The

Gaelic
Manuscripts

By
Betty White
with
Stewart Edward White
 Content Outline

HTML rendering of The Gaelic Manuscripts by Betty White

with Stewart Edward White, edited and copyright © 2002,
2003 by J. Harmon Grahn, may be reproduced in any medium,
in whole or in part, provided this notice is included.

00. INTRODUCTION

01. Chapter I - CREATIVE LIVING

01.01. THE PROCESS OF CREATION

01.02. NO CREATIVE EFFORT IS LOST

01.03. EVOLUTION FROM THE CREATIVE STANDPOINT

01.04. BEAUTY AND UGLINESS

01.05. THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF COMPLETE CREATION

01.06. THE DUTY OF APPRECIATION

01.07. THE APPRECIATION OF UGLINESS

01.08. THE DUTY OF SHARING

01.09. THE KINDS OF ARTISTIC MATERIALS AND THEIR USES

02. Chapter II - DISCOMFORT AND UNHAPPINESS

03. Chapter III - THE PROCESS OF CREATION

03.01. (NO TITLE)

03.02. THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT

03.03. THE REASON FOR THE GROUP

03.04. THE RESOLVING OF GROUP PROBLEMS

03.05. A MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD HIS GROUP

03.06. SURGICAL LIFTING OF LIMITATIONS - GLANDS

03.07. THE QUESTION OF MORONS AND IMBECILES

03.08. MISTAKEN HELP

04. Chapter IV - IMMORTALITY: ITS EVOLUTION

04.01. A DEFINITION OF TERMS

04.02. ITS GERM

04.03. THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL

05. Chapter V - THE MEMORY OF CONTINUITY

05.01. THE QUESTION

05.02. THE TWO TYPES OF MEMORY

05.03. MEMORIES AS PERMANENT POSSESSION

05.04. MEMORY AS INSTINCT: RACE MEMORIES

05.05. COSMIC MEMORY

05.06. MAN'S RELATION TO COSMIC MEMORY

05.07. MAN'S POSSESSION OF COSMIC MEMORY

05.08. INSTINCTS

05.09. INSTINCT AS RECOLLECTION

05.10. THE USES OF RECOLLECTION

05.11. CONTINUITY OF MEMORY

05.12. SUMMING UP

06. Chapter VI - IMMORTALITY: REINCARNATION

06.01. QUESTIONS DEFINED

06.02. WHAT IS REINCARNATION?

06.03. WHEN IS REINCARNATION?

06.04. THE PURPOSE OF REINCARNATION

06.05. CLAIRVOYANT MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

06.06. CLAIRVOYANT KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER PLANES OR SPHERES

06.07. TRUE NATURE OF THESE ZONES OR SPHERES

07. Chapter VII- IMMORTALITY: CONDITIONS IN THE INVISIBLE

07.01. WHAT IS HEAVEN LIKE?

07.02. WHY IT CANNOT BE DESCRIBED

07.03. A PICTURE

08. Chapter VIIA - MAN'S RELATIONSHIP TO COSMOS

08.01. MAN AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE WHOLE

08.02. MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO AND DEPENDENCE ON THE

WHOLE

09. Chapter VIII - THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT

09.01. RELIGION DEFINED

09.02. THE FORMS OF RELIGION

09.03. THE ESSENTIAL SIMPLICITIES: NUMBER ONE

09.04. THE ESSENTIAL SIMPLICITIES: NUMBER TWO

09.05. THE ESSENTIAL SIMPLICITIES: NUMBERS THREE AND FOUR

09.06. THE PURPOSE

10. Chapter IX - THE COMMUNION OR PRAYER ASPECT

10.01. PRAYER DEFINED

10.02. THE ART OF INSPIRATION

10.03. FALSE INSPIRATION: ECSTASY

10.04. TRUE INSPIRATION AND ECSTASY

11. Chapter X - HEREDITY

11.01. THE QUESTIONS DEFINED

11.02. RACIAL INTELLIGENCE

11.03. THE DETERMINATION OF ONE'S ENVIRONMENT

11.04. APPARENTLY UNFAVORABLE ENVIRONMENT

11.05. THE VALUES OF PRESSURE

 11.06. A WARNING

11.07. SPECIALIZATION

11.08. THE PERSISTENCE OF HEREDITY TRAITS

11.09. THE SPECIALIST

12. Chapter XI - CONFLICT

12.01. THE USE OF RESISTANCE

12.02. THE GATHERING OF CONDITIONS

12.03. THE REASON FOR THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

12.04. DEFEAT

12.05. THE PULSATION OF DEVELOPMENT

12.06. FREE WILL

12.07. EXPERIMENT

12.08. LEGITIMATE CONFLICT DEFINED

12.09. ILLEGITIMATE CONFLICT DEFINED

13. Chapter XII - JUSTICE

13.01. DEFINITION

13.02. HOW ATTAINED

13.03. HOW RECOGNIZED

13.04. THE NECESSITY OF SUSPENDED JUDGMENT

14. Chapter XIII - SELF SACRIFICE

14.01. THE QUESTION

14.02. DUTY

14.03. HOW TO DETERMINE

14.04. THE CRITERION

14.05. SEEK TO KNOW

15. Chapter XIV - GETTING ON WITH THE JOB: THE RHYTHM OF EFFORT

15.01. PRELIMINARY

15.02. RHYTHM

15.03. AFFINITY

15.04. THE RHYTHM OF EFFORT

15.05. CROSS RHYTHMS

15.06. CATCHING THE RHYTHM

15.07. HOW THAT IS DONE

15.08. WAVES

16. Chapter XV - GETTING ON WITH THE JOB: THE NEED OF

FUNCTIONING

16.01. THE NECESSITY OF FUNCTION

16.02. THE OBLIGATION TO FUNCTION

16.03. THE MAKING OF REALITY

16.04. THE OUTGROWING OF FACULTIES

16.05. THE SAME, CONTINUED

16.06. MAINTAINING THE BALANCE

17. Chapter XVI - GETTING ON WITH THE JOB: WORKING EASILY

17.01. REFRESHMENT

17.02. WORK WITHIN OUR POWERS

17.03. THE VALUE OF RITUAL

17.04. RESISTANCES

17.05. BAD LUCK

18. Chapter XVII - GETTING ON WITH THE JOB: THE REWARD OF BEAUTY

18.01. THE ESSENCE OF BEAUTY

18.02. THE UNCONSCIOUS PRODUCTION OF BEAUTY

18.03. THE RECORDING ANGEL

19. Chapter XVIII - THE TECHNIQUE OF COMMUNICATION: ADVICE TO

BEGINNERS IN PSYCHICS

19.01. TYPICAL BEGINNER'S EXPERIENCE

19.02. THE PURPOSE OF FIRST COMMUNICATIONS

19.03. THE ASSEMBLING OF CONDITIONS

19.04. THE BROADCAST IDEA: IMPERSONATIONS

19.05. DISTINGUISHING TRUE FROM FALSE

20. Chapter XIX - THE TECHNIQUE OF COMMUNICATION: MIND AND

INTELLIGENCE

20.01. PURPOSING AND INTENTION

20.02. THE PROCESS OF CREATION

20.03. HOW A LAW IS MADE TO WORK

20.04. THE COMPOSITION OF THE MIND

21. Chapter XX - THE TECHNIQUE OF COMMUNICATION: DIFFICULTIES

OF PREPARATION

21.01. INITIAL DIFFICULTIES: PHYSICAL

21.02. INITIAL DIFFICULTIES: MENTAL

21.03. INITIAL DIFFICULTIES: EXTERNAL

22. Chapter XXI - THE TECHNIQUE OF COMMUNICATION:

INTERFERENCE

22.01. MALICIOUS ENTITIES

22.02. A BIT OF ADVICE

22.03. THE POINT OF ATTACK

22.04. WHY INTERFERENCE AT ALL?

23. Chapter XXII - WORDS AND DEEDS

23.01. (NO TITLE)

23.02. (NO TITLE)

24. Chapter XXIII - SYSTEMS OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE EAST AND WEST

24.01. "DEVELOPING" SYSTEMS OF THE EAST

24.02. DEVELOPING SYSTEMS OF THE EAST

25. Chapter XXIV - DANGER AND ITS AVOIDANCE

25.01. THE BASIS OF ILLUSION

25.02. OBSESSION

25.03. THE RELIEF FROM OBSESSION

25.04. THE FIRM FOUNDATION

25.05. INSANITY

25.06. THE HEALING PROCEDURE

25.07. THE DAMAGE SUSTAINED

25.08. A TYPE OF ILLUSION AND ITS HEALING

25.09. THE DEFENSE

25.10. THE ONE SIN

26. Chapter XXV - THE FOURTH DIMENSION

26.01. SPACE AND TIME

26.02. INTERLUDE

26.03. THE TIME CONSTANT

26.04. TIME AND SPACE IN THE INVISIBLE

26.05. THE FIFTH DIMENSION

26.06. A PHILOSOPHICAL FATALISM

26.07. THE RESOLVING OF FATALISM

Publisher's note

This book is quite old (written 1930s), yet it's a perennial shining light amongst the
plethora of channelled material available nowadays. Stewart and Betty White published
several books in the 1930s, including The Betty Book, Across the Unknown and The
Unobstructed Universe. The Gaelic Manuscripts was never properly published - also [it
was] intentionally not copyrighted (unlike their other books).

This is perhaps because of the nature of the material. This book is written to assist people
already at work on the path, when much channelled material tends variously to encourage
people to start walking it. This book matched the level of other material such as that of
Alice Bailey in the 1920s or Jane Roberts in the 1970s. This is why we publish it here.

One other reason for this re-publication is that such books as this have exerted an indirect
formative, seminal influence on many New Age ideas of today - it pays to understand
where many such ideas originated, since they are not as new as many people think.
Though some of the forms of expression in this book can be a little dated or regarded
nowadays as gender-biased, the observations and truths contained herein are all the same
clearly put and very relevant in our time.

Warm thanks to Jessica BenDaniel of Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, for making this book
available.

Palden Jenkins
The Glastonbury Archive
http://www.isleofavalon.co.uk/archive.html

The Glastonbury Archive is a non-profit, goodwill Internet archive of the works of

interesting and enlightened people and seminal ideas. It makes available chosen out-of-
print and unpublished books and bodies of work which are of benefit to humanity,
without charge. It is a part of the Isle of Avalon island of websites at
http://www.isleofavlon.co.uk, a community website from Glastonbury, in southwest
England.

Re-published online by
The Glastonbury Archive 1998
http://www.isleofavalon.co.uk/archive.html

This book is copyright free.

 INTRODUCTION TO THE PANTHEAN PRESS EDITION OF
THE GAELIC MANUSCRIPTS
During the last part of the last century [19th] and the first third of this one [20th], there
occurred, both in this country and abroad, a great rash of books purporting to be
communication, one way or another, with people from other stages of existence.

Many people investigated, tested, experimented. Not all of them were folk from the
everyday walks of life. Many great scientists including Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver
Lodge, Camille Flammarion; writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle; and even our own
President, Abraham Lincoln, tested and found true that life is continuous, communication
possible; and that those in other stages, if they are sufficiently mature in the sense of
character and mentality, do have a wider vision than we of this, the physical level.

Many books were written by highly competent and experienced people. Stewart Edward
White was one who wrote, or more strictly speaking, gathered communications which
were published. Some of his books, The Unobstructed Universe, Across the Unknown,
The Betty Book, The Job of Living, and The Stars are Still There, are still available
through the E.P.Dutton Co. Indeed, so popular has the first named one proved to be that it
has for some years now, been in paperback. The books, other than the first named, "came
through" chiefly as a result of White's wife, Betty, and a friend "Joan", both of whom had
unusual ability to "open up" and permit those in other stages to speak through them. The
Unobstructed Universe came after Betty had joined those or, the "other side of life",
when she used the services of her close friend and co-worker "Joan" to do some
communicating, herself.

Unfortunately not all the work which has been done has been of this most excellent
quality. Since World War II the vast bulk of material published in this country has run to
sheer rubbish and sensationalism. And when White joined Betty in 1946, his manuscripts
passed into hands which made them inaccesible for further publication.

However, sometime before he joined Betty he got together the contents of a book which
appears in these pages - called, indifferently, The Gaelic Manuscripts, or
Communications of Gaelic. Some of the material was used elsewhere. Some of it has
never had regular book Publication. For this reason it has sometimes been assumed that
White's reason for not having his regular publishers handle it was because he felt it
should not be generally circulated. That it was for the few rather than the many.

A knowledge of the publishing business, however, rather discredits this idea. It seems far
more likely that the publishers were inclined to feel that they already had sufficient in the
other material. It is entirely possible that they simply did not want to publish "Gaelic" in
this particular form. This, too, is an assumption. However, what White himself did with
respect to this material lends a good deal of credence to the idea that he and his
publishers did not see eye to eye on the value of it (although the publishers were probably
right about potential sales - it is not the sort of thing that "sells" in the thousands) - what
is certain and known, is this:

White himself had 200 copies of Gaelic mimeographed for distribution. While it is not a
great number, considering that the usual "first run" is apt to be at least 5000 on regular
book publication, neither is 200 copies an amount which might be made up simply for a
"few close friends". Since that time it was again put out in the same form to the extent of
some 400 copies. More recently about 50 copies were made for circulation among a few
people who were interested by someone who had copies of one of the copies issued by
White, complete with White's notations on it. A copy of that, run off on a copying
machine, and a copy of the last 50 issued came into my hands. The material is too
valuable to not give as wide a circulation as possible - hence the present edition, which is
also a limited one, and still in mimeographed form; but at least it does make it available
to those who seek the sounder, saner material in the field.

The strangest part of it all lies in the actual intention of Stewart Edward White in making
the first two hundred mimeographed copies. And the question which remains unanswered
is this. If White himself felt that the circulation of this manuscript be restricted, why
didn't he take the precaution of copyrighting it? A writer with many, many published
books to his credit is not acting in ignorance when he deliberately puts out material in the
public domain. Because of this, we feel that his intention was not to restrict circulation of
it but in hopes that from time to time a few more copies would be issued for circulation
so that those who could benefit from reading it would be able to get copies of it - that
someone in a position to do so would always pick it up and issue a few more.

It is for this reason that we have published the present edition.

True it is not a book for "everyone" - but neither is any other book. True that many
people will simply misunderstand it, or fail to understand it. True that some people are
apt to try to misuse the information it contains. This is equally true of not only every
other book in this field, but true of practically any book which does not come under the
sheer entertainment class.

"Gaelic", like "Silver Birch" and the other truly great "Guides" have not come to
communicate for the amusement or instruction of a few. Rather they are trying to help a
humanity blinded by the material to realize how pitifully inadequate the material criterion
is, and how much unnecessary anguish and misery has been and is being caused by the
ignorance of the truth of the continuity of life - and how such misery is caused by our
failure to recognize both that continuity and the personal responsibility which attends it.

They look on a world filled with unnecessary struggle and strife and deprivation and try
to explain to us both that Cosmic (or God's, if you prefer the term) Law is and how if we
try to understand and use it we can eliminate most of the difficulties which beset us. They
are trying to help us to understand. We need the understanding badly. With it we can
make a world which is all that it should be. Without it we can only continue to destroy
under the delusion that when we have wiped ourselves out of physical existence that there
is nothing else. These "Invisibles" or "Discarnates" or "Guides" know better. They can
but try to tell us. If we in our folly and conceit misuse, or ignore, the responsibility is
ours. They have tried.

Meanwhile no information which is potentially helpful to any of us should be withheld -

no matter how some of us may see fit, through stupidity or greed, to deal with it.

Jerryl L. Keane, Ph.D.

 Chapter I
CREATIVE LIVING

1. THE PROCESS OF CREATION

I suppose we all want and search for satisfaction in life. I suppose most of us agree that the
man who attains the most of such satisfaction is the creative artist who produces something
that people like. He does constructive work, that interests him and is appreciated. But it
seems to us that there are comparatively few of him; and of those few only a minority attain
what we call success. But Gaelic maintains that this is not so: that we are all creative artists:
and that there is possible to each of us these satisfactions. He even has a word for "failures."
Here first of all, are his basic premises, his summary or sketch of the creative process. It
takes close reading; apparently it is merely a description of the processes of the astral in the
technical sense; but its principles must be understood before the comfort and enlightenment
of the personal application.

"Creation," he defines, "is an arrestment, a checking, of the flow of universal harmony; its
differentiation: its rearrangement into a new form of particularization.

"The amount and quality of this first segregation is dependent on the interposition of an
individual entity by which it is checked and through which it is filtered.

"The rearrangement depends upon the innate creative imagination possessed by that entity."

So much for the place of the "artist" - oneself.

"The endurance of the result is dependent on the dynamics with which the creative
intelligence works. These dynamics in turn depend upon the degree of spiritual development
and aspiration to which their originator has attained."

So much for the kind of work possible to each.

"The reality of the creation - reality in its broadest sense - is closely related to the fact that
both fashioning and the embodiment are carried out through a finite medium. I use the word
finite in place of material, though in a broad sense the two terms are interchangeable.
However, common acceptance has given the word material a narrower connotation.

"These are all the elements collected together and stated of the creative act. What is
necessary for the act itself? First of all, the creative intelligence must place himself in that
current of cosmic harmony. This is a voluntary spiritual act. We may call it by various names
- receptivity, openness to inspiration and the like. It is in essence, however, nothing so
specific as receptivity to detail. It is the spiritual attitude and altitude.

"Next comes the filtration. The quality and kind of filtration is dependent upon the personal
quality. It is a thing built up, a thing of development.

"Beside this attitude of spiritual receptivity is also one which is closely akin, closely
analogous, but different in exact kind. One may call it, for this purpose, a psychic receptivity.
In it one lays his hands upon the fashioned materials which he will employ in his
arrangement. They must be received through an open heart; for the whole substance of
harmony is the vibration in sympathy. That which is antipathetic is also a dissonance. The
vision which forms within oneself is a compound of these two sorts of receptivity, molded
and determined by individual genius and affinity.

