Letters from a living dead man — Reading Notes

e I will. Lend me your hand sometimes; I will not misuse it.

I am going to stay out here until I am ready to come back with power. Watch for me, but not yet.

Things seem easier to me now than they have seemed for a long time. I carry less weight. I could have held on longer in the body, but it did not seem worth the effort.

I have seen the Teacher. He is near. His attitude to me is very comforting.

But I would like to go now. Good night.

YOU need to take certain precautions to protect yourself against those who press round me.

You have only to lay a spell upon yourself night and morning. Nothing can get through that wall--nothing which you forbid your soul to entertain.

Do not let any of your energy be sucked out of you by these larvæ of the astral world. No, they cannot annoy me, for I am now used to the idea of them. You have absolutely nothing to fear, if you protect yourself.

A CLOUD ON THE MIRROR

(_After a sentence had been half written, the writing suddenly stopped, and was continued later._)

WHEN you respond to my call, wipe clean your mind as a child wipes its slate when ready for a new maxim or example by its teacher. Your lightest personal thought or fancy may be as a cloud upon a mirror, blurring the reflection.

You can receive letters by this means, provided your mind does not begin to work independently, to question in the midst of the writing.

I was not stopped this time, as before, by beings gathering round; but by your own curiosity as to the end of an unusual sentence. You suddenly became positive instead of negative, as if the receiving instrument in a telegraph office should begin to send a message of its own.

I have learned here the reason for many psychic things which formerly puzzled me, and I am determined if possible to protect you from the danger of cross-currents in this work.

There was one night when I called and you would not let me in. Was that kind?

But I am not reproaching you. I shall come again and again, until my work is done.

I will come to you in a dream before long, and will show you many things.

THE PROMISE OF THINGS UNTOLD

AFTER a time I will share with you certain knowledge that I have gained since coming out. I see the past now as through an open window. I see the road by which I have come, and can map out the road by which I mean to go.

Everything seems easy now. I could do twice as much work as I do--I feel so strong.

As yet I have not settled down anywhere, but am moving about as the fancy takes me; that is what I always dreamed of doing while in the body, and never could make possible.

Do not fear death; but stay on earth as long as you can. Notwithstanding the companionship I have here, I sometimes regret my failure in holding on to the world. But regrets have less weight on this side--like our bodies.

Everything is well with me.

I will tell you things that have never been told.

NOT yet do you grasp the full mystery of _will_. It can make of you anything you choose, within the limit of your unit energy, for everything is either active or potential in the unit of force which is man.

The difference between a painter and a musician, or between a poet and a novelist, is not a difference of qualities in the entity itself; for each unit contains everything _except quantity_, and thus has the possibilities of development along any line chosen by its will. The choice may have been made ages ago. It takes a long time, often many lives, to evolve an art or a faculty for one particular kind of work in preference to all others. Concentration is the secret of power, here as elsewhere.

As to the use of will-power in your present everyday problems, there are two ways of using the will. One may concentrate upon a definite plan, and bring it into effect or not according to the amount of force at one’s disposal; or one may will that the best and highest and wisest plan possible shall be demonstrated by the subconscious forces in the self and in other selves. The latter is a commanding of all environment for a special purpose, instead of commanding, or attempting to command, a fragment of it.

In this communion between the outer and inner worlds, you in the outer world are apt to think that we in ours know everything. You expect us to prophesy like fortune-tellers, and to keep you informed of what is passing on the other side of the globe. Sometimes we can; generally we cannot.

After a while I may be able to enter your mind as a Master does, and to know all the antecedent thoughts and plans in it; but now I cannot always do so.

For instance, one night I looked everywhere for ---- and could not find him. Perhaps it is necessary for you to think strongly of us, to make the way easiest.

I am learning all the time. The Teacher is very active in helping me.

When I am absolutely certain of my hold upon your hand, I shall have much to say about the life out here.

A LIGHT BEHIND THE VEIL

MAKE an opening for me sometimes in the veil of dense matter that shuts you from my eyes. I see you often as a spot of vivid light, and that is probably when your soul is active with feeling or your mind keen with thought.

I can read your thoughts occasionally, but not always. Often I try to draw near, and cannot find you. You could not always find me, perhaps, should you come out here.

Sometimes I am all alone: sometimes I am with others.

Strange, but I seem to myself to have quite a substantial body now, though at first my arms and legs seemed sprawling in all directions.

As a rule, I do not walk about as formerly, nor do I fly exactly, for I have never had wings; but I manage to get over space with incredible rapidity. Sometimes, though, I walk.

