear to him who do not com- The Gates of New Life 21 prebend the blessedness and tbe beauty of the transition. Now when we come to realize its true nature, should not this interlude be a joyful one on both sides? May we not think of our dear human relations as falling into three distinctive phases; the one when both are in the physical world ; the second when one is in the physical, one in the ethereal ; the third when both are in the ethereal ? The first one of these phases has had its sweet- ness and its joy for us ; but the second, too, has its joy and its sweetness. "Lift up your hearts." Nothing evil has happened. The companionship of spirit to spirit is unbroken. Then, the third phase, that of the reunion of both in the ethereal world, awaits. It is an event absolutely assured. There is no doubt about it. It is, at most, only a question of time. Now, why not accept the happiness, yes, even the happiness of this inter- lude? It offers its own beauty and interest. It offers great opportunities for both intellectual and spiritual experience and expansion. It has its own peculiar privileges and special joys that have not presented themselves before and will 22 They Who Understand not present themselves in just this manner again. Shall we not make it a rich and beautiful period rather than one of loss and gloom and sorrow? Because in that way we may contribute so much to the happiness of those who are so dear and who have passed into the unseen. It is not strange that this period has been made one of mourning and sadness to those who have not come to comprehend more truly the real nature of that change we call death. It has been veiled in mystery because we have not fully understood the real teaching of Jesus. To some extent both He and the apostles taught in parables and in symbolic language, and it is only in the larger illumination of modern interpretation that we have quite realized the simple and sincere mean- ing of the gospels. "With what body do they come?" asks Saint Paul in his epistle to the Corinthians. The context compares the resurrec- tion of the ethereal body with the physical body, — the withdrawal of the ethereal from the physical — with the sowing of grain which is quickened and springs up from the ground. "So, also," says Saint Paul, "is the resurrection The Gates of New Life 28 of the dead." Our error in the past has been that we failed to realize that his "resurrection" is but another name for the very process that we call death. It is the rising of the spiritual man from the physical encasement which he discards, as one discards outw^orn garments. He who dies thus rises in newness of life. That is what dying means. Now to rise in newness of life is very beautiful. It is also very joyful. And the beauty and the joy are for us whose love follows the arisen, so tenderly and unfailingly, as well as for them. Indeed, their possibilities of joy are very greatly diminished if not lost by our grief and sorrow. Now^ it is the one greatest com- fort to feel that we may still do something for those dearer than our own life; and we can do this; we can lift up our hearts and recognize the nature of the change that has come to them and share with them the joy of it. Archdeacon Wilberforce of Westminster in an Easter sermon said : " Resurrection means continuity of in- dividuality, utter abolition of death as a con- crete reality, the exposure of death as a sham and a delusion." These are strong words from one 24 They Who Understand of the most devout of churchmen; and in addi- tion the Archdeacon suggests : " It is mere self-deception, of course, to pretend that death is a delusion on the physical plane ; it is not ; . . . but, from within, the man, — the real man, rises into the new conditions. . . . The moment of death is the moment of resurrection, the essential identity the same. And remember, death is the re-uniter of loving presences." The young hero who, in all his holy enthusiasm, flung himself into devotion to the sublime ideal for which our soldiers were fighting, and who, yesterday at the front, was separated from those who held him nearest, but who, to-day, has passed into the unseen realm, is no longer separated. Death gives us our beloved. It is the contingencies of this part of life that take them from us. Following the wonderful illumination of the teachings of Saint Paul we read : " It is sown a natural body ; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body." The two are coincident ; the spiritual body (which is the real, the substantial body) is clothed by the 'The Gaies of New Lift 25 natural for a limited period of time. One need not look beyond the familiar passages of the gospels to find authority and confirmation for the conviction of the present reality of the spiritual body (the "substantial" body, as Saint Paul well calls it), for it persists; while its outer physical case, being unsubstantial, decays and disappears on the withdrawal of the substantial one. To clearly recognize this initial fact is to gain the conditions to grasp the larger truth in direct sequence, — that, with the existence of the friend in his spiritual body (of which the physical form we knew was a replica), compan- ionship and communion, even definite commu- nication, are natural and even inevitable. If I seem to dwell unduly upon this matter of the spiritual body it is because psychical research has so largely used the term "discarnate" in referring to those who have withdrawn from the life on earth. The term "discarnate spirit" may be scientific (by custom) but it is not spiritual truth. There is no such thing in the infinite universe as a "discarnate" spirit. Every spirit is clothed in a body. As life goes on and 26 They Who Understand on, these bodies become finer and more subtle. But for the moment we are not considering the momentous possibihties of future eternities, but rather the immediate present after the with- drawal. For the sake of clearness may I just say that in a vast completeness of contemplation, the body that first succeeds the physical is termed the ethereal; and that successively be- tween the conditions of the ethereal and the spiritual bodies there are differences of degree; but not to make our present survey encumbered with detail, one may simply refer to this the real body as the spiritual, which it is, indeed, in a potential degree. The assumption that the natural grief and sor- row for the death of those tenderly cherished is a matter to be approached without comprehension and sympathy is not tenable. Into all the sweet relations of our human life this sorrow falls. It is our universal experience. But just because it is universal, a grief in common to us all, we may approach it with mutual inquiry. A little understanding of the conditions in which we now live throws great light upon the problem The Gates of New Life 27 of the interrelations of life in the physical and the ethereal realms. We are, here and now, spiritual beings inhabiting a spiritual world. We are only partially physical beings inhabiting a physical world. Our sojourn in this physical realm is limited. Our physical body is only a temporary convenience. When Sir Oliver Lodge made clear to science the existence of the ether of space he thus pro- vided a very definite condition for the environ- ment of those who have passed through death. Sir Oliver's work was purely scientific; but one could hardly grasp the scientific truth without discerning its spiritual prototype. The great scientist finds that the ether is the most solid, the most substantial thing in the known uni- verse, — " Perhaps the only substantial thing in the material universe," he says. Sir Oliver adds that, in comparison with the ether, "the densest matter, such as lead, or gold, is a filmy, gossamer structure; like a comet's tail, or a milky way, or like a salt in a very dilute solution." Now this substantial, etheric world is absolutely inter- penetrated with our physical world. It forms 28 They Who Understand conditions coexistent. With this ethereal en- vironment the ethereal (or spiritual) body is in the same correspondence that the physical body is with the physical environment. So this truth provides a definite answer to our first question : Where are those who were here yesterday and have vanished to-day ? Where are they ? Under what conditions are they living? Think of the difference it is to us to simply believe in immortality, but with no definite idea as to what form immortality assumes; to try to conceive a "discarnate" spirit; an "essence"; a "persistence of consciousness"; or to realize that the man who has withdrawn from his physical body is as definitely clothed in his ethereal body and is living as definitely (and as naturally) in the ethereal environment as we are in the physical environment. What a tremendous difference that makes to us at once. There is something to take hold of, to understand. We not only believe ; we absolutely realize something of the nature of the life in which he is now dwell- ing. Sir Oliver Lodge did not himself, in his wonderful little book entitled "The Ether Of The Gates of Xew Life 29 Space", present its spiritual prototype. It is the purely scientific work of a great scientist. That is what makes it so tenable as a basis from which to still farther extend its significance. For if this ethereal world is so substantial one recog- nizes that it provides and explains the environ- ment for the next succeeding phase of life. That communication exists between those in the seen and those in the unseen worlds is a truth as definitely and unmistakably proven as is the reality of messages by the Marconi system. This communication has always existed. The Bible is full of instances and illustrations. In modern times the authentic experiences of Swedenborg alone would tend to convince the reader. And the vast accumulation of evidence is so great that no argument from details need be entered upon here. Any reader who is not convinced of this has only to make his own researches and to form his own convictions. The aim in these pages is, while assuming the truth of communication, to endeavor to trace out the conditions that render it possible and that also establish its probability, even its certainty. These conditions are two- 30 Thetj Who Understand j. fold, — those of the very nature of man himself and of the interpenetration of the two successive environments, the physical and the ethereal. We hold perfectly clear and definite relations with our friends in the unseen, just as we do with those in the visible world. The only difference is that the relations with the unseen are more intimate, more unfailing, more truly a companion- ship of spirit. The physical body that died was a mechanism that transmitted this companion- ship of spirit but transmitted it imperfectly. The friend who is in the ethereal, with that more abounding life, is in a more direct relation to us here than are our fellow beings on earth. A vast body of communications, ranging practi- cally over all time, have affirmed the existence of a realm not unlike our own ; of continents, seas, mountains, lakes, forests, rivers; of cities and of country; of churches, temples, schools; of music, of lectures, of art, of the worship of God. But how, we have questioned, can this be? Now, if the ether of space has the solidity and the reality that has been scientifically demon- strated by Sir Oliver Lodge, we understand how The Gates of New Life 31 it can be. And if the ethereal world is thus inter- penetrated with our physical world (as vibrations prove), we realize how this world is with us in our very midst. Further, and this, too, is a scientific fact, the ether is so elastic that it transmits the slightest impression made upon it, and thus thought, which is the most potent force in the universe, is instantly transmitted from spirit to spirit; from one who is still physically embodied to one in the ethereal embodiment. Thought is a power of such invincible potency that the kingdoms of the earth are helpless before it. Love is a force of such divine potency that it takes the wings of the morning and darts, straight as a beam of light, to him to whom it is sent. Thought and love, they are the irresistible powers of life. The rationale of the change we call death reveals it as no evil, no calamity, but a step onward in our great evolutionary progress. In our more spiritualized religious faith we shall come to recognize death as a sacred festival rather than as an occasion for gloom or sadness. Jesus came to bring life and immortality to light ; to demon- 32 They Who Understand strate to us that spiritual life is eternal in its nature. We simply discard successive environ- ments as we go on from glory to glory. Now and here, man, as a spiritual being, has the spiritual organs of sight, hearing, and, indeed, entire perception of presences that his physical eye cannot see. And why? It is very simple. It is a mere technical matter. In the infinite octaves of vibration, the physical organs of the eye and ear only register a small proportion. Ultra-violet light, for instance (which, in technical language, only begins with the fifty-first octave, and which is demonstrated in the laboratory), is in a vibration beyond that which the eye can register. We recognize here but the smallest proportion of the etheric vibra- tions. Now the ethereal body is in this state of high vibration and is thus beyond the point which the eye registers. The friend in the unseen stands by our side and we do not see him. In the law of vibration lies the scientific explanation, — an explanation likewise applicable as to why we do not hear his voice when he speaks to us. But there are other ways of hearing than by the The Gates of New Life 33 ear. Telepathy is the language of the spirit. Thought to thought responds unerringly. And, as is well known, there are the phenomena of clairvoyance and clairaudience. When man more fully develops the organs of his spiritual body, these will cease to be phenomena. They will be the natural faculties of his daily experience. "Within, beyond, the world of ether," said Frederic W. H. Myers, "must lie the world of spiritual life. That the world of spiritual life does not depend upon the existence of the material world I hold as now proved by actual evidence. That it is in some way continuous with the world of ether I can well suppose." This is to say that Mr. ]Myers, in contemplating the cosmos, recognizes as its first three states the physical, the ethereal, and the spiritual. Each con- dition is natural. There are no startling and revo- lutionary changes. There is no lapse of conscious- ness. The absolute continuity of consciousness is the truth at the very foundation of our spiritual life. We need to disassociate the idea of our life from that of the duration of our physical life. \Miether in the physical body and environment, or 84 They Who Understand in the ethereal body and environment is im- material, just as one's changes of costume are im- material to his essential life and pursuits. The continuity of consciousness is as unbroken and as uninterrupted by the withdrawal from the physical mechanism as is the consciousness and the power of the musician by the loss of his piano or violin. The Gates of New Life are thrown open to the man who has passed from the physical to the ethereal worlds. It is all so natural to him that many persons, indeed, have to be convinced that they have made the Adventure Beautiful. Doctor William James is one who has said that he had to be led to look upon his physical body, as it lay on the bed, before ^he could believe that he had passed on. In a communication received from William T. Stead (three days after the Titanic had gone down and two days before the arrival of the Carpathia in New York had brought tidings of certainty to any one), Mr. Stead, as recorded in another book of mine,^ i*'The Adventure Beautiful." Boston. Little, Brown, and Company, 1917. The Cafes of New Life 35 stated through the hand of a friend (who was not a professional psychic) that his dead son met him and assured him that he had passed into the next phase of life ; that he too was what we have called "dead." Continuing his automatic writing ]Mr. Stead added : " I looked down at myself; I looked as I always had; and I said, *0h, no, this cannot be true.'" The remainder of the story, which I will not entirely reproduce here, was not only intenseh^ interesting, but a narration to throw much light on the conditions beyond. Still more convincing is the instance, recorded in the same book, of the transition, and subsequent message regarding it, of Mrs. Sylvester Baxter (Lucia ]\Iillet, a sister of the well-known artist, Frank D. ^Millet), because the message from Mrs. Baxter included such verifiable matters as to be unmistakably evidential, even to the most sceptically searching inquiry. An early experi- ence of my own, occurring at sea, on the night of May 19, 1896, has always persisted in vivid memory. It was this : Wakened in the night by what seemed a cur- 36 Tliey Who Understand rent of electrical shock, I seemed to know (rather than see) that three figures stood near with an indescribable sense of joy and surprise; and the words, "Is this all? It is all over!" that (by some inner perception) I also seemed to know rather, even, than audibly to hear, were spoken by one who had just passed into the ethereal. Afterward I learned that this was the date coincident with the death of Kate Field. Some months later when, by the arrange- ment of Doctor Richard Hodgson, I had a series of seances with Mrs. Piper, Miss Field being the chief communicator, I asked her, at one time, to describe to me just what happened on her first consciousness of having withdrawn from the physical world. "I found myself standing on the floor," she said, "in the room in which they had laid my body on a long table. My mother stood by me, and said : ' Kate, my child, have no fear; come with me.' And she took me to the house where were my father and my brother." In this connection Miss Field also said that in these first moments she thought of me, and that her mother told her she would show her the way The Cafes of New Life 37 to find me. My experience that night on shij>- board was described through the automatic writing by Mrs. Piper's hand ; although at that time it had never been made known. The general consensus of testimony is as to the absolute naturalness of the experiences on entering the Gates of New Life. The friends who have been known and loved on earth, and who have already passed on, meet the one newly arrived and explain and assist in the adjustment of the new conditions. To a preponderating degree the testimony is that almost the first thought and desire is to be able to make some sign or token to those left desolate on earth: to assure them of the perfect continuation of life and love. The success in conveying this as- surance rests with us as much as with them. If we are unable to respond to these higher vibra- tions of touch or tone or thought, they have no miraculous power to impress us with these manifestations. It must always be, for the most part, a spiritual recognition, and not any expect- ancy of physical phenomena. The highest order of communion between two is when both meet 38 They Who Understand in aspiration and love and the nobler activities. There is no union of spirit comparable to the uniting for a noble purpose. Instead of that grief which saddens and pains those so infinitely dear, let the one left on earth enter on some special line of sympathetic and helpful work and call on the friend in the unseen to lend a hand. It will be amazing to see how difficulties are smoothed away; how circumstances will be adjusted ; how one will be prompted to take the right path, to meet the right person, to find the right book, — to be led through experiences which, while all natural, yet still combine to form a mosaic of complete preparation, or which further the achievement of the purpose in hand. The spiritual world is an inclusive phrase; it includes the present, in a discrete degree, as surely as the period beyond. To live the life of the spirit is to live in the spiritual world, whether here or hereafter. The interlude of friendship and companionship that exists during the period when one of the two who made up life for each other is in the ethereal and the other here may be made one of ineffable The Gates of New Life 39 blessedness. It rests with ourselves to make it so. In the almost universal bereavements in this War a great opportunity is offered for entering into a higher spiritual consciousness. We best learn the divineness of life by entering into the divine realm. And this realm is open to each and all of us, at any moment. It is the realm of high and beautiful thought. " Blessed are the songful of soul ; They carry light and joy to shadowed lives." To enter into the region of beautiful thought is to enter into the heavenly life. We build our own spiritual life, day by day; and thought is the material of which it is wrought. By dwelling on that which is irritating, annoying, sad, or depressing, we deplete our forces. We also create around us an atmosphere impenetrable to the more lofty and beautiful spiritual influences. And more, we injure those we love who are in this realm of thought and beauty. The Gates of New Life are open to all who lift life to the level of unbroken communion with the mystic, in-dwelling Christ. Nor is this mere phrasing. 