"Inspiration is not a suggestion of detail ready formed. It is a pouring in of all essence in a

vital stream, from which the creator segregates and absorbs those things appropriate to his
vision, as the organs and functioning mechanisms and tissues of the body take from the
homogeneous blood stream those elements only which make for their health and building.
That is why a considered reaching up the stream toward the source, in a conscious grasping
for what has been intellectually desired is futile, or even destructive. The mechanism of
recognition, segregation, and absorption lies lower down in the wholeness of the human
organism.

"Now this receptivity is not a mere opening of the door, as one opens the gates of a dam. You
must recall that I said that the very first requisite was to place oneself in the current: and that
means, not an opening, but a definite effort of aspiration. An aspiration is a spiritual effort.
An intellectual reaching is a grasping for a definite and defined detail, the alleged need for
which has been conceived by the intellect itself, which at this stage knows nothing of what it
needs. Again analogously to the selection by the various tissues of the body from the blood
stream, the creative faculty selects for itself those harmonies and those racially created
fashionings which its genius builds into the elements of its new vision of creation.

"That is the forming of the mold. As it is a process of assimilation and reproduction, the
delicacy of its development requires the comforting enwrapment of time and of brooding
cherishing. Until the hour of its unfoldment its petals must not be pried open by the sharp
fingers of intellect, nor forced by the hot breathing of haste. It must be allowed its due and
graceful period of gestation before it can be brought forth for handling. It must be allowed to
lie quiet, warmed by, one might say, a sort of suspended and reverent attention.

"During that period, from that second stream of inspiration, which we call psychic, details
apparently isolated and unattached will float to it almost at random, until at last it stands
ready for the intellectual fashioning. That is the second step of the process.

"It does not come to you if you have not placed yourself in the stream. The conscious
elevation to that stream is the method of the mystic. The elevation may, however, take place
by a culmination of spiritual efforts not consciously directed to this end. As to whether this
is, or is not, normal, depends upon individual constitution.

"Aspiration is a quality, not an action. I must emphasize that except in the case of the mystic
a conscious effort deliberately to place oneself in the current is exactly that intellectual
reaching upstream against which I warned. The consciousness of that process depends upon
the individual constitution. Some have no consciousness of it at all. Inspiration visits them
unexpected, and apparently unsummoned. Others go so far as to place themselves in an
attitude of attunement. Still others have some formula, simple or elaborate, and the rarer
mystics of high development realize exactly what is forward. Sometimes the illusion of
attunement or the lip service of the formula fails to produce the actual rising to the necessary
spiritual height. In that case, since the person is not actually in the current, inspiration cannot
flow in."

NO CREATIVE EFFORT IS LOST

That is at least an interesting glimpse of the approach of the true artist to the point of
production. But what has it to do with us ungifted mortals? Gaelic approaches that point.
First of all he summarizes.

"The infinite universe is a flow of unbroken and unmanifested harmony" he repeats.

Manifestation in the finite is an arresting for the purpose of visibility, so to speak, of that
flow. That arresting can take place only by what we will call creative intelligence.
Intelligence works in creation only by means of a conscious act of will. The act of creation is
the setting in motion of a specific set of vibrations. That set of vibrations takes its form in
manifestation according to the medium in which it is expressed. Its dynamics may be
sufficiently powerful to carry it beyond its first medium of expression into other and different
media, in which case the form of manifestation may be different. But it will be the same in
power and degree of harmony.

"These be broad and general principles which will bear repeated examination and study."

So far this is what he has said before. But now he broadens the field. He for the first time
makes it clear that he is not talking merely of what we call 'works of art.'

Any Manifestation whatever, that takes in, as far as we are concerned, everything in nature
that we can see, hear, touch, smell, or in any other way perceive, everything with which we
can come in contact - these things have been created, by an intelligence, in the manner he
epitomized.

"The outward expression," he insists, "follows upon an inward creative fashioning. That
inward creative fashioning, wherever exerted, in whatever form manifested, is always the
same sort of thing: a tuning into the universal power, and a stepping down of that power into
a degree that will manifest.

"The form of manifestation," he continues, "depends upon the conditions in the different
media. A flower in a garden, for example, is in last analysis an indication that somewhere an
intelligence has, with creative exertion, to the degree of that flower's perfection, succeeded in
seizing upon and identifying itself with a portion of universal harmony."

So far the idea is not startling. But his next statement is arresting.

"That the manifestation has taken the form of a flower," he says, "does not necessarily mean
that the originating creative intelligence has designed and constructed a flower. It may be
that, in another medium, it has given voice and form to music, setting thus in motion
dynamic circumscribed bits of creative harmony, which, carrying over into this earth
medium, and encountering conditions favorable for that manifestation, produces itself as the
colorful perfumed notes of a garden. And, vice versa, the music which one, in his best
creative mood, has harmonized in creative vibrational bits, may well manifest itself over here
in a pattern of color, conveying the same esthetic satisfaction in the one case as the other.

"It is this principle which lies back of the creative power of thought, though that is to some
extent a misnomer. The creative power of fashioning imagination would be better. Whatever
is so fashioned clothes itself - somewhere and somehow, now or later, in outward
manifestation, simply because it has been given form and, like a mold, exists now where it
did not exist before, capacious to be filled when conditions supply the materials for that
filling. In this sense, therefore, no genuine creative effort is ever lost. It has produced a phase
of harmony which has also existed in exactly that form before. It has added to the
harmonious differentiation of the universe detailed bits that have heretofore had no existence.
As we see it now, the circle in whatever is the understandable purpose will be rounded only
when all potentiality is brought forth consciously and made evident. Furthermore, the
potentiality itself is the intelligent creative act of the Great Originator.

"The fashioning dynamic creation of the opportunities of manifestation of these potentialities

is the function of the finite universe and of the slowly climbing intelligence which it
originates and of which it is composed.

"There are two aspects to note in the wee corollary which each human will apply to himself.
The first is that no genuine creation is without result. A mold may be placed upon a shelf
awaiting the molten in due time. But the shape exists in the universe where existence it had
not before. Its eternal quality is not limited by the small manifestation of form which may at
any one time be made by its means. The mold is intact for the uses of harmony at its need.

"The second aspect is that attention must be called to the fact that intelligence does not create
harmony, but comes into attunement with harmony, which it can utilize only according to the
power of its will to achieve."

3. EVOLUTION FROM THE CREATIVE STANDPOINT

"I stated," Gaelic returned to the subject at a later date, "that all manifested harmony is the
product of creative intelligence which harmony itself has evolved.

"It follows, then, that only that degree is manifested as is consonant with the degree of
intelligence in evolution. In other words, no outside intelligence penetrates or superimposes.

"In the early stages but a very simple harmony and a very simple manifestation is possible,
for the reason that only a very simple intelligence has been evolved. The progressing
evolution of intelligence is possible by one method only - the method of spiritual aspiration
and struggle. To speak in scientific jargon, progression from the first simple element of
hydrogen can take place only because within that element is the primordial striving of
incompleteness toward completion, which is the first faint flicker of the ambition to evolve.
That, arriving at creative fashioning, produces a bifold complexity in place of a uniform
simplicity. That bifold complexity, reaching in a similar manner beyond itself, by the fling of
its outreaching endeavor, so to speak, fashions at once the form and content of the next
higher step in evolution.

"Thus the creative intelligence of the finite universe advances step by step with the physical
manifestation, the one outpacing the other in equal turn. So we see both the material
envelope and the intelligent content rising from original simplicity to increasing complexity
and plasticity. The finite scheme of things, to use a homely phrase, is thus actually lifting
itself by its own bootstraps. It has no more intelligence than it has itself evolved; and that
evolution has been accomplished by its own unaided effort. Unaided, except for that
mysterious divine dynamic impulse which has set the complicated scheme whirling and in it
has infused the spark from the eternal.

"We come, then, to the corollary concept, that whatever exists of what you call material or
immaterial, has at one time represented the highest possible creative intelligence of its
period. It has also served as an embodiment for that intelligence. Mind ye, I say intelligence,
and not personality. The two are not divisible in your personal point of view; but one is not
indispensable to the other from the cosmic point of view."

4. BEAUTY AND UGLINESS

Having established these first principles, Gaelic returns at still another meeting to elaborate
one aspect of what he has said. As usual, he first summarizes. These frequent repetitions, we
found, had enormous potency in giving us real possession of his concepts.

"Finite manifestation is, in inception, an idea. An idea, in rounded wholeness, is an

harmonious arrangement. An harmonious arrangement is a product of creative imagination.
Creative imagination is an attribute of intelligence. These are the premises of our evening's
discussion.

"Harmony manifested in completeness results in beauty. The kind of beauty resultant

depends upon the medium in which it clothes itself at the moment. An imaginative creative
impulse, powerful enough in dynamics, may clothe itself in other medium than those
employed in its original fashioning.

"All these things we have said before; but I epitomize in small compass for the more ready
handling.

"Now we will take as an illustration a beautiful thing which seems most remote from the
possibility of actual personal designing. Call from your recollection some particularly
gorgeous and symmetrically balanced sunset painted across the sky. If you had been in a
poetic mood, you might have said to yourself, 'What a master designer has limned the
picture!,' but you would have said it with no thought of its being a literal truth. Nevertheless,
no balance of structure in the design, no contrast or blending or harmony of color, no
gradation of tone, but has actually been created by a designing intelligence. Nor could it there
be present if an intelligence had not operated. That statement is literally true. And yet, if you
therefore figure to yourself an artist planning out and fixing in the pigments of the skies the
picture you see before you, you will be wrong. No intelligence, as far as we know, has the
power to assemble those celestial phenomena to produce that exact thing. Nor does it
necessarily mean that somewhere some artist has conceived or arranged the exact pattern and
design you so much admire. But it does mean that somewhere, working in his own medium,
some intelligence has creatively conceived a certain just and balanced arrangement of
harmony which, expressed in sunset, produces this particular spectacle. I have used this as an
illustration because it is so remote from the conception of a gigantic artist with a gigantic
palette and brush.

"The same principle applies also to all other complete or nearly complete, and therefore
beautiful, manifestations in all the universe. You have looked in a tome today wherein are
pictures of marvelously beautiful, though sometimes microscopic, columns and scrolls and
arabesques and spear heads and many others, which, if designed and placed on paper by a
pictorial or architectural artist, would arouse your admiration. Their balance and symmetry
seem to exceed sometimes the best efforts of those artists. You exclaim, perhaps, in wonder
over the marvelous artistry of nature, or perhaps of God if you are theologically inclined.
Nevertheless, each of these forms is a result of careful and inspired design by an intelligent
artist. This statement is not nullified by the probable fact that the originating intelligence had
no such forms in mind. He had produced, stripped from clothing in any form of manifestation
and considered in its pure abstraction, a harmonious arrangement heretofore noexistent. Now
in his approach to that creation it mattered not whether he set out to draw the design for a
seed or a cathedral or a symphony or a color arrangement or a poem. That depends on the
personal idiosyncrasy of his genius or his opportunity. The medium was only the resistance
necessary to the dynamics of his conception. The conception itself is the true object, whether
he knows it or not. If the poem or the symphony were all, as he thinks, there would be only
that one small material thing added to the treasure of the universe. But the creation of a new
harmony pattern makes a possible seed pod, cathedral, symphony, painting, poem, and all
other things of beauty that vibrate to it.

"You may say, as you did today, that the man might have obtained his architectural
inspiration for his lofty building from the minute plant stock. If he had known of it! As far as
the resemblance holds in beauty he did so. But not by reference to the microscope, but
through the vibration of affinity to the original harmony arrangement from which both
sprang.

"Now here is a very important point to note, lest someone should take my remarks off into
mystic beatitude to construct therefrom false theory. The well-meaning person, filled with
sweetness and light and higher resolve, who places himself as a light and luminary in the
heavens to spread abroad an abstraction of beautiful harmony wherewith to saccarinize
circumambience, accomplishes just the sum total of nothing! In the finite one cannot create
with abstraction, but only through a medium. One must definitely work out his pattern of
creation through some sort of medium. Without the inertia and resistance of a medium,
dynamics lack - and the pattern is devoid of stability or persistence and endurance. The
radiation of influence is real; but it is an after-product of accomplishment. It is an
unconscious possession, not an end in itself to be attained.

"This is the reason for what seems at times bitter struggle, but which is at its best pleasurable
functioning. Whether it seems to be one or the other depends not so much on the thing in
itself as on one's understanding of it and attitude toward it. Enlightenment and understanding
alone may change it from one to the other. Therefore, seek not to escape conditions but to
search out understanding.
"Lack of beauty, ugliness, evil, whatever you choose to call it, is perfection so fragmentary
that the conception of the whole of which it is part has not yet been built by any creative
intelligence. It is the task of intelligence to eliminate ugliness and evil. That elimination, in
the long run, comes not from suppression nor destruction, but from utilization in a larger and
more comprehensive pattern to be creatively conceived. Complete elimination can come only
with ultimate rounding out of the whole scheme; but partial elimination accompanies each
cast forward of perception.

"In the contemplation of these things, the attitude of mind should be to attempt, as far as
possible, at least to glimpse a larger whole to which they might belong. That is the basis of
what we call tolerance. It is also what is meant when you are told to resist not evil."

The important subject of disharmony, here touched upon, was elsewhere elaborated.

"What you call disharmony," said Gaelic, "is merely partial achievement. Partial achievement
is due, naturally, to deficiency in the instrument. For harmony itself is beautiful and
complete. The creation of disharmony, to pursue the logical sequence further, can result in
the creation of nothing eternal for the reason that it is merely incompletion; and incompletion
cannot exist for a longer time than it takes for some other creative intelligence to tune in
upon, and bring to manifestation, the complementing vibration, the added proportion that will
round out and complete the mold left by the other. This is true of what you might even be
tempted to call malevolent and evil creations. They are extreme examples of incompleteness.
But they are, nevertheless, fragments of a harmonious entirety. They are ugly because they
are partial. They will endure because they are truly products of creative intelligence, but they
will not endure in their present form. Completed, they will be seen as the lesser curves of a
beautiful whole. They will be completed only by the fuller contribution of more advanced
and more able creative imaginations.

"To make it a more vivid personal example: it may well be that the creative work you do,
while bringing into rounded harmony its own bit of gathered inspiration is also releasing, so
to speak, harmonious vibrations which add their accretion to some present imperfection.
These things also are not partitioned each into its one narrow field of influence. Your music -
I mention music because it is a palpable vibration to you - is a piece of harmony plucked
from potentiality. It sets in motion waves of that particular harmony through the manifested
universe. I am altering the figure from the mold. These waves express themselves in your art
as musical notes. They might express themselves, when their motion reaches or penetrates
other conditions, as a trellis of beautiful flowers. I speak highly figuratively, you understand.
In yet another medium it might be a particularly beautiful glow of light. The whole universe
is a mutual back-and-forth, back-and-forth, helping and building, each assisting the other's
completion but at the same time completing as well as it can its own. It is a beautiful woven
interdependability. Every true spark you strike from out your own soul is a light that has not
shone before and that shall never be extinguished."

But whether or not we, as creative intelligences, have contributed our bit in actual
construction, it seems that we have each and every one of us a very definite and necessary
contribution to make to the complete and rounded creative act.

"You have all known and appreciated the natural beauty of, for example, the great spaces of
your desert land. You know the wide fling of their shimmering expanses, the tinted veils of
their evening lights, and the brooding magic that distills from their presence before you as a
perfume from a flower. Those emotions and aesthetic appreciations filter through your
consciousness and become a portion of the awareness existing in the universal consciousness.

"But consider the same desert before the advent of those capable of such appreciation. The
stark material embodiment was always there, the wide expanses, the uplifting mountains, the
gray sage, the white dry alkali, the shimmer of heat waves, the shadow of cloud. All lay
existent in stark materiality then as now. One thing only lacked in full measure, and that is
the beauty I first mentioned. To such creatures as inhabit the waste its appearance
corresponds solely with the response equipment of its kind. The lizard felt the warmth or the
cold, became cognizant in its own way of such elements of its environment as suited its
simple life, no more. The beasts that roam its plains saw each its own world in which veils of
sunset, inspiration of shadow, appeal of space, of sun and mountain did not exist, except as
such things represented material facts in their lives. The savage also, while a little more
completely aware, still fell short of supplying, through his appreciation, the spirit of beauty
which broods over those lands.

"Beauty exists there only when an appropriate response evolves it into the substance of
thought. The many passed that way unseeing, wrapped in the discomfort of dust, of daily toil,
of thirst and hunger and fatigue, and saw in it only a hinderment to travel and a labor to be
overcome. The many would so continue to have passed were it not that some one among
them, at some time, brought there the out-reaching spirit of appreciation and so for the first
time introduced there beauty.

"Whether expressed on the painted canvas or in the words of a book, this ingredient of
appreciation was made to function. It thereby placed, in the substance of thought, at the
disposal of those of sufficient receptivity, a mechanism by which they might manifest that
which otherwise had not existed before.

"This is a definite creative function. Each act of open and conscious appreciation, no matter
how small, creates definitely a reality in cosmos, or else strengthens a reality already
existent, by which it is easier for similar manifestations to take place. If this is a wholly new
mechanism, one that has not heretofore been employed, it is as solid a movement in
evolution as is the appearance of a new form - or a modification - in the physical world.

"For mark ye this; all advance has first been constructed in the substance of thought before it
has been precipitated in manifestation. We took that up the last time, you will remember. It is
the ordinary way of thinking to imagine that such a spiritual quality as beauty, say, must
necessarily be inherent in certain combinations of physical things, whether, as you say,
'anybody ever sees them or not.' That is only partially true. Spiritual qualities in general are
not things but responses; and unless the mechanism can be applied the spiritual quality does
not function.

