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THE SEVEN PURPOSES
Chapter VII
IT seemed to me that if Mr. Kendal had not
received my letters, and was in possession only
of the meager information contained in my tele-
gram, it was best that he should read the record
of the earlier interviews with his wife before com-
ing to communicate with her, and to that end
the book containing the whole story was to be
sent to his club before his arrival. Having de-
cided this, it occurred to me to consult Mary K.,
who emphatically negatived the plan.
"No. Mary Kendal is most anxious to tell
him herself now." She told us to make brief
explanations, adding: "All he needs now is
Mary Kendal."
Shortly afterward Mary K.'s now familiar
summons—an indescribable sensation in the
arm or hand—recalled me to the pencil, and
she wrote, quickly and firmly: "Mary Kendal
wants you to change your record."
Surprised, I asked what change she wished,
and was told to take out everything relating
to her banishment from Mansfield's life, be-
cause she preferred to tell him that in her own [74]
way.
"Shall I show him the record at all?" I
asked.
"Yes, but take that out first." Fortunately,
the record is kept in a loose-leaf, typewritten
book, so this was not difficult.
As the day wore on I grew more and more
nervous. Suppose he should be more hurt
than helped? Suppose we should fail? Rare-
ly in my life have I dreaded anything so much,
or felt so little confidence in anything I had
deliberately undertaken to do. By nine o'clock
I was in a nervous chill. Meanwhile Mr.
Kendal telephoned that he had found my let-
ters, which had been returned to his club, and
that he would join us presently.
Upon his arrival he told us that he had been
one of the early members of the Society for
Psychical Research in this country, and had
spent several years investigating phenomena of
this nature, together with various other young
men, under the general supervision of Prof.
William James, Dr. Minot Savage, and others
of that group. He mentioned some of the
frauds and self-deceptions uncovered at that
time, but said he believed the ultimate con-
clusion to have been that there were certain
well-authenticated phenomena for which no
logical or scientific explanation had been [75]
found.
Nothing that he said, however, indicated to
the slightest degree his attitude toward the
question in hand, and I received an impression
that his mood was critical, which steadied me.
The disappointment, should we fail, would be
less hideous. In the end, he suggested a trial,
and after preparing the table, Cass left us alone.
The pencil started almost immediately, with
a strange, jerkily rhythmical movement—due
possibly to Mary's agitation, possibly to mine,
but wrote very distinctly, without pause or
faltering. It was evident at once that the
message conveyed more to him than its words
suggested.
Much later in the evening he told me that
for some time after Mary left him he had be-
lieved that if she still existed anywhere in
the universe she would contrive somehow to
let him know; but as months had passed into
years, with no sign from her, while never en-
tirely losing faith in the continued integrity
of the individual after death, his despair had
deepened with his growing conviction that
"the drop that was Mary" had been swept
on in the stream and forever lost to him.
Widely read in philosophies and unable to for-
get them, steeped—despite his practical occu-
pation—in scientific and intellectual theory, [76]
he had feared to rely upon a reunion in a future
of which no proof had been given him, lest he
be grounding his faith in the sands of his own
hope.
It was to this unhappy conviction—a con-
viction so strong in its negation that for a time
she had been unable to penetrate in any way
the psychic atmosphere it created—that she
addressed herself in those first written lines.
She used, also, her intimate name for him,
which I had never heard, and his for her,
which I knew, although I supposed the peculiar
spelling used on this occasion to be an error,
until he told me otherwise.
He asked one or two questions about per-
sonal matters, which I assumed to be in the
nature of tests, which she answered briefly,
though not very specifically, concluding: "I
cannot tell you anything to-night, except that
I am so happy. I had lost you, and you are
found again. Let me talk to you to-morrow."
Some time later he wanted to know why he
could not read her mind direct, and she replied:
"You can, in time, if you will let me in, and
learn. We can have such communion as we
never had before, because one veil is now re-
moved. But that will take time to learn. It
is true. It can be. . . . Take me into your
heart and soul joyfully, without resentment or [77]
grief, and you will soon learn to read my
thoughts as I have read yours since I seemed to
leave you.