40 They Who Understand It is a work; it is a life work. Because the ordinary life in the physical world is inevitably full of all possibilities of discord. One does not need to offer any catalogue of the things just, or unjust, as may be, that are dij0&cult, depressing, irritating. No one is free from these. But the effect they have upon our lives and conduct is within our own control. A man has been wronged, misrepresented, defrauded. He may be absolutely blameless. But the sooner and the more entirely he can banish it from his memory, the sooner he can forgive as well as forget, and the better for his spiritual progress. Sooner or later he must forgive, for that is the law. Is it not better to rise to this at once and thus enter on peace of mind again ? The region entered by the Gates of New Life is a spiritual region. They who understand and thus keep to a high order of thought are spiritually companioned by their beloved who, being free from the physical discords, are dwelling therein. Nothing can separate those who inhabit the same atmosphere of thought. It is in this natural companionship of spirit The Gates of New Life 41 that the most satisfactory communion is found. Meeting Edward Everett Hale soon after the death of his youngest son, Robert Beverly, who had been his most intimate and inseparable companion, Doctor Hale said, reaching out his hand with its warm and generous clasp, "You don't know how well I bear it ; Robbie is with me all the time. He walks the streets with me; he sits beside me in my study." By this, Doctor Hale meant the companionship of spiritual per- ception alone. He was not designating any phenomenal experience. His son was not visible to his physical sight, nor tangible to the touch of hand. But the spirit-to-spirit recognition was unerring. How could it be otherwise when the two were so closely conjoined by love and by temperamental affiliations? The spiritual self, with its increasing development of spiritual faculties, transcends the barrier of the physical encasement. It is the same order of direct communication that might be if two persons, muffled and enveloped in clothing and in masks, who could not see each other because of the cover- ing, were yet side by side and could converse 42 They Who Understand together, directly, with no difficulty. The spirit language is evidently not words, but thought, although this thought is instantly and uncon- sciously translated into words. The impressions conveyed are beyond language; yet they are translatable into language. One finds much trace of this order of com- munion with the invisible world among the Greeks. Plotinus, whose life on earth fell between 204 and 269, A.D., thus relates an experience : "Often when I come to myself on awakening from bodily sleep, and, turning from the outer world, enter into myself, I behold wondrous beauty. Then I am sure that I have been con- scious of the better part of myself. I live my true life. I am one with the divine order and rooted in the divine. I gain the power to trans- port myself beyond even the super-world. After thus resting in God, when I descend from spiritual vision and again form thoughts, I ask myself how it has happened that I now descend and that my soul even entered the body at all, since, in its essence, it has just revealed itself to me? Man learns about divine things by leading his The Gates of Neic Life 43 soul to know itself as spiritual that it may find its way, as a spirit, into the spiritual world." PorphjTius, a disciple of Plotinus (born in Syria, 233; died in Rome 304, a.d.), has thus spoken of his inner experiences : "The soul has the power to extend her activity to any locality she may desire. She is a power which has no limits and each part of her, being independent of special conditions, can be present even-^vhere, provided she is pure and un- adulterated with matter." That is to say, the less a man is entangled with materiality, the more clear, direct, and potent are his spiritual power and spiritual perceptions. But let this idea be not misleading. A man is not necessarily entangled with materiality, nor hindered from leading the life of the spirit, be- cause he is dealing with material things. He is in a physical world, and physical matters are his inevitable factors of achievement. The life of the spirit does not mean sinking into vagrancy, idleness, or pauperism. The life of the spirit may be led by the most vigilant laborer; by him who is delving in the mine or laying pave- 44 They Who Understand ment in the streets ; by the man who is controlling vast and intricate industrial interests; who is commanding or serving in armies; who is in office, shop, study, or studio. The life of the spirit does not imply uselessness, but, instead, the highest degree of usefulness and efficiency. For the life of the spirit is in qualities; it is in justice, honesty, consideration, generosity. The man who is at the head of a great railway system, with its vast complication of the hu- man factor and the industrial and commercial responsibilities ; the man who is sending ships engaged in international traffic and transit across the ocean ; the man who administers the power of carrying on manufactories and indus- tries; as well as the educator, the preacher, the philosopher, has every condition for living the life of the spirit. Let no one imagine that the path to the diviner life and the life of the spirit is in mere inaction ; on the contrary, it is the path in which one is charged with the highest energy. The conception that there is no compatibility between the life dealing with spiritual and that dealing with material things ; that the one must The Gates of Neic Life 45 be chosen to the exckision of the other, was the fallacy of medieval times. It was then believed that the life of the spirit was lived by the mendi- cant ; the material life by the producer. It was held that the life of the spirit could only be most truly lived in the seclusion of convent or mon- astery, while we now realize that the field is the world. Jesus lived no life apart. He went up into the mountains; He sought solitude at times for that unbroken communion of prayer that recharges the spirit with divine magnetism ; but he lived his life among men. He shared with them all that they could receive of spiritual riches. Man would not have been placed in a material world if he had not been intended to deal with its conditions. They constitute for him a school of discipline and training. The physical environment is the theater for all possible exercise of spiritual qualities. To become just, truthful, honorable, noble, — under what phase of dis- cipline could man better learn those lessons and develop those povv^ers than just the conditions in which we now find ourselves ? But it is our con- sciousness and our increasing knowledge of the 46 They Who Understand unseen which conduces to this increasingly higher life. It is the realization of the unbroken con- tinuity of life that sustains the spirit through dis- couragements and denials and defeats; that whispers the truth that these are but temporary ; "just a stuff to try the soul's strength on ;" that defeat and disaster are as valuable in relation to the wholeness of life as are triumph and pros- perity. It is the realization of this unbroken continuity, the purposes in view not interrupted by the change of death, that sustains and inspires human life. II THE UNBROKEN CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE "And tears are never for those who die with their face to the duty done." — John Boyle O'Reilly on "Wendell Phillips." NE\^R was there a time when the world so eagerly questioned about the nature of the next phase of life as now, when these untold thousands of our youth have sud- denly been passing from the battlefield into the ethereal realm. The research into the super- physical has become an enormous quest. It is not irrational to believe that this is one of the results for which the War was here. For, that the most appalling conflict in ail history came upon us by chance is not a tenable conclusion. Nu- merous are the reasons assigned, as formulated by statesmen and moralists. One writer, in an able analysis of the political and economic causes for the most appalling trag- 47 48 They Who Understand edy that the world has ever known, sums up all these reasons in one, — " man's failure to live as God commands." Nor can this be regarded as a mere phrase of rhetoric. "God's command" is a law as inescapable as is the law of gravita- tion. He who breaks it must suffer the penalty. We find the writer saying : "... I have heard the statement that just previous to the War civilization was at its highest stage ; mankind had evolved — developed, if you like — to a point never before attained ; education was more general than had been known ; even the spirit of charity was evident in all lands, among all races ; in fact, the world was going very well and the dawn of a better day was clearly visible. Therefore, such a climax of horror and suffering, such a tempest of the brutal instincts of primitive man, seems to be a negative answer to man's well-founded hope of a better and a brighter day. ... If a few years ago a prophet had declared what the world would see during 1914-1919, he would have been judged by the majority of mankind fit for the asylum." The special command that man has broken is The Unbroken Contimdfy of Experience 49 cited as the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Justice and consideration are en- joined; but selfishness has largely ruled. Now if the teachings of Jesus regarding the conduct of human affairs are of any value they are practi- cable. If they are not practicable, they are of no value. The counsel to love one's neighbor as one's self is not that of a fanatic. It is the counsel of simple justice. Emerson notes that a time comes in a man's development when he is careful that his neighbor shall not cheat him. At a still higher degree of development he is care- ful that he shall not cheat his neighbor. The student of Emerson finds that he continually affirms the solidarity of society. "It is as great a loss to me that others should be low as that I should be low," we find him saying, "for I must have society." It is an entirely practicable ideal suggested in the counsel of Phillips Brooks : "Be such a man, live such a life, that if every man lived as you do, this earth would be heaven." All these ideals are intimations of a marvelous reality 'on whose threshold we stand. It is nothing less than the threshold of an 50 They Who Understarid entirely new comprehension of the nature, the progress, the destiny of human Ufe. One signal factor in this new initiation has been the service of Frederic W. H. Myers, whose place in the world of letters as a scholar of the finest classical culture, a critical thinker, and a poet, w^as so widely recognized as to give due pres- tige to an incident in his life which has led to far- reaching consequences. It was on the evening of December 3, 1869, that Mr. Myers and Professor Sidgwick were out together for a starlit walk. Mr. Myers was a young man of twenty-six. Of this walk he afterward said to a friend, "I asked Sidgwick almost with trembling whether he thought that when tradition, intuition, metaphysics had failed to solve the riddle of the universe there was still a chance that from any observable phenomena — ghosts, spirits, whatsoever there might be — some valid knowledge might be drawn as to a w^orld unseen. Already, it seemed, he had thought it possible; . . . and from that night onward I resolved to pursue this quest." Thus was initiated, in that one moment, the signal pur- The TJnhrolcen Contimiity of Experience 51 pose of his life. Mr. Myers held the con- viction that if a spiritual world ever had been manifested to man it must be manifest in the present just the same. He more or less clearly perceived that the entire life, the energy, of every day depended upon some influence from the un- seen. Was there in man "an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows, — an individuality which can never express itself com- pletely through any corporeal manifestation"? Could the spiritual man function separately from his physical body? Was the real personality capable of being liberated from its material or- ganism? Was there truth to reward him who should diligently search in the mysterious realms of occult phenomena? Was the man, the spirit- ual man, in reality independent of his physi- cal organism? Nothing less than this was the sublime quest on which Frederic Myers set out from that night. When (on January 17, 1901, in Rome) he passed into the unseen, did he find the answer to his life's questioning ? The little tablet placed to his memory in the English cemetery in the Eternal City, forever poetically consecrated 52 They Who Understand by the ashes of Keats and Shelley, bears this fitting inscription : " He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him long life ever and forever." At all events Myers dedicated his life, his genius, to this inquiry. Flournoy well says of the spiritistic doctrine of Myers, "If future dis- coveries confirm his thesis of the intervention of the discarnate in the web and w^oof of our mental and physical worlds, then will his name be in- scribed in the golden book of the initiated, and, joined to those of Copernicus and Darwin, he will complete the triad of geniuses who have the most profoundly revolutionized scientific thought, in the order, Cosmological, Biological, Psycho- logical." That epoch-making book, "Human Person- ality", which Mr. Myers left as his imperishable legacy to mankind, and which was not published until after its author had passed from the realm of questioning to the realm of replies, is an en- cyclopaedia of the most profound and scientific investigation of phenomena. It is scientific, it is philosophic, it is religious. Its depth and sin- cerity of religious tone impart to its scientific Th^ Z^nhrohen Continuity of Experience 53 and philosophical scope an irresistible claim to value. The author studies the problem of telep- athy as to whether this is the law of the direct intercommunion of the spiritual man; whether it is a supreme truth, reuniting all beings, — those in the physical realm, those who have withdrawn from that realm, — whether it is the law that unites them all "in a splendid universe of moral and spiritual life"? The problem of the sub- liminal consciousness ; the problems of duty, prayer, life eternal, and all their relations to the life that now is, as well as to that which is to come ; the mystery of genius; these, and other vital questions are marvelously discussed in these two large volumes of "Human Personality." Now life may be defined as the adventure of the spirit into temporary conditions which are ever increasing in significance and enlarging in their horizons; or which decrease in significance and power of satisfaction, and whose horizons narrow instead of enlarge, according to the personal power that is brought to bear upon them. This power is increased or decreased in its nature by the degree of the goodness and intelligence, or of 54 They Who Understand the evil and the ignorance of the man himself. For all objective conditions are fluctuating and are relative to the degree of individual control. There are certain laws of nature which are fixed, as the law of gravitation, for instance. In rela- tion to these, man must control his own attitude. He cannot defy the law without suffering the penalty, but it is in his power to control his own attitude in relation to the law. The fluctu- ating conditions of health, or illness; of some reasonable degree of success and prosperity, or failure and privation ; the achievement of in- creasing stores of knowledge, or the remaining in ignorance, — all these and others which need not be cited are a part of "the flowing conditions of life" over which the individual may also exer- cise an increasing control. Even the momentous question of immortality (in its differentiation from merely continued existence) is subject to the power of the individual. For immortality is not merely being alive after the change of death ; it is the condition of being alive now! It is a matter of spiritual vitality. To be just, consider- ate, sympathetic; to hold service as one of the The Unbroken Continuity of Experience 55 T. — -_>__^ priceless privileges; to be generous rather than selfish ; responsive rather than indifferent ; truth- ful and noble in every respect, to be active in all that makes for the usefulness and happiness of the largest possible number, to keep one's spirit in sensitive response to the guidance of the Divine Spirit — this is to be immortal in the present. Im- mortality is not a condition, not a locality. The question is not so much, Shall we be immortal? as it is. Are we immortal at this moment? Im- mortality is something to be achieved and in- creased by living in the sympathies and the activi- ties that create immortality. In so much greater measure, then, as one has developed these quali- ties of the spirit before death, is he the more fitted to enter on this next higher plane of life. "Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus" — that mind that is love, joy, peace, righteousness. To "bear much fruit" in that the Father may be glorified is to live in the widest relations with one's fellow beings ; to render the service needed at the moment, not counting the cost; to give the gift that is helpful, though it leave one's own hands empty. For spiritual treasure is infinite, 56 They Who Understand and to him who lives in the spirit the supply is sure. Human life is potentially divine life. Re- ligion, in its highest possibilities, is a life and not a litany, although the litany gives its strength and support and direction to life. It could not be assumed that the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882, some years after the resolution of Frederic Myers to devote his life to the quest outlined above, was in itself the initiation of a new and higher spirituality of life ; but that it has been a contrib- uting cause no one can deny. The last quarter of the nineteenth century revealed many phases of new ethical movements. The reconcilement of science and religion began ; they were seen to be not mutually antagonistic, but complementary and mutually supporting. Theosophy arose, offering a great explanation of the phenomena of the universe; of the problem of the origin, progress, and destiny of the soul. Spiritualistic phenomena had opened the way for more from the mid-century years. Accepted, or denied, it challenged attention. It became a factor in reli- gious life. All these movements, and the increas- The Unbroken Continuity of Experience 57 ing enlightenment of humanity, created a moral preparation for a more highly developed order of human life. Now here we see the contrast of two great opposing forces advancing towards the future : Germany, with her imperialistic and military ideals teaching the doctrine that Might, not Right, is the arbiter of national destinies; England, France, America, Italy, and other nations imbued with a purer ethical purpose. How could the advance of two such utterly opposite movements, — the one for physical domination, the other for moral and spiritual domination, — result in any- thing else than a terrible conflict ? For what was this War? Had it not aspects unknown to the historic past, and that brand it as a new order of human tragedy? "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Then what remains ? What can we do ? In this War we encountered not men ; we en- countered fiends from Hades. The editor of a 58 They Who Understand leading American journal thus characterizes the Prussian policy : " ' The enemy must be thoroughly engaged at once/ Nothing could better illustrate the nau- seating hypocrisy, the bloodless formalism un- convincingly covering a bloodthirsty savagery which so constantly characterizes the Prussian beast. Who are 'the enemy' that are to be 'thoroughly engaged'? Are they fighting men who can fight back? Not a bit of it. They are unarmed, non-combatant messengers of mercy — ambulance men risking their lives in the al- ways perilous No Man's Land that they may perhaps ease the pain or save the life of some tortured and helpless human being ripped open by shrapnel or left with a bullet-shattered limb, suffering through terrible hours the torments of the damned ! These heroes of pity, standing right up in the daylight, human targets that can- not be missed, men who have not fired and will not fire a shot in this war, are to be mercilessly mowed down by machine guns. . . . "So this official order to leave the dead un- coffiined and the wounded uncared for comes as The Unbroken Coniininfy of Experience 59 no surprise. It is the proper fruit of the upas tree. It is akin to the deliberate and ofHcially ordered bombing of hospitals. It is typical of Prussian militarism. It is precisely the sort of thing that our young men have sailed away across the Atlantic to uproot and finally destroy. " The German army ! \Miat is it in reality ? A collection of cowards who shoot down Red Cross men, ruffians who rob and 'beat up' helpless civilians, beasts who mutilate children, criminals who poison wells and even give deadly sweets to babies, torturers who crucify prisoners and abuse wounded enemies. ^ "Leave the dead unburied! Abandon the wounded to writhe in agony under the burning midsummer sun, without water, without succor, without pity ! Shoot down the Red Cross stretcher-parties ! These are official German orders. This is the sort of enemy our boys fought in France." In this startling presentation of the powers of darkness which our young men nobly sprang to overcome is revealed the conditions they met. Then what follows ? 60 They Who Understand "Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand." For this world is being prepared for the diviner life to come in. The ethical forces had long been gathering new strength and manifesting themselves in new forms of activity ; the materialistic and inhuman forces of Prussian militarism had also long been gathering new strength and manifesting them- selves in increasing activities. The conflict was inevitable. The Powers of Evil closed in a deadly grapple with the Powers of Good. The Powers of Darkness and the Powers of Light were in their conflict, i It was to this awful combat that the Flower of American youth went forth. The hour is conse- crated with their holy knighthood. "And tears are never for those who die with their face to the duty done \" The material, the spiritual, were arrayed against each other. It was such a conflict as no age of the world ever witnessed before. For evil forces and righteous forces cannot dwell together. And the reason they cannot longer dwell together in The Unbroken Continuity of Experience 61 any semblance of peace lies deeper still. It is that humanity itself has now advanced to that degree of spiritual development that requires for its existence and nurture a purer environment. No nation is wholly righteous, or without grave sins against the ideal state. Humanity has developed to that higher degree when it can no longer con- done its own sins, whatever they may be. Tem- perance, economic and social justice, must now come. It is the law and the prophets. History reveals that at intervals of about two thousand years there appears some order of a restatement of spiritual truth; a new manifestation; a new call to "Turn to the Lord and live." For in God alone is life. "For Evil, in its nature, is decay, And any hour may blot it all away." May it not be true that now, at the approach of two thousand years from the appearance of Jesus, the Christ, a new wave of spirituality sweeps over the land? But does so divine a thing as spirituality of life manifest itself in aspects too appalling for reference ? The tragedy of Belgium ; 62 They Who Understand of the Lusitania, of countless atrocities, are these the pledge and prophecy of a new wave of spirit- uality ? The association of the two is unthinkable and incredible. So we might rationally say. There is a mystery still deeper than this. May we try to penetrate it, in hov/ever feeble a measure ? It is an established truth that God works through orderly laws. Evolution, not revolu- tion, rules the kingdom of nature. If we sow wheat we do not reap a harvest of tares. Cause and eJBFect go hand in hand in orderly sequence. But the very advent of a higher wave of spiritual- ity forces a deadly conflict with the evil that is in the world, both individually and nationally. If a man to-day rise to a new height of spiritual power, what is the first effect ? It is to extermi- nate the sin that he had yesterday. If he were unjust yesterday he must free himself from in- justice to-day. Now the very degree of moral development that humanity has achieved will no longer tolerate the sins that civilization, up to this time, has tolerated. The very good focuses the evil. The conflict was inevitable. The causes had existed in the immaterial world. They were The Unbroken Continuity of Experience 63 recognized by the spiritual consciousness of man- kind. They encountered the invisible challenge of this higher moral consciousness, and they crys- tallized and formulated themselves for the awful conflict. On the higher plane the War was a spiritual drama. We have talked of Armageddon; we saw it before us. The Forces of Good, the Forces of E\'il, met in their grapple. Now, in relation to the youth who have leaped forward into this conflict; whose noble purpose, whose high en- thusiasm, whose devotion to lofty ideals have led them on, — what is revealed to us when they sac- rifice their physical life in this tragic struggle ? This is revealed : that these gallant young spirits have forever allied themselves with all that makes for righteousness ; that their devotion to true ideals has consecrated itself by seal and sign eternal ! They have died that the noblest ideals of hu- manity shall live ! What ineffable blessedness is theirs ! A\Tiat ineffable blessedness is ours by all that sharing of their nobleness through undying love ! Humanity has now achieved that degree of 64 They Who Understand spiritual development which requires a finer and purer environment. That is what this War, effacing and exterminating old conditions and creating new ones, is to give us. A world remade beckons us on in a not remote future. It will not be a sudden transformation. We shall not close our eyes in sleep on the world as it is and awaken in the morning to find it transformed to paradise. But that we are at that standpoint, even now, when all conditions for life are contemplated from a loftier range of vision and estimated by purer ideals, could hardly be denied. The larger recognition of the spiritual forces of life in the scale of the practicable and the applicable is, in itself, a signal advance of the race. It is not the lack of sound judgment, but the test and the sign of the sound and wise judgment to recognize unseen forces as those whose influences are the determining and the permanent. The hardships of the physical life increase; physical resources constantly become more difficult to compass. What then? Are we to learn that beyond the physical, — in the superphysical realm, — exists an infinite supply on which, hitherto, man has The Unbroken Continuity of Experience 