CHAPTER I
THE MANNER IN WHICH YOU ARE GUIDED
PERHAPS it has been your destiny, like mine, to come into close touch with your guide, in which case my experience will seem to you very real and natural, but to the average individual it will require some elucidation to arouse faith and a clear comprehension of what I have been and am passing through.
In going among people to introduce my first book, I find that others have had somewhat similar experiences to mine but on a small scale, mostly for their own personal guidance and not to bring any definite message to the world as I am made to do by my own guide. One lady hears, as she supposes, the voices of her husband and son, which, of course, are just the voice of her guide.
My former parlor mate at college hears a voice which is so masculine, as is also his way of leading her, that she thought it must be that of her father. It is that of her guide. She is and always has been a fortunate person, and as such is her destiny, her guide is able to lead her along the even tenor of her ways very satisfactorily. She declares that when she obeys his mandates all goes well with her, but if she does not heed him and follows her own inclinations in some matter where he is opposed to her way, she always regrets it. She has learned it is wisest to obey his voice. She calls him her guardian angel. She is an intelligent woman and was so successful at college that the faculty asked her to return after graduation and teach, which she did for one year, and then married. She is now the mother of two sons and a daughter. She says the owner of the voice is her constant companion and she feels as if she could not live without him.
A woman well known socially and philanthropically on taking my book said she should be interested in reading it because she had experiences of her own with the ouija board.
Another one has clairvoyant powers.
A business woman has told me about her automatic writing with a pencil. She has had other psychic experiences, also, such as hearing unaccountable noises. At one time when she was ill her trained nurse as well as she heard the strange rappings and other sounds, which made her ask if the lady were a spiritualist. One night she was lifted in bed and’ turned on her other side by some unknown force. Her writing is dictated by a man who tells her his name. He says he lived on this earth formerly and was a newspaper man. He makes her write poetry and says he loves her. She answers mental questions about which she knows nothing. For instance, a friend asks a question in her own mind without uttering a word. The lady then writes an answer which is prophetic and it comes true. All this seems mysterious, but is perfectly comprehensible when you know that the guide of every woman has entire control over her mind and leads her to do various things for a purpose: to show us that we are in direct communication with people in another state of existence, for my guide gives me to understand that there is a state before we reach the final heaven of the Bible, the latter being a world something on the order of our own earth.
Your unseen guide may not be your unknown guide, he may have already revealed himself to you as mine has to me, and if such is the case you will feel as I do, that you know him almost as well as if you could see him. If he has not done this he is guiding you the same but by a somewhat different method. He is doing your thinking for you, while if he has revealed himself to you he is permitting your mind to remain in abeyance and receive the impressions made on it by his talking to you.
Let us take a typical person and see how she is guided unconsciously, yourself, for example. It is best to study a woman first because she is being guided by a young man who stands in the light of a husband to her for eternity. We can study a typical man afterwards. The girl who is leading him is the wife of someone else and therefore does not bear to him such an important relation. Let us assume that you are an average well-born woman. Your guidance is narrowed down to a plain case of mind over matter. The young man who is shaping your destiny has a mind so miraculous that he has the power to do anything he may see fit to do with it. But he must follow your prescribed destiny which he knows at length from the moment he begins to take charge of you. He must work it in accordance with the laws of psychology, such as the laws of chance, the law of compensation, the law of give and take; also by the language of psychology, all the time foreshadowing what is to come to you hour by hour and day by day as well as year by year.
It is a complicated piece of work. He holds you in the hollow of his hand, as it were. But he is quite equal to it. My guide sometimes informs me he is entirely able to take care of himself and of his girl as well, meaning me. He knows your every slightest degree of consciousness, and well he might, as he is giving it to you. All the mental processes of which you are conscious, such as your intuition, your instinct, your conscience, are only your guide’s mind controlling yours, and making you think and feel as he wishes in order to keep you in your prescribed path. I look back now and go over how I thought and spoke and behaved before I knew I was being guided. I presume I was doing very much as other people were and are, as I was always practically the average person, only that I had my own individuality, precisely as everyone has. I had my ideas as to what I wanted to do and have, and put them into practice so far as circumstances, seen and unforeseen, allowed.
Your guide began to look after your mental processes as soon as you drew the first breath of life. You probably started by letting your family know you did not altogether appreciate your advent into a new place of residence and emitting some plaintive sounds to that effect. Soon you indicated that you hungered, and later on that you did not enjoy your bath. After awhile you developed a happier frame of mind, and in time you began to smile. My guide, who calls himself Richard, does not tell me whether your guide used his mind, or whether he let you alone to exercise your own small supply of mental power just as a new born puppy or kitten would. He does give me to understand, however, that he sees you as you are and as those about you see you, and that he is watching your mind at work, entering into all your sensations as if he were once again an infant and yourself. There is where the dual existence comes into play. Mentally he is you, and yet that does not interfere in any way with his own existence. To you your life is a flesh and blood reality, to him it is only a mental experience for the time being, later to assume big proportions.
At first much is left to the people who care for you, your mother, your nurse, your relatives, perhaps. Their guides are looking out for them, so yours does not have to interfere. They are factors in your destiny. If you are to have a happy one your guide will make you do things that bring you what you want. If left to your own devices you might not succeed in securing what you want because so many material and psychological forces are at work in the shape of other people who enter into your life. While you are a little child the persons who have charge of you are molding your destiny, at least seemingly; in reality their guides are influencing them to shape it as it is to be. When you grow older you begin to work it out more and more yourself, though you must always, to a certain extent, come under the influences of the destinies fulfilling themselves around you.
When you arrive at the marriageable age one of the notable figures in your life will appear in the person of the man who is to be your husband. He may have been your neighbor all along, or he may come from the uttermost parts of the earth, a total stranger. “They met by chance, the usual ways,” goes the old song. Its author did not know they were being adroitly led into each other’s company by their respective guides steering them toward that consummation when the right time came. Your guide will see that after you have formed the acquaintance of your prospective husband that you say and do what will make you attractive to him.
Your children will be the next important event, and then follow the usual ups and downs of the average married woman, and so on to the end of the chapter when the time has come to bid good night to this world.
How is your guide controlling you? I get the idea that his mentality is so intense that he reaches your mind through his own, and while it appears perfectly natural for you to make some weighty decision, in reality he is directing your mind to do so in order that you will decide as he knows you must to fulfill your own destiny and take your place in the destiny of the world.
The mind is the outcome of the brain, therefore a person with a normal brain must always be doing some sort of thinking. The brain is alive and acting, so, too, the mind must be except in times of unconsciousness, as when a person faints from some definite cause, or during sleep when the brain should rest as the body does. If you dream probably your guide is giving you such dreams as will indicate what is coming to you.
What you call conscience is your guide sending your thoughts in a certain channel, as is also what you call imagination. When you laugh he is influencing your sense of humor, but you must have a reason for laughing to make the act psychologically correct.
As to who he was when he lived here, it all depends on who you are. As you are supposed to be well born, he was probably a gentleman in the same station in life as yourself. He may have been an American or he may have belonged to some other nationality. He lived just before you were born, and passed out of this world before you came into it. He was reincarnated according to law by his guide, a lovely girl, and in that way came into possession of a miraculous mental power which enabled him to know just how to find you, as you were perfection for him and measured up to all requirements. He is your opposite in personal appearance, he being dark if you are fair; but your tastes and mental outlook are similar. As you belong to a lower state of animal life, he may not be especially interested in you, except from the big point of view. He knows just how to estimate you; how you will look and what manner of girl you will be when he has finished your guidance here and taken you into the larger life. He knows you will satisfy him and be his complement for eternity as you are both bound for a world where every Jack has his Jill, and he needs you to complete his life and his happiness. No other girl could take your place, as each and everyone belongs to some other man. It is all law.