"I would say one other word on behalf of the unrecognized. Creative genius is, as you
yourselves might discover, composed of two actions. These may conceivably be combined in
one individual; or each may find its embodiment in a different individual. The conception of
a thing must first be made in the substance of thought, and then precipitated in manifestation
on your physical plane. This, as I say, may be combined in one individual, so that a man
conceives his vision and embodies it.

"But not infrequently you have the spectacle of one who struggles frustrated throughout his
life without arrival at the world's success. You have on the other hand the spectacle of one
producing abundantly and beautifully, almost as it were by instinct, without labor, almost
without taking thought, a child of good fortune. One is condemned as a failure; the other is
almost revered in his success. Nevertheless, often the first - the failure - has made true his
vision; and the other, the genius, has done no more than possess the open eye wherewith to
see and the hand wherewith, unknowing to his own soul, to pass on.

"The measure of progress is not always the work of the hand, but is often the inner
fashioning.

"The point I would make is that in daily life is a spiritual duty of appreciation, of open-
hearted unfoldment to all that is, a walking with wide eye and receptive spirit. For in so
doing you are carrying on more than your own pleasure, and more than your own selfish
progress. The measure is the pushing on into resistance overcome."

5. THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF COMPLETE CREATION

There remains, it seemed, one final element to assure the newly created its endurance in the
scheme of things.

"The inceptive function of the creative faculty," Gaelic freshened our memories, "is the
assembling of already existent materials in a novel arrangement expressing an advance in
spiritual content. Just as physical nature works out its evolved forms from antecedent and
simpler forms, so works the creative faculty in those endowed with it.

"This creates a mold in cosmos, which may be filled with different content to manifest in
diverse objective form according to its environment. The same original artistic concept in one
plane of manifestation may be a musical composition; in another a magnificent sunset; in
another a bright colored flower; or in still another an architectural poem. This principle has
been elucidated before.

"While the creative composition may be conceived of value as placing in the cosmos at least
new material for the evolutionary progress, its mere conception is only a first step. The
second step is an assurance of its integrity by means of manifestation. It is not sufficient for
the artist to compose his work subjectively, no matter how completely carried out the
composition. To be sure, he has by that action drawn together in new arrangement to the
establishment of a possibility which may, advantage, as material, another with sufficient
perception to perceive and respond to it. That is so much to the good. But it is not established
as a mold in cosmos until its outline has been surrounded and defined by a definite outward
manifestation, accompanied by an exercise of that kind of productive faculty with which the
artist is endowed.

"But also this is not sufficient for the rounded cycle of artistic achievement. There remain
two more steps.
"The first is that contribution of appreciation on which, sometime since, we had a wee
discourse. Without this repercussion, without this audience, so to speak, the mold lacks that
sharp definition in the substance of thought which shall render it of sufficient universality to
contain adequately material of another plane than that in which it was first conceived. In
other words, your musical composition merely placed on paper and buried in a crypt without
the knowledge of any but the originator without the contribution of appreciation of which we
have elsewhere spoken, would lack the necessary element of transference, and so would
never otherwise manifest as the flower or the sunset or similar expression of itself.

"So now we have the creative gathering and arrangement; the outward clothing in
manifestation; and the repercussion back of the appreciative quality, there remains still one
other necessary element to the wholly efficient working of this new thing in the world. It
must, for its fullest use and effect, receive the solidifying influence of repetition.

"Each repetition of outward manifestation adds to the mold, so to speak, another microscopic
lamina of containment. The mold gains strength and substance by use. This is the accrued
value that inheres in the older created compositions that have stood the test of time on their
authenticity as products of true creative imagination - the ratio of increasing influence.

"There is one distinction to be made. Repetition need not in all forms of art be repetition of
too definite an outward seeming. It may be a repetition of the inner creative conception. It
might avail little to copy repeatedly the outlines and color and tones of a particular picture. It
avails much to repeat the inner vision that inspired it. A work of literature is repeated, of
course, through its numerous copies, reaching thus its appreciation. But particularly in the
realm of music the distinction obtains, for right here comes in the value of the interpretive
artist. Through his individual rendition he is able to avoid the brittle hardening of the mold
consequent or mere literal copying; and to contribute that flexible freshener of interpretation
which will preserve its integrity.

"These four processes constitute the full cycle of artistic creation, though the word 'artistic'
could well be elided. All true creation is an effort of art. To contribute value - and sometimes
great value - it is not necessary that a single individual accomplish the complete cycle. His
contribution may be one or another of the phases. The completest value, however - in the
sense that only thus is the maximum of dynamics that coheres the mold - has a greater
expectation of duration when it is the functioning of one man. Nevertheless, if it is not given
to one to tread the whole circumference of the circle, he who courses a segment and passes
on the torch has done a part.

"That is all."
6. THE DUTY OF APPRECIATION

But it was not quite all. After this compilation had been made and typed Gaelic returned to
"enrich the corollary," as he expressed it. In this he dwelt on the practical applications, as it
were, of the latter two of the processes - that of appreciation and that of repetition - and how
we may, or must, utilize them in every day living.

"It is," he said, "a technique of the work which each may do in the substance of thought, as
frequently, as regularly, and as easily as the breath is drawn.

"You have been told of the function performed, in the assurance of the creative act, by
appreciation. We have considered it narrowly, as it applies to the knowledged artistic
creation. We will now extend the conception to examine this function of appreciation in a
man's daily environment.

"Each item of detail in that environment is a product of creative fashioning, brought into
being in no manner differently than in the painting, the poem or the musical composition. It
is the filling, by material manifestation, of the mold formed in the substance of thought by
the creative intention of intelligence. Its eternal assurance depends, not on this material
manifestation which perishes and passes, but upon the solid integrity of the mold that
outlines the intention. That, as we have elsewhere explained, is contributed to by response, -
the response of understanding appreciation. I speak literally when I say that he who in
passing notes with sympathetic and pleasured eye the sheen of light upon the wayside flower,
has not merely pleased his own aesthetic sense, but has made a small but definite
contribution to whatever intention has brought it about.

"The deliberate, conscious, seeking appreciation of all by which you are surrounded and of
all that life encounters, is more than a pleasurable functioning. It is an opportunity of
contribution. It, so to speak, assists in repairing the wear of the mold, and in preserving it
pristine for further manifestation.

"But it has more of a reciprocal action than you would first perceive. Life in consciousness is
not a state of being, but a response. Without any response whatever, there can be no life.
That is instinctively well understood, as is well evidenced by the figure of speech you use
when you say that 'so-and-so is so dead to the world of music or of beauty' or of what-not.
You mean that he has no response to them. So in your filling of your moments with
appreciation you are receiving back from them more life.

"You are surrounded by so many possible response-mechanisms that, if you opened your
consciousness to them indiscriminately, naught but confusion could result. So you have the
power of opening your attention or of closing it down, as you draw the jalousies of a
window. So easily is this done, and so gratefully does the laziness of your attention bask in
this darkness that a bad habit is easily acquired of walking through your daily affairs from
point to point of your necessities, veiled. On either side as you walk are the wee small
unimportant beauties of fashionings created by the long slow processes which you know.
Each is the wonderful and delicate flowering of the slow deep toil of intelligent intention.
Each offers silently the gift it has for your spirit; and beseeches silently the waters for which
it thirsts, and which response to its intention alone can supply. You may withdraw and
withhold if you will, but to loss. I say 'loss' and not 'your loss' or 'its loss.' I say loss - of a
possibility, small mayhap, but a loss none the less of what should be the fullness of the
cosmic functioning.

"So I tell you, walk not shrouded; but look ye to right and left in open eye and heart, as a
prince taking his ease, avid to receive and return his loyalties. You may take pleasure in your
esthetic sense of the harmonies you perceive; you may also permit yourself a small glow of
satisfaction that you are, in your small way, fulfilling, performing a definite function of the
whole purpose.

"In our larger moments, with concentration of our powers, we trace our bit of the pattern as it
is revealed to us; but in our smaller moments, without effort, with pleasure, we may also be
working effectively, both to ourselves and to the Intention, in the substance of thought."

7. THE APPRECIATION OF UGLINESS

"So much for that which has been done. Now for the look forward upon that which is yet to
do. You have looked upon the pleasurable things of beauty, but turn not your eyes away from
those things which are misshapen in ugliness. They too cry out for the strengthening
appeasement of appreciation. Here the appreciation must be commingled with what wisdom
of creative understanding you may possess. We have in another discourse showed that
ugliness, evil, disharmony are such only because of their incompleteness; that rightly viewed
they are not finalities in themselves, but fragments of material awaiting their more
comprehensive inclusion in a larger pattern by a more potent creative imagination. A portion
of that creative imagination you must strive to infuse into your attention, so that, even if you
cannot see the completed lines, nor can imagine what they shall be, at least in the fragment
before you, you see the curve of a larger beauty.

"This is best done in the case of incompletion, not by an attempt at intellectual visualization,
but by a sympathetic faith. Not understanding - but trust. It may seem fantastic to you,
nevertheless it is true, that if you enter this feeling you have accomplished a portion. Not
perhaps the structure, but at least the scaffolding within which the structure will rise.

"So, though you obey my admonition to open your eyes to the beauty about you, close them
not against the thing that seems to lack. Your contribution we have defined. Your reward is,
again, more life; but life in terms of expanding faith and confidence."

8. THE DUTY OF SHARING

"We have dealt with the value, indeed the necessity, of appreciation as a consolidating
function in the endurance of the created intention. We will now approach it from the angle of
obligation," continued Gaelic.

"While the receiving into consciousness of the esthetic and understanding savoring of the
underlying concept is an individual and valuable contribution, it is so incomplete that a
strong instinct drives one further. This instinct is so insistent that it becomes an irking sense
of incompletion. Incompletion, as always, means discomfort. So deep founded is this that
often the facing of a beautiful object carries with its appreciation an almost aching sense.
That uneasiness is allayed when the instinct is followed, and we share our appreciation with
others.

"Our idea is that we would share the pleasure we are receiving. As a matter of fact, we are
fulfilling the obligation of which I spoke. We are extending the possibility of the
consolidating force which makes for endurance; are affording opportunity for the enfoldment
of another lamina which shall render permanent the mold.

"So our discovery of whatever appeals to our responsive sense brings with it a responsibility
to pass on the opportunity for the utilization of others. And since occasionally some chance
of angle or fall of light makes ours the only eye to see, there is in such cases laid upon us also
the duty of interpretative creation that will shift the concept into the visibility powers of
others. Interpretative creation is thus a very high form of art, in that it implies a sympathetic
understanding of the manifested intention: a clear-eyed understanding of one's own angle of
view; and an intuitive understanding of the angles of view of one's fellow men. These be no
inconsiderable endowments.

"To sum up this part - Appreciation is both an understanding and obligation of sharing. As a
corollary, this latter obligation implies also, if one's powers extend so far, a reshaping into
visibility for others.

"This obligation of sharing which is infused thus through all ordinary living, is manifolded in
the case of the original creative artist. I have said that it is useless to make your form and
hide it in a crypt. It must be placed within the eye of appreciation to draw to itself its
containing affirment. That function is very analogous to the original placing in receptivity of
the artist's own consciousness in fructifying his intention. It is not sufficient to withdraw the
veil and stand aside in expectation of the chance passerby, It must be carried in joyful
outheld hands, with the same eagerness of spirit, intent on sharing a newfound treasure, as
that with which one runs from the fields flower-laden, avid to display his garnering.

"There is a fine line here to be drawn: the line that divides offering from demanding. You
offer to attention: you cannot demand it. Nevertheless this distinction does not absolve you
from holding before one and another and another in turn your fashioning, in test of
recognition. You cannot sit, cowled and silent, in the obscurity of the market corner, torpid in
a dumb faith that a time is appointed when one shall come.

"The area of legitimate search for the outlet to the necessary appreciation is curiously like
what we call the circle of individual responsibility (see talk on Justice). It is like it in many
ways. Within that circle dwells not only the absolute right, but the duty of search. Within that
circle swarm those whose affinities do not vibrate to this occasion. Their attention may be
called, but only by a great shout that shall startle them from their legitimate business. Among
them you walk softly and offer in silence, testing for the spark of recognition. You may utter
your shout an ye will, and you may call all eyes to you; and if your words be cunning, you
may sell your ware. But you have stepped beyond the obligation of your sharing, and that
which replies back is a crumbling doubt that makes no permanence.

"Nevertheless, because you see some that so shout their wares, pressing here and there until
the whole world seems full of their insistences, that does not lift from you, on the risings of
your disgust, the duty of moving in seemly dignity about your proper searchings. Until you
have found the pedestal and placed upon it the work of your hands, until you have situated
upon the fair pleasances where walk those whose eyes it can pleasure, then is your work as
little deserving of your signature as though you had abandoned it rough-buried in the clay.

"You may not leave the children of your begetting upon the river bank, nor rest your
searching until they are bestowed."

9. THE KINDS OF ARTISTIC MATERIALS AND THEIR USES

"Now," said Gaelic, having surrounded the subject as a whole, "we will return to the first step
of creative fashioning and see what corollaries belong with it. The first step was the placing
of oneself receptively in the current.

"You have already been told," said he, "that a mere opening, to receptivity is not enough; that
you must make the spiritual effort to step into the flow. Once open to, once within the sweep
of All-Consciousness, those things pertinent may be appropriated to your purpose.

"Your necessity of selection is narrowed by the magnetic affinity of your underlying

intention; so that within the radius of your grasp are attracted by that affinity those matters
which are applicable; and are deflected by the opposed polarity those things which have no
appositiveness. In the pure form of that mechanics anything on which you may lay your
hands would thus in some manner bear an integral relation to the pattern of the thing you
would create. There would only remain to you the selection, from all the material possible to
your capacity, such of it as is fitting to the compactness of the work you are at.

"Unfortunately this unadulterated purity cannot be expected from an organism as complex,

and as partially in control, as the human entity in its present state of development. Subsidiary
and untimely cross-purposes, perhaps imperfect, perhaps merely misplaced to the occasion,
cannot be entirely eliminated to the point of negative polarity. They also attract their
opposites, so that the artist is left selection, not only from abundance, but from the
inappropriate.

"The richness of material swept by the current within reach depends on the displacement of
the spiritual body of yourself that you plant within the stream. The eddies resultant are, wider
or smaller in scope, and may circle wider and more inclusively, according to the bulk and
weight that is the containment of your degree. The swirl of the small man has but small
extent and power, and can deflect the attraction but few imponderables, with which he must
build but an airy miniature of structure. Nevertheless, if he has worked in sincerity
throughout, it will be a true and acceptable creation.

"The artistic sense of the most unskilled is able to distinguish - when the time of
distinguishment arrives - between that which is drawn in affinity to his central concept and
that, which drifts in answer to unsubduable or unsubdued adulterations of other purpose. So
that one would not attach the tail of a fish, however beautiful in itself, to his picture of his
dog. But the exact appropriateness of that which is drawn to the call of the central concept, is
dependent, not upon the strength of desire, or ambition to accomplish, or upon a realization
of need, but solely upon the steadfast purity of the intention.

"And, per contra, if the artist entertains the calmness of spiritual conviction that his intention
is pure, then whatever presents itself for his creative consideration, he may rest assured, is
proper material, no matter how ill-favored or dissonant or even destructive it may at first
glance appear. It would be such only if attracted to a flickering or wavering central concept.
Though darkness may be the cold containment of death, you would use its shadows to fill the
supporting hollows in the nobility of your design.

"The containers of destructive influence, deterrent when held in the isolation of themselves,
may be made subservient to higher purpose when justly incorporated into its design. That
incorporation, moreover, is at least one step toward the dissolution of the ugliness of
incompletion. It is in that respect also a truly creative contribution towards the unfoldment.

"Say the timorous, 'Touch not pitch, lest ye be defiled. I would not handle these destructive
forces lest their repercussion upon myself would destroy me.' And so indeed they might were
you to grasp them in your own weak person unsupported by the cleansing inner fire of
purpose that warms them to pliancy. If in your work such dismaying things present
themselves, examine not their unmodified influence; examine not the steadfastness of your
own spiritual fire to measure against them; but search upon the strength of purity of the
intention that has evoked them. If that be true and nobly tall, then perchance these darker
figures, that loomed at first so large, will be seen to be but the fragments to set in the mosaic
of its pediment.

"'These be things of evil,' say you, 'that come to me for expression, and I am afeared of them
and what they may do to me,' and you hide behind avoidance. But before you dismiss them,
enquire why they come, why they demand expression. Seek in yourself whether you know
what expression they demand. Is it of themselves and the evil you think you see within them?
Or is it a grasping for the chance of expression in a greater whole? If they seem to overtower
you, so that you be ascared for your own integrity if you entertain them for use, glance
behind you to the shaft of your endeavor - and behold it overtops you both! On the painter
man's palette are all colors - the light and the dark. If he limns his picture only with the white
and the gold, then will men cry on him, 'Insipid!' and will not look. To select for your
creation only that which, unrelated, you call high and noble, omitting the aidment of the
darkness which cries for use, that is, in more senses than one, an avoidment of opportunity.

"The only criterion you can put yourself as to what I called the purity of original intention is
not an intellectual examination of motive, but an orientation of inner being toward a hunger
or desire to produce something - comprised within the limitations of the present project - that
shall be an expression of ultimate harmony.

"All this that we have said applies to all the created work in the finite universe, as it has
evolved to its present state of development, from the simplest of material elements to the
highest response-mechanisms of the All-Conscious in finite embodiment. These things have
been created by intelligence, self-evolved. Anything that intelligence makes is fashioned by
these methods. One of the most important and responsible objects of your own creative
powers is yourself. That method in that task, also you employ. You employ it in every
moment that is actually creative. That method, and that method alone, is your tool for the
fashioning of your whole life as well, now and forever after, until, in the mysterious rounding
to a conclusion of whatever the Great Purpose may be, your handiwork will be fitted into the
finite Completion. Therefore, study it well; for its application, and for the comfortableness of
its assurance, is fitting to all occasions."
 Chapter II
DISCOMFORT AND UNHAPPINESS

We are primarily interested in ourselves and our reactions. That is why I have decided next to
insert Gaelic's dissertations on our human relationships, postponing until the last our status in
the cosmos.