65 drawn to only a very slight extent? Are we to recognize that when Emerson said, in reply to an assertion that the world was coming to an end, that he "could get along without it ", the remark is not mere wit and persiflage, but states an wholly practicable truth? We relinquish the physical resources of life to an increasing extent. They grow more difficult, more impossible for us to compass. The high and ever higher prices of food, clothing, shelter, — the three primary neces- sities of life, — suggest to one the wonder as to how he is to continue on this planet at all I Travel becomes so expensive that he vaguely contemplates his restriction to such portion of the earth's surface as he may be able to traverse on his two feet. What is to be the end? Are we to be crowded off the earth altogether ? This brings us to the verge of the recognition of the true nature of our life. Man is a spiritual being and an inhabitant of the spiritual universe. It is only in the most temporary and fragmentary sense that he is a physical being and an inhabitant of the physical universe. His nature is so largely adjusted to 66 They Who Understand respond to higher realms that the fact of being, as it were, compelled to transfer much of his life, here and now, to those higher realms, cannot be a misfortune. It is as if he were inhabiting only the lower floor of his dwelling, while above were successive floors far more delightful. But he remains on the accustomed level and will not be persuaded to mount higher. Suddenly floods come ; or fire invades his familiar interior, and to escape destruction he must ascend to the next story of his house. Once bestowing himself there he finds it far more desirable ; but he would never have made this change had he not been forced into it. Is it not possible that this analogy ex- plains the present condition of humanity? Are we not being forced to a higher level of life ? Our real world is that among the unseen potencies and under superphysical conditions. In the middle of the nineteenth century people were crossing the continent to the Pacific coast in conveyances dra\\Ti by horses. A quarter of a century later they were crossing it in railway trains. The steam engine had taken its own place. Morse invented the telegraph which carried mes- The Unhrol'en Contimnty of Experience 67 sages with a rapidity undreamed of before. Marconi perfected the system of sending messages through the ether. We have learned to navigate the air and to sail under the surface of the water. The horse is superseded by the motor car. En- tering into the use of the more subtle mechanical forces, man will also develop and use the more spiritual forces in application to his personal life. Immortality is more in increasing degrees of con- sciousness than it is the question of duration. He who lives in a more abounding spiritual conscious- ness, now and here, is thereby more immortal. For in consciousness is the true life. And then? Then it is for us, for those in the seen and in the unseen, to unite in building a new world. If the War leaves us no better than it found us, all its appalling tragedy and suffering and its incalculable loss will have been in vain. Are we to take up life again on no higher round ? Not so. I The evolution of a nobler civilization is working itself out on lines of harmony with the eternal purpose; All the ease and pleasure and joj^ulness of life that seemed so innocent and so full of enjoyment was yet deteriorating if it tended 68 They Who Understand to retard this nobler progress into the new civili- zation ; if we rested content in it, knowing how imperfect was its structure ; knowing that it har- bored economic injustice, selfishness, self-indul- gence; that it tolerated sins of omission and commission. Yet it was a pleasant, easy-going life, with an abundance of charity, even if not over-abundant in justice ; not without its nobler aims, even with rather prevailing ideals of having a good time. For the most part all fairly well-to- do people had a very good time, indeed. In the old, easy-going sense of those days, no one has a good time now. Those good times were not, in themselves, evil, but if they were retarding the more noble organization of society, then they should give way to these more difficult conditions which are yet doing the nobler work in forcing a more just and a finer adjustment of national life. Not unfrequently is destruction the initial step toward regeneration. Two forces are now in mortal combat ; one is evolving the divine harmony ; one is opposing and retarding that evolution. What service is being rendered by this retarding agency? It is within The Unbroken Continuity of Experieiice 69 the personal choice of each man to identify him- self with that which is advancing all that is noblest in life, or with that force which is opposing it. "See, I have set before thee this day life and good and death and evil ; . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing ; therefore choose life. . . . That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him ; for he is thy life, and the length of thy days; . . ." And again : " Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them : for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee ; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." To identify one's self with the forces of higher progress which are those of the life and good, as against those which are for death and evil is to go on in an unbroken continuity of experience, whether in the body or out of the body. The spiritual man has thus identified himself with that which is permanent and immortal. 70 They Who Understand " , . . \ATiat is excellent, As God lives, is permanent." For it is that which is — " Built of tears and sacred flames, And virtue reaching to its aims ; Built of furtherance and pursuing ; Not of spent deeds, but of doing." To the soul that has chosen life and good, that has identified itself with the highest, the chrism of the divinest joy is given. It has been finely said of our soldiers that they died that the nation might live. But beyond this is an even greater truth, — they died that they themselves might live ! That they thus attained to a life so far more abundant than that which they have laid down that their joy is full. "Never were there so many knights, or so noble," we find Doctor Stires again saying ; "but all grateful for the honor of serving, and all ready to conquer death with a shout or a smile, and gladly to cross the frontier for the higher service. It is light, light, everywhere light, and no dark- ness at all." The Unbroken Continuity of Experience 71 These who make the Adventure Beautiful have thereby so made themselves a component part of the nobler order of life that in this brief time they have thus compassed the spiritual development ordinarily only achieved through a long period of discipline. We can only hold fast to our invincible faith in God. The "dreams of the joy of dear ones in the Life eternal", as so tenderly phrased in some preceding citation from Doctor Stires, are, in reality, spiritual insights and spirit- ual visions. They are glimpses into the divine realities which God permits us to enjoy for our sustaining and our courage to still press on. Nor are these visions in a merely symbolic sense. Actual knowledge of those in the unseen is wholly possible. Actual communion with them, spirit to spirit, may be enjoyed. Love is the supreme and irresistible potency, and where love unites, all the powers of earth and air are powerless to divide those who are thus united. The release of the spiritual man from his physi- cal body is not to uncomprehended conditions. Science gives us definite knowledge of the ethereal environment. Consciousness is not a function 72 They Who Understand of the physical brain, but a function that manifests itself hy means of the physical brain, although it is as independent of this instrument and as much greater than can be thus manifested, as the musi- cian is independent of his piano or violin ; or as his resources of music to manifest are as far greater than any instrument can afford him adequate scope for producing. The question of the order of life immediately succeeding the life on earth is a much larger one than that involving the fact of communication alone. It demands a more adequate comprehension of the very nature of life itself. Sir Oliver Lodge says of death that it is "an important and momentous event, truly, even as birth is ; a waking up to new conditions, like a more thorough emigration than can be taken on a planet ; but no destruction, no lessening of power. Rather an enhancement of existence, an awakening from this earthly dream, a casting off of the trammels of the flesh, the realization of a body more adapted to the needs of an emancipated spirit, the entering on a wider field of service, the uniting with the many who have gone on be- fore." The Unbroken Continuity of Experience 73 Communication between the two states is no longer to be regarded as either apart from the reli- gious life, or as chiefly identified with scientific investigation ; but as a natural aspect of the inter- relations. For the joys of companionship are not ended with the passing of one into the life beyond ; a new order of companionship may be established, with its ineffable sweetness and satis- faction and inspiring joy.^ Ill EVIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION AND PROOF "I transport myself to your side and say, speaking just as you would to any friend, 'Come, I have some- thing to say to you.' I insist until you fairly hear my voice. The flesh is stubborn, and it is often almost impossible to make myself heard. . . . All space is peopled with spiritual beings. When you leave the body you enter this space (as you call it) but which is more solid than a million earths, and all the planets of the universe are but as a pebble in comparison. Death has a great work to perform. Every plan, every movement, is directed from this side. All the discov- eries, all the new inventions, are projected from here. Our surroundings are adapted to our uses. We have homes and houses and gardens and streets ; but there are mysteries here beyond your power to comprehend. As one rises from realm to realm all things become grander and more beautiful." COMMUNICATION between those in the unseen and in the seen is so abundantly proven that from this time on, in all discussion of the matter in these pages, it will be taken for granted. If the modern evidence that has accumulated in such vast volume within 74 Evidential Communication and Proof 75 the past sixty years, to say nothing of the records of the Bible and of the entire world, indeed, from all earliest time, — if all this evidence has not established its existence, the offering of any additional matter would be useless. Communi- cation is as well attested as is the working of. the telegraph. Its experience in some form is an almost universal one. These experiences occur to those who believe and to those who do not believe. The invisible world penetrates the visible, and throngs of beings we do not see surround us constantly. The reason we do not see them is because the etheric body is in a state of too high vibration to be registered by the physical eye. In another book^ I have endeavored to present the scientific explanation of this in full detail. In the two chapters in that book, "The Powers of the Ethereal Body", and "The Nature of the Ethereal World", it was the aim to make this clearly comprehensible from the basis of actual laboratory experiments and from the latest scien- i"The Adventure Beautiful." Boston. Little, Brown, and Company, 1917. /; 76 They Who Understand tific data as evolved by psychic research. In a word, as has already been said, the physical eye and the physical ear respond to only a limited range of vibration; and all that is above or be- low that range cannot therefore be either seen or heard. The extension of sight by means of the telescope above the range of the eye, or by the microscope below its range, will readily occur to all. Thus those who have withdrawn from the physical plane may be about us, although their presence is not reported by the senses. Clairvoyants claim that they encounter in the public streets as many inhabitants of the ethereal world as of this. The psychology of the future must take cognizance of the development of spiritual perceptions as they become factors in all present experience. The organic spiritual body that pervades the physical body, that has corresponding organs and powers, must be reckoned with. Death is merely the process of separation between these two bodies. The testimony of the senses in regard to a vast range of life is so restricted and limited as to be worth- less. Who has ever seen or touched electricity? Evidential Ccymmumcation and Proof 77 What could be the testimony of the eye, unaided by the telescope and the spectroscope, regard- ing the sidereal system? Epes Sargent, one of the most notable thinkers of the nineteenth century, after presenting a long and convincing array of evidence for the existence and recogni- tion of the ethereal (or spirit) body, says : "From the facts here brought together, it may be inferred that the spirit body is not a mere hypothesis; it is proved by the phenom- ena and the inductions of evidence; by the objective appearance of spiritual beings; by the testimony of clairvoyants who can see them, and by the testimony of spiritual beings them- selves, who claim not only a super-ethereal organism, human in its form, but the power of assuming visible bodies like those which at different stages of the earth life they had while here; by the phenomena of somnambulism and clairvoyance giving evidence of spiritual senses, for as the bodily senses imply their object, so do the spiritual senses imply theirs, and are prophecies of an endless life ; by all the analogies that reason and experience supply; and by the 78 They Who Understand belief of men in all ages and climes, — a belief founded on the actual reappearance of those who have died. "Add to these considerations the facts of a manifold consciousness pointing to a complex but unique organism; also the marvels of mem- ory, in which faulty impressions inhere and per- sist which are inexplicable under the theory of materialism, involving as it does a constant flux and removal of the molecules of the organs of thought. Only the existence of a spiritual body can account for these things." As a matter of fact the War, thus precipitating such an enormous number into the next phase of life, compels consideration of their immediate conditions and of their relations to the visible world. The psychical experiences connected with the War are already numerous. Recently ])Jrs. D. Parker, of Herts, England, was engaged in some household duty when sud- denly she heard her son's voice calling "Mother", as if in great pain. The son was a private in a Middlesex regiment. So real was the voice that she dropped her work and hastened down-stairs, Evidential Communication and Proof 79 feeling that he must have arrived. The call was repeated, but she found no one. His letters ceased, and she felt as sure that he had passed from this life as she did after receiving, some days later, a notification from the War Office that he had been missing since April 24th, the date on which she had heard the voice. For a time no word reached her; then a neighbor received a letter from another soldier saying that an Aus- tralian battalion had found the dead body of young Parker and had given it a military funeral and burial. A young American lady, Miss Annie Haider- man of New York City, was in London in the winter of 1915-1916, and was one of many of the noble women who "adopted" a soldier in the ranks for whom to personally care. ]\Iiss Haider- man's charge was a Belgian, and later he was killed on the field. After her return to New York jNIiss Halderman (whose own beauty of life is an ideal of womanhood) still kept in communication with his wife, who had been left with young chil- dren and to whom the sympathy and care given to the dead father was continued. By associating 80 They Who Understand herself with one or two other friends Miss Haider- man was enabled to assure the widow continued aid that the children might be educated and cared for. One night she was awakened by the feeling of a presence, and in the darkness there came before her distinctly the face of a man which remained visible long enough for her to perfectly see and remember the countenance. A little while after, the widow, in a letter of gratitude, inclosed a photograph of her dead husband, saying she felt that he would be glad that Miss Halderman should have it. It was the face that had appeared to her ! This occurrence seems to indicate that he fully understood the aid that was being extended to his wife and children ; that he wished the kind and generous friend to know that he was aware of it ; that he was in some way enabled to make his face visible to her, and that he influenced his wife to send the photograph that she might identify the face she had seen. As a matter of fact, the relations between the inhabitants of the two realms are far more simple and natural than has been fully realized. There Evidential Communication and Proof 81 is no such separation as is often believed. Nor is communication limited to that which is strik- ingly supernormal. There is, without doubt, a very large body of communication that is seldom recognized as such because it comes in so entirely natural a manner. It comes into one's mind, so to speak, and is either accepted as one's own individual thought, or as coming from some unformulated source. And it is also true that one cannot prove, even to himself, in many of these cases, whether the matter is, or is not, generated by his own mind. But there are also many cases when the thought, the prompt- ing, or the information so links itself with objec- tive things, unknown at the time to the individual, that he can identify the communication as com- ing from some one in the unseen and often can even identify the source from whence it comes. Such an instance as this is related by Emma Hardinge Britten, of England^ whose initial essays in the world of effort were on the musical and dramatic stage, but whose native psychic gift came to so dominate her that she became an eminent medium. Born in affluence and cul- 82 They Who Understand ture, Emma Hardinge found herself, in early girlhood, left, at the death of her father, with- out resources, and she, with her mother, came to New York. During the voyage they came to know one of the officers of the ship, who offered, on his next crossing, to bring to Miss Hardinge a package that an English friend desired to send. The time came when the steamer would have been approximately due, but no alarm was felt at a little delay, as the sailing was in the winter, and ships at that time were frequently some days late if they encountered severe storms. But one evening she felt the presence of some one unseen whom she seemed to recognize intuitively as this young officer; and it came into her mind that the ship had gone down and that all on board were lost. There was nothing visible nor audible; but to the inner sense all this seemed to be made clear. She even felt a sensation as of icy water. Yet nothing that could be classed as phenomena occurred. The information was not conveyed with the definiteness of the clair- audient voice, or of automatic writing. But, as a matter of fact, the ship was never heard from. Emdential Communication and Proof 83 There were no "S.O.S." calls possible in those days. That she went down with all on board the unbroken silence alone attested. It does not require a faith that degenerates into credulity to fully accept the apparent happening that the officer came to Miss Hardinge and communicated to her his fate. A remarkable instance of communication is related by George Thompson, M.P., of London. ]Mr. Thompson, recognized as an eloquent speaker in Parliament, came to this country as an anti- slavery speaker, in the decade of 1850-1860. At one time he was the guest of Isaac Post, who, with his family, had been much interested in the spiritualistic phenomena produced through the medium of the Fox sisters, and through whose hand was automaticall}- written the book entitled "Light from the Spirit-World." At the invitation of ]Mr. Post, Mr. Thompson had a seance with the eldest of the sisters. Some years before this ]Mr. Thompson had been in Hindu- stan on a government commission and had made some personal friends among the Hindoos, two or three of whom had since passed to the beyond. 84 They Who Understand It occurred to him that if he could get a message from any one of these it would be a real test. He mentally inquired if any of them were present, and three affirmative raps followed. His re- quest for a message was also answered in the same way, and the signal was given for using the alphabet. This w^as a tedious process, but one that was much employed in the early days of messages ; it consisted of repeating the alphabet until the signal of a rap indicated the right letter, and thus words were spelled. ]\Ir. Thompson began repeating the letters and received the first signal at the letter ''d", followed by the letters "w-a-r-k-a-n-t-h-t-a-g-o-r-e-e." Mr. Post remarked that this was a totally meaningless medley, and that there must be some mistake. He advised his friend to try again. Mr. Thomp- son studied the slip of paper on which he had written down these apparently unconnected letters, and then exclaimed ''Dwarkanth Tagoree!'