We have taken you as a typical case and assumed you were a woman. Your destiny is therefore a feminine one and your guide leads you through it along feminine lines that would be correct psychologically. But women differ, one is feminine, another masculine. If the former, you will think, do and say feminine things, your guide letting you run yourself, perhaps, so long as you do not interfere with your destiny. But it is probable that he is influencing your slightest consciousness as well as your every act. I see this because I am conscious of Richard’s control even when he is not distinctly telling me what to do, as he is almost unceasingly. I note how he is influencing my mind to make me do what he wants.
You may be sure your guide is directing you consistently. If you have masculine tastes he is careful to see that you adopt the usual role of athletics, sport clothes, cigarettes and cocktails, to say nothing of dogs, horses and motor cars, or even aviation. But you are still a woman and always will be, so he will manage to bring out your feminine tastes and instincts. Whatever your personality and character may be, your guide will make you live up to them, never forgetting the controlling laws of chance, compensation, the exception, and all the others. If you are fortunate the laws of chance work in positive groups. That is, you will have five, seven or nine pieces of good luck, and then comes something negative. This will be followed by more good fortune. This ratio will keep up, always indicated by good omens. If your destiny is a negative one, the ratio will be just the opposite; that is, numerous pieces of bad luck to one of good.
He directs you in your eating, your work, your pleasures. He goes shopping with you. When you want something whether trifling or important, he knows if you may have it. He sometimes uses your intuition. Your conscience, too, is another means of making you obey orders without your knowing it. He brings into play your senses, touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, as well as that of justice and your power to distinguish between right and wrong.
When there comes some crisis in your life and you must make some definite decision, he makes you scan it from all sides and finally choose the wisest course. You could not have done otherwise because he already knew what you would do. Destinies are worked out in real life mostly as in fiction. The good characters behave well, the villains act as you would suppose people of low moral standards would under certain conditions. You are the average upright person, consequently you usually do as you ought; sometimes, of course, you fall short and are criticized. Occasionally you rise to higher levels and praise comes your way. Both of these conditions would be averaging your daily life.
Children conduct themselves as you might expect. They are apt to be thoughtless and not very wise; sensitive, possessed of endless curiosity and easily influenced. Your life as a child sometimes foretells what it is to be as a woman.
If you are devout you will regard matters from a religious point of view.
Some people cannot contemplate any book as an authority but the Scriptures. They cannot expand far enough to conceive that God might have inspired others to bring truths to the world as He did the writers of the various books of the Bible. Saint John, the best liked of any in the New Testament, is supposed to have been written about a century after the lifetime of our Savior. It was composed by Saint John’s guide, a girl in the intermediate existence, who knew all about Jesus Christ, and thus could lead Saint John to write the truths of his gospel concerning Him.
Your thoughts, language and conduct will all be in keeping with your type of character and your place in that type, that is, if you are a good woman whether you are just ordinarily good, a degree better, or very good. If you belong in the first classification you will be given more leeway in your point of view and behavior than if you are a degree better, when you will be somewhat curtailed in every way. If you are extremely good you will be made to live up to your high ideals. Much depends upon your own personality, as each individual varies more or less from every other one. If you have a happy, gay and vivacious disposition you will meet conditions and events differently from what you would were you inclined to view life more soberly.
When temptations great and small assail you, as they do everyone, the way that you meet them will depend on the type of person you are and whether you are one of the extremes or the golden mean. You are the average good person, therefore you belong to a type that is lawabiding, churchgoing, philanthropic, and generally well behaved; careful of your personal appearance and your choice of associates. If you are classified as an extremist you will either emphasize all of these characteristics by being notably careful to fulfill all requirements, an exceptional person; or you will be somewhat careless and lax in keeping up to standards. But if you are of the medium class, you can be depended upon to do what you ought under all circumstances.
Of course you will now and then do the unexpected and upset all calculations. This is in accordance with the laws of chance and the law of the exception.
You will have the usual ups and downs of life and meet them characteristically, as if you were the heroine of a novel. In fiction the church member usually keeps her temper and bears her ills with fortitude and common sense. That is what you do without knowing your guide is leading you.
As you are allowed leeway in nearly every respect, and as you have to reckon with the exception, you occasionally say or do something seemingly not entirely in keeping with your role of goodness; but you practically never commit a really reprehensible act because that could not happen without destroying the outline of your type. You are supposed to be a typical average good woman.
Your conscience, your instinct, your intuition will constantly come into play. Your memory, which is also a mental quality, will depend largely on how you preserve your health. You usually find that delicate people and old ones have uncertain memories. If it is natural for you to possess a sense of humor, you will see the funny side of people and things. In short you are living your life as if you were a free will agent, and yet your guide is keeping such close watch on your slightest consciousness that nothing escapes him and he is directing your every thought and in that way your every act, so that your life will fit into its place in the scheme of the universe. It may occupy only a small niche, or it may be of such import that its influence reaches around the world. You being the average individual, your position is neither insignificant nor great. You are sure to exert a certain amount of influence on the lives of the people with whom you come in contact, which sometimes bears fruit, and big results develop from some idea you have given to your community, a philanthropy, or perhaps educational or social enterprise.
We are told that some serve who only stand and wait, because there are many people whose destinies seem so insignificant but each one serves some purpose though it may not always be apparent.
If your destiny is that of a model woman probably your guide is not any more interested in his task of leading you than if you are fated to be a sinner. I get the idea that it is an impersonal matter, though it is easy to imagine that if you are a delinquent he might feel pleasure in redeeming and reincarnating you a perfect human being as an immortal.
As Richard has not yet told me anything about the process, I do not know how agreeable the life of the guide may be. When you have reached that state you know the infant you are to guide through life and reincarnate. But you are here on earth at present, and as you have not yet learned the language of prophecy you are living along unconsciously, day by day. When you master that language, or at least get an inkling into it, you will begin to get a grasp on the unseen, so far as your future existence is concerned. You will begin to realize that everything is foreknown and foretold and therefore you have a foreseen destiny that is unalterable.
If you have a mental voice that talks to you, understand that it belongs to your guide and no one else whether you have thought it that of your husband, father, mother, son, relative or friend. At present there is communication between you and a total stranger, only. Each guide is concerned with the person he or she is directing and no one else, because this world is of so little importance and may someday be left to its own devices. As soon as we know the law of reincarnation we shall be ready to learn the future fate of this earth, whether or not it is to be abandoned.
When your destiny is ended your guide knows just how to bring your life to a close. It may be through sickness, or perhaps by some accident. It will all have been indicated, as he knows, but you do not, as you do not understand the language of psychology. My guide has made me recall the lives of my relatives and friends, and step by step he has taken me along and pointed out how the different forces were at work shaping each life and drawing it to its end. And so your own is being carefully worked out with all its different factors, people and things and incidents coming in to make or mar your success and happiness. Each piece of ill or good fortune, and every daily happening being always foreshadowed in some way. If you could stand, mentally, and note how the psychological laws are coming into play, it would seem curious to you, and so unreal.
When you comprehend the prophetic language you see just how your guide can pick and choose indicators. To illustrate, I went to a college graduate today to whom I had been sent by another one. Her residence number was nine hundred and five, so good, but when I entered her apartment I discovered the walls were hoodoo in color, but the drawing room was lighted by a big red-shaded lamp and I caught sight of the portrait of a girl in pink, both of which suggested that I should meet with success, which I did. There were the three good indicators, the number, the light and the girl. The result of the negative walls I caught later on, as I tried many places to dispose of my book that day, but without avail.
If you do not hear your guide’s voice, mine says you are being led in the same way as I, only he is pointing out indicators to me and explaining how he is using them, while your guide is controlling you through your mental attributes. Today I wanted to know what street I had just passed. Richard told it to me and then made me turn and look at the sign on the lamppost to convince myself that he knew all about it, which he did, for the name he gave me was correct, I saw it on the sign. Your guide would make you wonder if it were not Seventy-Ninth Street, lead you to decide to turn and look. When you saw it was you would wonder how you chanced to guess it aright.