The first challenge the new born baby makes to its world is a revolt against discomfort. Why
are we ever uncomfortable? Why are we ever in pain? Why are we ever unhappy? Is it
because we have 'fallen into a state of sin,' as an earlier generation had it? Should we be
ashamed of it, as of a defect?

"Hardly that," says Gaelic. "It is a byproduct of evolution; of the fact that we are evolving
creatures." And evolution, he points out, is an affair of expediencies.

"You have been accustomed," said he, "to think of the interplay of natural forces, and what
might be called the mechanical devices of the nature which is outside of yourselves as
representing devices perfected. As a matter of fact nature is not only imperfect but clumsy,
and her ends are attained by a series of compromises and expedients fashioned from the
ragtag material of millions of unsuccessful or half successful experiments. Only in certain
brilliant exceptions do the means and the end fit themselves in ideal correspondence. The
ends are indeed secured through clever and most ingenious use of the methods employed, but
the methods themselves are in a vast majority of cases inferior to those that could be created
were the past experiments to be wiped out and a fresh start made ab initio.

"In these compressed, sketchy and fragmentary dissertations it is impossible to illustrate as

fully as clarity would demand. You are more familiar with your own physical bodies than
with any other natural phenomena. If you yourselves were called upon, I make no doubt that
your unaided intellect could invent modifications of apparatus by which many bodily
functions could be carried out quite as effectively and with infinitely greater precision and
comfort. I will adduce only one example: the method of physical human birth. It has, as
considered from the point of view of mechanics, about one recommendation only: that is, that
it produces the child. From any other point of view it is a remarkably bungling method, the
result of countless semi-futile experiments in the course of evolution. Experiments in
reproduction have been made in many, many different ways: simple division of cells,
production of spores, external planting of seeds, and so forth, by many widely different
expedients - tentative gropings toward something which will fulfill all requisites, not only of
reproduction of kind but also of many psychical relations and dependencies. You may see
most of these experiments carried to an approximate perfection all about you. This principle,
the thing that has emerged from each experiment, has often been employed in whole or in
part in subsequent more elaborate attempts. This obtains throughout all developing natures
from the sub-microscopic to the super-telescopic. Everything is becoming.

"The corollary to unsuccessful experiment, incomplete experiment, as yet fragmentary

experiment, is always discomfort. Discomfort is a word that may be translated into a dozen
others - disharmony, sin, thunder and lightning. And, parenthetically, if your connection or
affinity or sensitiveness or receptivity or whatever you call it happens by mysterious ancestry
to be close enough to one or another of these things that are going on, its or their discomfort
will be very decidedly and really echoed in yourself. It is quite true that a north wind may set
you all on edge; and it is useless to attempt to nullify effects of this kind by the easy
statement that it is 'in the course of nature' and therefore must be right. And my north wind
may also be translated into, not twelve, but hundreds of concepts.

"The experiment of each creature, or entity, or force - or, more inclusively, quality of
consciousness - to evolve that which will nearest fit the need, is builded of the simpler
experiments on similar lines of simpler qualities of consciousness that has gone before it,
with the addition of its own contribution. It comes into possession of the elements of these
earlier, perhaps blundering experiments through that reverberation back from the Cosmic
Consciousness whose awareness-mechanisms those qualities of consciousness are. Each
quality of consciousness - and therefore each living thing - is an awareness-mechanism by
means of which the Cosmic Consciousness becomes aware of itself. Through experiments of
these awareness-mechanisms the Cosmic Consciousness gains its experience and memory,
which is its immortality in the finite. The reverberation back of which I spoke is the
occupation, through what you call instinct, by the individual entity, of that body of
experience, through experiment, gained by its own and other qualities of consciousness.

"Now in the lower quality of consciousness you of course know that the instinctive action is
the principle, and that oftentimes the instinctive action has a perfection which enlists your
admiration and is your despair. Man has not, for example, reached the political integrity of a
colony of ants. The instinctive actions are almost invariably surely and accurately wise in
adaptation to the need. Therefore, the lower forms of life fulfill that life with a beautiful
precision which higher forms increasingly lack. This is not because of a degeneration from
even approximate wisdom on the part of the higher animal. It is because as consciousness
rises in evolution the field of the precise instinctive action is narrowed and the field of the
reasoned - and blundering - experimental action is widened.

"The contribution of experiment by the lowest qualities of consciousness is almost

infinitesimal as compared with the ready-made instinctive correspondences to life. In man,
however, the instincts are reduced to the bare minimum necessary to self-preservation, and to
him is accorded the privilege and the duty of experiment - and blunder. The things that are
ready-made for him are his body and his bodily instincts. Both, from one point of view, are
marvelous. From another, as I have said, they are often clumsy. The rest is largely his.

"In the further development of consciousness he will find his ready-made portion still more
limited. He will make his own body, so to speak.

"I would add a great deal more, but am warned I must not. I must say this very briefly - and
too briefly. Just as the blundering but fairly successful experiments are synthesized, so to
speak, into a gratuitous equipment of a higher order of beings, so does the process continue
beyond yourselves. Your own original experiments or adaptations - as far as they are
successful to the degree of meeting conditions - enter the higher consciousness to be
reverberated back toward the equipment of something beyond your ken.

"That is not adequate. Very diluted. Very bad," he finished with an air of dissatisfaction.
 Chapter III
THE PROCESS OF CREATION

1. (NO TITLE)

Although the communicator seemed dissatisfied with the form of his remarks on discomfort
and unhappiness, he did not again directly recur to the subject. His concluding statement,
however, led straight to another aspect of man's life.

We had been given glimpses, in the course of other discussions, of man's interdependence
with the rest of creation. He is one cell of the body of Cosmic Consciousness: one of its
mechanisms by which it becomes self-aware. But his affiliations, it seems, are even more
sharply defined. He cannot stand or work alone. However solitary his desire, he is in spite of
himself a member of a Group. He belongs to this group because of affinity. Toward it he has
certain definite, inescapable responsibilities. This is true whether he is actively conscious of
the fact or not.

Of what nature is this group? What is the affinity that joins him to it? How long and for what
purpose is he held to it? What is the kind of connection he has with it? What are those
responsibilities, and what are the penalties for their avoidance?

2. THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT

We were led to this subject in rather a curious and roundabout fashion. We had been
discussing the ancient puzzle; and there had been decidedly two sides to the discussion.

One faction maintained that just as sometimes it appears that a man is made criminal by the
shape of his skull, so in general man's character and deeds are conditioned by physical make-
up. Man is made by his body, or at least heavily modified by his body.

The other side did not like this and argued back.

Like most discussions, it got nowhere. Instead, it branched out. The body is one sort of
external condition. Its inhabitant cannot get away from it. But how about other sorts of
external conditions? How much effect have they? To what extent is one justified in running
away from them - if he can?

Every time!

But hold on! Take the Family. That's an external condition. Some families are a blight on
those who belong to them. Do they just bust up? Or do they stick it out? It is simple to say
bust it up; but we reached out and recited a lot of specific instances where it was not so easy
to decide. Life is not so naive.
3. THE REASON FOR THE GROUP

"The points of view, as to how much manifested character is determined by the physical
vehicle, and how much the physical vehicle is molded by the character, are not antipathetic
but are segments of one circle," stated Gaelic as to our first discussion. So both factions were
right.

"What a man is capable of," he explained, "is indeed conditioned by the shape of his skull,
the proportionate activity of his glands. On the other hand, his skull is so shaped and his
glands are so activated because his characteristics clothe themselves accurately. The physical
characteristics are mechanically and physically hereditary in family and race - they depend
upon mechanical transmission through the germ plasm. A human soul to whose attributes
these characteristics are more or less accurately fitting, is attracted to and embodied in one
race or one family rather than another for that reason.

"Now any group of people, no matter how large or how small, are a group because of a
certain impetus in the world for the working out of which to its finish of dynamics the
contribution of effort of a single individual is not sufficient. The impetus is at once a product
of, and a responsibility of, a certain group type of entity. When that impetus is worked out,
whether it be of constructive or deterrent or destructive nature, that group, whether it be of a
single family, a nation, or a race, dissolves and comes to an end."

In that statement is the whole reason for, and the ultimate termination of every type of human
gathering whatever. It will therefore bear re-reading.

"This blending in final harmony with larger cosmic currents may be hastened or delayed
according as the members of the group accept, and work out those group tendencies or
characteristics - which at first view seems sometimes unjust, sometimes unaccountable, and
always outside any dependencies, so far as we can see, on anything the individual is or
desires or has done.

"This breaking into a vast diversity through individual initiative, generally blundering, and
the leading back to original simplicity through faithful working out, generally blundering, is
only another example of that breaking to complexity and reuniting in simplicity which
obtains in all other cosmic processes.

"If a human being finds himself hampered and confined by accident of body, by bounds of
temperament, limited by an overwhelming group tradition which has imposed itself in the
plastically receptive period of life, all of which is outside of his own origination of impetus,
he must reflect that this is the condition of his group problem - it is the field of his group
activity; it is his opportunity of group contribution, quite aside from his intimate, entirely
personal job. He must reflect that he is allied to this group and imposed upon by these
conditions because, in a way too complicated to sketch here, his own problem, his own
degree in development, fits him to it - just as his other characteristics drew him magnetically
to clothe himself in those confining physical characteristics which we call heredity. And he
must reflect, for his encouragement, that each hampering or confining group-characteristic
which he succeeds in lifting from its lower turmoil through his personal development to
conscious higher harmony, is that much done and finished with and put behind of the whole
group problem.

4. THE RESOLVING OF GROUP PROBLEMS

"A family will start with a tremendous black burden of narrowness, bigotry, intolerance,
whatever you will, which being subscribed to fully and lived out consistently by all members
of the family in succeeding generations, will grow in power and volume of influence until an
inharmony is created in cosmos of tremendous consequence. And it will persist as a deterrent
thing to which human entities will be magnetically drawn, until bit by bit and little by little
through hard won illumination those individuals have lived out and through to harmony, and
little by little and bit by bit have dissolved it.

"The interrelation to the personal development is too complicated a subject to undertake here.
Suffice it to say that this is not a horrible thought but one of great encouragement, for degree
of development is not measured by space passed but by pressure overcome, and those
hindrances imposed, as we say, by no fault of one's own but by the group condition, afford
opportunity for exerting pressure which would not otherwise be afforded. The measure of
one's life, from this point of view only, must be not only the measure of one's own personal
progress but also to what degree or extent one has emerged constructively from the undiluted
group attitude, which must be his in youth, to an individual solution.

"Now it must not be misunderstood in this very brief exposition that all group
agglomerations are unconstructive. There is also a class of impetus which makes for
construction. I give you the other side today because it applies more to the present problem.

"You must not forget," said he, "the element of group loyalty. That is the basis of race
patriotism: it is the basis of family cohesion: it is the basis of finishing the job. The army is
engaged upon the building of the bridge, the tunneling of the mountain - 'We will all work it
out together.'

"Yes, Uncle Peter is a hard, dour man. He oppresses the poor and steals from the rich. He
will probably be hung at last. But he is in the family. Let us get together and work it out, so
that there will not be another embodiment of Uncle Peter! For just as long as his problem
remains unsolved it must continue to seek embodiment in the family. Perhaps it is your
particular job to rid the family of Uncle Peterishness. If you succumb and carry on the Uncle
Peter tradition, so to speak, then you impose a burden on another who is to come. And you do
not release yourself from any part of the job; you must still, here or elsewhere, bend your
back to that labor.

"That is one reason, merely by way of light aside, one reason why so many on this side are
working so hard and so yearningly over those on that side; it is merely a matter of a group
job."

5. A MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD HIS GROUP

This seemed good, as far as it went, and quite cleared up a number of people with 'Uncle
Peters' of one sort or another in their immediate families. But Gaelic was not through with
the subject. At the next opportunity he continued with it.

"The individual man is a member of, not one narrow group only, such as the family, but also
of a succession of ever more inclusive groups until he is to be considered finally, as far as
your earth life is concerned, a member of that which comprises the sum-total of earthly
incarnations. Each of these groups has its own type of problems, good and evil, to be worked
out, all of which have the same characteristics of being beyond the power and scope of
individual solution, but which may eventually be worked out by individual contribution
toward solution.

"They have also the characteristic in common that they are individual problem and
responsibility.

"The exact form in which, and the exact manner in which, they are proposed are dependent
upon the individual circumstance. The human being is born upon your planet and conditioned
by its limitations because his state of being fits those limitations. He is born Chinese or
Arabian or African or Caucasian, and conditioned by the peculiar limitations which inhere
racially, because his state of being fits more or less accurately those limitations. He is born
into a family and is conditioned by the heredity of physical makeup, because his state of
being finds a comfortable fit within those limitations. He is born with certain physical
qualities of body which limit him in his possibilities, because his state of being does not, at
that state of development, press beyond the bounds thus set for him.

"So, while one may say that an incarnate is by the fact of incarnation unable to reach the
same powers of perception as the discarnate; while we may say that a man born, bred and
educated in the criminal slums cannot by that fact be responsibly aware of higher ethics;
while we say that a man born with certain glandular secretions cannot attain a normal
balance, we must not therefore conclude that fatal circumstance is to bear the entire burden as
an explanation. The state of being has not actually formed the outside envelope, as some
schools of your thought would have you believe; but it has come by a sort of magnetic
attraction of appropriateness to that circumstance which most nearly clothes it.

"Now the hope and the release come through the vital and intelligent working out by the
individual according to his capacity and the opportunity of his own progress, toward
harmony and enlightenment. Just as each embryo passes in review the whole biological
history before it arrives at that point where it is to function as an independent human being;
so, as a member of the group, will the human entity live through the spiritual history of that
group before arriving at the point where it can function as an independent worker on its
destiny. As the embryo wholly and completely lives its life as cell, reptile, fish, tailed animal,
and so on; so the child lives wholly committed to the outlooks, the points of view, the beliefs,
prejudices, temperamental vices of its own group, the family. It has the family attitude; it has
the family loves and hates, tastes and religion, politics, sympathy, hardness, courtesy,
rudeness, which is the atmosphere of its little group.

"So the youth in his larger group is provincial, ignorantly arrogant toward what he lumps
together as 'foreigners,' ineptly patriotic without thought that patriotism means aught but self-
assertion, and blandly indifferent to the peoples beyond his border.
"Only a little broader is the Caucasian within his race, is the Arabian, proud and self-centered
beneath his desert stars, is the African, convinced that whatever powers of magic the white
man possesses - he alone is the great man of earth. And so the Chinese, secure within the
age-old serenity, looks with contempt upon the 'foreign devil.' And so the human race in its
youth bends its eyes downward towards its speck of earth and cries out against the few who
raise their eyes.

"But as the child grows to manhood, just as when the embryo grows to human form, it begins
to appraise and utilize what has been unthinkingly a part of itself. It is knowledged in the
family temper or the family pride, the family point of view toward human kind, the family
religion and the family politics, the family traits of all kinds that make a group. He does one
of two things: he controls and utilizes them by the alchemy of his personality: or he
continues, unresisting, their tradition.

"If he does the former, there is either that much more or that much less of this particular
impetus, which had originated far back in that particular group. If he does the latter,
responsibility in his case has been passed on and must be worked out by others who follow.
Furthermore, he has, by his indifference, so accentuated these certain qualities in himself that
his magnetic attraction toward this type of limitation in the future is greatly intensified.

"On the other hand, if he has, by even ever so little, worked out a portion or a phase of this
group impetus, he has not only removed just so much limitation from the world, but he has
also lightened the human burden for his successors on this particular job and, naturally,
qualified for a wider field himself.

"This can only be done according to his knowledge and his capacity. The child is not
responsible for storming at the servants. It is the family habit, and he thinks it is the only
way. The man who has literally never realized cannot be responsible for what he does not
know. But intellect and the perceptions come into contacts outside the group, and they cannot
fail to bring the seeds of enlightenment through comparison."

6. SURGICAL LIFTING OF LIMITATIONS - GLANDS

For the moment no one had anything to say. All questions seemed to be answered. But
reflection showed this not to be so.

How about constructive energy? How about those clever chaps who remove a little pressure
in the skull and thus transform a criminal into a model of all the virtues? There are such
cases. How about those medicinal gland stimulants that work apparent magic in altering a
man's whole being as respects health, mentality - yes, even stature? There must be a catch in
it here. If one is supposed to work out his group problem by his own transcendence of the
limitations, how is he justified in dodging the whole issue by changing himself, not through
his own efforts but by outside mechanical means?

But Gaelic saw no difficulty here.

"Now in our discussion," said he, "I must remind you to keep constantly in mind that what is
said in principle of one group applies in principle to all kinds of groups. I must also remind
you to keep before you the basic idea that as a whole the group impetus is beyond the power
of the individual. Also that the problem of the individual is in the main a portion or phase of
the group problem, according to his personal capacity and aptitude. Therefore, if he works
out his individual development, he automatically also works out, as far as the individual can,
the group problem. It follows that if the group problem is by so much carried out, there is so
much less of it to weigh upon the other members of his group. In that thought you may
glimpse the interrelations of efforts and the value to others of that real progress you make for
yourself. You may also, perhaps, glimpse the reverse, and perceive how imposing additional
limitation on yourself through inertia and indifference imposes an additional burden of
limitation on those magnetically attracted to your group. This is for the automatic
relationships.

"There enters also a semi-automatic relationship, as one might say. If the individual works
out within himself his own portion of the group impetus, he will in the process, by a
universal law, have produced something, which manifests or clothes or makes evident that bit
of development in the external world. It may be a concrete thing, or a bit of practical
knowledge, or merely an externalized spiritual attitude or radiation; but whatever its form, it
is there existent in an appropriable shape for those who can reach out for it and utilize it.
Whenever such an appropriation is made by another, not only does the utilization aid further
in the solving of that group impetus, but in repercussion it renders stable the advancement of
the one first attaining.