"Then I can tell you things that I cannot
say through any messenger. . . . You can
learn. . . . All I want now is to convince you
that I am alive and longing to be with you and
to have communication directly with you. It
is impossible for me to do that alone. But I
had to reach you somehow, and Margaret was
the first way I found."
We talked a little of the possibility of his
establishing direct communication with her. I
asked whether he could use a pencil in this
way, and she returned: "Yes, if he will try
every day, he could in time, I think. There is
always a way for us to reach our dearest ones,
if they only persevere."
During a pause, with the pencil-point still
resting on the paper, I told him of Mary K.'s
assertion that eons ago some of us had been
one and that we still continue one in purpose.
Mary Kendal took it up immediately.
"Manzie, you and I are the same purpose.
That is the reason that, once reunited, we can-
not be separated, except by our deliberate
yielding to a different and disintegrating pur-
pose. That is the eternal battle-between the
purposes of progress and building and the pur- [78]
poses of disintegration. It goes on in your
life, and it goes on less bitterly in ours. Help
me build, as we began, toward the great unity.
. . . All of us here are working against those
forces of disintegration so rife in your life now,
and every bit of retention of unity that is for
upbuilding helps us and helps the great pur-
pose for which we work. . . . You and I began
working for that long ago, and each of us will
always continue to work for it. But we shall
be happier if we do it consciously together. . . .
Don't think of me as far away. . . . We will wel-
come to our unity anything or anybody who
strengthens the purpose, but let us always hold
fast to each other."
Here was the first actual statement, however
brief and incomplete, of that theory of life which
seems—to us who received it first, at least—so
rational, and so full of inspiration and hope.
Referring to her phrase, "all of us here," he
asked: "Is 'here' a place, or a state, or both?"
"Both," she answered, quickly. "It is the
beginning of eternal life." After a moment,
she added: "The state is fluid; the place is
ephemeral."
"I believe it!" he exclaimed. "That's more
nearly an explanation than anything I ever
heard before."
"This is more nearly the truth than any- [79]
thing you ever heard before. That's why. . . .
Truth in your life is comparative. Here it is
absolute, but not dogmatic."
He said that she had not been given to the
use of a philosophic vocabulary in this life,
and must have acquired it there, to which, at
the moment, she made no response.
Some time after Cass rejoined us Mr. Kendal
asked how much farther, or how much more
clearly, they could see about purely business or
political matters than we.
"We can see much farther, but we are not
permitted to tell you, except by ethical sug-
gestion. Part of your development comes
through your struggle to decide, and while we
see your struggle, we can help only by giv-
ing you as much of our strength and light as
you can take. It is a moral universe, Manzie."
The underscoring is hers.
Out of his wide experience with psychic
phenomena, he gave me much comfort regard-
ing the inaccuracies and misleading statements
that had so greatly disquieted me. He argued
that these discrepancies might easily be caused
by some factor or factors unknown to us,
operating on another plane, and was entirely
untroubled by them. In this connection,
Mary K. said to me the next day: "We
regard things successfully started as accom- [80]
plished."
[Some weeks later Mr. Kendal suggested
another possible reason for these apparent in-
accuracies, using as a comparison a familiar
experiment in physics. He reminded us that
if a rod be projected in a straight line between
the eye and a coin at the bottom of a bowl
of water, its tip will miss the coin by a dis-
tance varying with the angle of vision and the
depth of the water. Assuming that the dif-
ference between this plane and the next must
be vastly greater than that between air and
water, he argued that there might be a factor
comparable to this deflection of ray influencing
their perception of material, specific details
of this plane—a simile which Mary K. sub-
sequently characterized as "almost perfect."]
It was three o'clock in the morning when
Mr. Kendal left us to return to his club—but
he went convinced. Like Mrs. Gaylord, his
confidence was inspired not only by the tem-
per and tenor of the messages he had received,
but by the accompanying consciousness of a
familiar personality, akin to the certainty of
identity one feels in talking to a friend by tele-
phone or in reading a characteristic letter. Like
her, too, he said that in several instances his
unspoken thought had been directly answered.
The next day we resumed our conversation [81]
—for it amounted to that—with Mary.
"There will be hours, and sometimes days,
when you cannot feel me, just at first," she
warned him. "But I beg of you, do not let
the doubts prevail. I shall be there, unless
that disintegrating force drives me away.