Perhaps you have premonitions, some people do, and you will not carry out some plan because you feel that if you should the result would be disastrous. This is your guide making you do as he wishes and taking that way to accomplish it. A clergyman in denouncing the psychic as not religious uses in his book the argument that one man on board a ship had a premonition that it was to be wrecked and so left it at the first port it entered. His premonition proved true as the ship sank at sea and all on board were lost. The clergyman asks if God would deliberately save one man and abandon all the rest? Wherein he shows his ignorance of the psychic. It was the destiny of the passengers to perish, but also the destiny of that one man to illustrate that there was some power with prescience guiding him. In reality his girl guide who gave him the premonition that saved him.
Let us suppose you to be the average person of refinement and intelligence but unlucky, as some people are. Your guide is obliged to force you to think, say and do things that will lead to unfortunate results. He will make you decide to marry a poor man, perhaps, because you love him; and then comes the pinch of poverty. You may have chosen a fine man but not a successful one. One struggle after another comes in rearing and educating your children. They must feel the consequences of having an unlucky mother. Your guide will make you choose negative colors, numbers and symbols; and unknown to you who do not understand the code of signals, he will induce you to start out to go somewhere just in time to meet some negative omen which he will use to indicate some trying incident coming into your life. You will not recognize it but he knows what he wants. I notice how Richard now and again hurries me and I rush out to come face to face with a couple of somber sisters of charity. I have never known them to fail. If it is not they it is some other ill omen. I am familiar with them all now on general principles. I unconsciously classify every object I see, whether great or small. Richard always discusses the matter with me, but your guide cannot with you. I get an impression and it is often sufficient; when it is not, Richard explains what is coming or oftener he waits and draws my attention to the fulfillment of the indicator. Sometimes this does not happen at once. When it does he makes me go back and recall the indicator I noticed at the time, but which did not come out immediately.
If you are a fortunate person, your guide leads you by emphasizing the good omens. He will manage to make you come in contact with them. What strikes you as still stranger they apparently come your way in a manner he could not control. Richard sometimes says to me that he cannot run the world to suit me or my destiny; but he knows the conditions that surround me as well as the events of the near future and the distant also, so he maneuvers to keep my destiny up to its requirements in that way. It is plain sailing for him because he can foresee what I will think, say and do, so he need only lead me accordingly.
If you are fortunate one good omen comes to you after another. Figuratively speaking, each corner you turn you confront the Goddess of Good Luck.
I have successful days and I watch the auspicious indicators as they prophesy. They fill me with surprise each time. I always wonder how they managed to arrive upon the scene.
Types are guided in keeping with their character. Teachers have the same general characteristics differing somewhat from those of doctors, lawyers or business people. Authors, artists, musicians belong to a type and are easily detected. Farmers belong to another type, as do fishermen or seafaring men. The society girl is typical, so is the college student.
Your life is molded by your heredity and your home influences. The well born, well educated man or woman is usually the product of refined and cultured lineage. The anarchist or radical comes by his views, mostly extreme, naturally from generations of illiterate and downtrodden ancestors. There are always the exceptions and an Abraham Lincoln is fathered by a backwoodsman who can neither read nor write. But psychology is at work in even the exceptions; there is always some influence shaping such a life. Lincoln’s strong and intelligent mother, for instance.
If you are a man and therefore guided by a girl, you are run along masculine lines but usually adhering to some certain or uncertain type. The various conditions and forces of your life, often complex, are making you an individual. That is, you differ in one way or another from anyone who has ever lived or ever will live. You are being guided in the same way as a woman, only your guide does not bear as important a relation to you as will the girl whom you are to guide, but who cannot come into existence until you have passed out of it. Your daily life is always being foretold by indicators, and as soon as you grasp this fact and learn to recognize their significance, the more clearly will you understand your own life.
A lady said to me: “Suppose your guide is a bad person, what will happen to you?” But there is no such thing as a bad guide. As soon as you have put on immortality you are perfect and cannot change even though you may have been a veritable criminal in this world.
The girl who is guiding you takes very little interest in any body or anything else, so far as I know. She will give you all possible leeway, and is absorbed in her business of putting you through your destiny. If you are an unselfish individual she will see that you get your just rewards. If otherwise, you may succeed in your desires but you will occasionally find that elements over which you have no control work against you, and your selfishness, like a boomerang, comes back and strikes you when and where least expected.
Mere selfishness, however, must not be confounded with selfpreservation. Richard tells me that both here and hereafter our first duty is to ourselves. This makes for progress and development. Each individual must make the most of his or her abilities, and by making as great as possible a being of yourself you are encouraging and enabling by your influence and your achievements other people to advance and achieve. All this is the individual destiny, though it may not seem so to you at the time; and you must always bear in mind that whatever you make of your life is your destiny.
The great law of love works without ceasing. We are such an inferior race of beings here, that only for our divine possibilities hereafter we might not arouse much feeling in our guides, but they know what we are heirs to, and that makes each one bound to us by a tie we can readily comprehend.
Your guide loves you for time and eternity. He saves you because he must to save himself, but he does so willingly and gladly always.
CHAPTER II
HOW I AM GUIDED CONSCIOUSLY
So far as I know, I am the first person to explain our guidance. Richard wants me to relate the many small and seemingly trifling incidents of my daily life, and their significance, that everyone may know the method by which he or she is controlled. He wishes me to give the details of his use of the language of psychology in order to teach the world that there is such a system and its purpose.
To make known that what people have learned of superstitions is a smattering of this language of prophecy, a language of symbols, and a useful as well as scientific language which governs the whole universe, whether we know it or not. The sooner we do know it the better, he says, for the knowledge of it is an important step in progress. He makes me notice how I am being guided by him and how comprehensive the system is, and then observe that other people are being guided by the same method, only they are ignorant and unconscious of it.
If you will follow the details of how I am guided you will know how your own personal guide is controlling and leading you, only he is doing your thinking for you and is not talking. Richard’s conversing with me is a form of thinking. His mind controls mine so completely that he can make me hear his voice mentally and realize his personality. It is always his voice and no one’s else, and is very characteristic of him. He impresses upon me the fact that he is a real flesh and blood young man who lived like you and me in this world and has gone on as we, too, must, into the next state of existence, from which we pass into the other world as soon as we have severed our connection with this one which we do when we have guided and translated our charge here.
He says he is my soul mate, that is, we are perfection for each other. I always feel the strangeness of the relationship. It strikes me forcibly every time I stop to think about it. He is so real, so strong, so manly, and I have become so accustomed to him and his guidance, and yet he always seems something of a stranger to me because I had the greater part of my life before I knew I had him, and I have never seen him though I know his voice so well. It seems to take so much responsibility off my shoulders to have him always telling and showing me what to do, and yet he constantly warns me to watch out for myself and use my own judgment, counseling me to bring into play my knowledge of the world, of its laws, natural, psychological and manmade; of people and human nature, always viewing things from a practical standpoint.
He tells me he is my exact opposite, as is every man from the woman he guides. His eyes are blue, his hair chestnut, his skin red and white; he is and always has been strong and masculine. As he has been my companion for some fifteen years I have become accustomed to his ways. It is as if someone in a distant locality were constantly communicating with you over the telephone. A stranger who called you up on important business which never ceases. You would soon learn to know his voice and his manner of speaking, especially if he had a marked individuality, as has my mentor. He is always himself and no one else.
When he first came to me I was mystified as to what it all meant, but after all these years of mental association with him I am entirely convinced that the voice which speaks to me so clearly belongs to a reality, a living young man in some other state of existence. One of the most convincing proofs is that he knows what is coming to pass whether it is a minute, a day or a year distant. He indicates to me continually so many future events, from the most trifling to the important happenings. Sometimes he informs me in plain English, but he oftener uses the language of symbols he has taught me.
