THE SEVEN PURPOSES


      Part III

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

      "We have purpose to progress beyond the vision of man,
      but even material progress, to be constructive and perma-
      nent, must be governed by a vision beyond the day. We
      are trying to extend that vision."



      Chapter I

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

      "Yes. It is a force of destruction, mo-
      mentarily victorious, but Germany cannot win.
      She moves steadily toward her destruction."

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

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

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

      "You need not fear the end of the war. It [138]
      is certain and inevitable. Germany is doomed,
      and must work her way back to light. This is
      not foreordained, but here we already see the
      end, and are looking toward the battles that
      will still be raging when the countries of the
      world seem peaceful."

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

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

      "Tell Mr. Kendal the philosophers have per- [139]
      ceived the truth in fragments. This is to be
      the whole truth, as far as it can be understood
      on your plane. It may sound, at moments,
      like a patchwork of philosophies, because all—
      or most—of them have some truth. He will
      help you in this. He found the truth in spite
      of philosophies, and it is part of his work to
      help others find it because of one—a philosophy
      not dreamed, but lived and proved and known.
      Therefore, not a philosophy, but a faith."

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

      ". . . It has always been easy for me to
      reach you, because you never doubted that I
      was there. Doubt is one of the things we
      cannot reach through. Doubt, bitterness, grief
      —all these are destructive forces." To a
      statement that they had felt deep grief, she
      returned: "You have not had the kind of
      grief that would shut me out. You have shut
      out some helpful forces, but you will do that
      no longer. It is because the force may reach
      you through me that I can come. We are the
      same purpose, and I can reach you freely.
      We can always reach those who are very near
      and dear. Sometimes people are dear to us
      there who are not really near us here. They [140]
      do not need us, nor we them. It is an ephem-
      eral relation. Love lasts eternally. Please
      don't ever forget that. . . . Listen to me. I
      cannot always reach you as directly as this,
      but just as soon as you learn to read my
      thoughts, as I now read yours, a messenger will
      not be necessary."

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

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

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

      "You cannot realize how intimately we work
      together still," was one of his assertions to [141]
      her. "You are a fine force for progress. You
      are being and teaching the things we all work
      for here. Teach, above all, unity of purpose.
      Never mind the method. Look to the goal.
      Building, light, freedom, faith—these are what
      the forces of construction stand for, the way
      to the great purpose. The forces of disintegra-
      tion are gathering for a tremendous fight. The
      Great War is one of the crises of civilization,
      but the battle to come still is one of the crises
      of eternity. It is for that we are preparing
      now. This is what we must say to all dear to
      us and, through them, to as wide a public as
      we can reach. . . . It is a great message that
      is to be given. To-day I only want you to be
      sure that I know all you feel and all you have
      suffered, and that the more confidently and
      freely you reach out to me, knowing I am
      there, the more easily and surely I can reach
      you."

      Like the others, this man used the circle,
      which we were beginning to perceive must
      signify more than joy, as we understand the
      word. For example, on this occasion it was
      used thus: " You will look for me now, listen
      for me, feel me near you, and the (O) will be
      as near your life as it ever can be there."
      After telling her of the frequent use of this
      symbol, I asked him whether it had not a [142]
      deeper significance—perhaps completion, per-
      fection, consummate unity, something joyous
      of this larger sort, to which he replied in the
      affirmative.

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

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

      "Thank you," was the response to my prom-
      ise to arrange the interview. For the first
      time it occurred to me that possibly Mary K. [143]
      had given over the pencil, and I asked who
      was writing, to be told quickly: "D. B."

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

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

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

      "We so long to tell you whom we love not
      to grieve. We are of you, as you are of us.
      Even more closely than we were when I was
      visibly with you. Perfect union is only pos-
      sible to pure spirit. That will come. Mean-
      while, one of us is pure spirit, and both of us
      so much the richer thereby. Once, in the be-
      ginning of things, you and I were the same
      purpose. Purposes are eternal. They may [144]
      be temporarily divided, temporarily overcome
      by the forces of disintegration, which are for-
      ever seeking to destroy, but forever each di-
      vided purpose answers to the call of its own.
      You and I were one purpose in the first, and
      we shall be perfectly reunited when you have
      joined me here. But while we were one in the
      beginning, one with many others of our great
      purpose, we are now eternally definite and
      separate individuals, but united as perfectly,
      after the first life there, as if we had returned
      to one unit. . . . The first message any of us
      send must be this one. That is the reason
      we can come so freely now and tell so much."

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

      He had spoken before of being very busy,
      and now she commented: "He seems so in-
      terested in the work!"

      "Interested is not the word. It's more like
      inspiration."

      "Was the passing difficult?" she asked.

      "Not difficult at all. The pain ended with
      unconsciousness."

      "But you had no pain!" [145]

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

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

      "Yes, we are very tenderly received. There
      is always a part of one's own purpose waiting."

      "Have you seen Jack?"

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

      "'In fighting trim' !" she repeated. "How
      funny!"

      "No, it isn't funny. We fight perpetually,
      and love it. It is a wonderful thing to fight
      with the great forces, and to know why.
      Most of those in your life fight in confusion
      and doubt, and suffer. But here we unite [146]
      ourselves to a definite and constructive pur-
      pose, and the fight is glorious."

      "Do you see Granny?"

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

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

      "I hope you won't get so far beyond that
      I can't catch up," she said.

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

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

      "No, I did not feel your fear. But when
      one knows that the step is coming, there is
      one blinding moment of dread. . . . You kept
      me a little while," he continued, when she
      said that she had tried to hold him here, "but [147]
      the thing had gone too far."

      "Was there anything we could have done
      that was not done?"

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

      "Did ____ make you nervous?"

      "No mere man could make me fail to re-
      spond to your call to courage. I knew and
      you knew, that it might be the end of life
      there; but there was no possible thing that
      you could have done, mentally, physically, or
      spiritually, that you did not do. It was your
      courage that kept me calm, even through that
      dread moment; your spirit that met me when
      I woke here; your tenderness that soothed
      my first bewilderment; your purpose that
      roused me to better, broader, finer work than [148]
      I had ever dreamed before. It has been you
      —you and I, one always—that have helped
      and upheld me, as your faith has enabled me
      to reach and uphold you."

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