* For here was the Hindoo name in full. Mr. Thompson uttered some friendly words of surprise and delight, to which a shower of raps responded. Tagoree had been a friend especially Evidential Communication and Proof 85 prized ; a man of unusual ability and goodness and also a Hindoo of high rank. By means of the tedious, yet reasonably direct process of the alphabet, a conversation of some half hour's duration ensued. ]\Ir. Thompson put some questions to test the alleged identity. One of these was as to a gift sent by the Hindoo friend to Mr. Thompson's wife. The correct answer (a cashmere shawl) was spelled out. The Hindoo had visited London, and ]\Ir. Thompson asked for the place they had last met? The reply named the place correctly (Regent Street), and one or two other test questions met an equally true reply. The "Undiscovered Country" is no longer un- discovered or unexplored. But its true nature is only recognized through spiritual perceptions and aspirations. An interesting editorial article in the New York Tribune for August 4, 1918, conveyed a surprised but yet enforced recogni- tion of the rapidly increasing interest and belief in the realities of communication between the two realms. The writer, however, instanced Eusabia Palladino's phenomena as something 86 They Who Understand so remote from any spirituality of life, any true religious feeling, as to discredit the growing interest. Now, as a matter of fact, nothing is less connected with the persistence of loves and friendships and spiritual intercourse between those who have passed on and those here than the crude material phenomena of which the Nea- politan peasant woman was a striking purveyor. If it had its own interest in suggesting unex- plained forces of nature or laws not yet grasped, that alone might give it claim to scientific in- vestigation. A still more interesting and remarkable phase of unquestioned physical phenomena is that so ably studied and described by Doctor Craw- ford in the Irish family, where every opportunity was gladly afforded him to investigate strange occurrences. For instance, when a large table was raised in the air by some invisible means, Doctor Crawford found that if he passed between the medium (a young girl) and the table when it was. suspended in the air, it immediately fell. He set himself to work to penetrate the reason for this. His investigations led him to con- Evidential Communication and Proof 87 elude that some power, like that of a rod, pro- jected itself from the body of the medium and raised the table; and that his passing between the. girl and the table broke this current of power. Doctor Crawford's study of this case was car- ried on with scientific appliances, scales, mirrors, and phonographs to record and establish the reality of sounds or raps ; and he, as a scientific engineer, brought to his task trained knowledge in an exceptional manner. Now, however curi- ous are these phenomena, they are no more spirit- uality, they are no more religious growth and culture, than are the experiments in a chemical laboratory. Persons who should mistake these for religious spiritualism would go very far astray. With Eusabia Palladino, when the exhibition of her powers was given in this coun- try, Doctor Hyslop refused to have anything to do. Not being a physicist, he was not a specialist in investigating physical phenomena, and even admitting its genuineness, partially or wholly, as may be, it had too little significance for him to command his time or interest. We need to discriminate between a possible communion of 8S They Who Understand spirit to spirit, in all the beauty of love, all the sacredness of religious feeling, all the recognition of the communion as natural to the continuity of life and as simply the continuation of that spiritual intercourse between the seen and the unseen that pervades all the Scriptures, — we need to discriminate between this and mere physical phenomena, however strange that may be as estimated from known physical laws. Let one take some such communication, for instance, as that received through automatic writing by Mrs. Fanny H. Park, of Liverpool, who (under her maiden name of "F. Heslop") has published, in a book entitled "Speaking Across the Border-Line", many of these beauti- ful and most interesting messages received from her husband. A little word about him contrib- utes to the better understanding of the mes- sages. John Park was a Scotsman, filled with the love of life, a keen sportsman, a lover of na- ture who "revelled in the beauty of river and loch", and whose bias of mind, Mrs. Park tells us, "was toward the practical rather than the poetical, while for mysticism and all occult Evidential Communication and Proof 89 matters he had no toleration." Mr. Park was a man of strong affections and tenacious friend- ships; many of his friends^said to Mrs. Park after his passing that he "was the most lovable man" they had ever known. His wife says of him that his character "was a combination of strength and tenderness, strong in rectitude and every manly vu'tue, but tender and understand- ing toward the weakness of others." Mrs. Park adds : "We never spoke of his approaching death, and the thought of his return from the spirit world and the possibility of communion with him never entered our minds. To us, death meant separation, and separation meant death. So when he left me, I seemed in my loneliness and desolation to have passed also into the land of shadows." As a matter of fact, also, Mr. Park had been intolerant of the idea of spirit communion. Neither he nor his wife felt any sympathy with the theory. But after his death, through the hand of another person, these messages to his wife began to be given through the medium of 90 They Who Understand automatic writing; they established his identity so unmistakably that she had no choice but to accept them. This was rather perplexing to many of their friends; and he, apparently hear- ing a discussion that took place, thus referred to it to Mrs. Park : "Our friend is quite right in thinking that when on earth I opposed all suggestion of spirit communion. I thought there was blasphemy in the very idea. My whole early training had bent my mind in the wrong direction. Now, with my fuller vision, and stripped of all the theological misconceptions of my youth, I see how utterly wrong I was. And to me, one of the most wonderful discoveries of this life here is that it is possible to return to full communica- tion with you, my beloved, and continue in almost perfect and unbroken joy the union con- summated twenty years ago." Later, he began to use his wife's hand for these communications. Mrs. Park notes that she was filled with dread lest these were the product of her own subconscious mind. Perceiving this, he wrote : Evidential Communication and Proof 91 " I see you have been going through a needless distress of mind as to the authorship of these letters. After much reading of modern litera- ture on the subject you have flown to the con- clusion that possibly your subconscious mind was impersonating me, and that these letters were not from me at all. My dear, how could you think such a foolish thing? Have I not given you test after test of my identity? Have you not received information beyond your wildest dreams? Surely, you know by this time that it is I who wTite to you, my love that surrounds you. Never let this doubt stay with you for a moment again. Cast it out of your mind and cling to the definite assurance which I now give you that I am constantly with you, whether you realize it or not, inspiring your mind, smooth- ing your path, warding off all evil influences, and loving you all the time with a love beyond any- thing you can dimly imagine." ]Mrs. Park had no thought or intention of pub- lishing these messages, feeling they were a sacred part of her private life, but she was constrained to do so for the same reason that Sir Oliver Lodge 92 Theij Who Understand felt constrained to give the widest publicity to the messages received, or which he believed that he received, from his son, Raymond. In giving these in full, with a certain admixture that was sure to be misunderstood by a large number of readers. Sir Oliver did violence to his own feel- ings, but he felt he had no right to withhold any contribution that could throw light on an im- portant subject. INIr. Park, with the wider vision of the life beyond, urged the publication of his letters. He saw in them something that he believed mfght comfort the sorrowing. When Mrs. Park decided to do so he wrote : "Now I am glad to see you are arranging the letters I have written you from time to time. They will be especially valuable to the bereaved. ... I am glad you are willing to have them circulated, for it is just what I tell you in these letters that needs to be known. How love grows and deepens on this side; how it can be communicated to those who are in affinity with one another (when one is still on the earth plane) and that is the special work of ministering spirits." In one of the first of these letters Mr. Park Emderitial Communication and Proof 93 describes his passing to the spirit life. The matter is made so clear and seems to bear such testimony to the naturalness of the transition that, at the risk of unduly quoting, I shall ven- ture to transcribe it. Mr. Park wrote : "When I died I simply fell into a state of un- consciousness and was at once taken into my mother's loving care. . . . Gradually the won- ders and beauty of this new world unfolded them- selves. The loveliness of the trees and flowers, the grandeur of the mountains, the glint of dis- tant lakes seemed familiar, yet all spiritualized. It was some time before I could realize what had happened, and that death had really passed ; so I rejoiced, for my suffering on earth had been great. Then spiritual illumination came to me, I developed new powers, and was literally born again. They carried me to my beautiful home, and every flower I loved was there to greet me. Oh, such roses ! Would that you could see them too. . . . How can I tell you of this new and beautiful life? ... I see now that only the germ of truth is taught on earth, overladen with 94 They Who Understand much error. You hardly reaHze that you have the power to express God in your lives. . . . Remember, you are building your home here all the time you dwell on earth. It is the outer expression of your thought. All spiritual and beautiful thought produces beautiful surround- ings. ... I am busy perfecting our home, but it cannot be completed until you join me. . . . You are never alone . . . but no spirit, however pure and beautiful, must ever come between your soul and God. Because you have given yourself into the divine keeping nothing of any kind can harm you. Banish every vestige of fear from your mind. You are in God's care, and your guides will help to keep evil influences away." These last lines are especially suggestive, as many persons make an objection to any idea of communication with the unseen, or to the idea of receptivity to influence from those beyond, by saying that they feel all influence should come to us directly from God. In that they are quite right, only is it not always possible, even in this world, to love God more the more we Evidential Communicaiion and Proof 95 love our friends, our associates, or the more sym- pathy and active good will we feel and manifest to every one ? " loved the most, when most I feel There is a lower and a higher;'* And again : "The love that rose on stronger wings, Unpalsied when he met with Death Is comrade of the lesser faith That sees the course of human things.'* That is, the more entirely the soul goes forth to the divine; the more one "loves God", to use a common and ever comprehensive expres- sion, the more truly does he love his friends ; and the converse is also true. We do not make the objection, in this present life, that we cannot, or should not, love our friends because we love God. On the contrary, the more deeply any nature is attuned with the divine, the larger is the capacity for associations and friendships. "My friends come to me unsought", said Emer- son ; "the great God Himself gave them to me." Why should the love of God and the love of friends 96 They Who Understand be in any mutual exclusiveness of each other when the friends have passed into the next phase of life? The divine aid is not less if it come through the means of a friend, in the seen or in the unseen. An instance of communication from the be- yond that is one of the most simple and natural as well as impressive, one which has never before been made public, but which I have permission to use here, — is related by Mrs. Bradley, then living in Michigan. The story would lose if its narrative were changed from the simple form in which she herself relates it, and which is thus given in her own words : "My name is Nellie L. Bradley, and I have lived for twenty-eight years in Muskegon (Michi- gan), my present home. My husband and I have been devoted lovers for forty-five years, and I am just a cheerful, plain, sunny-tempered woman, never, at any time in my life, a profes- sional medium, or anything of that sort. Never- theless, I have had some remarkable experi- ences in that line, one of the strangest of which I will now relate. Evidential Communication and Proof 97 "On the first day of the February of 1907 I was sitting by the window sewing, when the voice of my dead sister said : ' Nellie, you must go away, or you will not live many months/ My sister was i\Irs. Villa Stowe, who had lived in Grand Rapids. I had always called her 'Dar- ling', for she was my idol, and the bond between us was very close. She had died in the August of 1906. I had been suffering for some time with rheumatism and was perhaps illy able to endure the chill and dampness of the spring. \Mien my husband came in I told him of what my sister had said, and that she had added that the way would be opened. From that moment I began preparing for a journey, although circum- stances made it seem extremely difficult, if not impossible for us to leave." Mrs. Bradley here explained how the un- dreamed-of arrival of a friend from Duluth combined with other circumstances to enable them to leave at once, and she thus continues : *'Mr. Bradley had bought tickets for Havana, although he did not know why he chose that city, as we had only intended going to Florida. We 98 They Who Understand stopped in Florida, and only then did my hus- band tell me that he had extended our journey to Cuba. Arriving at Havana we went to the Hotel Tuileries, and a little later we recalled that a young man from our city, Earl Patton of the United States Army, was stationed in that locality, and we went to see him. On returning we found we had taken the wrong car, and look- ing about to find some one who spoke our lan- guage, we noticed a lady in deepest mourning, accompanied by a gentleman, sitting near us. I turned and said to them, smiling, 'Pardon me, but do you speak English?' He replied in the affirmative and added, 'What can I do for you?* We made known our mistake; he directed us aright and expressed the hope that we were pleasantly located, saying that there were de- lightful rooms in their hotel overlooking the harbor. He wrote the address on a card, and we left the car; but on reaching our hotel we found them waiting to tell us that the rooms of which they had spoken had been taken mean- time, but giving us another address equally pleasant, to w^hich we removed that evening. Evidential Communicaiion and Proof 99 This casual conversation, with our thanks for their courtesy, was all that passed between us. Nor did we expect to see them again. '^Usually I sleep well; but occasionally there IS an exception, and I soon realized that night that, despite fatigue, I should not sleep. A cold wave passed over me and a voice said, 'This is Marie ; they called me Sweet INIarie from the old song.' I strained my eyes, startled, and although the street light was shining dimly through the shutters, I could see nothing. Nev- ertheless I felt this sentient presence, and I said: 'I don't know you; what do you want of me?' "'Oh!' the plaintive young voice answered, 'I want you to take a message to my mother. I have tried, oh so long, and you are the first one I could talk to.' I protested, 'But I don't know your mother,' and she said: 'Oh! yes, you do. Please tell her I cannot be happy while she grieves so deeply; it holds me to the earth.' '' Now this was not a dream. I was never more completely awake and in full consciousness. I 100 They Who Understand asked IVIarie questions about herself, all of which she answered, telling me that she died four years ago, at the age of twenty-three. Finally I begged her to leave me that I might sleep ; and at part- ing she said : ' My father will take you by the hand and say that you have given him more comfort than any one else.' In the morning I told my husband of the experience, and he remarked that it would be strange if we met these people again and that he should be glad to have an opportunity of asking them if they had such a daughter. But so far as we knew the incident was closed, and we were so engaged with our sightseeing that we almost forgot the matter." A few nights later, Mrs. Bradley said, her husband proposed that they should go to dine at "Harvey's", and as he spoke a cold wave passed over her. Before she could reply a voice spoke to her inner ear saying, "No, no, please go to the Chinese restaurant; there you will meet my father and mother and dine with them." Mrs. Bradley was so startled she could hardly relate this to her husband; and he at once re- Evidential Communication 'aiid Vrcnf ' ipV plied : " Yes, let's see it out ; it would be strange, indeed, if these people were there." ^Irs. Bradley thus resumes the story : "We started down under the avenue of date palms, in the moonlight, on our way to the Chinese restaurant, and all the way Marie's voice kept sounding beside me. We found it crowded, but seeing two vacant seats at some distance we proceeded toward them, when my husband sud- denly grasped my arm and said, in a low tone : *If there are not those people we met in the car.' A sudden wave of excitement and awe swept over me as the voice of the dead girl again spoke distinctly at my ear, saying, insistently, 'Ask my mother, ask her about Marie.' The lady and gentleman rose at our approach, with a smile of recognition, and begged us to dine with them. In my agitation I at once asked the lady if she knew any one by the name of ' Marie ' ? She grew deadly pale and dropping her knife, exclaimed, 'Why do you ask? How did you hear that name? Indeed I know; she was my darling daughter whom we lost four years ago; we called her Sweet Marie, for the old song.' 1X5?' Tliey Who Understand My husband then interposed and begged we would say no more until after dinner, inviting the gentleman and lady to return with us to our apartment that we might tell them the story." The details that INIarie had told INIrs. Bradley proved to be correct in every particular, and her parents were deeply affected. On their leave- taking, Mrs. Bradley further states that the gentleman took her hand and repeated exactly the words about the comfort she had given them that Marie had before asserted her father would say. This little incident illustrates the natural and simple way in w^hich communication from the unseen is interwoven with the ordinary occur- rences of daily life. The great error is in regard- ing communion and companionship between the seen and the unseen as a phenomenal occurrence, rather than as a natural and, to a great extent, a constant experience in daily life. All tendencies to the abnormal are not to be considered as inevitably conjoined with psychical gifts, but rather as due to their abuse, or their absence. The life of the spirit, whether in or Emdeniial Communication and Proof 103 withdrawn from the physical body, is a normal life. So far as it varies from the normal, it is simply defective as a spiritual life. The narra- tions of the mingled life between the inhabitants of the physical and of the ethereal realms per- sist through all the ages. Boccaccio, in his life of Dante, relates that when the poet died the *'Divina Commedia" was found unfinished, and the manuscript was sent to Can Grande lacking the last thirteen cantos that now appear. The poet's sons, Pietro and Jacobo, were anxiously questioned about the missing cantos, but they knew nothing of them. One night, however, Dante appeared to his son, Jacobo, "his face shining with light, and when the son asked if he were living, replied : ' Yes ; but in the true life, not yours.' Then it occurred to Jacobo to ask his father if he had finished his work before he passed to the true life, and if he had, where was the conclusion to be found. To which question came the answer,^ 'Yes, I completed it ' ; and then it seemed his father took Jacobo by the hand and led him to the room in which he had lived and, touching a panel in the wall, 104 They Who Understand said: 'That which you seek is here'; and hav- ing said this, he disappeared." And when the sons looked, the next day, there were the miss- ing cantos. ''And in great joy they copied them," continues Boccaccio, "and sent them to Messer Cano, and then added them to the im- perfect poem; and in this way the work which had been carried on so many years was finished." No one can realize the true nature of the present life until he also realizes the true nature of the change we call death. Those who pass on are not asleep. Those who pass on are not removed into conditions incomprehensible to those here. They enter, so far as they are fitted, on more intense activities and a larger range of conscious- ness, and thus become more alive than is possible in the limitations of the physical world. The conviction of immortality and of the eternal progress of the spirit requires for its completest atmosphere of growth and its manifestation in reality the knowledge of the reality of communi- cation between those in the seen and the unseen. Without this know^ledge there may be (and is) faith in God and faith in immortality as a condi- EviderMal Communication and Proof 105 tion, vague and ungraspcd, but some way, some time, to be recognized as true; but with this knowledge (of the absolute unity of life and the unbroken communication) the faith becomes clear and intelligible, not vague. It becomes an ever-present reality of the immediate hour, sustaining, encouraging, and revealing the practi- cal nature of the divine aid in every hour of life. It assures us we are not left alone. If the reli- gious man, who does not accept the Spirit- ualists' faith in the communication and the continued companionship between those who have passed on and ourselves — if he asserts his belief and full reliance on the help of God; if he only looks to Jesus for aid — why, that is good ; but that faith is not lessened, nor neces- sarily at all changed, by a little knowledge as to the ways and means by which the Divine Power helps us. "Are they not all ministering spirits?" Nor do we fully enter into the realities and the nobler possibilities of the present life until we realize that we are, even now and here, inhabitants of both realms. In every achieve- 106 They Who Underdatid ment of life we draw upon ethereal forces. The ethereal realm interwoven with our own is not a miracle region; it is another phase of nature. In fact, life here could not exist at all unless it drew upon the life beyond. There is a perpetual inflowing of ethereal energy, and if this were checked, that which we know as the physical world would cease to exist. The ethereal world is far more real than is the physical. Stephen Phillips embodies an absolute fact in the lines : " I tell you, we are fooled by the eye and the ear ; These organs muflBe us from the real world That lies about us." The more clearly the vision extends into the more real world the more power is unlocked to draw upon for achievements. Then does one ally himself with the diviner forces. Then does he learn how to transmute his energy into power. For energy is not synonymous with power. En- ergy may be restless and dissipate itself to little purpose. Power is calm, serene, uninterrupted, unremitting, and perfects itself in definite achieve- ments. All problems of life are really spiritual Evidential Communication and Proof 107 problems. There is no line of demarcation. In the last analysis Love is the only working philos- ophy of life. Love is light and beauty and power. Love alone, in the larger and higher sense, makes endeavor successful. "Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, pleads no excuse of impossibility. He that loveth flieth and rejoiceth." He that loveth dwells in that harmonious atmosphere in which there is no waste of energy. The initial condition for any form of worthy achievement is to banish every discordant thought and establish that harmony which rests alone on the basis of uni- versal love and good will. It is when living in this diviner air that communication with those in the unseen becomes easy and a frequent part of the natural experience of every day. " Let nothing disturb thee, Nothing affright thee ; All things are passing ; God never changeth ; Patient endurance Attaineth to all things ; 108 They Who Understand Whom God possesseth In nothing is wanting, — Alone God sufBceth." /Nor is the "possession" of God a mere phrase of abstract and incomprehensible significance. It is the practical duty of life, and it is the most practicable of duties. We possess God when His divine spirit possesses and informs and dominates our own. Life is a spiritual drama, and every day's experience may be invested with a kind of magical enchantment. The enlarge- ment of interests by the extension of thought and vision into the unseen; by the conscious- ness of the constant telepathic communion that may be held with friends there, is the very re- demption of life from the commonplace and the trivial to the plane of the significant and the imiversal. IV THE natuhalness of the next phase of LIFE "The soul looketh steadily forward, creating a world before her, lea\'ing a world behind her, and the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed." — Emerson. "This world is not conclusion, A sequel Ues beyond." — Emily Dickinson. THE absolute naturalness claimed for the next phase of human life is, by a paradox, its most bewildering attribute. The language of the Bible has been taken literally to an over- whelming extent, where it is intended to be only sjTnbolic and figurative. The literal interpreta- tion of this language has been handed down through so many ages, it has been so universally taught, that it is little wonder the world is so generally disposed to accept these ideas. It is not strange that with the symbolic picturing of a state of rest, the suggestion of activities should 109 no They Who Understand seem a desecration. Or if the conviction has been inculcated that sleep, poetically invested, is the condition after this phase of life, to endure until some mystical and incomprehensible resurrection takes place ; or that a more or less literal accept- ance of golden streets, palm branches, and harps possesses the mind, — these