He says I am just the regular, readymade, practical, logical, educated individual whose destiny chances to make my guide reveal himself and talk to me, whereas other people’s guides are mostly keeping quiet at present and doing their thinking for them. He remarked to me one day: “You have heard of persons having greatness thrust upon them, you have had the psychic thrust on you.” He informs me I do not need to believe what he tells me unless I want to; that it might be a good attitude for me to sit on the fence, figuratively speaking, and scan impartially what is going on in my head, weighing the pros and cons. But no matter how indifferently I may regard it all, I cannot get away from the impression he has made and is making on me. I could not be a thinking, reasoning being and not by this time after all I have been through, feel perfectly assured that the voice which I hear all the time; belongs to a real person; and as he certainly is not in this world, I conclude he must be in some other. I cannot help believing he knows everything he wants to, otherwise he could not tell me and indicate what is to occur in the future. I cannot tell when left to myself, can you? I can now do much better than you, however, because I have studied the language of prophecy, the new tongue which is as old as the incoming of man to this sphere, probably, and that comes to my assistance.
Another convincing proof of his reality is his humor. He is so witty, so droll, so full of fun, that he makes me laugh continually. I never realized before what a force humor is. It appeals to me so conclusively when he shows up the funny side of things with his keen wit. He turns and twists people’s words and attitudes, their traits of character, and actions, always hitting the nail on the head. And yet he is so lenient toward their shortcomings, it is such a kindly wit. He is so sharp he cleaves “the very soul from the spirit,” as the Bible says. He transcends the keenest wit of any one I have ever met or whose writings have come to my notice. He is supernatural and yet so natural. He is the most human of human beings with whom I have ever been brought in contact. He asks why should he not be, he has lived here and been one of us, so he knows all about us and our point of view, but he has come into a life and a power of which we have no slightest conception.
Another reason that inclines me to believe what he tells me is that it is all precisely what we want, and having your desires fulfilled is what we are supposed to find in heaven. Every normal man or woman here, whether young or old, craves love, and there is no love so desirable as that of man and woman for each other. That it is all perfectly arranged beforehand by law, makes it all the better. Husbands and wives who are happy in their love here cannot understand why they are not to have each other for eternity. Richard meets this situation by explaining that it is well for us not to try to apply our finite standards to the infinite, as we belong to a totally different order of human beings mentally, when we have put on immortality, and that alters our lives, our outlook and our mode of living. We have gone up so much higher in the scale of human life, are so superior and inhabit a so much more wonderful world that it would be laughable, if it were not so serious, our attempts at fathoming and regulating eternal life and laws. But, he continues, we have fine minds here, capable of development and expansion, of penetrating the great sciences and applying the marvelous laws waiting on all sides to be discovered, comprehended and put into practical use. We are capable of grasping and will grasp the scheme of eternal life when the times are ripe for us to have it told to us, though we may not be able to realize it and cannot enter into it until we have put on immortality. We shall have to accept it as a fact when it comes to each one of us in due time, as we have to accept life here. We know we have these wonderful bodies and more wonderful minds, though we do not know where they originally came from or how we chanced to have such curious possessions as minds which are the most inexplicable adjuncts of our makeup. Without the mind life would be a failure, and yet it is intangible, there is nothing real to it except the results growing out of having it. An abnormal person who is bereft of his mind loses his grasp on life. If all the minds in the universe suddenly became blank, what would the consequences be?
We can get some insight into the life of the other world when we try to grasp that each one of us on entering immortality is equipped with a mind that can perform any kind of a miracle imaginable. That is the idea I get from Richard who proceeds to give me partial proof by demonstrating that he knows everything, past, present and future that he has complete control over me, body and mind; and by making me realize that he, a man in some other existence, is entering into my daily routine and causing me to laugh, besides, with his drollery.
He says I am his constant companion, he can see me always as plainly as if he stood beside me. I infer that this is due to his miraculous mentality, but that there may be a law of electricity as yet unknown to us that enables people to see at long range as well as hear by longdistance telephone.
People ask me if I believe what Richard tells me, it does not make any difference whether I do or not I cannot change anything. I had nothing to do with his mental advent into my life, and I cannot prevent his talking to me almost without cessation, or help hearing what he says as he speaks plainly in a clear voice. He has taken possession of me seemingly as a matter of course, which was something new to me, but he says as he always had possession of me mentally from the hour of my birth, his relation to me is nothing new to him only my destiny forced him to employ a somewhat new method of guidance. He is always where I am. As I walk down or up Fifth Avenue he comments on the people I pass precisely as if he were stepping beside me. He admires the pretty girls and women or remarks on the personality of the men. He makes me notice everyone I see as a separate individual and also in the mass. He classifies them or lets me do so in a sort of group system. I have studied them so carefully that I now get a conscious impression of each face and general makeup the instant they meet my view without my seeming to sum them up; the intelligent person, the intellectual, the strong, the weak, the practical, the good, the evil, the attractive, the plain, the well born, the middle class, the fashionably attired, the unusual, the commonplace and others of striking or noticeable appearance. He makes me distinguish the American from the foreigner and reason out why I can tell the difference, as in some instances it is not easy to decide. I see all faces and figures through American eyes, but I am guided by a young man who tells me he was ” 49 a foreigner in his former sojourn here; a very foreign foreigner, whatever that means. He does not enlighten me as to whether he was an Englishman of distinctly English proclivities, whether he came from Russian territory, or from the Orient. He declares that in the land where he now belongs, “We are all Americans,” meaning that we are all alike as to language and traits, though all retaining our own individualities.
I am always conscious of him except when I am completely absorbed in talking, reading, thinking or watching some action, as a play, but even then only for a few seconds or perhaps minutes. I always wake up to him again as soon as the tense mental strain is relieved. He often greets my returning consciousness of him with recognition of my lapse into oblivion, as “Well,” or “Did you think you were rid of me?” or “That I had forgotten you?” It always seems good to return to him, to feel that there really is some person in that mysterious world of our faith, who is a friend and who will help me all he can even though he cannot or will not alter my destiny, hard as it is, sometimes. He is such good company and always shows me his knowledge of my slightest thought or sensation, as well as act. If I cut my finger he sympathizes with me by saying: “It hurts, does it not?” and directing me to bind it up. He is a skillful doctor, but only along natural lines known to me. He believes in simple remedies, such as sunshine and fresh air, wholesome food and sleep, exercise and a free mind. He says if you are ill you can be cured by any school of treatment whether medicine, osteopathy, Christian Science or any other, if it is your destiny, but always through knowledge and expert treatment. The doctor will understand your case so well that he will be able to apply the exact remedy necessary for your recovery; it may be some drug, an operation, or only correct living. All the other practitioners will use their special lines of treatment with the desired results. But if it is your destiny not to recover, not one will hit upon the solution of your case. There is virtue in every school, but none is infallible.
Of all the interesting men I have ever met he is the most interesting, and I am glad he belongs to me for eternity.
He is known to me as “Richard,” but he does not specify if that was his name while here. It is one that I like as it is strong, and it suits him. He calls me by all sorts of appellations: Carolyn, which is my real name; Caroline, as people who do not know how to spell or pronounce my name, say or write it; Carrie, which has always been my familiar name, the one my family and intimates use; “Mrs. Richard,” as he says he stands in the light of a husband to me; “Sister” and “Girl,” also “Mrs. Dingbat” when in a jocular mood, but only when something disagreeable has happened or is about to happen to me. He is partial to the word “Dingbat,” and has coined the adjective, “dingbatish,” meaning more or less wrong or obnoxious. I first saw the word, dingbat, in one of the morning papers in the column devoted to fun. I think it must be of German origin. I did not know its meaning, but from the sense in which it was used it suggested something objectionable. It undoubtedly took Richard’s fancy, as he forthwith added it to his vocabulary. He speaks of anything he dislikes or disapproves as “dingbat.” If I come in contact with someone who incommodes or annoys me, he calls him “the dingbat man,” or if a woman, “the dingbat lady.” When conditions or events are trying he dubs them “simply dingbatish.”
His way of expressing himself, the different tones of his voice convey so much meaning. In the morning when I begin to wake and am too sleepy at first to rise, he urges and coaxes me in a persuasive voice. “Will you get up?” he begs. “Oh, please do.” “Have you any idea how late it is?” His tones sound so clear and distinct. I know he is only joking, but I lie there and laugh at him, he seems so much in earnest, as if he were taking it to heart whether or not I rose on time.