Now, I want you to do me a favour. You know what a difficult job I often had to keep things going, yet I kept them going. Don’t you get discouraged about the material wherewithal for your work. Work right ahead, as if the supply were there, and it will be there. You can demonstrate it in one way or another. Do not feel weak or uncertain, for when you do you drag me back to earth by force of sympathy. It is as bad as grieving for the dead.

THE IRON GRIP OF MATTER

TO a man dwelling in the “invisible” there comes a sudden memory of earth.

“Oh!” he says. “The world is going on without me. What am I missing?”

It seems almost an impertinence on the part of the world to go on without him. He becomes agitated. He is sure that he is behind the times, left out, left over.

He looks about him, and sees only the tranquil fields of the fourth dimension. Oh, for the iron grip of matter once more! To hold something in taut hands!

Perhaps the mood passes, but one day it returns with redoubled force. He must get out of the tenuous environment into the forcibly resistant world of dense matter. But how?

Ah, he remembers! All action comes from memory. It would be a reckless experiment had he not done it before.

He closes his eyes, reversing himself in the invisible. He is drawn to human life, to human beings in the intense vibration of union. There is sympathy here--perhaps the sympathy of past experience with the souls of those whom he now contacts, perhaps only sympathy of mood or imagination. Be that as it may, he lets go his hold upon freedom and triumphantly loses himself in the lives of human beings.

After a time he awakes, to look with bewildered eyes upon green fields and the round, solid faces of men and women. Sometimes he weeps, and wishes himself back. If he becomes discouraged, he may return--only to begin the weary quest of matter all over again.

If he is strong and stubborn, he remains and grows into a man. He may even persuade himself that the former life in tenuous substance was only a dream, for in dream he returns to it, and the dream haunts him and spoils his enjoyment of matter.

After years enough he grows weary of the material struggle: his energy is exhausted. He sinks back into the arms of the unseen, and men say again with bated breath that he is dead.

But he is not dead. He has only returned whence he came.

WHERE SOULS GO UP AND DOWN

MY friend, there is nothing to fear in death. It is no harder than a trip to a foreign country--the first trip--to one who has grown oldish and settled in the habits of his own more or less narrow corner of the world.

When a man comes out here, the strangers whom he meets seem no more strange than the foreign peoples seem to one who first goes among them. He does not always understand them; there, again, his experience is like a sojourn in a foreign country. Then, after a while, he begins to make friendly advances and to smile with the eyes. The question, “Where are you from?” meets with a similar response to that on earth. One is from California, another is from Boston, another is from London. This is when we meet on the highroads of travel; for there are lanes of travel over here, where the souls go up and down as on the earth. Such a road is generally the most direct line between two great centres; but it is never on the line of a railway. There would be too much noise. We can hear sounds made on the earth. There is a certain shock to the etheric ear which carries the vibration of sound to us.

Sometimes one settles down for a long time in one place. I visited an old home in the State of Maine, where a man on this side of life had been stopping for I do not know how many years; he told me that the children had grown to be men and women, and that a colt to which he became attached when he first came out had grown into a horse and had died of old age.

There are sluggards and dull people here, as with you. There are also brilliant and magnetic people, whose very presence is rejuvenating.

It seems almost absurd to say that we wear clothes, the same as you do; but we do not seem to need so many. I have not seen any trunks; but then I have been here only a short time.

Heat and cold do not matter much to me now, though I remember at first being rather uncomfortable by reason of the cold. But that is past.

A RENDEZVOUS IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION

YOU can do so much for me by lending me your hand occasionally, that I wonder why you shrink from it.

This philosophy will go on being taught in the world and all over the world. Only a few, perhaps, will reach the deeps of it in this life; but a seed sown to-day may bear fruit long hence. Somewhere I have read that grains of wheat which had been buried with mummies for two or three thousand years had sprouted when placed in good soil in our own day. It is so with a philosophic seed.

It has been said that he is a fool who works for philosophy instead of making philosophy work for him; but a man cannot give to the world even a little of a true philosophy without reaping sevenfold himself, and you know the Biblical quotation which ends, “and in the world to come eternal life.” To get, one must give. That is the Law.

I can tell you many things about the life out here which may be of use to others when they make the great change. Almost everyone brings memory over with him. The men and women I have met and communed with have had more or less vivid recollection of their earth life--that is, most of them.

I met one man who refused to speak of the earth, and was always talking about “going on.” I reminded him that if he went on far enough he would come back to the place from which he started.

You have been curious, perhaps, as to what we eat and drink, if anything. We certainly are nourished, and we seem to absorb much water. You also should drink plenty of water. It feeds the astral body. I do not think that a very dry body would ever have enough astral vitality to lend a hand to a soul on this plane of life, as you are doing now. There is much moisture in our bodies over here. Perhaps that is one reason why contact with a so-called spirit sometimes gives warm-blooded persons a sense of cold, and they shiver.