"Note carefully that these things are produced for appropriation - I use the word advisedly.
The appropriative movement comes from the spirit of the one who takes. The wares may be
as attractively arranged and displayed as you will, but there must be no forcing or selling
campaign. If there is that attempt, you are making an assault on the freedom of spirit which is
the necessary prerequisite for any actual advance.

"Now do you not see that, so far from acquiring merit by acquiescing in the limitations to
which your former state of being has been drawn, simply because you cannot tear them down
with your bare hands, you are wholly justified in reaching out in appropriation of whatever
tools, of whatever kind, your fellow group members have manifested from the spirit of their
own efforts toward a working out of their own particular portion of what is wrong with their -
and your - group? And do you not see that, if by so doing you tear asunder your own
limitations, you have not only released yourself for wider efforts, but by the practical
demonstration of the value of those tools you have justified the other's efforts?

"The men who have worked to perfect a medical remover of limitations have worked in their
own sphere of capacity on a portion of the great group problem - How comes human
infirmity? Naturally that is but a part of the great human impetus upon the working out of
which each in his own way, every member of humanity is, or should be, engaged. Whatever
any one of them accomplishes or manifests for appropriation is just so much of an advance
toward the final solution. It may be, probably is, of the most concentrated efficiency in his
own case. He has accomplished that much anyway in the whole task, whether his results are
ever appropriated or not. But with each intelligent appropriation by another of his group the
effect toward solution is thereby expanded, and so much less remains for the future of the
race. So much for justification.

"Now as to the other aspect that probably will occur to you; why, if so serious a limitation is
imposed upon him, should so simple an effect suffice to relieve it? An easily relievable
limitation of any kind, no matter how it appears, is a limitation whose impetus has been
nearly run through.

"A man born with a badly shaped skull is imprisoned within the intelligence that shape
imposes. Neither surgery nor serum can lift that weight. The only removal of such a
limitation must come through as earnest an effort as capacity permits toward filling out all
the possibilities within that limitation. Then in future states of being he will find himself
more or less relieved, but always sufficiently so as to leave room for further repetition toward
expansion.

"But in the case where the administration of some simple remedy brings about what you call
complete normality, that is an indication that somewhere or somehow, by the united progress
of many efforts, this particular phase of impetus is nearing its conclusion. Those afflicted
with faulty glands fifty years ago were in as defined a limitation as our man with the
deformed skull. There was no known remedy; the impetus had not been worked out. Nor has
it yet been entirely worked out, but it is in a fair way of accomplishment. The gift, not yet
quite in perfection, but usefully appropriable is in the world.

"Let us take," said Gaelic, "a suppositious case of gland deficiency. A man is born with this
particular physical deficiency because, roughly speaking, his state of being or development,
the kind of entity he has become, takes on readily this deficiency. This is his individual
handicap, which he must work out for progress. It is also a physical handicap for mankind,
which mankind must work out for its progress. And it is, furthermore, one of a multitude of
limitations, the sum total of which magnetically attracts to incarnation those entities whose
state of being is at that point in progress.

"Now the gland deficiency results in a certain type of mind, way of activity, trend of thought,
of a quite different nature from what those things would be in that individual were the gland
deficiency not present. He is, as you say, a different person. Now if by the intelligent act of
appropriation he reaches forth for the medical knowledge to rearrange the gland secretions,
he has availed himself of the working out on the part of the whole of that particular
deficiency. He has by the act of appropriation, as expressed a moment ago, strengthened by
justification, and so has contributed his due part toward that aspect of the problem. He has
finished with that phase; and in other, liberated aspect of his personality - which as you say is
quite different - he will find a new phase of the group impetus to which to apply himself.

"Now it must be recorded further, and emphasized, that the individual ultimately shares
according to his effort, in any direction, in the whole body of removal of limitations.
Therefore, while immediately of the greatest importance to himself is the direction of his
effort, in the long run he is compensated all along the line. It is the avid activity with which
he exerts pressure that is the measure of his accomplishment. That pressure is exerted in the
direction his perception and knowledge show him. If a handicap of a physical nature prevents
him from pushing aside the obstruction to as great an extent as would have been possible
without the physical handicap, nevertheless the ultimate effect is commensurate with the
effort made, rather than with the visible result obtained. The removal of the handicap is too
often taken merely as an opportunity to diminish pressure."
7. THE QUESTION OF MORONS AND IMBECILES

That also seemed satisfactory, for the time being. However, further discussion raised another
difficulty. The argument seemed to be that one must transcend or reduce his limitation by his
own effort, even if that effort was only one of appropriation. How about the moron, or the
total imbecile without sense of direction or initiative? Someone calls in the doctor, and he is
restored. He has nothing to do with it. And how did he happen to be an imbecile in the first
place?

"By indifference, inertia and neglect of one's opportunities for expansive life we have seen
that, so far from removing or enlarging limitations, one but assures to them added potency
when one enters one's next opportunity. In a way it is as if a focus on this lack or need was in
the first instance too diffused, and must now be concentrated so that other possible interests
are left outside the field of vision and one's possibilities are narrowed to an obligatory
attention. Conceive still an indifference, inertia and neglect, a continued acquiescence in
these new limitations without the normal pressure towards transcendence of them, and you
will find the limitations still further narrowed, the individual attention still more sharply
focused, his possible activity still further circumscribed. When near the vanishing point of
this continued process you find him narrowed, not only to the point of such physical
disability as cripples him to a place of contemplation of the sun, but his mental movements
bound within the circumference of almost the lowest animal. His start upward must come
from an interest as vigorous in proportion to his capacity as would equal the pressure, in
proportion to his capacity, of the most enlightened spirit of you all. Nevertheless the outward
and visible seeming of the effort would appear no more than instinctive stirring toward the
sunlight and away from the chill of the shadow.

"But there comes a point when even such a movement seems to hang in a balance of
equilibrium, and it is a question whether or not the germ of personality is to dissolve into its
original elements or swing back up the slow and difficult arc. At that point it seems that even
the opportunity for exerting what you call proportionate pressure has left the power of that
atrophied will. Some outside help must be given, not toward supplying a deficiency which
the entity itself must fill for stable development, but merely to place it in the way of making
the first effort.

"Now this type of arbitrary administration of help, rather than the usual and justifiable offer
of the materials for self help, is the only type of instance in which what one might call
assistance by authority is permissible. I have carried the process back to its first elements
merely to illustrate the kind of assistance this must be. It may be offered - generally is offered
- far short of the immanent point of final disintegration. The instance you spoke of lately - a
person insane, forcibly taken to a treatment; your other instance of placing one possessed in
the way of dispossession by another - both these in principle are not far different from my
type example.

"Both have reached a state of equilibrium where not the will but the power to apply pressure
is lacking. Your contribution consists merely in so placing the person that there is a chance of
disturbing this equilibrium to permit once more of individual application, no matter how
small in outward seeming - as one touches the pendulum of a wound clock to start its
machinery once more.
"This that I have said is almost self-evident. I offer it merely to round out the course in group
work, and its extent, and the justification of interrelated activities between its individuals.

8. MISTAKEN HELP

There is here required a warning, which Gaelic proceeded to utter. Mistaken, officious, ill-
timed 'help' is in reality no help at all.

"If by making a person's decision for him, of any kind, you have deprived that person of a
certain opportunity and therefore a certain property, you have robbed him, with the best
intentions in the world," he said. "He may gain thereby certain easements unearned, but at the
same time he has been forced to forego a chance for certain self-building which the process
of earning would have accomplished for him.

"Taken in the group sense, this thing that you have presented him, this thing you have
prevented him from doing, is in the group impetus still undone. It remains to be done, and
must await another combination of circumstances making that thing possible. That may not
recur until a considerable time, and the group is burdened with the effects until that time has
come. That is for the group aspect.

"Now as to the personal aspect; in the law of compensation sooner or later you must make
restitution in kind for whatever you have appropriated. Some time in your two histories an
extra effort from yourself for the other will be demanded and must be made, when condition
and opportunity serve. This apparently gratuitous service accounts for most of the
responsibility for others outside of the natural affection and desire. It is the affinity which
you will probably recognize.

"As to the assumption vicariously of the immediate consequence of that which you have
arbitrarily taken from the other, that may well happen. But it will not be by way of any
immediate compensatory balance. It is merely because unguarded you have stepped too close
within their zone of action. You did not belong within that zone of action, remember, and
unless your insulation is strong it probably will come about that you will be affected."

"How," asked someone, "does one know the difference between the service which you owe
and that for which you are going to owe later?"

"That is a very pertinent question," replied Gaelic. "The gratuitous service that one owes
comes about in such a way, when conditions are ripe, that one is forced to pay it by force of
circumstances. You have the general principle of offer and appropriation for your ordinary
guidance."
 Chapter IV
IMMORTALITY: ITS EVOLUTION

1. A DEFINITION OF TERMS

To understand the underlying concepts in Gaelic's opening words on this subject, it is

necessary to define briefly what he will later take up at length.

The Universal Consciousness, in the finite, is aware of itself, in its various aspects, through
its creations. These are its awareness-mechanisms, its senses, so to speak. As it evolves these
mechanisms, it becomes, through them, more and more aware of itself.

Each created thing, in the finite, is the manifestation or embodiment of a certain quality of
consciousness peculiar to itself. The quality of treeness, evolved and differentiated in the
Universal Consciousness, manifests objectively as the tree. The quality of dogness makes the
dog and so on. Anything in nature is merely, in last analysis, as assemblage of protons,
electrons and neutrons. The thing that assembled them in any particular form is the Idea of
that form, or, as Gaelic terms it, the particular quality of consciousness, That is what Gaelic
means in his use of the word 'quality.'

If that is clearly understood, we can proceed.

2. ITS GERM

"Everything that is is life," he began abruptly. "From the moment that it emerges by
juxtaposition from the theoretical 'void' in which dwell your mathematical 'points.' It is the
manifestation of intention. That intention is naturally at first of almost inconceivable
simplicity. Nevertheless, it is intention. And it is life. Then what you call external
manifestation of that life is the material embodiment of the intention. The direction, or what
Joan called the quality of the intention determines the form of life. What you know already,
but must remind yourselves of, is that everything you see, touch or measure or can become
cognizant of by any imaginable means is always the external manifestation, through life, of
intention. There are no dead things.

"You have been told that rocks have life. It is literally true. And it must be literally true if
what I have just said is so. Now let us remember for a moment that just for our present
purposes we will consider, Joan's 'quality of consciousness' and 'intention' as much the same.
The lower forms of animal life, as an example - insects or reptiles or fishes - touch individual
existence as dust motes touch individual existence, eddying in and out of a sun ray. They
flash for a greater or lesser period, and are obscured. They have gained nothing as motes
during their brief life of illumination; they lose nothing as motes when they slip out into the
shadow. But they have added, perhaps, some little bit of beauty in the eye of the one who has
beheld; and so their very evanescence has fulfilled a purpose. In almost similar fashion the
billions of ants and bees and humming life that swarms everywhere slips into and out of
individual embodiment, adding, as Joan's philosophy has told you, not only to its own
quality, enlarging its own intention, so to speak, but the tiny bit of experience it gains as an
individual; but contributing to the experience and memory of those things and beings with
which its little circumscribed, individual life may bring it in contact.

"Now at a certain point in the expression of this ant-intention, as one might say, there happen
small, individual instances in which perhaps some one ant, in the tiniest, feeblest - one might
almost say negligible - fashion, steps out, as it were, of the ant routine. He does this because
his quality is exuberant with the gifts that all his kind for perhaps ages past have brought to it
from their brief incursions into personality.

"Now that exuberance, that superfluity of quality," he went on, "reaching on tiptoes to its
highest point, just touches the thing above that ant-quality; and from that touch, like
electricity, a spark springs into existence, and another quality is born. And from that quality
in turn come those brief flashes into material personality - each bringing his little gift of
function fulfilled - until it, too, fills to the overflowing point. And so on up.

"Does that give you a little glimpse into Evolution?

"Very well. At a point in the upward progress there comes a time when the individual,
leaving the sun ray, carries with him a little self-contained glow of his own. The glow is very
faint and very simple. It does not represent a constituted individual, such as existed when the
thing was what you call 'alive'; it may represent only one or two or three characteristics out of
perhaps a hundred that made up the complete carnate thing - but those three, glowing in the
darkness, call to themselves magnetically all the complimentary things they need. And when,
in the quality of that particular thing, this little persistent glow has thus made itself a
completed whole, it is born again into the world of personality - not as the same individual,
exactly, but carrying within itself its own germ of immortality.

"So in that sense we may say individual immortality begins pretty far down in the scale.

"But you can see that the question of personal immortality, as distinguished from individual,
is not quite answered. Nor can it be answered by saying it begins with, say, horses or dogs or
canary birds or anything. Why? For the very simple reason that it is individual."

3. THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL

"We have at this point a glimpse of the small beginnings of an individual immortality - or
perhaps continuity is better. That is, continuity of a separate thing. It is not necessarily
personal. Certain incomplete but individual characteristics of that separate thing or being
pass over into its Idea or Intention or Quality of the universal consciousness that makes it
what it is. The particular separate things do not entirely dissolve back. They persist; and they
attract to themselves all the other bits necessary to produce another complete being. These
characteristics, then, have persisted in continuity.

"But there comes a time when these characteristics gain such strength and number that they
go on as personal.

"You might say," said he, "that a soul is born."

"When and why does this happen?

"A soul is born when of his own volition the individual looks with love, not only outside of,
but above him-self," we are told.

In that simple statement there are three elements; the free will element; the affectional
element; the worshipful element. All three are necessary. When all three are present,
continuity of a personal entity of some sort, for some duration, is predicated.

That implies that at least the embryonic soul has sometimes inception in animals lower than
the human. This implication was not dodged.

"A wild animal's relationships," explained our Invisible, "in ties of affection or affectional
interest, are primarily with his own species, and remotely - secondarily - with a few
individuals of other species - sometimes. The wild dog's relationships are of that type. But in
the case of the domesticated dog, he has interchange, not merely of physical needs and the
subtle dependencies attendant on physical needs, but little by little, from his juxtaposition
with man, he enters into such realities as loyalty, unselfish love, and at times even into the
highest sacrifice.

"There is a point, in degree, when the development of the spiritual realities so strengthen the
dog's entity that he has that included spiritual cohesion that will endure. I shall not attempt
even to indicate the precise point. Not all, nor indeed many, domestic dogs acquire from their
human contacts more than an accelerated opportunity for the development of gifts for their
quality. Only in the case of a few does the process go so far as to fix the possibility of an
enduring thing. At times you almost recognize this fact - when you say that a certain dog is
'almost human.'

"Now it is a fact, or a law, that while an individual dog, and a fairly complete individual dog,
can be born again materially as a dog, with the addition of his lacking characteristics drawn
from his quality, a 'personal dog' will not be born again as a dog.

"A new soul must be born from the quality above its own."

This was not entirely clear in all its implications, though the main point was plain enough.

"What," asked our Invisible, "has any entity to look up to with this magic relationship, which
has the power to confer this great gift? On the material plane man alone can stand in this
relationship.

"I am not quite sure of that. There may be exceptions to what seems to me a rule. But that is
the case in anyway a vast majority of cases.

"I think the reason is because man himself most consistently looks upwards and receives
from above. Haven't you noticed how universal and how strong is mankind's instinct for
making pets, or domesticating? On the surface it seems like a play-instinct - a frill -
something not serious - aside from serious life. As a matter of fact, it is extremely deep-
seated; and lacking more promising material men have been known to expend infinite pains
in the taming of spiders or crickets or other such things. It is the calling-out instinct; through
it they evoke the very thing they bestow. Its base is the same base that you will find when
you dig deep enough into any aspect of any subject anybody anywhere can propound - from
communication to creation - SYMPATHY. If you dig deep enough you strike rock every
time.

"Now you have thought that when a soul was born, free will was born; that they were
contemporaneous, so to speak. That is not quite so. You cannot doubt that when an ant comes
head on to a pebble he has the choice and the privilege of turning to right or left. That is
certainly free will. But the more simple, the lower down the scale the organism is, the more
circumscribed is the uncrossable circumference within which his free will works. Growth is
the expansion of that circle. That is all. And the moment of the soul's birth so expands that
circle that includes a knowledge and a choice of right and wrong, good and evil; together
with a perception - at first very faint, and at best dim and wavering - of the difference
between going in harmony and the dour despairful struggle against the rush of life. That is
the real free will. And that is the gift that at the birth of the soul the Fairy Godmother bestows
- as a weapon by which its progress may be won, or a black curse by which its very existence
may be destroyed.

"Heretofore the ordering of the climb has been in the hands of nature. Hence forward it must
be man's own.

"The soul is a feeble thing at first; it must be fostered and cherished - or it might expire. The
abundance of its own quality swaddles it about, guarding and warding it until it has gained its
strength to grasp. Then, justly, it demands that the soul, in turn, by its efforts, gain its own
abundance, that it may return to its quality manifold what it has received; in order that those
souls yet unborn, or feebly struggling in the first stirrings of life, may in their turn have
abundance from which to draw. And if he fail, he might be destroyed utterly. And he would
be destroyed utterly were it not for others, both in his own quality and in ours, to make up his
deficiencies."
 Chapter V
THE MEMORY OF CONTINUITY

1. THE QUESTION

Assuming the continuity of the individual personality as a fact, a number of questions spring
to mind.

The first and simplest is that of memory. If we have lived before, when and how shall we
come into possession of the memories of that past life? Certain occultists claim to be able to
recall a great number of them in detail. Is this so?

If it is so, then how about the doctrine of reincarnation? There again the occultists, and
certain systems such as the theosophical, are very positive in their statements.

And, speaking of such doctrines, are we to take literally those teachings that purport to tell
the minutiae of detailed conditions in the discarnate state? How about the zones, and the
multiplicity of planes, of the occultists? On the other hand, how about the carefully described
landscaped 'heavens' of those purporting to speak from the spiritualistic standpoint?