That's a power we here cannot fight alone.
Faith is not the desire to believe, as some men
have said. It is the thread that connects
your life and ours, and when it is broken we
are powerless to reach you."
We spoke again of inaccuracies concerning
mundane activities, and he elaborated some-
what his theory that it is unwise to ask and
unsafe to rely upon answers about concrete,
specific things, because in translating them into
terms of our plane we are apt to overlook some
transforming, unknown factor, and so go wrong.
"Besides that," Mary took up the discussion,
"you must work out your problem yourself.
We can only help you definitely and directly
in the larger things that pertain to the life of
our purpose. Your present problem may be
solved in any of several ways, and will per-
haps affect the ephemeral part of your life.
Your greater concern, and my only concern,
is with the fluid part, which we shall share
together always, now."
He asked, after some further talk, whether [82]
there was danger of my being exploited or
employed by malign influences—a suggestion
entirely new to me—to which she replied in
the negative, adding: "Trust us for that. Her
own purpose is definite, and with that founda-
tion, we can protect her fully." Apparently
she underestimated the strength of the enemy,
or perhaps she merely disregarded the tem-
porary confusion created by occasional sorties.
Thinking that he might know something
about New Albany, Indiana, I told him of the
Annie Manning episode and my failure to as-
certain her brother's address. Our conversa-
tion was interrupted by an unsigned statement
that the brother was not in New Albany,
Indiana, but in Albany, New Hampshire, flatly
contradicting a previous statement. My im-
patient comment was answered by an assur-
ance that Annie Manning had recently passed
to the next plane and was confused. A sug-
gestion that possibly Annie Manning was one
of the malign forces mentioned brought no
response, unless Mary Kendal's next words
constituted an indirect reply.
"Manzie dear, . . . you will have entirely
different forces working against you, from
those trying to control Margaret, but we will
truly and surely protect you both."
Again, following a period of silence, she wrote [83]
a brisk reply to his unspoken thought, adding,
when he commented upon it: "You see, I do
know what is in your mind, and the time may
not be far away when you can read mine as
clearly. I don't always answer your thought,
because Margaret has still some fear of being
deceived in her reception of my message, and
it is hard, but as she works with us she will
learn unconsciously to yield, just as you will
learn to detect my presence."
"Is there anything I can do to help you or
your work?" he asked. "Or must it be all
take and no give with us?"
I have no record of her reply. She began
by saying that any actively constructive effort
here helped them there, because it helped the
great purpose. This was followed by a mes-
sage so intimately and exquisitely his that I
felt it almost a desecration to be the messenger
through whom it necessarily came. He took
that part of the roll away with him, and I am
glad to say that twenty-four hours later no
word of it remained in my memory. It was
truly his.
The next night he came again, very happily.
She, too, was in a lightsome mood, and while
there was some serious talk, most of it was
pure effervescence, frequently witty, some-
times brilliant. Unfortunately, little of this [84]
may be quoted, either because of its too per-
sonal character or because, like much amusing
conversation, it was too essentially of the mood
and the moment to bear translation into type.
Constantly he exclaimed at the characteristic
quality of her repartee, to my great surprise.
I said that I had never seen this merry side of
her, and had not dreamed that it existed, to
which she replied: "You never saw us when
we were not in trouble—before."
"Let me in and don't chafe," she told him,
in one of her more serious moments, "and I
can tell you much of what I see ahead. Grief,
resentment, bitterness and doubt are our
highest barriers. There is no cause for grief
in a relation closer than your life there knows.
There is no ground for resentment in the price
we pay. There can be no bitterness in growth
and development together—quicker growth,
fuller development, than could be possible if
one of us were not here. It is largely in the
point of view, this thing that is called grief."
In the course of their drifting talk he asked
her how to go about starting persons who have
no starting-point—" no peg to hang things
on."
"Sometimes a bomb is effective. But the
fragments are not always efficient." We
laughed, and she added: "They just have to [85]
wait and grow up, Manzie dear. We learn
here that our frantic haste there has been
foolish. Growth must take its own time. . . .
No, I didn't!" I had called attention to her
failure to cross a t, and she returned to it
with a flourish. Several times thereafter she
made a little joke by conspicuously dotting
her i's.