ideas, too, being en- twined with tender and sacred associations, — it is little wonder that a different philosophy, one involving no break in the continuity of activities, might be regarded as lacking in religious rever- ence. Yet a deeper study of the teaching of Jesus will disclose new points of view. Were the more modern conception of spiritual life based on mere phenomena alone, with little heed of the religious feelings, it would naturally repel persons of the higher order. Unless this somewhat different conception of death can be spiritualized and made a vital part of our religious faith, not held as antagonistic to it, the conception will not meet with any universal recognition nor win any uni- versal belief. But is it not true that religion is, in its very The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 111 nature, progressive ? Or rather, perhaps, that as man progresses it reveals its truth to him more and more completely? "I have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now," we find Jesus saying. In the enlarging conceptions of scientific truth that record themselves, succes- sively, through the ages, generation after genera- tion, we see how the views of nature change; how the attitude and belief of one century, or one generation, is discarded, or greatly changed, by the next. May this not be equally true in regard to the great problem of the origin, the development, the destiny of man ? I do not phrase this, " the destiny of the soul", as if the soul were something apart from the man himself. That phrasing is misleading. It belongs to the past, when the conception of man was that of the visible form which possessed, we felt sure, a soul ; but of what mysterious nature could not be conjectured. Now we realize the transient aspect of the visible man; we realize that his physical body is no more himself than his clothing is himself; that the real man is simply manifesting himself by means of his physical body as the mechanism, 112 They Who Understand the instrument, of his contact with the physical world. What is his destiny as an immortal being? We follow him through the physical environ- ment; what next succeeds that? Can we still follow him after he has w^ithdrawn from the physical world? Can we penetrate into the ethereal realm of "the encircling spirit world"? Through all ages this spirit world has been felt; the intimations of immortality are always in the air. Modern spiritualism focused and verified many of these intimations ; the purely scientific work of psychical research has contributed valu- able aid ; but now intuition and increasing spirit- uality of life are bringing to bear a force of con- viction and a larger grasp of knowledge than has before been revealed. Science and spirituality go hand in hand to this end. Science has re- vealed and formulated the existence of the ethereal world; spirituality recognizes that this ethereal world, in correspondence with the ethereal body in which man is clothed after dis- carding the physical, is the natural environ- ment for the next phase of this evolutionary prog- The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 113 ress we call life. The existence of the etheric body is now a recognized fact which is no more denied than is the existence of the physical body. After this etheric body shall have served its use, during the sojourn in the ethereal world, it will be succeeded by a body still finer and more subtle. But of these future conditions we can now only speculate; while with the one immediate future condition we can already formulate much accurate and positive knowledge. Here are two realms, the physical and the ethereal, that interpenetrate each other; the in- habitants of the former withdraw from it and pass into the latter. The transition effects no imme- diate change. Nor is the new environment in any respect so different from the former as to amaze the newcomer. The greatest surprise, indeed, is in the realization that the change is so much less than has been anticipated. There is a vast amount of evidence already that sub- stantiates this statement. To the question as to how one can know that this is reliable evidence it may be answered that the identity of individ- uals on the other side has been so unmistakably 114 They Who Understand established as to give reasonable warrant for its acceptance as a fact. Now when the identity is accepted ; when the friend making these state- ments is one on whose truth and judgment reli- ance could always be placed; and when the descriptive accounts of the conditions of life in the ethereal agree with much positive knowledge gained through actual demonstration in labora- tory research, the assertions and statements made commend themselves to the mind. Take the case of a communication from Edward Everett Hale. ^Mien Doctor Hale returned to his Boston home from a visit in Europe would his friends have doubted any narration of his about life, or other matters, in London or Paris ? Then why, if his identity as a communicator is estab- lished beyond reasonable doubt, should one doubt any statement of his regarding his present environment? I may have related in some previous book the little incident that I beg to record here, but if so, it is easy for the reader already familiar with it to turn this page. It is so typical an illustration of the perfect natural- ness of the next environment into which we enter The Naturalness of the Xext Phase of Life 115 that I venture the risk of repetition. Soon after the death of Kate Field, Doctor Hale wrote to me m Paris, saying, " I did not know Miss Field ; I hope I shall know her." This was in the summer of 1896 ; the years went on, and he also passed into the ethereal. Doctor Hyslop (who had not known Doctor Hale) was pursuing his investigations in psychical research through the remarkable mediumship of Minnie M. Soule, the famous Boston psychic, and coming to me one day, )\ // j , some few years after Doctor Hale's death, told ' ' me that Doctor Hale had apparently been at the seance that morning and had sent a message to me, although a message that Doctor Hyslop found quite incomprehensible. It was, "Tell Lilian WTiiting I have met Kate Field, and that she is the most adventurous spirit I have ever seen in a feminine body." But link the message with the letter of years before and how unmis- takable is the connection, the message being a natural sequence to the letter. In the letter he mentioned that he had not known Miss Field. When he himself passes on into the same environment he not unnaturally meets her. 116 They Who Understand When in this life Miss Field was one of his most appreciative readers and admirers. His convic- tions on any matter impressed and influenced her. What more natural than their meeting in the new conditions to which both have passed? And Doctor Hale's characterization of her as an "adventurous spirit" is one unusually applicable. The message given somewhere about 1912 is in perfect sequence to the letter in 1896. : Lady Henry Somerset has related that an audi- ble voice out of the unseen spoke to her, directing her to go forw^ard in the temperance movement. At that time she was entirely engaged in the social life that presses upon an English peeress, and while she had felt promptings and drawing toward work of reforms, involving leadership and its sacrifices, these promptings had only dimly stirred in her mind. When the voice spoke her resolution was taken, with the important and beneficent results to the world with which the public is familiar. Nobly did Lady Henry respond to the bidding. She answered the call, and the path on which she then entered has been one of strange contrast to that life of ease and luxury The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 117 which otherwise would have been her appointed way. In the very interesting reminiscences ^ of iMrs. Julia Ward Howe given by two of her daughters, there is the account of an experience which she spoke of as "a midnight vision." Mrs. Howe was suddenly awakened by some words falling on her mind, as if from a voice, and in her journal she thus recorded the incident : . . . "There seemed to be a new, a wondrous, ever-permeating light, the glory of which I cannot attempt to put into human words, — the light of the new-born hope and s^Tupathy — blazing. The source of this light was born of human en- deavor. . . . And then I saw the victory. All of evil was gone from the earth. Misery was blotted out. ^Mankind was emancipated and ready to march forward in a new era of human understanding, of all-encompassing sjTnpathy, and ever-present help, the era of perfect love, of peace passing understanding." This was in the year 1908 ; and does it not seem 1 Julia Ward Howe : 1819-1910. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916. 118 They Who Understand to have been an intimation of the sublime ideal toward which humanity is tending, and of the newness of life for which conditions are being shaped and molded by the recent conflict? Mrs. Howe had never been drawn to any special study of psychical literature or speculative theories. But the eyes that saw the glory of the coming of the Lord were the eyes of vision, and without any especial formulating of specific con- viction, her daily life was simply the life of the spirit. Of IVIrs. Browning it was said that she spoke not particularly of religion; her whole life was religion; and similarly it might be said of so exalted a spirit as that of Mrs. Howe, that her entire life, philosophic, poetic, mystic, was the life of perpetual companionship with celestial intelligences. Mrs. Livermore had given much thought to the WTitings of Sir Oliver Lodge, Frederic Myers, and others eminent in presenting the philosophy of spirituality, and she had come to the definite con- viction of the reality of communication between the two realms. Two letters from her, each nar- The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 119 rating a striking psycliical experience, have al- ready been published in two previous books of my own ("The Spiritual Significance", 1900; " The Adventure Beautiful", 1917), and in many other of her letters to me allusion and assertion and speculative thought regarding the matter were almost invariably expressed. After her own passing she described, through the hand of a psychic, her joyful entrance to the ethereal, say- ing in part : " They were all here to meet me ; my dear husband, Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips, and so many of my friends." What more natural ? The language used in relating this included many turns of expression characteristic of her, and one or two incidents that corresponded with some objective occurrences, thus establishing a strong presumption of the evidential character of the message. -' The etheric double of the individual has its prototype in nature. Every tree, every object manufactured by man, every aspect of nature, has both its material and its ethereal side. Of flowers, we on earth take the material flower; those in the next environment take the ethereal 120 They Who Understand part of the same flower. The material and the ethereal are conjoined like shadow and substance. And, like these, the material corresponds to the shadow ; the ethereal to the substance. It is the ethereal which is the positive, the significant, the substantial ; it is the material which is the tran- sient and of lesser significance. It is the ethereal body which Saint Paul asserts to be the "sub- stantial" body. An entire fallacy has been presented and per- petuated under variously erroneous forms. The phase of life succeeding this has been identified with the shadowy, the wraithlike; it has been relegated to a region of phantoms and phantasms ; it has been regarded as unloiown and, so far as human intelligence could go in the present, as unknowable. Even in the assertion of many of the professional psychical "researchers'*, the next condition of human life has been presented as something so mysterious that only the scientist should make any attempt to explore it. They would seem to regard it as some abstruse prob- lem in physics or some dangerous experiment in chemistry might be regarded, — as impossible of The Natvralness of the Next Phase of Life 121 approach save by the expert. Practically, the attitude of many of them affirms that the general public should provide the funds for carrying on a purely scientific work, whose processes it must not expect to be instructed in, or even hope to understand ; and must quietly aw^ait results as to whether these experts discover that there is, or is not, personal immortality ! As well might the church universal affirm that religion is no afTair of the layman ; that it consists in mysterious rites known only to the priesthood and exclusively to be directed and carried on by them. The great fallacy has been in relegating the experience entered upon by humanity after the change called death to the region of phenomena. Spiritualism has also largely contributed to this false attitude, although it has contributed so much of truth and illumination that it savors of ingratitude to arraign the movement for its errors. All the same, in the pursuit of truth one knows neither friend nor foe ; and there could hardly be found any ethical cult that has not its errors and its abuses. Cults are composed of people, and the human race is not yet infallible ; not yet perfect, 122 They Who Understand but simply on its great way toward the goal of ultimate perfection. The general recognition of the exceptional persons known as psychics, or mediums, has created a widespread (but wholly erroneous) conviction that these persons were the gate keepers, so to speak, and that no communication with those in the unseen was possible save through their agency. Now it is true that there are these exceptional individualities who have the natural gift, in varying degree, of communicating with those who have passed into the ethereal world. Just what qualities or faculties determine this special power is not definitely known. They apparently have a greater preponderance of the luminiferous ether than is common, but then what is luminiferous ether ? Many psychics hold their vocation reverently. Many hold it com- mercially only, and, as we all know, some are entirely sincere and truthful, and some are not. Many people draw a strict line of demarcation between the professional and the nonprofessional medium, declaring that they have no faith in the former. Does not this seem unreasonable ? If a The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 123 medium devotes his (or her) time entirely to this calling, why should it not be remunerated as is the calling of the ministry? As the world goes, it must be. The medium must pay his bills like other people; and if he devotes himself to this calling he is entitled to just payment, nor does this any more invalidate his spiritual usefulness than the salary of a clergyman invalidates his usefulness to his parish. As a matter of fact, the professional medium is apt to be more unerring as a transmitter of messages than is the unpro- fessional. For mediumship, like all other voca- tions that have to do with either the material or the immaterial world, grows stronger by defi- nite practice. It is precisely the same with the vocation of the poet. Mrs. Browning used constantly to urge upon her husband, during all the years of their married life, — that wonderful idyl of fifteen perfect years, — the desirability of going to his study immediately after breakfast with the definite intention of writing poetry. To her it was a calling, a vocation as well as a consecration. "I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of 124 They Who Understand poetry/* she said; "nor leisure for the hour of the poet." Every worker in any Hne whatsoever, in poetry and romance as well as in the less inspirational order of literary work ; in spiritual seeking and in prayer, as well as in oflGicial and mechanical and industrial pursuits, knows the untold magic of regular hours and a definite purpose. "No work that is worth doing," said one of the greatest of men, "can be thrust into the holes and corners of life." Mr. Browning was not, however, temperamentally amenable to Mrs. Browning's suggestions. He was variously gifted, and during all his earlier life music and sculpture attracted him almost as strongly as poetry. The artist suffers when he is the victim of over-possession. His efforts in any one direction are neutralized, if not paralyzed, by counter-attractions. A body placed at the center of the earth would be equally attracted in all directions and would therefore remain motionless. The too numerous attractions are equally dis- astrous to specific achievement. Whether, after JVIrs. Browning's withdrawal from the visible world, she was able to influence her husband more The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 125 potently must remain an unanswered question; but, at all events, it was after she had vanished that he entered upon regular morning hours for work, and that he produced his greatest poem, "The Ring and the Book." It was in the spring of ISGO, more than a year before her death, that he had chanced upon "the old yellow book", when strolling through the piazza of San Lorenzo, on a market day; but it was four years later before he had transmuted the tragedy of the Franceschini into his immortal work. The professional psychic who brings to the vocation the added potency of attention focused, as it were, at regular hours, is apt to be more unerring as a transmitter than one who only exercises the gift at irregular intervals. But surveying the entire field of mediumship from this present vantage point of time, one could hardly escape the conclusion that mediumship has been a phase, a temporary bridge, a lamp in the darkness ; but that now the time has come, or is rapidly approaching, when it is no longer needed. Nothing can be more unsatisfactory, as a rule, than the seance. It has served a great 126 TJwy Who Understand purpose; but its best use was to lead to its disuse. It has served to establish the indisputable fact that communication between the two states of life is possible ; the complaint that it has never given any communication of value is unfounded ; it has given, first and last, during the seventy years of modern spiritualism, a proportion of communications of significance ; and it has given a very great number of communications that have established the identity of the communicator, although nothing of much importance was said. The establishment of the truth that communi- cation is possible is the all-important purpose it has served. After that, the messages, however interesting or comforting, are yet negligible compared with the fact that messages are possible at all. Now that the purpose is served, — then what ? The next step is for each to so develop his own spiritual faculties that he may be in telepathic response to his friends in the ethereal realm. The higher being, the spiritual self, the real self in every person can be awakened. But this awakening can only be accomplished by the The Naturabiess of the Next Phase of Life 127 individual for himself. He must generate the force that will unlock currents of energy hitherto unsuspected. He must generate the force that will set free a higher range of faculties. It is the liberation of this force that is known in religious experiences as conversion. It is a very real fact of life. It may easily be the supreme fact and the transcendent experience of life, an epoch, that ushers one into a new world. It was an experience of this order that Edward Everett Hale thus describes : _ ,/' t /^ "1 began by seeking during the day one hoiit ^^^ I of perfect solitude. As the weeks went by, I rTTtp began to be conscious of a curious change in myself which I did not and do not explain. My '** ' ', pleasure in the many interests that made up my * life began to diminish and become dull. Instead of desiring to finish the duties to turn to the pleasures, I found that the so-called pleasures had little interest. Various things that had filled my mind lost attraction. I felt no lack in life, however. I believe I w^as conscious of a greater interest." The poets have always testified to the reality, 128 They Who Understand of the spiritual realm that encircles humanity. This testimony has not impressed the general reader with its true significance. It has been relegated to the atmosphere of imaginative romance. Yet to the poet (the very perception and experience, indeed, that determines him as a poet), the reality of the interblending worlds is invariably recognized. No writer of verse who has not this recognition and conviction has poetic immortality. His songs may have a season of aesthetic recognition, but they hold no enduring spell over the minds of men. All poets who have won universal recognition are poets who intui- tively and inevitably affirm in their work the reality of the spiritual life. One does not need to offer in evidence any list of names to support this assertion. No poet has expressed his percep- tion of the ethereal realm as interpenetrated with our own more clearly than has Lowell in the lines : ! "We see but half the causes of our deeds , Seeking them wholly in the outer life, And heedless of the encircling spirit world Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in us All germs of pure and world-wide purposes," The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 129 Although in previous writings I have (perhaps more than once) quoted these lines, they are instanced here as more perfectly embodying the ideal of the twofold life possible to each and all than almost any other passage from any poet. It is in this expression that one may find the true meaning of the term "spiritualism." It is not in phenomena, not in tables rising in the ah-, not in raps, nor in bells rung in the air, nor lights seen that proceed from no normal source, — it is in none of these things that the faith is to be sought. There is a world of legerdemain, of necromancy; there is also a world of physical phenomena, of which such intelligent experiments and investigations as those of Doctor Crawford offer legitimate interest; but it is not in these phenomena that spiritual aid will be found. Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. The fact that forces in the ethereal world can (and do) transcend physical laws and thus reveal the existence of a higher range of laws in physics than those we yet know, — this fact has no more to do with spirituality of life and with communion with friends in the unseen than has 130 They Who Under stard any chemical experiment that might be made, however interesting in itself. It is the quality of the communion enjoyed that is important. It is an interesting scientific fact that a man in New York may speak to another in San Francisco ; but this speaking is not to be mistaken for the leisurely conversation with its mutual thought and s;yTiipathies. The analogy holds true in the contrast between the receiving of a message through mediumistic aid and the prolonged telepathic communion possible to those attuned to the same key of vibration. Life in the ethereal is in perfectly natural rela- tion to the life in the physical world. During this past seventy years of modern psychic phenom- ena much definite information has been given as to the conditions under which life in the ethereal moves on. That there is no such contrast to the conditions here as has been supposed seems suflB- ciently attested by the mass of evidence that many who have passed out do not realize the transition. All nature has two aspects, the material and the ethereal, which as strictly correspond as do The Naturalness of the Next Phase of Life 131 an object and its reflection in a mirror. To adjust the mind to the reaHzation of this natural condi- tion, to speak to those in the unseen as one would speak to a friend in the same room, is to enter on an order of communication that is full of solace and joy. Where is this ethereal world? It is in your room, your home, your grounds; it is in the streets of the city ; it is in the woods and the mountains ; it is on the sea ; it is ever^^where because the ethereal and the physical worlds interpenetrate. HOW TO DEVELOP SPIRITUAL RECOGNITION "My spirit to yours, dear brother; I do not sound your name, but I understand you." — Walt Whitman. " When two clasp hands and part, they go toward the future meeting ; For the path of life is a circle ; be sure they shall meet again." — Elsa Barker. IN "Aurora Leigh" Mrs. Browning has something to say of the value of keeping up open paths between the seen and the unseen. The power of any individual life is indefinitely multiplied by the aid of clear and well-defined views of its relations to the ethereal realm and its possible extensions into the unseen. These extensions are practically unlimited. Just as one may have all the air he can breathe, without money and without price, so may he draw from the ethereal realm all the potency he can appropriate. The only limitation is within himself. There is none on the other side. He 132 IIow to Develop Spiritual Recognition 133 may draw on these forces for health ; for success- ful achievement; for power to help others; for knowledge; for spiritual vitality. And he will find that the promise, " To him that hath shall be given" is particularly fulfilled in this relation. As one draws from this infinite reservoir of power he learns how to draw more; as he as- similates and appropriates these energies, and applies them to specific purposes, he learns how to assimilate and appropriate still greater po- tencies. Saint Paul, enjoining that men "might be filled with all the fulness of God", adds this impressive statement : "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." The last clause indicates the condition of receiving abundantly. It is "according to the power that worketh in us." And this power is faith. Faith creates the condition by means of which the divine aid can come. Faith is a creative energy. It is a great fallacy to suppose that faith is a merely passive mental state in which one idly waits for some miracle to happen 134 They Who Understand to him. On the contrary, it is a condition of the most intense form of energy. The Catholic expression of an act of faith is significant. It is an act; it is doing something, when one has faith. It is a process of spiritual creation. God is able to do, "exceeding abundantly" all we ask, if we do our own part. But, as the apostle so clearly portrays, this divine aid is according to the power that worketh in us. Emerson suggests the ideal condition of living when he says, "Every touch should thrill." One must so order his life, physically as well as spiritually, to the end of keeping in sensitive response to the vibratory influences of the ethereal realm. The philosophy of fasting was to bring the physical nature into this more sensitive and subtle response. While man inhabits his physical body its condition greatly limits, or promotes, the power of the higher influences. It may almost exclude them from his perception. The bodily condition renders the man more or less impenetrable or responsive. So it comes to this : that if any physical habit or self-indulgence tends to more entirely imprison the spiritual Hmc to Develop Spiritual Recognition 135 self, then it is wrong simply because of that effect. Phillips Brooks was once asked how certain things seeming innocent enough, not to say quite negligible, in and of themselves could be wrong? The reply of Bishop Brooks was to the effect that if things not wrong in themselves yet kept us from better things, to that extent, then, we must class them as wrong. The teachings of Theosophy regarding the nature of the physical body and its relation to the ethereal body have for their purpose the presentation of knowledge and aid to the estab- lishment of open channels for the divine energy to reinforce and recharge the human energy. The physical body is very plastic, and its matter can be modified constantly by the force of the will. All hygienic science has for its objects and results the more complete domination of the physical mechanism by the power of the spirit. College athletics are not an end in themselves; but athletic culture gives to the youth a power of control over this physical instrument that is of untold use to him. Theosophy contemplates 136 They Who Understand man as a dense body, a vital body, a desire body, and, with other intervening states, to at last achieve the spiritual body. During the evolu- tionary progress of the spirit, the outer bodies, in successive relays, become finer and still finer as the spirit exercises upon them its increasing con- trol. Spiritual potencies are constantly trans- muted to dynamic energy. The standpoint of the Christian Fathers was that while it was hard to fight poverty and hunger, yet from the standpoint of the soul's progress these were far preferable and far more favorable than luxury. It is left for the more advanced civilization to realize that comfort and ease may be so held as to minister to the higher life; to facilitate achievement; and that, as Emerson tersely says: "A cushion is good if you do not use it to go to sleep." We have learned that there is nothing inherently immoral in wealth, or in the larger privileges and opportunities that it opens; it is the use we make of these oppor- tunities and privileges that determine the matter. Thought force is the most intensely creative of all potencies. Create in thought ; to realize this Hoiv to Develop Spiritual Recognition 137 creation in the outer and objective life, is the invariable process. The unmeasured potency cf prayer, as the means of uniting man with his higher self and uniting him with the divine life, is a potency that exceeds all definition or human comprehension. It is the power that leads man on from glory to glory. It is this power that develops spiritual recognition. Desire, alone, effects nothing. Will, purpose, must be brought to bear. To bring the physical mechanism into complete harmony with the con- trolling thought; to so refine and dominate it that it will serve as the most delicate and flexible and sensitive instrument to transmute plan and purpose, is the object of both hygienic science and moral law. When one comes to study the various occult sects and cults, the Rosicrucian, the Theosophical, and others, one finds the basis of each and all, so far as discipline is concerned, to be that of making the body serve as the perfect instrument of the spirit. That is the use for which it is designed, and its temporary nature is simply because that when the spiritual man withdraws from the physical world he has no 138 They Who Understand further need of the instrument that related him to that world. The spiritual forces play a far larger part in this unexplored universe in which we find our- selves than we recognize. We are, indeed, "heedless of the encircling spirit-world", and it is as we apprehend more clearly its part in daily life that we become more efficient. Science has revealed to how limited an extent we see the world in which we are placed. The telescope and field-glass reveal a wider range on the one side; the microscope reveals a wider range on the other side. Now there is no inherent im- probability in the speculative conception that those who have died are still dwelling to a greater or lesser extent in the same space in which we find ourselves. That we do not see them is no argument against their possible presence. The eye only registers within its own degree of vibration. The ethereal body, as we have seen, is invisible, that is to say, unregistered by the physical eye, because its rate of vibration is beyond the range of that registration. But that their sight includes us, in part, or at certain times, Hotv to Develop Spinhial Recognition 139 at least, seems to be established. This would account for many warnings of danger; for many suggestions that find their way, by one means or another, to those here. Whether this power of cognizance is associated with actual presence in the sense in which we understand that ; whether it is telepathic and may proceed from any point in space, is problematic. But the result on this side is much that of the close presence as we should understand it here. How, then, shall we develop our recognition of that cognizance and our own ability to respond to it? There are possibilities of resource in the ether beyond man's comprehension. The ethereal cur- rents that make possible wireless telegraphy were as much in the atmosphere when Columbus discovered America as they were when they were discovered by scientists four centuries later. \\Tio may venture to predict the nature of future discoveries in nature? The spiritual man exists independently of his physical body. He is capable, even before death, of partial detach- ments from it. The spiritual man has faculties undreamed of in the present. He possesses a 140 They Who Understand power, latent to a great degree, to attract new ^'forces, to alter conditions, to act upon existing phases of the outer life. To this end Faith seems to be the key. Doubt disperses and dispels and destroys power. Faith fosters the power until it grows as the mustard seed and becomes a creative force. Now this power to act upon events and to bring one's self into harmonious recep- tivity to the divine currents may be largely assisted by friends in the unseen.") Thus may those in the two conditions bring to bear the best energies of both states of life. It is not improbable that the youth who have passed from the front into the next phase of life are still contributing aid beyond that which was possible for them to give here. Jamblichus, who died about 333 A.D., said, even in that far- away time ; "If the soul rises to the gods she becomes godlike, and able to know the above and below; she then obtains the power to heal diseases, to make useful inventions, to institute wise laws. Man's intuition is the result of the connection existing between his soul and the Divine Spirit; Hoiv to Develop Spiritual Recognition 141 the stronger this union grows, the greater will be his intuition or spiritual knowledge. ... If the mind of man is illumined by the Divine Light, the ethereal vehicle of his soul becoities filled with light and is shining." Not only from the early Christian centuries, but from periods long antedating the appearance of Jesus on earth, similar testimony comes. The perception of spiritual truth advances as man advances in development. The twentieth century should give us a larger view; nor is it venturing too much to believe that this larger view already manifests itself in the world. The magnitude of the War, its unprecedented depths of tragedy, are bringing us face to face with spiritual realities. Consciousness is extending itself to hitherto unexplored regions. Man is learning to send his soul through the invisible. In proportion to this extension of consciousness is man's approach to larger truth. The larger view of truth promotes greater effectiveness in all the affairs of life. There is no limit to the radius to which consciousness can extend itself. Spiritual advancement is as recognizable a fact 142 They Who Understand as advancement in electrical science. And as consciousness extends itself toward the Infinite Consciousness, man grows more capable of co- operating with the divine purposes, and it is thus, in the language of the Bible, that he may "walk with God." Archdeacon Wilberforce made the striking assertion that "The human soul is a dynamo, generating spiritual electric- ity from a magnetic field as vast as the whole universe." Should we not, then, be able to penetrate with intelligence and accuracy to some degree beyond the confines of the physical world? May we not enter upon cosmic truth? May we not dis- cover that the universe of all intellectual and spiritual life is one ; that in this universe those in the physical body and those who have with- drawn from it are all dwelling together? Love itself unites closer bonds in this realization. " Regret is dead, but love is more Than in the summers that are flown. For I myself with these have grown To something higher than before." How to Develop Spiritual Recognition 143 Again, we find Tennyson saying : "Known and unknown ; human, divine ; Sweet human hand and lips and eye ; Dear heavenly friend that cannot die, Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine." Spiritual recognition, therefore, is attained by rising into the realm of the spiritual order. "Why do we make no greater advances?" questioned Mrs. Browning regarding communi- cation with those beyond. "Why are our com- munications chiefly trivial? Why, but because we ourselves are trivial. \Miy, but because we do not bring serious souls and concentrated attention and holy aspirations to the spirits who are waiting for such things? . . . WTiat comes from God has life in it, and certainly from the growth of all living things, spiritual thought cannot be the exception." Poet and seer unite with prophet and apostle in the conviction that the exaltation of our own life is the condition of the recognition of spiritual realities. Communication, spirit to spirit, should be one of the channels of religious progress. 144 They Who Understand ^^ There is a wide contrast between the simple truth of spiritual companionship and the mysteries of occult phenomena. People have grown be- wildered, if not repelled, by the rehearsals of the seance. To identify the beauty and naturalness of intercommunion with a mass of objective phenomena, — with raps, with alleged materiali- zations, with the ouija board, with crystal-gazing and other forms, — is a confusion that strikes dismay to the minds of many. These forms of manifestations from the unseen are all genuinely used (whatever may be occasional fraud or imitation) ; but in the higher and larger aspect of spirituality of life they become negligible. - The danger in all this objective phenomena is that of inconsequential communication, as there might be were the doors of one's home freely ,. opened to any miscellaneous passing crowd. '^AVhile there are not wanting authentic instances of commynication through a psychic that is of both comfort and value, it is still true that the better way is to learn to receive the thought, the expression, through one's own spiritual faculties. Archdeacon Wilberforce, who was left in desola- How to Develop Spiritual Recognition 145 tion and loneliness by the death of his lovely wife although continually conscious of her uplifting sympathy and presence, sought a definite com- munication through the mediumship of a very remarkable woman, i\Irs. Etta Wriedt, who had gone from her home in Detroit to London at the invitation of Mr. Stead. The three seances that the Archdeacon had with Mrs. Wriedt were very remarkable. He was a tramed observer, but he was also a man of the most delicate and unerring spiritual perception. Many sceptics and doubters who believe them- selves critical are, instead, dense. They are too unawakened to the spiritual side of life to recognize truth even when presented. The Archdeacon was not a man to be easily deceived, nor, on the other hand, one to fail in recognition of any genuine communication. Through Mrs. Wriedt's powers the audible voice is heard; "and," said the Archdeacon to the writer of this book, "if ever I heard my Charlotte's voice, if ever I talked with my wife, I did on these occasions." Had it been merely the voice alone, however unaccounted for save on the theory that Mrs. 146 They Who Understand Wilberforce was speaking, there might be room for discussion if not for well-founded doubt; but the contents of those conversations included matters known only to the husband and wife themselves and were of a nature to entirely refute any possible theory save that Mrs. Wilberforce was speaking. Then, too, the x\rchdeacon related, even quite aside from the subject matter, there were turns of expression; allusions; a thousand subtle things, incommunicable as "evidential" matter at the stern and rigorous bar of the Soci- ety for Psychical Research, but inevitably the strongest and most unmistakable proof of identity to the Archdeacon. It would not be right nor just, when INIrs. Wriedt, Mrs. Soule, and others of a high order, such as Mrs. Piper of Boston, whose fame as a transmitter of messages from the beyond is world-wide; who is the honored friend of Sir Oliver Lodge — it would not be just when these exceptional psychics, and others, too, that might well be named, are proven so genuine, to fail in appreciation of this order of service. Yet it may be (and, for one, I believe it is) the ideal for each individual to so develop his spiritual How to Develop Spiritual Recognition 147 faculties that he may be in direct and personal touch with the unseen. This achievement is already much in evidence, and it will become more and more universal. ]\Irs. Livermore (and a saner or more poised woman than ]Mary A. Livermore could hardly be known) used to say, after the passing of her husband, the Reverend Doctor Daniel Parker Livermore, that every morning, after finishing her correspondence and meeting other immediate demands, she could call her husband and pursue an intelligible conversation with him, his part in it being instantaneously impressed upon her mind as naturally as if it had fallen audibly upon her ear. The time is perhaps not very far distant when i\Irs. Livermore's experience will cease to be exceptional. No means of developing spiritual recognition, aside from prayer, always the most intense power in life, can be so helpful as that of taking a certain time alone each day to lift up the heart and thought and to give one's self to the higher currents of the diviner atmosphere. This prac- tice sets free the higher powers. 148 They Who'^ Understand But it is with life, the quality of daily life, that we are most concerned. "The field is the world.'* The test is in the average daily contact, in work, in social life, in incidental meeting and encounter. The test of spirituality of life is in the homely virtues of honesty, truth, justice; it is in the unconscious influence exerted ; it is in the effort to make one's self a link to carry forward hope and happiness. The hour of uplift and meditation; of opening the mind to all nobler calls; the hours even for prayer, are still means to an end, not an end in themselves, and that end is in diviner living. It may be confidently held that "... Life is ever lord of death, And Love can never lose its own." Where there is a spiritual bond there can be no separation. It is indissoluble for time and for eternity. We shall follow those who precede us into the ethereal world. What does Emerson say ? " 'Tis not within the power of fate The fate-conjoined to separate." Hoic to Develop Spiritual Recognition 149 Love is of the immortal life, and over it neither time nor change nor death has power. "Love is watchful, and, sleeping, slumbereth not. Though weary, it is not tired ; though pressed, it is not straitened; though alarmed, it is not confounded ; but as a lively flame and burning torch it forces its way upwards and securely passes through all. "Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible. It is therefore able to undertake all things and warrants them to take effect, when he who does not love would faint and lie down. " He that loveth, flieth, runneth, and rejoiceth ; he is free, and cannot be held in. He giveth all for all, and hath all in all ; because he resteth in One highest above all things, from Whom all that is good flows and proceeds. Love is active, sincere, affectionate, pleasant, courageous, faith- ful, and never seeking itself. "If any man love he knoweth what is the cry of this voice." 150 They Who Understand Love is an inner and all-pervading and a trans- forming energy. It can achieve the impossible. It can endure the unendurable. It can create life anew from ruins. "Sorrow is a condition of time, but joy is the condition of eternity," and Love discerns the eternities. The mission of Jesus was to bring life and immortality to light; "I am come that ye might have life and have it more abundantly;" for life here on earth lived divinely is far more abundant than the ordinary human life ; and immortality teaches that death has no terror, being merely the process of tran- sition into the fuller life and joy beyond. The life beyond this transition bears the same relation to our present life that youth may bear to infancy and early childhood ; that mature manhood may bear to youth. The evolutionary progress is continuous, gradual, unbroken. Who can dis- cern any crisis day in the development of the infant to the man ? Yet the transition goes on before the eye. The normal and orderly devel- opment of life includes mutual companionship between the two states. All phases of progress here imply somewhat of conquest over the ethereal Hoiv to Develop Spiritual Recognition 151 conditions. Sir Oliver Lodge, speaking of this matter has said : " If there is any object worthy the patient and continued attention of humanity, it is surely those great and pressing problems of whence, what, and whither that have occupied the atten- tion of prophet and philosopher since time was. The discovery of a new star, or of a marking on Mars, or of a new element, or of a new extinct animal or plant, is interesting; surely the dis- covery of a new human faculty is interesting, too. The discovery of telepathy has laid the way open to the discovery of much more. Our aim is nothing less than the investigation and better comprehension of human faculty, human personality, and human destiny." Telepathy is simply the spirit language. " Star to star vibrates light ; can soul to soul Strike through a finer element than its own?" Soul to soul can, and does, strike through this finer element. The tragedy of the War, the stupendous nature of the international conflict that began with the August of 1914 and which 152 They Who Understand closed in the early November of 1918, is revealing more impressively than it was ever revealed before the truth of communion unbroken by death. It is a truth that will revolutionize all the philosophies in the world and will largely modify, if not transform, the systems of education. For children will be taught the true nature of our relations to the unseen. Death will no longer be regarded as a mysterious terror. Through this philosophy the spirit of man will have been lightened and exalted and enabled to increase in spiritual energy. VI DAILY LIFE TRANSFORMED BY SPIRITUAL VISION "A Divine light strikes upon rae, penetrating through this wherein I embosom me ; the virtue of which, con- joined with my vision, lifts me above myself so far that I see the Supreme Essence from which it emanates. Thence comes the joy wherewith I flame, because to my vision, in proportion as it is clear, I match the clearness of my flame. ... joy ! ineffable glad- ness ! O life entire of joy and peace ! riches secure, without longing ! . . . Behold now the height and breadth of the Eternal Goodness!" — Daxte : il Paradiso, (From the prose translation by Charles Eliot Norton.) Thy testimonies are very sure : holiness becometh thine house, Lord, for ever. — Psalms : 93 : 6. THE Beautiful Days are approaching. Every hour brings them nearer. For in proportion to the distance that these Beautiful Days receded and their experience seemed to fade beyond possibility of recovery, — in just this proportion they are advancing to us and we are approaching to them. 153 154 They Who Understand "For the path of life is a circle." We are about to enter on the new order. Human life has been incalculably elevated and ennobled by tragedy, sacrifice, suffering. Let us not only keep faith for it, but keep faith with it. For faith is divinely creative and is the condition of realizing that in which it believes. Let us keep hope; let us approach the new order with courage. With Lowell one may say : " I have no fear Of what is called for by the instinct of mankind." What is this unknown future into which man is advancing? It is deliverance and salvation. For two thousand years the Christian world has prayed to be delivered from evil. The gradual deliverance, the larger elimination of the evils of life are at hand. We are on the threshold of a world rich in deeper experiences; glorified with higher hope and purpose. New stores of cosmic energy shall be unlocked. Man's intel- lectual power increases in proportion as he ad- vances into this ethereal world. The history Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual Vision 155 of the progress of spiritual brotherhood is the history of social evolution. Material substances have been regarded as the substantial ones out of which to fashion the enduring monuments and structures