2. THE TWO TYPES OF MEMORY

"As to memory, in general, that is of two sorts," said Gaelic, "but both sorts depend on one
thing for their existence. That one thing is experience. Without something to remember,
naturally there can be no memory.

"One kind of memory is that acquired, through experience, by an entity endowed with free
will. The other sort is the result of experience by an entity not endowed with free will. Both,"
said Gaelic, "are true memory. And memory is a tool for building up the thing that possesses
it. It is by the utilized memory of experience that the body of any segregated thing is
expanded.

"The simple body of memory acquired through the simple automatic awareness-responses of
the stone, or any purely instinctive entity, builds up the faculties and content, not of a
particular stone or particular amoeba, or whatever, but the quality or intention that so
manifests itself. In that way, one might fancifully say that stones in general learn how to be
stones in increasing sufficiency. Of such type of memory is that, for example, of cells of the
body; so that one early discovers that, from long past physiological experience in the course
of evolution, such subsidiary organisms acquire better, more responsive and more efficient
methods of carrying out the intention, or the quality, in manifestation.

"The other type of memory, coming with the individual entity as such, and born with the
selecting free will which makes intelligence, builds up primarily the individual entity, and
only through it the intention or quality which it represents."
3. MEMORIES AS PERMANENT POSSESSION

Having established or stated these general principles applicable to all created things, Gaelic
particularized on man.

"Experiences," he said, "that are primarily of the first type - that is, that come to a man
through automatic awareness-responses - have their effect not on the individual man, but on
the human quality of consciousness, or intention. Therefore, though they may have their
effect in that they have added to the sum-total of race-experience, so to speak, they are not
retained in the memory of that individual. The human physical structure, to take a simple
example, is daily undergoing a great multitude of experiences having to do with the
sensational and instinctive, and therefore automatic, end of the spectrum which, as far as the
individual is concerned, have no place in his final structure. Such things as ordinary bodily
functions; some, like the beating of the heart, practically beyond conscious control, and
others occupying a borderland into which free will can always theoretically, and sometimes
practically, enter.

"But," said Gaelic, "every experience which is a matter of action by free will, however slight,
is drawn from that part of cosmos which comprises the not-done; and transferred into that
part of the cosmos which comprises the thing-done.

"The latter is in the realest sense possible a portion of the individual entity, and will forever
remain so. The course of development from that point of view is a constant transferal from
that which is outside in experience permanently to that which is - not inside, but ourselves.
Once it is a part of ourselves, it is naturally a part of our personal possessions. For one reason
or another we may not be able at will to place our hands on either any particular one of these
possessions, or, perhaps, a desired group of them. Nevertheless they are there. No act, no
experience, which has involved free will, but exists intact in the memory, and can by a proper
assembly of conditions be brought intact to the conscious mind."

This thought Gaelic emphasized on a number of occasions and in a variety of ways. The
concepts implied were necessary to his further argument. Evidently he was urgent that we
understand and accept them. They were:

Every experience wholly or partly the result of free will, results in an individual memory.

That memory is part of our permanent possession. It cannot be destroyed or lost. It is a part
of us, whether we know it or not.

4. MEMORY AS INSTINCT: RACE MEMORIES

"Let us now take the relation of the individual in memory to that content or body which is
rather the property of his quality than of his individuality, that body of memory which has
come through the pure instinct or the pure sensation. His relation to it depends entirely and
very, very simply, on the degree to which his contact possibilities are developed, as far as
they can be developed in an individual, toward race consciousness rather than personal
consciousness. In other words, the expression that 'the wider are one's human sympathies, the
more power one attains,' is here taken from the figurative and placed solidly in the practical."

To illustrate what he meant, Gaelic next gave us very careful directions which resulted in the
construction of the following diagram.

[Diagram not included with the original text. The above diagram was
created by the HTML Editor, Harmon Grahn, harmonhouse.com.]

"A, B, C, D, E, and F are individual entities; and the angles above them represent their body
or possession of memory. At first [1] they are wholly separate, distinct one from the other.
A's experiences - and hence memories - and B's experiences are different.

"But," said Gaelic, "as memory through experience expands the content or body of memory
for the individuals A, B, C, and so forth, as above described, the sides of the angles naturally
become wider apart. At a certain point [2] A and B overlap; as do also C and D, E and F,
and so on. Conceive the diverging lines to extend upwards still further; then at some point
[3, 4, 5...] portions of A, B, and C and so on will overlap. Carry the process on far
enough, and all the field of memory of all the entities will be shared, each and each alike."

Though Gaelic brings out the point later, it would be well to note here that he is talking about
possession of the body of memory, not command of it. Much of it, perhaps all of it, may well
be in the unconscious.

"Can you carry the thought on from here," asked Gaelic, "or would you ask questions? This
is an illustration merely. The point being this; that with increasing development each
individual possesses in his own body of consciousness not only the experience and memories
of that on which he has exercised his own free will, but also a portion of the experience and
memory of, first smaller, and later larger groups, and, finally of all others of his own quality.
And as they become a part of his possessions as much as though his own free will had
manufactured them, he has the same power of accession to them as to those he might
naturally consider his own.

"In the human being on earth this must naturally take place, if at all, in the farther region,
over which his control is little or none: the supra-conscious, or the subconscious.

"I concern myself with the principles and processes, leaving your intelligence to supply the
specific examples. But I would call your attention to many attested instances of those who
have thought to remember other lives, other times, other places - with the warning that this
explanation covers not all but a majority of such instances.

"Only one natural question occurs to me: it may seem to you that you possess very vivid
memories of scenes or incidents, and especially aesthetic appreciations in which it may be
difficult for you to identify the action of free will - where you have been, so to speak, a
passive spectator. For the sake of clarity I have concerned myself this evening with what one
might call primal experience: that resulting purely from the action of free will on fresh
circumstance. I would point out to you that there are also composite experiences in which the
personal reaction would be impossible were it not for a long series of other experiences in the
past.

"Two people, both of what we would call 'passive spectators,' at the same thing, would obtain
from it totally different reactions, and hence differing memories. Why? Not because at that
moment they differently applied the free will; but because in innumerable instances in the
past, in numberless differing but contributing experiences, each has differently used that
power. The cross threads and interactions and inter-relations are so complicated when one
examines detail rather than process that I ordinarily prefer not to quibble."

5. COSMIC MEMORY

"There remains of this subject but one indicated division which we have not yet touched
upon," said Gaelic next, "the relation of the human individual memory to what (for lack of a
better term) we must call Cosmic Memory.

"In attempting a discussion of this, we must first of all keep steadily and clearly before us the
realization that the Cosmos in its ultimate is inunderstandable by anything but Itself.

"We are privileged to examine it however, in any of its finite aspects, because within us is the
potential capability of understanding ultimately, as finite creatures, whatever is comprised
within the finite.

"Within the finite - for what reason, with what ultimate intent, with what relations to
dimensions whose very existence we cannot even remotely conceive - within the finite, the
intention of the All-Conscious is the same intention by which any of its creatures is actuated -
the expansion of self-consciousness by means of increasing awareness. And, as its creatures,
awareness must possess both a mechanism and an object. In the contemplation of this
original finite intent a duality within a unity must be proposed. The one member of the
duality has that which is outside itself, to be sure; but only in the sense that it is contained by,
surrounded by, comprised with the other member.

"Whether it is possible for you to gain a mental idea in this apparent contradiction in terms, I
doubt. It is only necessary for you to gain the conception that within the finite the All-
Consciousness realizes its quality of 'I AM' by awareness of itself through response-contacts.
And that the growing number and complexity of these response-contacts - which are
experience - with their accompanying memories, make that growth toward perfect self-
awareness which seems to be the end of the Cosmos within finity.

"In order to experience awareness-contacts, it is necessary to possess awareness-mechanisms

- just as any created thing possesses the mechanism of awareness of its own peculiar type,
needs, or state of development. On the simple physical side, the lungs of the fish and the
lungs of the air-breathing creatures are at once mechanisms of mechanical life and of
response to individual necessity and environment. The Awareness mechanism of the All-
Conscious, within finity, are what you call separated or segregated creations, whether the
simplest or most complex. Whatever any of these created things experiences in its impulse
toward its own self-awareness is also an experience and a memory of the All-Conscious.

"And as the memories of individuals actually and constructively enlarge and assure the body
of expansion of the individual consciousness; so does the great aggregate of awareness-
response of all created things, becoming part of the All-Conscious possession, enlarge and
self-assure the body and content of the possession of the All-Conscious.

"And just as forever in the individual no memory is lost and no memory but can be restored
by the assembly of its conditions of manifestation, so in the larger consciousness of the finite
no memory is lost and all things can be reformed."

6. MAN'S RELATION TO COSMIC MEMORY

"The human being, considered solely as an awareness-mechanism of the All-Conscious is a

delicate instrument of constantly increasing capability, and for an inscrutable reason of its
own, the All-Conscious has chosen to become aware of itself as to its power of free will
through that mechanism."

This is important enough for restatement. Just as the eyes and ears and other organs are the
awareness-mechanisms of the individual; so is the individual the awareness-mechanism of
the All-Consciousness in the finite.

7. MAN'S POSSESSION OF COSMIC MEMORY

"It is as though, one could say, that in the human body a constructing Intelligence had
selected the eye as a mechanism by which the person who was to become aware of the form
and color of his surroundings. Without the eye he could not be so aware. And that the eye -
fancifully - had the power within itself to decide for itself what it would or would not, and in
what form, allow to pass its senses into the perception of the brain! The responsibility in that
case would be considerable!

"The fundamental and ultimately important responsibility of those creatures gifted with free
will is not too unlike that crude illustration. For it is through themselves, as awareness-
mechanisms, that the All-Conscious becomes aware of its finite - its finite - Self.

"No human being can look into that consciousness with other understanding than he brings to
the contemplation of his own. But it would not be too far a cry to guess that when Its
awareness-response, through Its creatures of free will, is in harmony with the basic law, It
experiences pleasure as we experience pleasure in like case. And that when those
mechanisms respond to disharmony It feels the pain which our own personal disharmony - of
body, for example - brings to us. And that the struggle towards self-awareness, through
mistake, through ignorance, through the slow obstruction of disharmony, the feeling of effort,
of triumph, of achievement or temporary defeat, as reported or reflected or embodied in the
countless multitudes of Its creatures, is not unlike in kind our own gropings upward.

"These things, however, are in the ultra-violet of inspiration, rather than knowledge. The
little point to which all of this great speculation brings us is that in Cosmic Memory all
experience that has ever been still exists, and can be recalled.

"The relation of any human memory to it is in exact proportion as its consciousness has
expanded through development, between the diverging lines (see diagram). As the individual
becomes possessed, by expansion through effort and desire, of possessions which are the
fruit of the efforts of other entities than himself, so he reaches into the All-Conscious -
Cosmic Memory - and becomes possessed of that which he has earned. By the very nature of
the case the farther out he gets from his immediate intellectual point in development, the
more his new possessions or acquisitions of this sort enter into the intuitional or inspirational
regions.

"These are, I must repeat, at present almost completely out of your conscious manipulation. I
will say no more than that with development, even though you move along the spectrum so
to speak, conscious manipulation of what is beyond, and what you actually possess in that
beyond region of intuition and inspiration, comes more fully into your hands. What you
possess. And you possess only what your free will has brought you."

8. INSTINCTS

"You think," said Gaelic, "that your own personal memory is pretty well confined within the
limits of your present earth life, and also is pretty well defined by those limits." We
acknowledged this. He disagreed with us.

"Will you tell me, from your own memory," he challenged, "what happened in the first ten
minutes after your birth? Will you give me seriatim all that happened in any ten minutes of
the first ten years of your life? No? Where does memory begin or leave off in your earth life?

"In other words, you cannot divide this, either, into sharply bounded compartments, but must
dimly conceive of a continuous process. The memory you have at command now of your past
is a different degree of memory than you possessed thirty years ago. When you were fifteen
years of age you could pretty well recall, I hazard, the detailed happenings of the past ten
years. Is not that true? Is it not also true that your memory of the antecedent ten years was, at
fifteen, more vivid in detail than your memory now of the ten years just passed?

"The reason," said he, "is not a difference in memory, but a difference in the quality of
recollection. The memory exists, intact. There is no happening however small, however
unimportant, that cannot be recalled in its pristine vividness by the proper application of
recollection. Nothing is lost, nothing whatever.

"The power of recollection is not so haphazard as you might suppose. You say, in later life,
that your memory is getting bad. You used to have a good memory, but now you cannot even
recall what you did on Thursday of last week. Why? Is your mind failing? Not at all. The
quality and degree of recollection is precisely, and beautifully, adapted to your present need
in development as considered in relation to the particular substance in which your
consciousness embodies itself, and to which your awareness-mechanism responds. That need
differs in each and every individual. The recollection takes forth from the store-house of
experience - and that in essence is all that memory is - the store-house of experience - that
which its shaping sense (if healthy and unperverted) requires for the present need. As one
grows older, in the average case, he has less and less need to correlate or otherwise employ
the cruder physical juxtapositions which were his best raw material at an earlier stage. He is
more concerned with the employment of what we may call the distillation of the essence of
that type of experience into finer and more subtle decisions, both within himself and in his
relations with the spiritual quality, so to speak, of his fellow men. The raw material he now
needs is that distillation of essence, rather than the crude physical fact. Both the essence and
the fact are garnered within the storehouse of experience. His recollection takes that which he
needs, and refuses to burden itself with that which is unessential.

"I am speaking in the broadest sense, making no attempt to examine stray small recollections
or stray small aggravating forgetfulnesses. I seek only to sketch a principle. Now the
recollection-mechanism is a part of man's equipment, as much as his eyes or his hands. It is
actuated by himself through his mind. I refer to his whole mind, for a man can recollect by
sensation or intuition, as well as by a deliberate employment of the intellect. If this does not
instantly commend itself to you, recall the immense, sudden, but quickly obliterated
memory-impression caused by a stray perfume of flowers, sometimes, or the astounding flash
of half-grasped memory that sweeps across you like the shadow of a cloud when some
chance arrangement merely seen by the eye opens to you a whole but flashingly transitory
vision of some past. You must all have experienced those things; they are merely a
functioning of the recollection-mechanism through some aspect of the mind.

"We should then consider memory in essence as the store-house of experience. That
definition will hold, down to the lowest embodiment of consciousness. Before personality, as
such, begins, that experience is gathered by the individual as a gift to the quality or intention
embodied in him. That experience is recollected, in the sense in which we used the word,
almost automatically in responses to needs or exigencies in the life experience of the
individual. The recollection-mechanism then works through what you call instinct. As the
complexity of the creature increases, and the crises or circumstances of its existence become
therefore more complex, it is necessary to recollect - to re-collect - more and more varied bits
of experience, or memory. This experience or memory in the case of the more complex
creature has been accumulated by a long evolutionary process from many lives, not, in this
case, of the identical individual, but of the quality from which myriads of similar individuals
have sprung; and also a long series of contributing qualities, and of antecedent qualities.
Therefore a given juncture in this one individual life may actually recollect bits of the lives of
many thousands.

"In that sense, through sensation and through instinct, a creature may be said to have a
perfect recollection of many incarnations, inasfar as those recollections immediately serve
the present purpose in that creature's existence.
9. INSTINCT AS RECOLLECTION

"At a certain point this recollection according to need is made also by the intellect, as well as
by the instinct and sensation aspects of the mind. I must recall intellect to you as defined as
the focusing point of consciousness on its environment for the purpose of selection according
to its needs. At this point of conscious intellectual selection, the portion of the storehouse of
experience open to choice is at first very limited. Nevertheless it is wider in scope than you
customarily think.

"Every day the merest child is recollecting for its immediate purposes small fragments or bits
of many millions of lives through which its human quality has passed. In the short space of
two or three years, starting apparently with nothing at all, the human child acquires an
immense store of knowledge. That knowledge is so habitual a portion of everyday living that
you do not wonder at it, and your evaluation of it is dulled. Nevertheless if you would for one
day examine with a detached eye the detailed activities of a child, you could not but be struck
by amazement at merely its muscular correlations and the ease and intelligence with which it
performs feats of the body and mind which, were you to analyze them to their elements,
would present a marvelously complicated accumulation of mere knowledge. The child, as
you say, 'learns quickly' - so quickly that you are amazed at the facility. And were you to
review the ordinary equipment for the simplest life necessary to any youth of twenty, you
would sit down discouraged at the thought that in so few years so much must be inculcated.
And you would have reason to be discouraged, were it not for the fact that from many
incarnations, not necessarily personal to this one individual, but from many contributing
incarnations of quality, experience and memory have been stored away for the use of
recollection.

"If you are curious-minded enough, and philosophically enough inclined, you may trace
introspectively what you have learned by in some manner having been a tree or a bird or a
blade of grass or a living rock or whatever. And when in your daily life you employ any of
these what you call primitive instincts, you are actually to that extent re-collecting a definite
memory of a former incarnation of one sort or another.

10. THE USES OF RECOLLECTION

The preceding was the groundwork. Gaelic now proceeded, very simply, to build his
structure. He had started out, it will be recalled, to explain why, if we have lived elsewhere
than in our present earth surroundings, we have no continuous memory of the fact.

"The most of this recollection," Gaelic unfolded his argument, "is purely through the instinct
aspect of the mind. And at the risk of repetition I must point out again that mind is all one
thing, whether considered as sensation or instinct, or intellect, or intuition, or aspiration. As
long as the major portion of recollection comes through the instinctive aspect of the mind, it
will not gain that conscious continuous recognition that dwells only in the intellectual aspect.
In order to trace a given personality backward knowingly it would be requisite that you be
able to correlate and compare the different portions one with another. If that is not done,
continuity is lost; for if one object does not touch or in some such fashion become aware of
its neighbor, as far as it is concerned it is a fragment isolated.
"Now the comparing and correlating power resides in the intellectual aspect of the mind,
wherever on the spectrum it may center. And since this power of continuous recollection
resides in the intellectual aspect of the mind, we must again examine that aspect to refresh
ourselves as to its function. At any given stage of development, it cannot act outside its
function.