One day on the street he said something so irresistibly funny that I burst out laughing. A man coming along asked, “What are you laughing at?” Of course I could not explain, but only hurried on. Yet his fun is not anything that can be repeated. It is just connected with the everyday occurrences. He informs me it is not his destiny at present to pose as a wit for the edification of the world, that he possesses a sense of humor like the rest of us, and uses it naturally; also that he is helping me with a serious destiny, and that there is not any positive influence much better than smiles or laughter.
CHAPTER III
OMENS
THEIR name is legion; good, bad and indifferent omens, all so potent in regulating our lives. For about three years previous to Richard’s revealing himself to me, he began to teach me the language of prophecy without my knowing it, through inclining my mind to notice omens, the conventional ones, like a horseshoe, and others not traditional, as a red rose, by associating them with some event. I had never paid any attention to such things, and consequently when I began to notice them so markedly, it surprised me. I found that every time I saw one or more red roses, some happy event appeared upon the scene. The horseshoe worked wonders. I recall my experiences with it in connection with a well known periodical. I had offered my work to the editor many times, always, with one exception, receiving the same polite refusal. As I had a series which seemed especially fitted for the publication, I decided to try once more, so I sent it off. While awaiting a reply I noticed from my window, one morning, an old battered horseshoe with the auspicious rusty nails in evidence. It stood upright in the muddy country road, as I was staying in a small college town at the time, doing some college literary work. I casually noticed the standing erect, the correct position to hold in the luck, but did not pay much attention to it. Finally, as it continued to stand there, after a few days the thought occurred to me to pick it up, knowing its traditions. This I did, washed off the mire and stood it in my room. It soon lived up to its reputation, for a letter arrived informing me my series had been accepted. This made me regard my horseshoe with something of amusement but a little more faith which was increased later on when one evening as I was returning home through the fields I spied another one. I thought without much seriousness, “This looks like ‘The Rising Sun Publication,’ ” and picked it up. Stopping at the post office for my mail I took thought on the subject when an official looking letter was handed me bearing the inscription of the publication and containing a check for one article I had just written for it and ordering another. I kept a horseshoe on hand after this incident and found it worked wonders, as I had much success. Richard directed me, all unconscious at that time of his guidance, to have a special one made. I went to a shop and watched the smithy fashion me a pretty little shoe from fine metal. When it was finished I paid him and as he handed it to me he declared, “It is fit for Salvator,” a noted race horse. I knew it was a good omen meaning “to save.” I tied it with a red ribbon lovers’ knot and it accompanied me on my travels for years. It proved a veritable charm for I always landed safe and sound in New York.
He makes me get indicators for some special purpose, and when I recognize that the coming event has arrived he tells me to give them away or cast them aside if they are soiled or worn. Such a one was a red heart he ordered me to make out of satin. This was especially designed to indicate my coming journey to California where I had always longed to go because my father was the only lawyer in that state at the time of the discovery of gold. He was young and went in the spirit of adventure, returning with a bagful of golden nuggets, one of which he had set in a brooch for my mother. It was a beautiful piece with such a rich color just as it came from the bed of a river. I was accustomed from my childhood to see her wear it, and inspired to see the land which produced it. They say all things come to him who waits with patience, my going at last was one of them.
At first the little heart was very small and dark red. I pinned it on my blouse and wore it out. The next was larger and brighter, indicating California was coming nearer. The third was larger and brighter still. Finally just before I started I bought a big red satin heart, a jewel case, and carried my pieces of jewelry in it all the way to the Golden Gate. He often called my attention to the posters of “The Girl of the Golden West,” a play popular at that time, as prophetic. I certainly arrived and had a variety of peculiar psychic experiences which I prefer not to relate because they were too closely interwoven with my private life and personal affairs. They were convincing of some miraculous power controlling and leading me for a purpose. When I reached California, Richard directed me always to draw any money I needed from the bank, in gold pieces, and keep them in my red heart jewel case which he made me leave behind when I returned to New York where I discovered the banks would not pay gold, a bad omen for me as for everyone. Money was short on all sides, prices soaring but not the rate of interest on investments. I have been longing for my red heart and my gold ever since.
He then made me buy a string of blue beads and one of pink, as they are auspicious, but not good like red. He promises me a string of red ones as soon as my destiny will admit of them. At present I am not having a brilliant fate, consisting as it does of disposing of one book and writing another, with a depleted bank account and all the accompanying discomforts; also no time to take any recreation even at a moving picture production, provided I could find a positive one, for many of them are so negative that they are harmful. We need more like the Yale-Harvard pictures of the boat race, all creation profits by such a scenario. The blue and red of the big universities were true prophets and brought a production of great value.
I cannot recall any omen more reliable than a colored pencil or pen. If I apply to a person for any reason I can practically always foretell the result if he or she chances to be owning or using a pencil or pen if I note its color, which of course I now cannot help doing. A red one proclaims, “Success,” a negative colored, “Failure.” Richard has me use a red pencil that marks with the same color. This does not mean that I always have success with it, because there are sometimes negative forces at work too strong for my red pencil; but it is a big asset, and always has some value.
This brings us to the subject of why negative and positive indicators do not apparently always bring what results you would expect. When I started out with my book I began to apply my principles. I determined I would avoid negative days, streets, numbers, names, colors, while clinging to everything positive. Richard soon showed me that I must not avoid anything but the hoodoo number and sometimes the hoodoo color if very bright and used in quantity. He pointed out as I stopped wherever I was to find a friend or ‘acquaintance, or I had been sent, that if the number was poor the color of the house was good. If the exterior looked threatening I often found the interior satisfactory. When the name or number of the street would have deterred me, on investigating further the lady I sought proved correct in appearance and cordial reception of me and the psychic. He illustrated for my benefit that the language of psychology is comprehensive and for a purpose; that our guides know how to use it and we are about to learn its intricacies through practice. It is a medium of communication between us and our guides, and we are gradually getting into closer touch with each other. We are to have perfect communion by means of the psychic. You can become familiar with the principles of the language and your guide will use it for your edification, but you cannot always interpret it correctly because you do not know the various forces at work, and your finite mind cannot grasp how and why it is used, just as the ignorant mind cannot grasp the higher mathematics.
CHAPTER IV
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE
RICHARD gives me the idea that as soon as you finish life here your guide changes you to a young and beautiful person, though retaining your personality and individuality, and invests you with miraculous power. You have then become an immortal and are ready to take up your duty of guiding your charge here. You cannot enter heaven, another world similar to this, until you have finished your task and severed your connection with this one. While you are leading your charge you are existing in space far above this sphere. You can tread the air just as Christ walked on the waters. When you have reincarnated your charge you leave him before he starts to guide his charge in this world, so that for the time being he has no connection with it. You are then set free and leave him to his work of guiding the new born girl who is to be his soul mate for eternity. You enter the other world and never again have any connection with this one, mentally or physically. In this way you lose your hold on the man you have been guiding, but you part only temporarily; he will join you and be your best friend, as soon as he has guided his own girl through her life. It is all accomplished by law. We have always regarded the psychic as of so little importance but we are beginning to awaken to the fact of its tremendous value as we learn more and more of its power over the material in its effect on our lives here.
The reason for an intermediate state is that the change from this world could not be at once to heaven because this world is a negative as well as positive one and it taints everybody and everything that comes in contact with it. All destinies must suffer in consequence, some more than others. It had to be used as the place for our creation because the process of carrying out the law of procreation is so negative that it could not occur in a perfect world. As soon as your guide gets you away from this objectionable sphere and its detrimental influences, your transformation commences and he is free to apply the laws, probably of electricity, to make you perfect and endow you with the required miraculous power. You could not enter heaven otherwise, as any negative attributes, mental, moral or physical, would at once begin to assert their harmful influence on the immortals. All is joy and gladness there, due to innumerable positive and protective laws…
The word translate might be a more appropriate one than reincarnate, as life is probably never allowed to leave us, as we have always supposed it did, from visible evidence here. In endeavoring to lead me to the truth, Richard brings me to the statements in the Old Testament that Enoch was translated, and that the prophet Elijah was seen to rise and disappear, dropping his mantle upon the shoulders of Elias. He explains that those cases may have been foreshadowing the fact that everyone who lives or has lived since the creation of human life here is taken up bodily by his or her guide and no one is any the wiser, as your guide can do anything with you he needs to. The idea I get is that life is so precious and is created at such a cost that the flame must never be allowed to go out. There are several well known pictures of winged young men bearing maidens toward and beyond the stars. These may have been inspired as suggesting to us the mode of procedure adopted by our guides.