In the midst of one ecstatic whirl she paused
to inquire: "Who ever started the foolish
notion that there was no life beyond that one?
Was he a philosopher, or a dyspeptic, or both?"
And again, following some amusing nonsense,
"You don't think this would sound trivial to
a scientific investigator, do you?"
"What's the matter with the scientific type
of mind?" he asked.
"Mostly it's pure intellect—and life isn't."
During another moment of jesting he said:
"I don't think I'll bother to walk home. I'll
just float."
"Come on! We'll float together," she re-
torted. "Do you raise that, or call?"
Laughing, he returned: "I'll pass the buck
to Saint Peter," whereupon she intimated that
Saint Peter was not immediately available.
"Who hold the keys?"
"You hold your own—not transferable."
"You are mostly pure idealist," was another [86]
comment, a little later, replying to something
he said about his own attitude toward life,
"and got lost for a while in the dark." He
began to say that he should hardly have called
himself an idealist, but already she was an-
swering. "A true idealist is not a man who
limits life to ideas, but a man who puts his
ideals into life."
One otherwise serious statement, concern-
ing the influence of "hard-headed, intelligent
men who are not afraid to testify to their
faith" in these revelations, was given a hu-
morous touch by the signature, "Missionary
Mary."
"Do you want me to go forth and testify,
also?" I asked.
"No, you do it, and that involves too much,"
she replied. "Let your converts testify. You
go on playing hermit."
"Have you seen William James?" he asked.
"He is instructing many of us. Some of
my newly acquired vocabulary he taught me.
He is more certain and less philosophical than
he was. The will to believe has given way to
the duty of faith. He has learned more quick-
ly than most do, because he is truly sincere and
had cultivated his ground well. Now he is still
a leader of thought and accomplishment, but
his instruction is dynamic. . . . He is a very [87]
fine force, Manzie, and is doing magnificent
work here, but he no longer smothers it in
language."
Much of this parting interview must be
omitted.
At nine o'clock Sunday night Mr. Kendal
had approached this experience in a state of
high nervous tension. At midnight on Tuesday,
fifty-one hours later, he left us to return home,
imbued, like Mrs. Gaylord, with the vitalizing
quality of this touch with the unseen and
carrying with him the happy conviction that
he did not go alone.
Chapter VIII
UP to this time the messages, while frequent-
ly impersonal in tenor, had seemed entirely
personal in direction. It happened, fortunate-
ly, that both Mrs. Gaylord and Mr. Kendal
were more interested in the wide meaning and
purpose of life than in the narrow, individual
details of its conduct, and to that interest
chiefly those nearest them on the next plane
had addressed themselves. The rapidity with
which these communications came, and their
surprising volume, was attributed to the fact
that in both cases the time in which they
could be given through me was limited.
Aside from the attendant nervous strain—
which has been less, on the whole, than one
would expect, probably because these efforts
have been followed by such sound and refresh-
ing sleep as I had not known before in years—
the manual labor involved in taking these long
messages, and in typewriting them afterward,
has been excessive. Assuming, however, that
this flood of disclosure would be diminished
when the necessity for immediate expression [89]
passed, I looked forward to leisure and oppor-
tunity for some long talks with Mary K.,
which should be more detailed and personal
than our somewhat fragmentary intercourse
thus far had been.
This was briefly delayed by requests to
establish interplane communication for one or
two other friends, whose need was more im-
perative than my own, when significant and
beautiful messages—not to be quoted here—
were obtained. One of these slightly elabo-
rated the now familiar idea of the close and
intimate relation of certain persons to one
another, because of their union in a common
and eternal purpose. In a letter to Mr. Ken-
dal I mentioned this, adding: "It begins to
look like a gospel, doesn't it?"
Finally, however, my own opportunity came,
on Thursday, March 21st, but instead of per-
mitting me to propound any of the many ques-
tions I had in mind, Mary K. delivered a de-
tailed message of instruction that left me
astounded and incredulous. Most of this is
too personal to repeat, but some of it must be
quoted, in view of what followed.