"The function of the intellectual aspect of the mind is to select that which is necessary for
existence in which the present stage of development of any entity has embodied it. If that
state of development demands a simple and limited environment of few and limited choices,
for the fostering of especial attributes in need of progress, the intellect will be focused merely
and entirely upon those needs; and its power of recollection will be confined to the elements
of that environment solely; leaving to the instinctive recollection, on one side, the task of
selecting from past personal incarnations that which is necessary to its persistence in that
environment; and to the intuitional aspects, on the other side, to select from the memory of
the human quality, as a quality, that which is necessary for the progressing expansion of that
entity. In that case you can very well see that consciously in correlation and continuity the
individual can have no recollection or memory of other incarnations by the very necessity
and nature of the case."

11. CONTINUITY OF MEMORY

We have then, no continuity of memory because conscious memory is for use and not for
curiosity or amusement. Nothing that has happened to us is ever really lost to us. It is in
storehouse, and can be brought out at any time by an act of recollection. As far as our
instincts are concerned, our bodily functions, the recollecting is done by a portion of the
mind outside our intellect; and the storehouse from which the recollecting is done is the race
experience largely. Likewise, often, what we call inspiration or intuition is really a
recollecting, from the same storehouse, by another portion of our minds outside the intellect.
Both types are for a purpose, and are limited to that purpose. It was on this aspect that Gaelic
began his next discourse.

"We have perhaps established a broad general principle that recollection is not an idle thing,
but is always for use. We have indicated a broad corollary, that the recollection from
individual experience has its use in the instinct of the entity by decision in that substance
wherein it is embodied at the moment; and that recollection from quality or racial experience
is for use in its expansion in progress, or growth.

"This distinction is subject to many modifications which it is impossible to consider in the

time at our disposal; but it is important.

"The maintenance of the individual in its present environment as you know it, and in the state
of average development up to now in that environment, is largely what you call material or
physical. Since that is so, the body of recollection of past personal incarnation comes mostly
through the instincts; is hence uncorrelated, and therefore discontinuous. As development
goes on, by expansion through effort and decision, this degree of correspondence will
become increasingly automatic, requiring no decision. Certain physical correspondences of
the sort you are now working out have already, in your own case, become so; they require no
intervention of the intellectual aspect of the mind at all. The body of possession of this sort is
constantly increasing.

"The power of progress is also an accelerating thing. It widens both in scope and in
complexity. For its proper functioning it requires in mere quantity more and more raw
material, so to speak, with which to work. It comes into more correspondences, with larger
things. These raw materials are drawn in exactly the same way, as needed, from the
storehouse of those things which have happened and those decisions which have been made
in the course of growth. As more and more are needed, more and more come within the
recollection mechanism of the individual. Those which are subject to conscious decision
through free will, more and more are appropriated and correlated through the intellectual
aspect of the mind.

"Thus by expansion and growth, mankind slowly but surely edges toward that point where
the isolated fragments one by one crowd nearer and nearer toward one another, so to speak,
until a chain of continuity must inevitably be established.

"It is in effect much like dropping stones in a pool of water. You drop one stone, and the
water is the same; or two, or three, or a score. Always the surface of the pond remains
smooth, unbroken, unrevealing. But at the last - perhaps the thousandth stone - all at once the
surface is broken with significance.

"One earns his knowledge of his past; and a time will come when the capacity of use will be
so expanded by development that it can employ, and does employ, not single fragments
widely separated; but by right of ability, can and does select or recollect for use, any or all of
an unbroken series. Then all at once, as the last stone arose above the surface of the pool,
complete continuity - which means continuous memory - comes to the individual.

"As to when, or in what embodiment, that continuity will take place, cannot be predicted in
general. It is an individual thing. Persons beyond the veil of what you call death do not
necessarily nor at once attain any degree of this power. They are not, you must understand,
necessarily cut off from memory of earth life either; for that is most often a type of
experience which is of most immediate use to them in their next succeeding embodiment. As
far as tracing back is concerned, they are little better off than yourselves."

12. SUMMING UP

"Except for this: in ordinary cases the entity which is born from the human quality on your
earth has progressed to a point where opportunity is expanding in a geometric ratio.

"I realize that there must be many detailed considerations of specific cases which will puzzle
you, but we cannot do more, without danger of leading you astray, than indicate the mere
direction. You must remember that reincarnation is merely successive and continuous
embodiments in different ranges of vibration for the purpose of specific development. The
range of vibration is determined by the individual need. The attributes pertaining to different
scales of vibration are naturally different. Even your senses show you that; where one octave
will come to you with the property of color, and another with the property of sound, each
with its individual laws and limitations. The particular range of vibrations in which you are
now embodied is favorable for certain responses from your consciousness - and I do not
mean merely sense responses - but it is not particularly favorable for acquiring facility in
other directions. If I might be permitted a very fanciful and possibly far fetched figure, I
would say that your strings of life vibrate so slowly that your musical note does not possess
the many overtones of vibrations that are higher pitched. A lack of those overtones is your
physical limitation.

"Only one thing to add: whatever you have gained, you hold. You may be deterred, or
stopped; but what solid acquisition you have made is yours eternally. The strings of your lute
may be tuned higher, but they can never be slacked."

"What then of deterioration through neglect or misuse of capacity?" asked someone, "might
not that slack the string?"

"You deter. You stop." Gaelic assured him. "You proceed on the next step with infinitely
increased difficulty. You do not lose. You can deteriorate your immediate potentiality, and
the instruments by which that potentiality night be assured. The gain you make, you hold."
 Chapter VI
IMMORTALITY: REINCARNATION

1. QUESTIONS DEFINED

These discourses on the evolution and continuity of memory hinted repeatedly of

reincarnation. The theory is appealing and logical. Those who profess skill as occultists claim
ability to prove it by an actual review of past lives, both their own and others.

Nevertheless many people feel that there is a catch in it, viewed as an invariable mechanism.
Gaelic himself had in passing told us that, "as a general thing we do not return." We much
desired his further comments, but for a long time he contented himself with merely this
casual statement. Finally, as our puzzlement grew over the conflicting statements on this
subject to be found in cult and literature, he consented to a discussion.

Is reincarnation a fact?

If it is not, then what significance can we attach to the very detailed and apparently honest
recollections occultists appear to trace?

2. WHAT IS REINCARNATION?

"It is a very chancy subject," said Gaelic, "The best we can hope is to approach it at different
angles; and so perhaps obtain a glimpse of principles rather than methods.

"It is always well to define what you are talking about," he pointed out. "What is
reincarnation? Have you ever defined it? Reincarnation in what? The consciousness with an
awareness-mechanism, which makes it a consciousness, must always be incarnated in
something. It is embodied, always; and embodied for one purpose: expression, progress,
awareness."

This might seem self-evident, and a quibble, but Gaelic merely wished to emphasize that
reincarnation, as a general principle, is not only true, but inevitable. "But," he immediately
acknowledged, "what you mean by reincarnation is undoubtedly in what your present senses
can recognize." And also, he implied, the question is whether such is a methodical procedure;
at least until we have finished with all the earth can teach us. He seemed to find this idea a
trifle amusing.

"How can you postulate," he demanded, "that it is either necessary or important whether, in
embodiment, the consciousness should happen, in its need, to occupy precisely the one pin
point, in an almost infinite range of vibration, that it has happened to occupy before? It does
so happen from time to time by what you would be justified to call a fortuity of circumstance
- provided you admit fortuity at all - but as for there being a regulation or rule or common
sequence, from our point of view, that seems rather an unimportant speculation. Whether you
happen to manifest, in your particular need of the moment, on a rather minute globe which
you call the earth; or on various other globes whose embodiment happens to be visible within
the narrow limits that obtain reaction from your eyes or your other limited senses; or whether
you are embodied in other spheres of substance which happen to lie outside those limits; it is
all the same thing. Within the very limits of your own extremes of your sense responses to
vibration, are gaps wherein there is no sense recognition at all. Are you bold enough to
maintain that within those gaps a vibration is not? Or that if those vibrations exist, they
represent nothing to anybody anywhere?

"It is a singular arrogance to appropriate the word 'carnate' for your extremely straightened
field of visibility and to throw into a 'discarnate' discard all that you happen not to see or taste
or touch or hear or smell or apprehend. You are completely discarnate yourselves to a great
many things - like ants, unless you step on them.

However, he acknowledged, even that was not quite our question; whether we are reborn, on
earth, as persons, with our same qualities of awareness and limitation.

"That may happen," he admitted, "not as a 'punishment' - or a sending back to relearn a

particular lesson - but because the precise conditions necessary for your development are
comprised within those limits of vibration of which we spoke."

But even coming back to earth does not necessarily mean a return to the same conditions. By
that he did not mean the obvious variety of environments, or social or race positions; but the
whole earth-sphere. That, too, is progressing in evolution. A man who had lived in cave-man
times - or even in the last century, for that matter - entered conditions "as different as though
one set took place on another planet, or even in what you would call an invisible sphere."
Only by a great wrench of literalness could these two lives be called common earth
experiences. "Only in certain base elements were they the same."

3. WHEN IS REINCARNATION?

"Consciousness," continued Gaelic, "must go through a steadily expanding continuous

embodiment in that to which his awareness-mechanism responds. Continuous, from the
earliest birth of individuality. It is not a series of lives, as you call them; it is one life,
continuously embodying itself; and shifting in the conditions in which it exists, solely as its
own development of all sorts causes those conditions to change. Its range of sense-vibration
is continually expanding. It is at first very much narrower than your own at the present time.
The band of sense-vibration of the very lowest creatures is almost incredibly narrow as
compared to your own. The band of sense-vibrations of yourselves as cave people was,
compared with your present response, also narrow. Those people actually were not cognizant
in any way of many of the higher vibrations that now come to you. A great deal of what you
call the visible universe was to them invisible. And that is not too fanciful either!

"If you reincarnate, as you call it, in the future upon your earth, and have not stood still in
development, it will be as a being whose sense-range toward what you call physical matter is
greatly extended.

"The birth of any entity from out of its quality is determined by many complicated things; but
one of the chief determinants is that of its needs. You must not forget that there are, not only
qualities, but degrees within those qualities, through which the individual and later the
persons must progress. Not one degree can be skipped. But whatever the environment of
development from one degree to another may be, on your earth or elsewhere, depends
entirely on the individual requirement.

"The glimpsing of this truth is the basis of the idea of reincarnation. A soul is indeed once-
born, or many times born. There are cases wherein a human soul is born again, or yet again,
to one environment; either to learn a lesson which is best taught by that environment, or very
rarely because of an unfinished service which can better be fulfilled there. As a usual thing,
however, if anyone during a lifetime on earth fails to get what should be reasonably expected
from that sojourn, it is an indication that he had better change his school. As a usual thing,
we do not return. As an actual thing, any human soul is many times born before it reaches
any advanced state of development. I don't think that's very good; there are lots of modifying
considerations - outlying considerations. Don't make that a hard and fast picture of a process.
Leave it loose and flowing."

4. THE PURPOSE OF REINCARNATION

So far Gaelic had done little toward answering categorically our two questions. He had, to be
sure, established the necessity of reincarnations of some sort. He had acknowledged that a
person might be passed through a number of experiences on this, our earth. He had, however,
denied that this latter was an invariable, or perhaps even usual method of growth. The things
that one can learn or acquire on earth may also be learned or acquired elsewhere. Take any
Quality, or Intention; take tree quality, for example. It manifests or embodies itself, on earth,
as what we know as a tree.

"Have you any particular reason for supposing that all the tree quality of the universe is
gathered around your little globe?"

"We must," said Gaelic, "restate the general principles: An entity is clothed in a specific
incarnation - either earth or any other - by its present necessities of development. It is like a
magnetic attraction. Once identified with that environment, it naturally proceeds to clothe
itself in the body that corresponds to that environment and can function in it. Certain qualities
are best developed against a pressure, though their possibility of development exists
elsewhere. The sphere - to use a cant expression - of greatest pressure is in the earth phase.
Functioning in it, the entity is probably more clogged, muffled, hindered in its free
expression than in any other. Nevertheless these very hinderances are the more conducive to
the primary germinations of certain basic desirabilities than the freer spheres. Those
principles would seem to you ludicrously few, and this in spite of the apparent multiplicity
that seems to offer in your complicated world - ludicrously few and simple. The complexity
is merely a many sided faceted (word obscure) by means of which the light of understanding
may at last reflect from one surface, even if a thousand others fail. You think that life tells
you many things, and it is telling you over and over a few; presenting them tirelessly in
multiform, until at last the one appropriate rendition brings illumination. The multiplicity of
Nature's devices are a means of telling you the same thing over and over again, in different
forms, until the apt phrase makes you understand.

"When these few and simple things are at last comprehended and incorporated, use of that
environment has ceased, the necessity is relieved, the magnetic attraction fails, and the entity
is no longer drawn into its functioning. These few and simple things can be all sufficiently
learned in the span of a single lifetime. It is true, as is often said, that many, many life terms
would not be sufficient to learn and comprehend all the manifold wisdoms and knowledges
of the earth; but those wisdoms and knowledges are but the selective media through which
the basic simplifications may be reached. The least considered one may do that function as
well as the most complex. It is not necessary for those finishing with the earth phase of life to
have learned all that is possible to be learned on your earth. Most of those things may be
better and more easily acquired in freer spheres, provided that the basic simplicities I have
mentioned have been acquired.

"That, I think, disposes of one confusion that it must be necessary to undergo many
incarnations to exhaust the earth's possibilities of learning. But until those basic simplicities
possible to be acquired in the earth sphere have been encompassed, the entity is again and
again drawn back to what you call 'incarnation.'

"There are no two conditions exactly alike. It is a magnetic attraction. If an entity is drawn to
the earth sphere by the magnetic attraction of necessity, it will continue to be so drawn until
the necessity is appeased.

"Now we will assume a spirit that is so drawn and redrawn into what you call reincarnation -
a specific, not a general case, you understand. Its life after death is a period of adjustment to
what it had acquired, an establishment of it, an incorporation of it into the fiber of the entity
in such a way that, when finally arranged, so to speak, its further lack in that line gives rise
once more to the magnetic attraction that draws it into another earth life. In that interim it has
no foreknowledge of its destiny in that respect. That knowledge comes only with the
establishment of the magnetic attraction that becomes like an irresistible hunger that cannot
be denied.

"I think that is true of all of us, until the equilibrium of what has been accomplished is
balanced. We dwell in a security as of eternity until the new aspiration draws us to the next
sphere of our development. In that sense, I suppose no one really knows whether he is
destined for another earth incarnation or not; though those of us who have gained to
conscious knowledge of the basic simplicities may be justified in our certainty that with us
the earth phase is finished. Those who have passed actually through many earth incarnations
are the slow of development. They are the true earth bound entities; though they do not
realize that fact. They are earthbound through no sin or transgression as one might says, but
merely because they are not through with earth."

Someone asked as to "these basic simplicities." Gaelic chuckled.

"I think," said he, "that is one of the 'many-faceted resistances.' If I should turn to the back of
the book and read the answers I should be committing a crime more stupendous than is
possible in your muddle-headed world. The safety element in that is this: that one who has
comprehended those simplicities also understands the purport of their acquisition, and so is
not tempted to turn to the back of the book."

5. CLAIRVOYANT MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES

Thus was our first question answered. The second still remained. We had all of us read much
in occult literature, and had been impressed, but not wholly convinced by the confidence with
which those supposedly in command of 'occult science' detailed their clairvoyant knowledge
of past lives on earth. And correspondingly, their alleged knowledge of conditions of life and
development in other 'spheres' of existence. This minute mapping of the topography of the
invisible universe reaches its apogee in the elaborate system of Theosophy, for example.
"Some of these," explained Gaelic simply, "may attain such a state of clairvoyance that they
may actually remember at least parts of past lives. But many who quite honestly think they
do so are merely tuning in with the racial past and individualizing it; or are translating other,
non-earthly incarnations of their own into the language of the earth they are how inhabiting.
They sense a non-earth experience and clothe it in earth concepts; and therefore imagine it as
an experience of their past."

6. CLAIRVOYANT KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER PLANES OR SPHERES

This was an important and understandable contribution. As to the rest of it, Gaelic was in
doubt whether he could convey his idea.

"It is a subject," said he, "which has never been thought ready, and which it has been
despaired of even to attempt to explain. It may be presumptuous on my part, and I may fail to
convey my full idea, but if comprehension lacks at the present time, be of faith that it kinna
long tarry. I refer to the apparent evidence brought to you by witnesses of clairvoyant faculty
whose credibility is unquestioned, but the contents of whose reports are just beginning to
awaken some doubt as to detail among people such as yourselves.

"Reality of any sort whatever reaches perception necessarily through a mechanism. That
mechanism is of a twofold character; the material manifestation in which the reality clothes
itself, and the awareness-mechanism impinged upon by that manifestation. This results in a
necessary dilution first dependent upon the degree of perfection in which the reality is
manifested; and second, the degree of response of the awareness-mechanism to the stimulus
made upon it by that manifestation. To that must be added a third factor: the degree of the
response of the entity possessing the awareness-mechanism to its own physical faculty.

"But wherever the perfection, or lack of perfection of the translation from pure reality, on one
side, to inner perception on the other, it is invariably conditioned in kind and translated in
intellectual understanding by the sort of manifestation and the sort of awareness-mechanism
peculiar to the environment in which the recognition or perception takes place. This is a
general and at first hearing a rather abstract, statement of principle. Let us now apply it to the
case in hand.

"Your clairvoyant witness escapes from the physical as you understand it, into another state
of consciousness in which we, for example, find ourselves. He there encounters a certain set
of realities which enter his own perceptions through their manifestations in that state of
consciousness and through the awareness-mechanism he possesses in that state. He gains, for
example, and not too closely to specify, the knowledge that entities of differing development
find here certain appropriate and differing correspondences, spiritual sustenance, the aliments
necessary for spiritual growth, each according to its need and station in progress. The
conditions, the things with which A is in touch, may be totally and entirely other than those
appropriate to B. One is as unlike the other as night and day. His feeling, then, is of the actual
segregation of the conditions in which A finds his appropriate environment, and those in
which B must necessarily dwell for his sustenance and his progress.