I get no conception of the intermediate state further than an existence amid clouds and vapors, but of the real world, the heaven of the Bible, Richard gives me clear cut, beautiful mental pictures with God and Christ the central figures.
CHAPTER V
HEAVEN
I GATHER from what Richard tells me that the plan of life in the other world is simpler than here, because no negative laws exist there to interfere with and frustrate the positive. The negative laws of this world create all sorts of complex and involved situations and conditions, keeping us in continual turmoil. Life there is serene and in many ways larger, broader and stronger as well as more intellectual and wonderful.
He does not enlighten me as to what we do there, only suggesting that perhaps we follow our own bent, whether science, art or a frivolous career. As regards continual progress there may be development and application of laws and resources, but when you have reached perfection it would seem there was nothing more to which to attain.
I get the impression that the other world is much larger than ours and that it is now so well filled with those who have lived here and gone on that it cannot comfortably hold many more, as we are allowed plenty of space. That is why the Bible predicted the ending of this world, only it is not the sphere itself, only the human life on it which is to end. The sphere will continue for time and eternity perhaps, to revolve on its axis and around the sun, and possibly animal life may continue, but human life will not. We were put here to fill heaven, and when we have accomplished it the reason for our life here ceases. When the time arrives we will all go together, possibly within a year, as our guides can take us at the psychological moment our destiny calls for. But it is too far distant yet to contemplate.
No children are born in that other world because there would soon be no room for them and they would be crowding someone out. There is no reason for them as there was here, so we have no desire for them.
I had two mental pictures of our life in heaven given me, no more. The first was my entrance there after my task in the intervening state was finished; the other, a glimpse of how we enjoy ourselves, a typical and suggestive scene, pleasant to contemplate.
I sat quietly while Richard pictured it all to me mentally. It seemed almost like a view of living tableaus we often see on the stage, it was all so real, and picturesque. In the first one I saw myself attired in light blue soft draperies falling from my shoulders, with bare neck, arms and feet. I looked like myself, but was a lovely young girl. I seemed to have come to a standstill and waited just on the border of a picturesque country stretching far back filled with beautiful young men and women. God, a noticeable figure in white, stood at the right a little distance apart, while Richard, a veritable Prince Charming in white satin with blue collar and a pink rose pinned to his lapel was near to greet me. I could hear their voices which sounded sweet and musical. They seemed to be twitting Richard on the arrival of his soul mate. He took their bantering in good part and was smiling at me.
The other picture showed a broad campus stretching away, with trees and autumnal foliage of rich coloring, and great festoons of grapes and rare fruits. Young people were dancing so gracefully, singly and in groups, holding each other’s hands, their feet bare also their limbs, arms and necks. They wore rather short draperies which floated out as they danced, as seen in some of our notable paintings; the colors were red, white, blue and pink. Evidently it was a festival season, beautiful deep blues and reds the festival colors.
Richard said the pictures were meant to convey the idea of youth and happiness always there, surrounded by an atmosphere of bright light, as of sunshine, with no night and no sleeping; perpetual joy and gaiety.
“In my Father’s house are many mansions,” I am led to believe means for each youthful couple, “A house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens,” as we are promised in the Bible, where every young man and the girl now so precious make a home together for eternity.
CHAPTER VI
SPIRITUALISM
MODERN spiritualism has been in existence for about seventy-five years and for the past fifty years the believers have taught that everyone in this world is being guided by someone who has lived here and gone on. But they think you can be guided by any one, whereas I am taught to reduce it all to law. One lady thinks she is led by Zoroaster; another, by Abraham Lincoln. A physician in good standing explained to me that he had several guides, one of whom was Plato. I am told by Richard you are never in communication with anyone but your guide by law. He or she leaves this life on the eve of your entering it. All clairvoyants bring you messages from their guides only. The information may be very valuable in many ways, but they are never from your relatives or friends. The Bible tells us that with God all things are possible. So with our guides, they are enabled to accomplish any desired end, no matter how marvelous. Every psychic phenomenon since creation has been gradually leading us up to this great truth. Christ said: “Greater things than these shall ye do, because I go unto my Father.” He did not explain what we should do because He knew we had not progressed far enough to receive the explanation. He lived nineteen hundred years ago and we have been progressing all that time.
God knew that this was a more or less negative world and that its condition affected everyone entering it, therefore parts of the Bible would reflect its pernicious state. Studying it from the psychic point of view throws new light on it.
The spiritualists have always been somewhat decried by people who did not understand the bigness of their teachings, but they have gone right on and are steadily growing in numbers because they never lose sight of the great truth that we are all in direct communication with people who are in the next stage of existence. Their characteristic features which arouse criticism, such as rappings, table tippings, seances and others will fade away under the practical direct communication of our guides. There will no longer exist any reason for such demonstrations. When Richard first came to me he gave me a few experiences such as rappings and prophetic visions, to show me how and why such phenomena happen, but we laugh at them now for the reason that I have outgrown that early state of psychic affairs. Why make me write with a mechanical pencil or use a ouija board when he can tell me what he wants me to know, or flash some coming event by our code of signals, the language of psychology? The methods he uses will develop and expand, and the revelations about this and the future life will be systematic scientific evolution along psychic lines. He shows me that every minute of the day I am being led correctly from a psychological standpoint. I have progressed beyond the teachings of other people in many ways, and yet I am building largely upon the foundations laid by other seekers after the truth. I know nothing by myself, it is just what I am told. The noted psychists investigate the phenomena brought to their notice. I do not need to investigate because I give the fundamental principle underlying the whole mass of phenomena, or the psychic in its entirety; namely, our guides, who have lived here and gone on, and who possess the same power as God. I have been made to investigate, or rather, to study the language of psychology, and I find it the truth as my guide elucidates and interprets it as a language of prophecy and a psychic code of signals.
The reason for all the phenomena is to let us know the truth about the world to which we all go, and the process has been necessarily slow. Why there has been so much mystery and falsity about a good deal of it, is that we are in a negative world and get the negative consequences along with the positive information and revelations. When you study the negative side to this world, together with the negative laws, both material and psychological, controlling it, you no longer feel any surprise at the negative side to the psychic which is being constantly brought to our attention. You are thankful for the positive side, for the proofs of a life hereafter. The increasing number of guides who are speaking mentally to us, are the most convincing of all the phenomena, as they are something with which we have nothing to do. They come to us seemingly unheralded and without any effort on our part, their mission apparently, to let us know of their existence and what that fact means to us here and hereafter.
When you lose your relatives or friends you cling so intensely to the memory of them and think of them as exactly the same as when with you, therefore it is difficult to understand that in reality they have put on immortality, and that there is a gulf between the mortal and the immortal which is only spanned by the mortal putting on immortality. It is hard for you to realize that a dear husband who has passed on is no longer interested in you as you are in him. But everything is the same for you, while it has all changed for him. He is interested only in the new little girl whom he must guide and who is his soul mate henceforth and forever; whereas your soul mate is still guiding you in this world. Your husband now knows that he cannot change your destiny in any way, and that in your future existence you and he will be delightful companions always.
Materialization, the spiritualists avow, is due to electricity and mesmeric forces. Richard explains that it is accomplished by the guides’ understanding certain laws connected with electric power. The people who appear before the spiritualists in material form, seemingly solid flesh and blood when touched, are not so in reality. They exemplify how the guides can use electricity, the greatest known force here or hereafter, except the immortal mind. It is possible that the vital reason for materialization is in translating us from this life to the next state. By its use the people of this world could be hoodwinked into believing our bodies were lying lifeless here, while in truth they were whisked away by our guides.