It is something of an effort on my part also to write like this, but it seems to be worth while.

I come to the place where I feel that you are. I can see you better than most others. Then I reverse; that is, instead of going in, as I used to do, I go out with great force and in your direction. I take possession of you by a strong propulsive effort.

Sometimes the writing has stopped suddenly in the midst of a sentence. That was when I was not properly focussed. You may have noticed when reversing and shutting away the outside world, that a sudden noise, or maybe a wandering thought, would bring you right out again. It is so here.

Now, about this element in which we live. It undoubtedly has a place in space, for it is all around the earth. Yes, every tree visible has its invisible counterpart. When you, before sleep, come out consciously into this world,[1] you see things that exist, or have existed, in the material world also. You cannot see anything in this world which has not a physical counterpart in the other. There are, of course, thought-pictures, imaginary pictures; but to see imaginatively is not to see on the astral plane--not by any means. The things you see before going to sleep have real existence, and by changing your rate of vibration you come out into this world--or rather you go back into it, for you have to go in, in order to come out.

Imagination has great power. If you make a picture in the mind, the vibrations of the body may adjust to it if the will is directed that way, as in thoughts of health or sickness.

It might be well as an experiment, when you want to come out here, to choose a certain symbol and hold it before your eyes. I do not say that it would help to change the vibration, but it might.

I wonder if you could see me if just before falling asleep you should come out here with that thought and that desire dominant in your mind?

I am strong to-day, because I have been long with one who is stronger; and if you want to make the experiment of trying to find me this night, I may be able to help you better than at another time.

There is so much to say, and I can seldom talk with you. If you were differently situated and quite free from other things, I could perhaps come often. I am learning much that I should like to give you.

For instance, I think I can show you how to come out here at will, as the Masters do constantly.

At first I took only your arm to write with, but now I get a better hold of the psychic organisation. I saw that I was not working in the best way, that there was a waste somewhere, so I asked the Teacher for instruction in the matter. By this new method you will not feel so tired afterwards, nor shall I.

I am going now, and will try to meet you in a few minutes. If the experiment should fail, do not be discouraged; but try again some other time. You will know me all right, if you do see me.

[Footnote 1: This undoubtedly refers to my “hypnagogic” visions.--ED.]

YOU will be interested to know that there are people out here, as on the earth, who devote themselves to the welfare of others.

There is even a large organisation of souls who call themselves a League. Their special work is to take hold of those who have just come out, helping them to find themselves and to adjust to the new conditions. There are both men and women in this League. They have done good service. They work on a little--I do not want to say higher plane than the Salvation Army, but rather a more intellectual plane. They help both children and adults.

It is interesting about the children. I have not had time yet to observe all these things for myself; but one of the League workers tells me that it is easier for children to adjust themselves to the changed life than it is for grown persons. Very old people are inclined to sleep a good deal, while children come out with great energy, and bring with them the same curiosity that they had in earth life. There are no violent changes. The little ones grow up, it is said, about as gradually and imperceptibly as they would have grown on earth. The tendency is to fulfil the normal rhythm, though there are instances where the soul goes back very soon, with little rest. That would be a soul with great curiosity and strong desires.

There are horrors out here--far worse than the horrors on earth. The decay from vice and intemperance is much worse here than there. I have seen faces and forms that were really frightful, faces that seemed to be half-decayed and falling in pieces. These are the hopeless cases, which even the League of workers I spoke about leave to their fate. It is uncertain what the fate of such people will be; whether they will reincarnate or not in this cycle, I do not know.

The children are so charming! One young boy is with me often; he calls me Father, and seems to enjoy my society. He would be, I should think, about thirteen years old, and he has been out here some time. He could not tell me just how long; but I will ask him if he remembers the year, the calendar year, in which he came out.

It is not true that we cannot keep our thoughts to ourselves if we are careful to do so. We can guard our secrets, if we know how. That is done by suggestion, or laying a spell. It is, though, much easier here than on earth to read the minds of others.

We seem to communicate with one another in about the same way that you do; but I find, as time goes by, that I converse more and more by powerful and projected thought than by the moving of the lips. At first I always opened my mouth when I had anything to say; it is easier now not to do so, though I sometimes do it still by force of habit. When a man has recently come out he does not understand another unless he really speaks; that is, I suppose, before he has learned that he also can talk without using much breath.

But I was telling you about the boy. He is all interest in regard to certain things I have told him about the earth,--especially aeroplanes, which were not yet very practicable when he came out. He wants to go back and fly in an aeroplane. I tell him that he can fly here without one, but that does not seem to be the same thing to him. He wants to get his fingers on machinery.