of earth. But beyond these is the still more enduring and more potent substance of Thought. Fundamentally, all things are made by thought and will. To create in brick and mortar is a slow process ; to create in thought is instantane- ous. This higher creative power is about to be made so applicable to the conditions of life on earth as to produce a marvelous change in all industries. Had it been prophesied in the early years of the nineteenth century that the human voice would be heard from New York to San Francisco, from Washington to Hawaii; that messages between Europe and the States would flash under the ocean; that messages sent through the air on a ray of the ether with- out visible mechanism, would be transmitted around the entire globe, who would have believed such a forecasting? Yet within half a century all these things have become common knowledge 156 They Who Understand and common practice. Man is on the threshold of changes still more extraordinary because he is about to enter into the realm of higher law. The resources of the ethereal realm are infinite. In the ethereal energy lies all constructive power ; all possibilities of instantaneous communica- tion; all possibilities of a new order of transit. The spiritualization of matter is the next onward step in civilization. Henri Bergson perceives this truth. He argues that life should be free, spontaneous, that while it is now clogged and hampered by matter, its free creative activity is the ultimate reality. Monsieur Bergson has also offered a speculative theory that is, at least, one of curious interest. It is that consciousness, which he regards as one great unity, pours itself with resistless force through separate individuali- ties; that matter, or the soul, being immersed in and clogged with matter, is what keeps back the rush of life ; that man has but to remove the obstacle and more consciousness rushes through. ''Organize individuality a little, and a little life will pass through. Organize it still more highly, and the more consciousness, the more life. Or- Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual Vision 157 giinize it elaborately, and still more life will come through." It is a common experience to perceive that some men are more alive than others ; do we find the explanation in the theory of Henri Bergson ? Arthur James Balfour has asked the question : " Is the flood of life really beating against matter till it forces an entry through the narrow slit of undifferentiated protoplasm?" And he also questions as to whether it is possible for philosophy to establish the reality of this theory. "Berg- son's 'Evolution creatrice' is not merely a philo- sophic treatment/' continues Mr. Balfour; "it has all the charms and all the audacities of a work of art, and as such defies adequate reproduction. Yet let no man regard it is an unsubstantial vision. It mingles minute scientific statement wdth the boldest metaphysical speculation. His philosophy never w^earies of an appeal to concrete science." Mr. Balfour points out that Professor Hertz demonstrated experimentally the identity of light and of certain electro-magnetic phenomena. Now light consists of undulations of the lumi- 158 They Who Understand niferous ether. Electro-magnetic waves are also found to be undulations of this same ether, differ- ing from the undulations of light only in length. Mr. Balfour then calls attention to this fact : that if man had a sense by means of which he could perceive the long undulations in the same way that he perceives the short ones, this would be a new sense and open to him a new world. Are we, then, on the very threshold of this new world ? Will not this higher life begin to impose itself on the ordinary life ? " The electric theory," says an English authority, "carries us into a new region altogether; it analyzes matter into something that is not matter at all, postulating nomads as units of electricity." Theosophy states an illuminating truth in the following affirmation ; " The invisible worlds interpenetrate the visible, the crowds of intelligent beings throng round us on every side. Some of these are accessible to human requests and others are amenable to \ the human will. Christianity recognizes the { existence of the higher classes of Intelligences ! under the general name of angels, and teaches Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual Vision 159 that they are 'ministering spirits'; but what is their ministry, what the nature of their work, what their relationship to human beings ? — all that was part of the instruction given in the Lesser ^Mysteries, as the actual communication with them was enjoyed in the Greater, but in modern days these truths have sunk into the background." Professor Tyndall found that the luminiferous ether is so attenuated and elastic that it can convey vibrations of light at a rate of some two hundred thousand miles a second. If man had the faculties developed to enter into rela- tions with such an atmosphere as this, his environ- ment would be completely transformed. Life would then be in the higher etheric vibrations of spiritual substance. The microphone demon- strates the actual presence in the atmosphere of innumerable waves of sound of which the physical ear takes no cognizance. In this realm of finer and higher vibrations, too subtle to be registered by the ear or the eye, may not spirit voices sound? May not the ethereal bodies live and move? Such philosophers as Stewart 160 They Who Understand and as Tait postulate the existence of an unseen universe, with the strong presumption that it is full of life and intelligence, that it is infinitely higher in its degree of intelligence than the uni- verse we know, as it is infinitely more potent in force. Only beings of a higher organization could exist in this environment. Stewart and Tait contend that we must resort to this subtle universe for an explanation of the forces that carry on the universe in which we live. To a wonderful extent, here and now, the regenera- tion of the body can be effected by^the renewal of the mind, according to the literal counsel of Saint Paul. The secret of this renewal is in being able to exercise the power to bring currents of consciousness into connection with the vital cells x>f the body. It is entirely possible, if one may learn the way, to maintain the physical meciianism in a state of unbroken health, har- mony, and energy. It depends upon spiritual initiative. The new order of human experience thus faintly outlined and fragmentarily suggested is that which lies just before humanity at the Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual Vision 161 present time. ''It doth not yet appear what we shall be." But apparently it is a preliminary necessity to sweep away old conditions. Indus- trial and social problems will be reinterpreted and readjusted. ]\Iay it not be that the Power which makes for righteousness employed even the tragic means of this recent conflict in order to carry humanity to a higher plane? Sacri- ficing the kingdoms of the material and the tem- poral, man advances into the kingdom of the spiritual. The vast numbers of young men who so sud- denly passed over from the front, carrying with them such devotion and love, are bringing the life beyond into familiar comprehension. They entered there in the sphit expressed by Dante : *'0 splendor of God, by means of which I saw the high triumph of the true kingdom, give me power to tell how I saw it !" They return to assure those who follow them in the unbroken consecration of love that the world they enter is as natural as the one they leave, and that there is no break in the unity of life. They go in joy and triumph. To his 162 They Who Understand mother, just before death, a young soldier wrote : ' *'When I enlisted I knew such a day as this might come, but I do not regret it. I am happy in the thought that I can make my gift complete. Will you not trysto be glad and thankful with me?" One communication from a soldier was given by automatic writing to Mr. T. N. Brocas, of Auckland, Australia, and was published by the recipient in ''The Harbinger of Light", a journal in Melbourne. The soldier wrote : "I am trying to give you all a true and direct account of what has happened to me on this side of life — that is to say, since I left the earth plane on being killed at the Dardanelles by a Turkish bullet, as you have no doubt heard already. After I sent those shawls to you I was for some time in Egypt, but directly after sending those last two postcards I, with many others, was sent to the Dardanelles to fight the Turks. . . . I commenced to run, with my bayonet ready at the charge, when I felt a tremendous shock, and then all seemed dark for a time, but how long I don't know. Then I awoke to find myself Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual Vision 163 standing among strangers. Some seemed to be my own people and some seemed like the Turks. " I turned to some of those near me and said, 'Where am I? How did I come here?' and 'Where is the fight? I cannot see or hear any- thing of it, or my companions.' "They smiled, and one of them said, 'We are as strange as what you are, and don't know how we came here; but I suppose we have been ill and have been brought here w^iile unconscious.' "But directly after this a strong, active man came, quite suddenly, and said, turning to me and those near to me, 'Do you not yet realize that you are all dead?' and he smiled such a smile. I said, ' Dead ! No ! I am not dead ! Indeed, I am very much alive, I can tell you; but I don't know how I came here. The last thing I can remember is charging at those deadly Turks, then I felt a shock and woke up here to find myself in a strange place.' I found that I was really dead. Well, that is to say, I had come over into the other side of death, into life, and I can tell you, dear friends, it is a life, and a greatly better life, than the old one, for 164 They Who Understand there is no more death to fear and look forward to. Don't be afraid of death any more; the only sting of death is the temporary parting from those we love, but even that is softened to a great extent, to some at all events, for they are allowed to get in touch with their dear ones to some extent. "I cannot tell you much, but I have met my mother, and she and I had so very happy a meeting; but we sorrowed over the fact that father would be grieving over my death. But, oh, it will not be so very long till we are all united. "I must go, but I will come again later on, and will try to tell you more about our life over here, and do believe I am really trying to talk to you all." A series of messages from a soldier to his mother, recently published in a small book,^ offer an unusual example of fact and incident from the unseen. Before he went to the front the youth had been an enthusiastic experimenter i"Thy Son Liveth." Boston. Little, Brown, and Company, 1918. Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual J'isioii 165 in wireless telegraphy. The apparatus was left in his room, and he had half laughingly said to his mother, before he went, that he would find a way to send her a message through it; this promise, however, having to do with his life "Somewhere in France" and not in the ethereal world. But it was from the latter that the first message came. His mother had gone to his room to read a letter from him which had just arrived, when suddenly the apparatus signalled *' Atten- tion." She sprang to the key, — she had before this learned the code, — and the message came, beginning : "Mother, be game. I am alive and loving you. But my body is with thousands of other mothers' boys near Lens." Transcribing this, the mother wrote : " So the news that my son had been killed came to me from his own intelligence by the methods we had used together in our experiments in this very room. ... I have no explanations or proofs other than those that are given here. A man who icas killed in battle and is yet alive, and able to communicate with the one closest to him in 166 They Who Understand sympathy^ must make his own arguments. I have no knowledge of established psychic laws or limitations. But I know what I know." Aside from the wish to communicate with his mother, the special desire of this young man was to establish the proof of survival after the loss of the body in order to comfort other mothers and other bereaved homes. This motive, in both the messages from many sources, and their being shared with the public by those who re- ceive them, is felt in common by all. If one family thus receives comfort they feel it a duty, as Sir Oliver Lodge notes in "Raymond", to pass this knowledge on and share it with all who are prepared to consider it. One thing that is con- tinually emphasized by those in the ethereal side is the sorrow caused them by the mourning of friends on this side. "Every tear tortures -• the dead" is one expression in a message. "Try and make this point plain to the families." To all who have close ties in the beyond, one chief source of grief is the thought that one cannot do anything any more for those so loved. It is perhaps true that we miss far more the privi- Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual Vision 167 lege of giving some form of loving service or manifestation than we do the receiving of such manifestations and precious tributes. One who loves finds his dearest joy in doing something for the one beloved. But we can do infinite and wonderful things for those who have passed into the ethereal. We can do far more for them than was ever possible when they were on earth. For it is far more important; it offers far more of joy to the recipient to sympathize with his thought, to companion him in spirit, than it did in this life to offer him material tokens. And this companionship of spirit is so rich in its satis- factions. " Now I can love thee truly. For nothing comes between The senses and the spirit ; The Seen and the Unseen." For the first time, in the sweet relations of affection, the closeness of the spiritual relation transcends all others; and, as Lowell expresses it in the stanza above, there are no longer ob- stacles to come between. 108 They Who Understand First of all, the beautiful offering we can make to them is not to sorrow and grieve in a way that shadows and impairs all their new interest and happiness. Realizing the spiritual presence and companionship, we can share these interests and happiness. In a I^tIc embodying much of truth occur these stanzas : " How can I cease to pray for thee ? Somewhere In God's great universe thou art to-day. Can He not reach thee with His tender care ? Can He not hear me w^hen for thee I pray ? " What matters it to Him who holds within The hollow of His hand all worlds, all space. That thou art done with earthly pain and sin? Somewhere within His ken thou hast a place. " Somewhere thou livest and hast need of Him ; Somewhere thy soul sees higher heights to climb. And somewhere still there may be valleys dim That thou must pass to reach the hills sub- lime." Daily Life Transformed hy Spiritual Vision 1C9 In these latter years we are exchanging a faith that includes much definite knowledge for the former faith that included no knowledge at all of the conditions of life beyond. Science penetrates into the nature of the ethereal realm ; spiritual perceptions on this side and the great mass of messages from those beyond unite in establishing some very clear conceptions of both the nature of life and its environment for those beyond the visible. A death in the house- hold tends to draw each member of it into the radiant atmosphere. There is the strange, sweet sense of a different order of companionship; there are thought and message and feeling that flash between in telepathic form of expression. Shall not one then so enter into the spiritual loveliness of the transition that he shall walk in joy in conscious sympathy with his friend? For this is the priceless gift he may make, the service he may still render. There is undoubtedly a deeper significance than we have been accustomed to give to the assurance of Jesus when He said : "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in 170 They Who Understand you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you." The words are not a vague and mystic phras- ing that mean nothing in particular when analyzed. Here is a definite promise: "Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you." But this promise is conditioned; and the condition is something marvelous. For what is it to abide in Christ? It is something more than to follow Him; it is nothing less than the complete identification of the human self with the divine. The question readily arises as to whether such complete spiritualization of life is possible to any man while on earth. Does not the very question itself suggest that this spiritualization of life is not a question of environment, nor one in any manner conditioned by the objective world, but that it is the problem of spiritual achieve- ment ; of more and more entering into the spirit of Him who had conquered all lower inclinations and had thus become at one with the divine? To the degree, then, to which man, now and here, can thus enter into and merge his whole being Daily Life Transformed by Spiritual Vision 171 in God, to that degree y and no more, may he receive the fulfillment of the promise, "Ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." This promise is on that plane of life from which all selfishness has been excluded. The exclusion of selfish purposes does not necessarily mean the exclusion of what we call material things. There is nothing inherently wrong in a material object. It depends upon the use that it serves. In the physical world material objects are our signs and symbols ; what are food, clothing, shelter, the first necessities of aid to the distressed, but ma- terial things? For they may be divinely used, as Jesus Himself divinely used physical aid and relief. The entire purpose of life, — life in the sense of its extension into all the infinite eterni- ties, — is to increasingly lay hold on the divine. To conquer the tendencies that drag us down; to conquer selfishness, self-indulgence, injustice; to live on the plane where we take the good of another to be our own ; where we joyfully sacri- fice the lower that we may rise to the higher. It is not too much to say that these lessons are impressively imaged before man by the awful 172 They Who Vndersiand tragedy of the conflict of nations. Its lesson of self-sacrifice; of the sacrifice of the lower life to gain the higher, is as unmistakable as the Handwriting on the Wall. In the individual instances are revealed the universal spirit. One youth, himself the descendant of a Revolutionary hero, leaving his studies at Harvard, made his way to France as cabin boy on a cattle boat and gained his admission to the Ecole d^ Aviation Militaire. He wrote his name as a hero in the battles of the air. He destroyed many enemy air-craft. Then, on a golden September day in 1918, while patroling the American lines, came the fatal shot, and his body was tenderly laid in a field "golden with buttercups." What had this youthful spirit not achieved of the sublimest order of life, of the absolute partaking of the divine life? "This I say," were his words when he left, "that if I die, I will die fighting," And the mother, learning of his death, could say, "And what could be more glorious than to die fighting the enemy? It was a glorious death my son had, to glide down to earth on territory held by the American troops after he had done Daily Life Tranvformed by Spiritual Vision 173 his best and given his all. The mothers of the United States and in all the countries are doing what God did. He gave His only begotten Son that liberty might have life." Of such greatness of spirit was the power created that carried on the War. Was it nothing for a nation to rise from a life of easy pleasure and leisurely pursuits to such sublimity of soul as this? This one example which can be contem- plated only through eyes dim with tears, but also with heart and soul uplifted in gratitude to the Divine Father that such splendor of spiritual exaltation is possible, is only typical of the spirit of all this Flower of Youth, — these young Knights of the Holy Cross, who go forth in the consecration of utter sacrifice of self that Liberty may be enthroned and triumphant. It is he who loseth his life that shall find it. Is it not true that the ineffable blessedness of abiding in the Christ is entered upon by such greatness of soul? Are we, then, as a nation, beginning to realize the actual significance of many of the divine promises whose deeper meaning has never before been revealed to us? "If ye abide 174 They Who Tinder stand in Me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." The young men of all the nations who have thus triumphantly and joyfully given their lives that the nations may live are thus entering on a spirit- ual heritage, incalculable in its power and glory. With what marvelous beauty and in- tensity of energies do they find themselves after the withdrawal from the physical body, which has served its purpose and is discarded. Imagination falters before the vision of this resplendent life just beyond. "And they need no candle, neither light of sun, for the Lord God giveth them light." VII "HERE AM I, LORD; SEND ME'* "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I ; send me." — Isaiah : 6: 8. IT is this voice, it is this response, that we hear abroad in the land. The heavens are illumined by flashes of Brahmic splendor. There are sacrifice, privation, and sorrow. There are glad renunciations; there is a choral spon- taneity of response to the voice of the Lord, ''\Miom shall I send and who will go for us?" The Divine Life is manifesting itself anew through the uncounted thousands of the youth who respond, "Here am I; send me." The moral grandeur; the intellectual illumination; the new sense of Immortality, — the marvel and glory of these new conditions of life through which all humanity is rising to a higher spiritual plane, mark this period as a crisis in all the history of mankind. This is the age, not of denial 175 176 They Who Understand and darkness, — it is the age of transfiguration. It is the process of the spiritual regeneration of man. These are the appointed conditions by means of which his latent higher faculties are being aroused. From this age onward he is to be a new crea- ture. He in whom this divine light has not flashed forth in an awakening is still asleep in the spirit, and can no more bring his forces to bear than a sleeping man can guide or prosecute a given work. Man must become aware of his higher consciousness. An ancient writer coun- sels, "Throw away your imperfections and become perfect in God." If ever in human his- tory the hour had arrived in which such counsel as this might be considered in its fullest signifi- cance, it is in the present. The conditions are unprecedented in all the annals of civilization. This War was a great spiritual conflict. All the possibilities of future civilizations are being weighed in the balance. The issues are so vast, so incredible, that it would be strange if their very magnitude did not blind our eyes. The call to arms was the call to spiritual energy. "Here Am I, Lord; Send Me'' 177 The soul of man is to be liberated; to be freed from the bondage of the many inadvertent errors of which, in easy and prosperous times, we took little notice. The little vanities and vexations of life ; the unconscious selfishness of self-indul- gences; the personal extravagance in dress, in appointments; the compromise with lower standards, — all these must go. And when they have gone mankind has throwm off a burden and a material weight. It is not that the soul would renounce art, beauty, poetry, all the loveliness of life. But she would renounce somewhat of artificial standards and require- ments with which she has been impeded. ''Then why pause with indecision WTien bright angels in thy vision ' Beckon thee to Fields Elysian?'' To "throw away imperfections and become perfect in God" does not sound like so impossible a counsel to consider, — even to aspire toward, • — in 1919, as it would have appeared in 1914; for these five years have wrought a signal change in the spiritual outlook. Visions, ideals, are 178 They Who Understand in the air. Dreams of a more perfect