It has been made clear by a physician that the socalled “psychic eye” is a material cell of the brain, located back of the lower part of the forehead, and is used only by persons having clairvoyant powers. It is the substantial matter producing, or giving out, the conscious ability to predict coming events, or to know what has already happened unknown to others.
Some people think animals are to migrate to the other sphere, but Richard vetoes this idea. The fondness for animals is a phase of this life which does not continue because it belongs to a lower order of mentality. We have no desire for them just as we would have none for children for the reason that the purpose of their existence ceases in this world, the new one being governed by different laws, having gone beyond this earth’s limitations.
Richard says not to take life too strenuously. Be as great and good as you can, for what you are here shapes your character hereafter. Do not be too downcast if you cannot learn all about our psychic relations with the other world and its inhabitants. Progress is slow, and it would not be consistent to hasten. Grasp and believe all you can, and pass by the incongruities without too much criticism.
Some of the psychists promulgate the idea that your spirit lives separated from your body, just how they do not reveal, though they do go so far as to suppose that it clothes itself in some enveloping substance similar to the accustomed one here. They seem to lose sight of the fact that the spirit is only a mental attribute.
A newspaper article gives an account of a scientist who believes he can photograph the soul as it departs from the body. In the first place, perhaps it is never allowed to depart; but if a picture could be made, it would be only of the vapors or gases exhaled from the body as life became extinct. The mind, the soul and the spirit are without substance of any kind, and depend on a living body, of which the brain is a part, performing its natural functions. As soon as the brain ceases to act, the mind, soul and spirit cease. Our entrance into this world is material, and it is probable that our departure is also, brought about by another even more wonderful law. The psychic as it continues to unfold itself to us is going to keep us pinned down to law, logic and common sense.
CHAPTER VII
THE “SPIRIT MAN” ILLUSION DISPELLED
THERE are no such things as spirits, good or otherwise, or any other mystic or mysterious creatures here or hereafter. Ghosts, apparitions, phantoms, visions or wraiths as well as hallucinations are produced by your guide when your destiny chances to require such; they are only figments of your brain, but they always serve some purpose. No one has ever lived in spirit until he or she was created by his or her parents, and then the so-called spirit is part of the mentality. We call psychology the science of the mind; the dictionary defines the word as the “science of the human soul,” showing that the mind, the soul and the spirit are synonymous terms.
When you are born you possess an embryo mind, soul, and spirit; the mind developing first. It is the practical member of the mental trio. The soul and the spirit are more what we term “spiritual,” they gradually; evolve with the expansion of the mind. We associate the idea of the soul with the hereafter. It is with the soul that our finer selves stretch out toward God, therefore we have always conceived it to be the intangible portion of us that in some unknown way was wafted into the eternity of our Biblical teachings, promised to the faithful. Our conception of the spirit is that it is not so deep as the soul. It is the beautiful, unselfish, kindly attribute which some people have in a greater degree than others; we have seen it in Phillips Brooks, the present Bishop of London, or to go back farther, Martin Luther. It is Godlike or Christlike. We sometimes imagine both the soul and spirit returning to our Creator, thus supposing them to be separate qualities. My guide often reveals to me his soul and spirit by his sweet sympathy when I am passing through some of the trying experiences which come to us all; by the way he leads my thoughts, my soul and spirit, to higher and better aspirations ; to charitable consideration for other people; to more perfect ideals.
We sometimes hear the expressions, “The spirit of God within us,” or “The Christ within us.” Jesus, Himself, said: “My Father is in me and I am in you.” But, like the phrase, “God is Love,” these are only figures of speech which Christ in His teachings uses so often, as He does the parable.
The immortality of the soul is explained, so Richard says, by the law of reincarnation, or translation, about which we shall know everything in due time. That law is the key to our knowledge of the hereafter, and is the greatest of all laws.
Richard declares there could no more exist a mind, a soul or a spirit outside a living flesh and blood body than there could be a set of teeth without a mouth to grow them in. The teeth are produced in the mouth by a natural physiological law; the brain produces the mind, the soul and the spirit by another, but there psychology comes into play also; and because our mind is totally different from our material teeth, we at once give free rein to our imagination and conjure up all sorts of unfounded theories and beliefs in regard to our minds and their possibilities, both here and hereafter.
We have heard the other world referred to as the “Spirit World,” and its inhabitants as “Spirit Man;” but Richard says to free your mind of any ideas you may have of there being any “spirits” in that universe. It is a world of solid flesh.
You are never reincarnated in this world in some other person. You never lose your own identity. You are always yourself for time and for eternity.
CHAPTER VIII
EVIDENCES OF MY GUIDE’S PRESCIENCE
RICHARD shows me in the various incidents of my everyday life, how he is watching over me. He often warns me of coming danger where automobiles are concerned in the crowded thoroughfares. I was traveling not long ago and in changing trains, I did not know which way to go to make connections. I turned to the right and started toward one end of the platform. In my haste I did not notice at first that he was warning me, but as I rushed forward he called, “Carrie! Carrie! Carrie!” so sharply that I stopped and turned, knowing I must be going wrong. He directed me to a gentleman waiting near, from whom I inquired the way. He told me what to do. I hurriedly followed his directions, down one stairway, up another, reaching the track just in time to catch my train. Then Richard remarked: “Did I not tell you so?” as he sometimes does when he shows he is guiding me and I can surely trust him.
Occasionally he informs me I cannot reach my destination down a certain street, then makes me turn into it to prove he was right. I find it is so and am obliged to retrace my steps. He then has me ask the way from someone but not a person wearing negative colors, or a negative person, a soldier, for example, as everything connected with war is negative. He will say: “Do you expect to get what you want from such a person?” Time and again he has made me question negative people in order to get results. Almost invariably they proved he was right. Now I understand so well that he says I do not need to be told any longer to avoid negative indicators.
He calls my attention to the sameness and the difference between when he guided me unconsciously, and now that I know of his control. I live my life day by day very much as I always did. Formerly I thought out what I intended to do, now he talks to me of my plans and directs me.
One word alone, “love,” “red,” “nine,” “roses,” “brides,” will convey to me his meaning. I know they are all positive, while their opposites are negative. If I were about to turn a corner to call on a lady, I should know he meant me to do so if he said “love;” but if he used its opposite, I would change my plan and go somewhere else, understanding that for some reason I was not to go there.
On the street he will speak of something I am approaching of which I know nothing, as I proceed I find it there as he predicted.
In Coronado, California, he guided me often by a red revolving lamp in a lighthouse. When I left for San Francisco by one of the big steamers, Yale and Harvard, he made me sail in the latter because of Harvard’s color, crimson. As we sailed away I noticed another red revolving light in a second lighthouse, and thought at once that I ought to see a third somewhere to complete the auspicious trilogy. I forgot about it but he did not. In the middle of the night he woke me up and made me look out of my stateroom window, and there was the third, the finest of all, a big red revolving light away out in the Pacific Ocean.
He shows me that guides are no respecters of persons. He does not hesitate to put me through my paces. I have to face the music as others do who are guided unconsciously. At first I thought it would be otherwise, but I soon found I reckoned without my host. He shows me how kind and thoughtful he is, but that he must work out my destiny. He is partial to me wherever it is possible, but fate is inexorable, and he cannot interfere with it whether it is agreeable to me or not.
He exhorts me to rise above the petty, personal, selfish point of view; to endeavor to grasp life, its meaning and complications, with big and broadminded standards; not to take life too seriously, but slip along and get through with it, doing the best in my power to meet whatever comes my way with common sense and Christian principles.