". . . We have much to tell, and few through
whom to tell it. You have the sensitiveness to
receive and the power to convince. When you
have fully grasped the meaning of what we [90]
have to tell, you must make it known, but not
before we give you the whole of it. You will
get the truth slowly, through helping many
people, but keep the full knowledge frankly
back until it is all told. . . . Let them know
you are withholding it, but do not let them
have it in fragments."
"You mean they are not to be told of the
division of original purpose into individual
life?"
"No, they must have that to build on. But
there will be more given to you in fragments.
Piece it together for yourself, but do not give
it to anyone as long as you are still receiving
it. . . . The light is breaking, and you are the
accs . . . accustomed. . ."—later she returned,
to write "accredited" over this word. I think
neither was what she tried for. Perhaps ac-
cessible?—". . . force to make the meaning
clear. . . . It is what we have long sought and
just found. That is the reason we are giving
you things never told before. You are to
pass them on when the time comes. . . . This
is your work, your contribution to the great
purpose, which will be revealed to you little
by little. Keep clear of disturbing contacts,
as you have done, and keep your purpose true.
You have already recognized this as a gospel.
It is more. It is a faith. Be true to it and [91]
it will save many from suffering. That is the
reason I am here now and shall remain. I am
the force used by greater forces to reach the
world through you. We have always been the
same purpose, and I can reach you freely."
After an allusion to mental purpose, she de-
fined it thus: "Mental purpose is the force
that convinces men. Moral purpose is that
which persuades them. We prefer conviction.
It lasts, where persuasion fades. Nothing
more now, but this is only the beginning.
Mary K."
After the first phrase, save for one or two
brief pauses, this long communication was so
rapidly written that I could not follow it with
my left hand, though I made several attempts,
as my right arm became greatly fatigued. At
no time had I the slightest impression of what
was to be said, and during most of it I was
too bewildered to think clearly, my mind be-
ing filled with blank wonder and vague ques-
tioning, scarcely formulated, yet immediately
answered.
The next day she resumed her exhorta-
tion.
". . . This is war work. It is going to make
the war seem what it is, a reawakening of the
souls of men. There is no higher duty than
to make a man know his own soul and the souls [92]
of his fellows. The war will be justified only
if this result is obtained. We work for that
here, and we ask you to help us. There can
be no victory unless this is accomplished. . . .
Be true to your purpose and ours, and help
us build for light and progress, against the
forces of doubt and disintegration."
To an inquiry about Germany, apropos of
her mention of the war, she replied: "Ger-
many is the united purpose of fear. It is her
weapon and her weakness, and it is to defeat
the force she symbolizes that we all work. . . .
There you have the real war, the battle that
has gone on from the beginning. This is one
of the crises of eternity."
Here I thought of certain past wars, when
the victorious barbarians set civilization back.
"Sometimes the forces of disintegration have
won, sometimes we. But their victory is never
permanent, because they are negative and we
are positive. They delay us, but we live and
work. We, shall win in the end, but that is
far away. We call you to fight with the forces
of life and light. You can do more with us
than you can alone."
The following day found me still incredulous,
and she said:
". . . Tell them that you are doing the
people's work, under secret orders, and that [93]
they will perhaps know presently what it is.
They will all recognize it when it is given to
them, except those souls not mentally free
from fear."
From this she passed immediately into the
first of that remarkable series of communica-
tions which she has called Lessons. Again the
writing was so rapid that my arm ached to
the shoulder, long before she had finished,
from the incessant movement to and fro across
the table, and again my mind was filled with
blank amazement.
Perhaps it should be stated that, although
I have written more or less light fiction during
the past fifteen years, literary composition is
to me a slow and laborious exercise. Espe-
cially is this true of opening paragraphs, which
generally require many hours of work. Un-
fortunately, the time consumed in writing one
of these Lessons was never noted, but with
one or two exceptions, when I was too tired
to receive readily, they were done without
hesitation and with extraordinary rapidity.
Also, while in personal messages the mental
impression is sometimes given to me a little
before the physical movement occurs, never
during the writing of the Lessons had I the
slightest inkling of what was to follow. One
by one the words were revealed by the moving [94]
pencil, my principal sensations being wonder
and incredulity. Until frequent repetition had
accustomed me to this experience, I felt as if
I must be dreaming.
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