hmnanity haunt the heart. "God's kingdom must come and it is our business to see that it comes/' the great and good Edward Everett Hale used often to say. He had the soul of the prophet. The time has come sooner than he would have dreamed, when the literal fulfillment of these words must establish itself. For the full free- dom of the nations implies the freedom of the individual soul. It is the appointed task for this age to create a new heaven and a new earth. Each individual must become a temple of the Holy Spirit, manifesting this hitherto undreamed- of power. Why, this is not the call to loss, to privation, to poverty of life, or effort, or spirit. It is not the call to renounce all the culture, the charm of life, all that we have held as so desirable and essential in the past. It is the call to such richness as man has never known. It is the call to exalt culture and beauty and the enchantments of life to a nobler plane. Is it any w^onder that this young knighthood instinctively recognized the Divine Voice that was abroad in the land, and sprang with eager joy to respond to its bid- "Here Am I, Lord; Send Me'' 179 ding? How the flaming lines of Emerson make themselves heard anew ; "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, / can.'' For the past quarter of a century the world has heard much, through the ethical teachings of India, as scattered broadcast by the itinerant Swam is who have lectured everyT\'here, of the great benefits of the practice of man's union with his higher self, known under the Indian term of Yoga. The man's union with his higher self is being effected in ways unforeseen. It has become the practical necessity of the hour. All these forces are leading to a restatement of the Christian religion. The exclusion in this restatement is merely negligible; the inclusion of larger truth, or of a more perfect interpreta- tion of the truth, is one of importance. It is to include faith in immortality, not merely as a religious expression to which the layman attached only a vague meaning, but as a vital and clearly 180 They Who Understand comprehended fact of life. There will be in- cluded a recognition of psychical truth. There will be included the comprehension of the nature of the change we call death and an unquestioned conviction of the unity of the individual life in the physical and the ethereal worlds. We shall grasp the fact that the withdrawal from the physical body has no more power to change the man himself, in any instant way, than has the substitution of one costume for another. With that closer walk with God for which the soul of Cowper sighed and which this restate- ment of religion will enjoin, will be included that easy, natural recognition of the presence of friends who have passed beyond, that recog- nition and telepathic communion of compan- ionship to which much allusion has been made in previous pages of this little volume. It is not strange that when this companionship and com- munion is presented under the aspects of weird and incomprehensible physical phenomena the religious man should turn from it as something that desecrates that which he holds sacred; but seen in its true light, as a component part of our "Here Am /, Lord; Send Me'' 181 own spiritual life, just as social companionships and the sweetness of friendships are a component part of our life in the visible world, then will it be estimated aright. Then will it be seen as a part of the spiritual atmosphere of life pre- sented by Jesus, the Christ. Man will come to realize not only that there is no such thing as death, save as a name defining a change of condi- tions in the onward progress of conscious life, but that this change causes no separation. No one has formulated the new and more extended view of truth into a clearer presentation than has Epes Sargent in the following propositions: "(1) Man is an organized duality, consisting of an organic spiritual form, evolved coincidently with and pervading his physical body, having corresponding organs and developments. " (2) Death is the separation of this duality and effects no immediate change in the spirit, neither intellectually nor morally. "(3) Progressive evolution of the moral and intellectual nature is the destiny of individuals; the knowledge, experience, and attainments of earth life form the basis of the spirit life." 182 They Who Understand Mr. Sargent, a poet, a thinker, an accomplished man of letters, was the editor of the Harpers' " Cyclopedia of British and American Poetry ", the most notable, finely selected, and complete poetic anthology that existed up to the time of its publi- cation in 1880. Since then a new school of poetry has arisen, of which, at that time, Walt Whitman was almost the only herald. Under the date of April, 1886, Doctor Hiram Corson wrote to Walt W^hitman, saying, "There are points upon which I have been long pondering — one, especially, that of language-shaping, and the tendency toward impassioned prose, which I feel will be the poetic form of the future, and of which I think your 'Leaves of Grass' is the most marked prophecy." ■ Mr. Sargent's death occurred just before this important Cyclopedia was published. In the announcement of the volume the Harpers char- acterize him as a man of complex nature, high aspirations, and one whose profound knowledge of literature, whose clear, acute, and discriminat- ing judgment eminently fitted him for this work, the crowning work of his life. In his spirituality "Here Am /, Lord; Send Me'' 183 of nature, as distinguished from the merely formal and academic, Mr. Sargent had the keenest and most unerring poetic intuitions. With this he united a philosophic bent; and in the early days of manifestations from the unseen world he had given serious and discriminating study to the phenomena. He had become convinced of the truth of communication between the two conditions of life in the physical and in the ethereal. He felt the truth that was later to be so well expressed by Doctor Charles W. Eliot when he said : " The religion of the future will not be gloomy, ascetic, or maledictory; it will deal, not chiefly with sorrow and death, but with joy and life." Religion becomes joyful and vital and replete with creative energy when the manifestations of the spiritual universe are recognized in their true relation to the physical world. To restrict human perception to that of the physical senses alone limits man's world as the deprivation of sight and hearing limit the world of the persons thus afflicted. It is in proportion as man exer- cises his spiritual faculties that his world is en- 184 They Who Understand larged and made more significant, more intense in its energies, more enthralling in its interests. It is difficult to conceive of a statement more reasonable, or one that could more entirely commend itself to the moral judgment of the individual, than these three propositions for- mulated by Mr. Epes Sargent. That there is an organic spiritual form that exists entirely independent of the physical body, but which uses the physical body as an instrument through which to function during the sojourn on earth, has been abundantly proven both by science and by psychic study. That the process we call death is merely the separation of the man from his temporary instrument of communication with the physical world is abundantly recognized. That the progressive evolution of the intellectual and moral nature is the unending experience is a presumption supported by all religions; by all systems of ethics ; by the intuitive recogni- tion of the soul. Jesus came to bring life and immortality to light; that is, to make clear this fundamental truth of the endless process of spirit- ual evolution. ''Here Am 7, Lord; Send Me'' 185 They who understand realize that the intelli- gent comprehension of man as a spiritual being has no relation to the idle and meaningless asser- tions made by those who have no definite con- ceptions of the true nature of life. Mere physi- cal phenomena, genuine or fraudulent as they may be, are not a factor in the matter. The investigations and conclusions are on another plane. The true comprehension of the spiritual nature of man has to do with conduct, which Matthew Arnold rightly defined as being three fourths of life. It is a man^s conduct which is the unerring touchstone of his degree of spiritual advancement. The nature and conditions of life in the ethereal are becoming still more real, to say nothing of far greater and more universal concern, by the multitude of homes bereaved by the War. Love follows these vast numbers of young soldiers who died at the front into the experiences that immediately awaited them, — the conditions upon which they immediately entered. Communica- tions have been frequent. Many of these are so linked with personal remembrances of their 186 They Who Understand life here as to be amply evidential, even to the vigilant psychic researcher. They speak of these conditions with the utmost naturalness. They confront aspects which they do not under- stand and about which they speculate much as they would here in entering on a new environ- ment. In one of these communications we find the young man saying that after a period of helping on the battlefield they were to leave for another place. "We did not fly, or float," he says. "We just marched at a rattling good pace. The only strange thing about it was that we did not mind such natural obstacles as for- ests or rivers, but went right along through them or over them. . . . We passed through vil- lages shelled and destroyed. There were human bodies ever^^where. From this point of view there is no more in death than removal from one house to another." The communicator speaks of their conductor — one who had been longer an inhabitant of the ethereal — as apparently receiving instructions in a way that puzzled the newcomer. "There were no messengers or me- chanical means like telephones or wireless. But "Here Am 7, Lord; Send Me'' 187 it seems we acquire the ability to hear anything addressed to us, personally, through any amount of space. That is how you reach us. And what v>'e are trying to do now is to have you hear us as well as we hear you." ^ This suggestion will particularly appeal to those who understand. There is, all in all, an accumulation of testimony that those in the unseen can, and do, hear the spoken voice. Then the next thing that follows is that those on earth shall also hear the voice from the unseen realms, and distinguish the spoken words. Clairaudience is the power of hearing with the spiritual sense. The words fall upon the mind with all the reality of tone and inflection. Clairaudience thus dif- fers from the telepathic method, by means of which the thought is flashed upon the mind, but without this sense of tone and inflection. The young soldier from whose communications the above extracts are taken also said : "I get all your messages, mother. I can only answer a few questions. Partly because I am 1" Thy Son Liveth.'' Boston. Little, Brown, and Company, 1918. 188 They Who Understand not yet sure of many things here, and partly because there seems to be no means of communi- cation concerning certain conditions. That is, when we get beyond the usual, we are beyond the common medium of language. The words we know are inadequate to express our revela- tions." This suggests that telepathy is of a higher and more universal order as a means of communi- cation than clairaudience. The latter is limited in its scope to language as we know it on earth ; the former has the infinite possibilities of the infinite universe. In this world we find the individual life greatly enlarged and its capacities multiplied by the acquirement of new languages. The classics, the romance languages, open to man new worlds of life and of literature. They enable their possessor to enter into many phases of life and thought otherwise impenetrable to him. Is it unreasonable to infer from this that the ability to easily converse with those in the next higher state of life would be a signal advance in evolu- tionary progress? Removed from the associa- ''Here Am 7, Lord; Send Me" 189 tion of the phenomenal, the inconsequential (as the phenomenal is but too apt to be), it would simply be a factor in the general enlargement of intelligence; an increasing comprehension of the universe in which we live; and the cancel- ing of the former mystery (not to say the terror) of death. It would thus eliminate the one great- est sorrow of human life. We should come to understand the nature of the change and know that it did not involve the separation of entire silence. It would be of incalculable intellectual benefit as well as consolatory. It would be far more; even that of the more intimate compre- hension of the Divine Wisdom. *' These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace," said Jesus; the words conveying the assurance that increased comprehension of the unseen life gave to man increased peace of mind and freedom from anx- iety. "In the world ye shall have tribulation," He added ; " but be of good cheer ; I have over- come the world." To have tribulation "in the world" does not mean that tribulation has geo- graphical assignments and is a factor in one 190 They Who Understand realm inherently, and not in another. Tribula- tion is a condition of imperfect and defective spiritual life. The more completely man may unite his spirit with the divine order, the less his tribulation. He may endure privation, dis- aster, but shall we not learn to distinguish be- tween these and tribulation, which is the result of mingled ignorance and selfishness. One may be hungry, or cold, or limited in a thousand ways of discomfort and inconvenience without being at all selfish or ignorant. He may so discriminate between temporary discomfort and onward progress as to enable him to patiently endure and vigilantly strive. To "endure as seeing the invisible" is of profound significance. It is the condition of faith that sees beyond the temporary, and faith is the creative power by which the immediate and temporary can be transmuted into the noble and the satisfactory. The "world" in which tribulation is a factor is a condition of spirit. Jesus overcame that lower condition ; man may overcome that lower condition. WTien he rises into the larger spiritual life he has overcome tribulation. Rising into "Here Am 7, Lord;' Send Me'' 191 this larger spiritual life; feeling one's self a part of it, the sorrow for the dead, the grief and loneliness incident to the change, are transmuted to a new sense of the beauty and the joy of the new relations that have been established. V "Let not your heart be troubled," urges the Divine Teacher; reminding us that we already believe in God, and enjoining that we also believe in Him. For it is He ; it is His personal experi- ence and assurance that reveal to us the true nature of death. He demonstrated that this change had no power over the immortal being. "Xow," He says, "ye have sorrow." That is, while uncomprehending of the nature of the great adventure, while still ignorant of its entire significance, "ye have sorrow"; then comes the assurance, "But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." The words are as vital to-day as they were two thousand years ago. They appeal to us with the deeper meaning because man has advanced to a true comprehension of all that they mean. They lift us into the Blessed Assur- 192 They Who Understand ance ; they open to us the celestial gates, even the Gates of New Life. Is it, then, that the final magnitude of the result of the War shall be, — not only the estab- lishment of more just industrial and economic conditions; not only the promotion of tem- perance and the downfall of intemperance and the evils in its train ; not only the bringing about of needed reforms and the promotion of better social conditions ; not only a renaissance of Art and Literature, enriched and ennobled by all the deepening of life in the world's tragedy ; but shall the supreme result of this mighty conflict of the nations with its sending into the Beyond these vast masses of noble youth be the develop- ment of the latent spiritual powers of man and the recognition that death need not cause sepa- ration; that, indeed, it gives the conditions of the closest union of spirit to spirit? Life would be transformed ; readjusted at once to a higher plane. All its interests, and thereby its possi- bilities of happiness, its capacities for zest and enjoyments, would be tremendously extended. For the larger that one's individual world be- "Here Am /, Lord; Send Me'* 193 comes in its potentialities of achievement, its call to action, its unfolding of greater purposes, the larger areas of happiness does it offer. "Dismiss the delusion that matter is not in- formed with spirit, and that God knows nothing of matter,'* says Archdeacon Wilberforce ; "mat- ter, incidents, material conditions, life experi- ences, are the spirit's media through which He speaks to us. . . . When you blend the con- scious mind with the Infinite Mind you are dwell- ing in the ^secret place of the Most High.' While you are thus mentally dwelling in 'the secret place', no sorrow can touch you, no anxiety can fret you; you are in full communion with the spirit beings on the other side; you are in vital union with the Infinite Spirit." From such communion one brings stores of renewed energy to press on in his duties and occupations. Humanity is on the eve of remark- able changes and transformations. The dawn- ing recognition of powers in every individual that link him in natural and unbroken compan- ionship with those who have passed from the physical realm; that make possible, by means 194 They Who Understand of this conscious recognition, the blending of effort in both worlds for the progress and up- lifting of the universal life; this general move- ment of rising to higher planes of perception is a pledge and prophecy of the most inspiring nature. "O, Days of the Future, I believe in you!" Nor can one fail to catch on the air the wonder- ful message of the poet: "0 my brothers and sisters! It is not chaos or death. It is form, union, plan, — It is Eternal Life, — it is Happiness!" The messages from many of the youth who have passed on bear witness to the naturalness of the life on which they enter. There are as- pects of it that continue the aspects familiar to them here. There are new conditions resulting from the ethereal environment, about which they speculate as a man might in a foreign coun- try on confronting conditions hitherto unknown to him. "To acquire the ability to hear any- thing personally addressed to us, through any amount of space," was one thing that aroused the curiosity of the young man from whose "Here Am I, Lord; Send Me'' 195 messages several quotations have been made. \Miat more natural ? ^^^len Doctor Graham Bell first exhibited the telephone, how eagerly people discussed this new and apparent possibility of speaking beyond the known limits of the human voice; and how incredible to the students of the invention in 1868 would have been the extensions of its ser- vice as practiced in the daily life of 1919 ! The speculations, and the conclusions arrived at, as revealed by Raymond Lodge; as revealed by many other of the young men ; the conjectures, the assertions, the observations and inferences of all this body of youth who suddenly enter on the succeeding conditions of this endless life, form a mass of testimony that is far from unimportant. It is not an unimportant fact that the father of one of these young men who has been able (be- cause of the cooperation of his parents) to com- municate with the life here, is known as the world's greatest living scientist and one whose spiritual perceptions are so developed as to enable him to become a reliable interpreter of the nature and possibilities of this communication; one 196 They Who Understand whose sympathy with other bereaved families is so great that he felt constrained to place on public record all that he felt most helpful in the messages from his own son, and thus share these with all who value them. Sir Oliver Lodge had been absolutely convinced of the reality of communion between the two worlds long before this communion had become to him so vital a matter as to its truth or fallacy. With no uncertain note he had more than once stated that he knew those whom we call dead could speak to us; that they are far more aware of life here than we dream ; that personal communi- cation is not only possible but that it is an as- sured and unquestionable fact. With the pass- ing of his son this assurance could not but become a more vital matter to him. The comfort it has afforded is the comfort that may reach every sorrowing home. It is in the Divine Order. Apparently these young men who in all the glow and freshness of ardent youth passed into the ethereal world so instantly, who daily faced this immediate possibility, are inevitably uplifted to the higher plane of life, whether they vanish ''Here Am I, Lord; Send Me'' 197 from earth, or still remain. Life to them can never be the same again. They have stood too near to the divine realities. If they return to enter into the affairs of the present ; or if they enter on the work of the next plane, they bring to bear, in cither case, a new influence. Those who pass on seem to find little break in the continuity of their lives. They speak of being with their comrades the same as here. They are full of plans and interests. The special gift, or attraction, often repressed by circumstances when on earth, springs into activity in the new life. How often, in this part of life, is it true that the one whose soul was in music has been obliged to adopt a business career; the born scientist has applied himself to agriculture or to industrial concerns. The freedom of the ethereal realm at once liberates the individual from a distasteful occupation, precisely as some suddenly fortunate circumstance in this world may set a man free from enforced labor and permit him to enter on the line for which he most cares. Mr. Lowell found his chair in Harvard a burden to his life. 198 They Who Understand He longed for the leisure demanded by his poetic gift and the freedom that would enable him to devote himself to literature. When at last this came he joyfully resigned his professorship. Similar matters of release from the distasteful occupation appear to be the experience in the ethereal life. This assurance alone has its consolation for those in the home left desolate and bereaved. Nor is there unmixed desolation to those who find themselves initiated into the larger truth. They who understand find that understanding brings courage, trust, and joy. They who understand enter on a new and more intimate spiritual companionship with their beloved. Thus do they both give and receive a new order of happiness. For it is this gift we may still offer to the one so dear, — the gift of sympathetic comprehension of his new life. His gallant spirit heard the call, — "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And in all the ardor of his divine enthusiasm he replied, "Here am I, Lord; send me!" Could the love that so tenderly enfolds him mar his new happiness with unbroken "Here Am 7, Lord; Send Me'' 19d gloom and lament? Shall it not rise into per- fect understanding and sympathy with the glory that has been revealed to him ? The glory shall encompass life here as well as that on the higher plane. Love unites both realms, and no separation of spirit is possible. Love shares the glory and the beauty of the transfiguration. It is they who understand who shall thus enter into the gladness and the radiance which enfold and exalt the beloved m their new life and shall thus enter into the joy of the Lord. And then ? Then, "The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee ; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. " Thy sun shall no more go down ; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.'* It is they who understand who shall enter into the realizations of the Blessed Promise. It is they who understand who shall hear, as if borne on the air, the divine assurance: 200 They Who Understand "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ; "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal ; but the things which are not seen are Eternall" r^ ///^'V^'^''^' n V /y e' -^/>/ -/ ^^;^^' y / ^u.,.. ^.^y^^ '^'^\.;^^,,^/i. 0^*/r. ^^•v^^,/ Q'.T'A t^C^/- V /> ►