People say to me: “It must be a comfort to you to have your guide.” In many ways it is, but it does not change my destiny which, like that of everyone else is due to a perfect network of intricate influences, among them my lineage stretching back indefinitely to my initial ancestors. They are all natural. At times I grow low spirited when I go among people endowed with the good things of life, and compare my hardships. Then he says in a facetious way, “Cheer up, Sister, you may not have their riches, but they do not have your Richard. Is it not worth a fortune to be told you have a goodlooking chap in another state of existence, taking good care of you in this, and only waiting to carry you into the other and be your devoted slave for all eternity?”
His nonsense makes me feel how small I am to bother about my discomforts when I know they are only temporary, until I can get out of this negative life into a happy one. I only have to study the indicators every way I turn, to realize there cannot be for most people lasting happiness here. No matter how much good fortune comes your way, there is always something cropping up to interfere with it. If you are a Christian you find comfort in the truths and promises of the Bible, only they do not seem real as his gay young voice telling me what a glorious place the other world is, and what delightful surprises await me there. He quotes the lines of the tired out lady, “Who lived in a house where help wasn’t hired,”
“Oh, mourn for me not, Oh, mourn for me never, I’m going to do nothing Forever and ever.” .
“But,” he adds, “we are pretty energetic when arriving on the environs of that other world, and do not feel inclined to do nothing forever and ever; we prefer to be up and at it. If you want to saw wood to pass the time away, you probably will not find much wood to saw, but there is plenty doing, and more exciting.”
He says I am still a lower form of animal life, so far as he is concerned, but very like him physically. He descends to my level mentally without injury to himself, but with my unillumined mind I can never rise to any comprehension of his state of being while I am here.
He does not inform me what the life of the guide is like in the intermediate state, but he throws some light on it by putting the question to me: “Do you suppose it any too pleasurable for a young gentleman to be kicking his heels around, dancing attendance, year after year, on a poor little mortal grub in a negative world?”
He does say we shall never be in communication with heaven by wireless telegraphy or any other medium, because this is a negative world and contaminates to a greater or less degree everybody and everything in it or connected with it. Therefore we are debarred from any possibility of injecting earth germs into the other world’s perfect atmosphere.
He shows me how the mind controls the body, and the guide controls the mind.
He is so masculine, and yet he declares it is hard for him to show his manhood because he is putting in the background his own personality in order to enter into and guide the life of a very feminine woman.
He at times makes me choose a different course from what I or any intelligent person would naturally, when some crisis arises where I must make a decision and act accordingly. I have learned that every step in his guidance of me is for some purpose, so I obey him. I then find by what follows that it was right to do as he directed instead of my way because events happened of which I knew nothing but he foresaw. He explained to me that I was right because working in the dark, but that he knowing the future led me safely.
He calls my attention to the fact that the psychological laws go right on working, just as the natural laws do whether we know it or not, and there is the advantage of having a talking guide, he knows everything and can help us out. In this way, when all people are guided consciously, it will be correct psychologically to make destinies much happier than is the average one now.
Richard keeps me up to the mark when at times I would take the easiest way of doing what I must, and it is negative. It is difficult to live up to positive requirements, but I know the right means now of doing so, because I have had a competent instructor for so many years who has been patient with my slow progress. He has showed me plainly by each failure or success that it is far wiser to at least try to avoid the negative laws and keep the positive. It is easier to go along and do as you like at the time regardless of consequences, but the latter come, and I find my guide is now a ruthless taskmaster. He is conscious that I know what I ought to do, and he thinks it best now to compel me to live up to his precepts in spite of my inclinations. It is trying at the time, but I always feel sure it is best, that he is really sparing me in the end. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Your thoughts, words and acts of each day, even to the slightest omission and commission, are indicators of your future whether near or in the distance, this you learn.
CHAPTER IX
EVOLUTION
WE can follow each step in the development of this world and now we are to see how this life merges into the next and last phase of our creation.
The mind is the somewhat mysterious element of organic life, and yet the most vital. We watch its unfolding in the three groups, the plant, the animal and the human being. Now we are going to have the privilege of studying its final stage, the mind of the immortal. It has taken all these ages, since the birth of the universe, for us to progress sufficiently far to be ready to grasp and apply the laws bearing on our relations with the hereafter, though we have been pointing toward that goal always. We are preparing to go quickly now.
The geologists assure us the narrative in the Bible of the creation of this world is scientifically correct; at first formless and made up of gases, vapors and other chemical substances. Then it began to materialize, hardening .into solid inorganic composition. Later organic life made its appearance in the shape of vegetation. Next came the lower animal, and finally man who combines in his make up something from each original group, chemical constituents, mineral constituents, the carbohydrates of plant life, the flesh and blood of the animal. We must leave this earth to attain to the final stage in evolution. The whole scheme of it here is for the purpose of filling a perfect world with a perfect race of beings, man immortalized, like us in body and mind, but the superman. He has reached the acme which defies progress.
That other world must have been in existence an almost incalculable period of time. We shall now get away from the idea of mere spiritual life there, as the truth is more and more impressed upon us that we retain our solid proportions. We are to become familiar with the thought that there is nothing mysterious or awe inspiring connected with it. Wonderful, surely, but this world is made up of wonders.
So long as this world is inhabited by human beings it will continue to improve and progress, but Richard points out that it can never be a fit place to dwell in if we aim for perfection, because of its climate, its weather, its dirt, its negative laws. It is best to terminate the existence of the human race. This is probably toward what we are progressing. Like wireless telegraphy, when the right time comes the predicted end of the world will arrive naturally, but it will prove very different from what we have pictured it. The world is forging ahead leaving the old methods behind.
The knowledge of the psychic and the consequent mental enlightenment will gradually revolutionize existing conditions. When all guides can reveal themselves to their charges ” and have a free intercourse and a free hand instead of being tied down as at present by the complete ignorance of the truth now everywhere prevailing, the general run of destinies will change. The average person will have a charmed life, guided away from ills and mishaps, and we shall approach as near the millennium as is possible in this negative world. Your guide to be trusted must inspire confidence. He must prove his own reality. This you will find he is competent to do when he comes. He will prove to you without a doubt how the psychic governs the material in this world.
Richard has made me understand that the guide is a living being similar to ourselves, and that it is the mind that varies from that of the inhabitant of this world rather than the physique. I get the idea the brain is the organ that differs in form and composition more than any of the others most of which are very similar. The cells are for a different purpose and therefore totally different and function differently. That is why we cannot enter into the point of view, or what is more important, perform the mental work or attain to the achievements of the immortal.
An animal here can never use his mind as does man.
It is not the proportions of the cells, but their power. The head of the immortal varies in size only a little from that of man here, and that is only to carry out the symmetry of the body which is on a little larger scale. The cells of the immortal brain are dynamos of incalculable power, and can be used in countless ways. Their possessor has complete control over them, the mind which is the outcome of such cells, being as inconceivable as the cells themselves. Such a brain and mind come in contact with existing laws which do not exist for the human being of this world because they are beyond his reach physically and mentally.
We know how a person completely broken in health here because of his disregard, perhaps not willfully but owing to unavoidable circumstances, of the laws governing the body, can be restored to health by being taken in hand by someone, as a doctor, and made to live a normal life. Such a man if taken to a good sanitarium would be subjected to a prescribed course of treatment and made to submit to the known laws of nature. He would have his daily sun bath, his massage, his outdoor sleeping porch, his alternating rest and exercise, his deep breathing practice, his careful and scientific diet, his cheerful environment and pleasant companionship, his recreation and diversion, his hygienic clothing, his avoidance of harmful habits and influences such as alcohol, narcotics, degenerate people. In short, he would be led to keep the positive laws and avoid the negative with the resultant restoration to health.
Something on this principle the guide with his limitless knowledge and power takes the human being from this world who has been his charge, and reconstructs her, keeping her intact and preserving her personality, individuality and character; altering where the coming new existence requires it, and exchanging, or rather, transforming the old incompetent brain cells and consequent mentality into the dynamic force that knows no obstacle where ends must be accomplished.
This is the new force to which we are being introduced, and yet as old as human life here on earth, and who has always been communicating with us to a certain extent through our minds and by his known code of signals.
The End