"Now in the body in which he temporarily finds himself, the significance of this state of
affairs is clear. But the moment he emerges from that consciousness and reenters the physical
environment, the perception of that same reality ceases to pass through the one set of
apparatus and transfers itself to the other. And in the physical, even the true perception of
that segregation between A and B becomes a zoned segregation and you have A and B in an
astral plane or a devachanic plane or any other plane whatever. It is impossible to translate it
otherwise; whereas A and B, though dwelling in such differing - you see it is impossible not
to use their terms - spheres, planes, whatever you like, as respects their correspondences to
spiritual substances and growth, nevertheless as regards proximity, in respect to both space
and one's being with the other, may be seated cheek by jowl in the park.

"This is one simple example which, well considered, will illuminate much of the super-rigid
formalism that attends revelations of conditions on this side. Each is a translation, into terms
of a mechanism which has not its counterpart with us, of perceptions and realities which are
nevertheless the same for us both. That is why we have always considered it unwise to
attempt to tell you of conditions on this side, why we have told you so often that we have no
language to explain. It is not that matters with us differ greatly from those with you. The
same ultimate realities, from the greatest possible conceptions to the smallest possible wee
bit ideas, of torches, of wheels in the street, of lights in windows - these realities come to
inner perception with us as with you, but the mechanism of manifestation and the awareness
mechanism are not the same.

"It is a fearsome thing to say, lest we alarm you with the feeling that you will be strange and
homeless and uncomforted in knowing these things. It is not so, because still the real pussy
cat will feel within you like a real cat, and you will say to it, 'Good Tabby!' But if we should
tell you that the cat would not be furry, with claws and a pink tongue and whiskers, why we
would be translating truly, but it would not be a literal statement of fact - just as the formal
zones of heaven of the religionists, theosophists, occultists etc., are really but translations of
the things seen by their witnesses. And since your awareness mechanism will be adapted in
sort and kind to the manifestations you are capable of encountering, they will seem as natural
and as homely as do those diminished realities you see in your present state.

"As I said when we began, this aspect has never been attempted before, and is still
considered by many unwise and productive of confusion. I have replied to you that some may
catch a glimpse - and God knows the others are confused enough already."

It is the same with the numerous divisions of the entity set down by these systems of thought.

"If you consider them," said Gaelic, "as illustrative symbols, they are valuable. Considered as
fact they are misleading, like the zones or spheres. A translation into zones, or parts is given
where only the differentiation of a unified whole is intended. These illustrative symbols were
the best possible at the time of the revelation. If anyone rests satisfied with any revelation,
my own disquisitions included, he falls into error, for the very reason that anything incapable
of creating a response through the physical awareness mechanism must be an illustrative
symbol. It must be used as such, and must never be looked upon as the final fact. It is but a
stepping stone, and you must keep open and eager for the wider symbol which will surely
come in this attitude of mind. This new symbol will express no new truth, but will be merely
a better translation of the same truth. That is why you will always find people who say,
'There is nothing new in that. It has been said many times before.'

7. TRUE NATURE OF THESE ZONES OR SPHERES

"It is almost impossible," said Gaelic, "for you to consider these things apart from certain
limitations of your own conditions."

One of these limitations is a necessity for what he called "a duly-ordered intellectual-
mechanical sequence of process for the soul."

"You would have it progress from definite sphere to definite sphere, or heaven to heaven, or
system to system, graduating from one to the other, as the member of an industrial system is
promoted or as a scholar progresses in the schools.

"There is in this conception, of course, more than a mere color of truth. The universe -
comprising in that term all that is - is an orderly universe of structure and purpose. But it is
not necessarily the intellectually-mechanical order you know and see and use. It there
becomes a harmonious order of needs and responses. Your human entity (or any other, for
that matter; but we speak of the human now) is environmented, and therefore incarnated by a
sort of specific gravity rather than a pedagogic gradation. That specific gravity is composed,
as I see it, of harmonious orderliness of need and response. The precise domination,
naturally, is dependent upon the greatest need and the largest capacity for response.

"This general law is possibly incomprehensible to you. My effort is to offer you a fructifying
glimpse.

"The question will probably occur to you of the apparently concomitant separation of
individuals by this process. The difficulty here is that your conceptions are in three-
dimensional space. You conceive, for example, of yourself being attracted by, or rising by
your specific gravity, to some solar system a million miles away; while your nearest and
dearest may, by the same law, be born to, conceivably, another nebula.

"This would be so were your present limitations of space and time not to be also transcended
when you transcend the physical as perceivable by your five senses. I cannot explain this to
you, except to offer you that which has often been hinted before; that we who have
developed beyond the need of your physical are not entirely conditioned by space and time as
you understand them. There is a hint here of what you call the fourth dimension; though this
again is a term expressed in a phraseology of your limitations. Suffice it to say, that just as
yourself and the cricket upon your hearth may occupy the same room and may be as wholly
aware of each other as your respective correspondences will permit, yet each be inhabiting
actual worlds as far apart as are the spiritual nebulae, so entities encompassed within the
warm room of mutual love are actually together as far as their correspondences will permit,
even though by the necessities of their development they might be said to inhabit stars
millions of years separate.

"This is not a literal picture; it is a thought of comfort."

 Chapter VII
IMMORTALITY: CONDITIONS IN THE INVISIBLE

1. WHAT IS HEAVEN LIKE?

Naturally, being human, we are anxious as to conditions "on the other side." We got only
evasive replies to our questions. "If we tried to tell you, you would not understand," we were
told. "We haven't any words." "It would only give you false ideas."

This was exasperating. We could understand plain English, and we had some degree of
imagination. Plenty of others had made a try at it! The Bible, the occultists, the spiritualists,
Theosophists, clairvoyants. Was what they said to be trusted? Answer, yes or no!

Nothing doing.

Well all right then: why can't you tell us?

2. WHY IT CANNOT BE DESCRIBED

"The exact outward form by which any quality manifests itself physically, or in any
substance, using the broadest meaning of the word," finally we were told, "depends entirely
upon its correspondences with the type of environment in which that manifestation takes
place.

"Tree-ness - to use our old example - manifests itself in woody fiber for its stability, the
necessary circulation of its sap in branching form for the accommodation of its myriad
foliation, and the foliation itself for those purposes of breathing and absorption which its life
in an atmosphere of hydrogen and oxygen makes necessary. The result of these
correspondences viewed as a whole is the tree, as you see it. In like manner all other qualities
of life produce on your physical plane the physical apparatus necessary for the furtherance of
the particular characteristics inherent in those qualities. And the forms of material life are
thus determined - not, as some philosophies have thought, by an 'ideal' pattern of the thing as
you see it - but rather by the production of such mechanisms as are required for the material
life of that quality.

"The wonder of the intricate niceties of these correspondences between the organ and the
need is and always has been a marvel to the human mind. Their accuracies have been the
chief field of speculative science, and the measurement and cataloging and intelligent
understanding of their smooth interplay have been the subject of practical science.

"If this principle has been understood, conceive now in imagination a substantial
environment of totally different content than that by which you are surrounded - let us say on
some remote star. The elements of matter are not only all new and stranger but they bear to
each other, let us say, relations cast in a novel ratio. Let us suppose that in this suppositious
environment the 'tree' quality again manifests itself. It no longer deals, in terms of its
development, with hydrogen and oxygen, or with the chemical formulae comprised in
moisture or air, or with heat as you know it; but for these simple correspondences other and
unknown correspondences are substituted. Providing, mark you, for the satisfaction of the
same basic needs of that particular quality - Tree-ness.

"It follows that in order to provide a mechanism by which these needs of tree-ness can be
satisfied in that new set of surroundings, there must evolve a different physical structure than
in your earth environment. And, conceding that your eyes-of-the-beholder remain the same,
that thing would look no more to you like what you know as a 'tree' than a dog does.
Nevertheless, it would be a tree, considered as a reality, not as an appearance.

"But, consider yourself not as an outsider in that distant sphere, looking about you with alien
eyes, strange with the standards of your earth; but as a being, still of the human quality which
manifests itself on earth as a man such as you know him; yourself in all your many complex
multiple needs for correspondence fully embodied and adapted to that by which you are
surrounded; at home in that environment. Then the embodiment of that tree-ness there would
be to you beautiful, harmonious, satisfying, pleasure-giving, as fully as is now your great oak
here on this place. And that, no matter whether you in your old character as the alien visitor
from earth had looked upon that embodiment of tree-ness there as an ugliness, a fantastic
thing, almost unimaginably distorted to your human appreciations. Or, not to give a false
impression, of course the contrary might be true. It might seem beautiful to you - but only if
within you had developed that sense of perception which could at once penetrate below the
external to the reality, and bring back to the surface the feeling of its essential beauty of
harmony with its world.

"But suppose by some means you on this earth could extend your thought across those
immeasurable spaces, to touch and make your friend some being on that far-off star. So
mingling the humanness of yourselves as to establish true communication, you two human
beings touch each other; you talk; you exchange news. You think of him as like yourself - in
outward form. He thinks of you as like himself in outward form. You are like each other
actually, of course. He says to you, 'Have you trees?' And since you understand the essence
of his thought, and you know what he means by 'trees' (because of their tree-ness), you reply:
'Certainly we have trees, have you?' And he replies, 'Why, yes - very beautiful ones.' And in
like manner you talk together about what you call the generalities of your common
experience.

"But some day you inquire in detail what his 'tree' looks like. And from then on, you're lost.

"Now, I know so little of how much of a framework this makes to you; but can't you see,
when you ask us what we are like, what we are surrounded by, what kind of places we live
in, where we go - all the little details - we must reply in one of two ways? Either we must
say, 'Yes, we have trees, clouds, insects, birds, flowers, fountains and cities and streets, and
dwelling places' - and then you have a picture of those things as they are to you in externals,
and that picture would be wrong; or we must try to translate into your verbal symbols these
qualities of tree-ness and floweriness and all the rest, as they embody themselves in our
substance, in the mechanism that is best adapted for manipulating the correspondences they
need. In which case, translated into your verbal - and hence visual - symbols, they seem
fantastic, or unbelievably inhuman. They seem undesirable, unbeautiful - because their
correspondences are not those of the correspondences of identically the same things on your
earth.
"But if your own mechanism were adapted to the correspondences of this our element, as
they are now adapted to those of your environment, we could describe the shapes of things
here, and they would seem as harmonious, as desirable, as beautiful, in every way a soul can
imagine.

"Furthermore, the same quality of pleasure, appreciation, reaction of any kind, that comes to
you from a forest of trees there, would come to you from a forest of trees here, however
embodied; because whatever you get inside yourself from the forest there is the tree-ness,
and the beauty of perfect correspondence of itself to that in which it dwells. We get the same
thing here. So that the emotion you have for any given thing there is identically the same
emotion we get from the same thing here.

"That is why we cannot tell you more when you ask. We must choose between allowing you
to build up a solid brick heaven or, quite naturally going to the other extreme, to conceive of
us as floating, nebulous, homeless, foggy and phantasmal in the ether of space.

"I wish to repeat, just to emphasize: when you see beauty in anything whether of form or
character or thought, the emotion you experience comes straight from the heart of Reality
that is behind the form. That emotion is the same emotion that the same Reality inspires in
us.

"We live among real things. We live among real things!

3. A PICTURE

And then in a final statement Gaelic presented what he himself often described as a "picture
and not a literal statement of fact." It is certainly at least a big picture.

"We will not attempt to transcend your own limitations of space and time," he began.

"You have, stretching out in all directions from the place you stand, an immense universe of
tremendous spaces of something almost near emptiness. Here and there hundreds of
thousands, millions, billions upon billions of miles apart, is a single small pin prick in
immensity - something registering on your sense organism. Those minute points of
registration you name the constituents of your physical universe. All between them is empty
space, space so wholly empty that you must make a grasp for understanding by postulating
an ether - which has no registration on your physical mechanisms! This registration is
comprised within narrow limits of vibrations, vibrations so attuned to the organs with which
your body is provided that they become, through that attuning, the real objects in your
cosmos.

"But now - suppose yourself, by some magic of readjustment, to be attuned in your sense
organs to a different scale of vibrations. Instantly the worlds and suns and stars and cloudy
star-dust skies would be blotted into a black void of nothingness. From them would be
conveyed to you no faint tremor of impingement to make you aware of their existence. But
there now would flash before your reattunement galaxy upon galaxy of new worlds, new
suns, new stars and cloudy star-dust skies, occupying in the firmament pinpricks of space at
those points where before had been only the empty void of ether.

"And still moving on, in still another attunement, this second universe in its turn would
vanish and be no more; and in the vast and empty void more points of light would spell to
your renewed senses more worlds.

"And so on, and on, and on, through the almost infinite reaches, until, in the nearest approach
to omniscience possible in a finite cosmos, you would appreciate that in all the vastness of
space is no empty point; that it is all One Thing, One primordial Thing. And its manifestation
in the complex is only as a man moves, and so sees new lights that were before obscured, and
loses in obscurity lights that before have shone.

"That is all. I will bid you farewell."

 Chapter VIIA
MAN'S RELATIONSHIP TO COSMOS

1. MAN AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE WHOLE

This is a large subject, too large to be treated in any exhaustive fashion; too large indeed, to
be comprehended. In Gaelic's remarks we must not understand that he is making any such
attempt. He is trying, rather, to offer what he has somewhere described as a "fructifying
glimpse." His opening sentence refers to the fact that a man we will call Miller was for the
first time present at one of our experiments.

"Good evening to you," he greeted us.

"I have but the wee bit giftie this evening, more as an excuse for making a new acquaintance.
I would have you take a broad view for the once of what you might call the state of the
world. A pessimist is a man who takes a narrow view of things, and if things are dark there is
always the sure remedy of extending the horizon. If the extension be sufficient, you will
inevitably come upon clear skies.

"All things that live have an individual life, complete in its own circumference, however
small. Each thing that lives has also a life as part of a larger organism of one sort or another.
The very cells of your body exemplify this fact. Now the degree of quality of the individual,
so to speak, must be in consonance with what we may call the corporeal demands of the
larger body of which it is a part. The particular type of cell which makes up your human flesh
is of a different degree of density, of physical constitution and of intelligence from the cells
which make up as individuals the body of a fish or a tree or a living rock. The degree of
quality which manifests itself in what you call physical matter is determined by the need, the
constitution, and the degree of development of the more embrasive quality which is
manifesting itself in the larger entity of which the first one is a part.

"Now if we have that principle in mind, let us consider a larger body of consciousness of
which human consciousness is a cell. This is probably almost inconceivable; but exercise
your constructive imagination for a purpose. I speak partly literal truth and partly figurative
symbolism when I ask you to consider what you know of the human race as a body of
consciousness consisting of many individuals. Now the embodiment of those individuals, not
so much in material substance as in degree and quality of intelligence and awareness, is
determined as in the case of the physical cell by the constitution and degree of development
of the larger entity. The larger entity is passing through a progressive evolution as are all
finite entities. You must not think of the human perception of spirituality as a degraded and
retrogressive affair (i.e. the fall of man idea). It is, on the contrary an emerging affair. The
greater body has passed through what we may call the rock period of absolute savagery. It
has been passing through the hardy materialistic and mechanistic phase of its upward climb,
and therefore men have been formed in outlook and perception of unchangeable materialistic
and mechanistic outlook. As it refines, so do its constituent cells refine; and so must its
constituent cells refine.

"Now the health of any body is of two-fold origin; it is an aggregate of perfect functioning of
a myriad of individual units and it is also a direction of the aggregate intelligence, and it
cannot exist without the cooperation of both. If sufficient of the cells of the body do not
properly function, health fails. Health, however, in quantity of sufficient for progress, does
not depend on perfect functioning of all constituents, fortunately. But those constituents
which work in harmony with the laws of the being contribute automatically to the health of
the whole, and by that very fact assure thus their own existence. And those that work in
disharmony are assured of existence only by the fact that the majority of their fellows is great
enough to assure what you may call an average of health.

"I speak now not of the mortality or immortality of the individual as an enduring thing. I
speak of the life or death of one manifestation.

"If humanity as an entity in your present earth scheme is to continue healthy and alive, it
must be because sufficient of its cells function in accordance with the law of its being to keep
its average of health. Just as an individual human body and the cells of which it is made. If it
lives in harmony, it is healthy. It is the duty of each to become healthy, thus adding to the
weight of the majority. Only when a majority of the greater entity should become unhealthy,
disharmonious, can the individual living in harmony be affected adversely, because then the
whole entity is sick. I speak partly in parable: it is impossible to be literal. I seek to give a
picture."

"I can understand universal substance, energy, oversoul - what you please - in which we all
exist," objected Betty, "but this stuff tonight supposes lesser entities of varying degrees, of
which we are all cells. I cannot conceive them. What are they?"

"If you could conceive it, you would be it," said Gaelic.

2. MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO AND DEPENDENCE ON THE WHOLE

"I approach with extreme caution a subject which I cannot hope to make you see clearly,"
Gaelic continued next day. "You must be content with momentary half-guessed glimpses, as
you see your own mountain peaks through the clouds. It is an inspirational picture I would
draw for you rather than a plan.

"I must repeat one thing: you are capable of understanding only that to whose dimensions
you have grown. Any creature is only so capable. You may feel intuitively momentarily,
something beyond, but when you would fashion it into a shape, that shape will be your own.
You may think this is not of universal application, and perhaps your thought may stray to
your doggie, and you may think that he is looking up knowledgeably to what is above and
beyond him when he looks up to his human master as a visible god. As a matter of fact, to
him you are only another of his kind, not a doggie but an animal, greater, more powerful, of
larger possession than himself, but an animal. I would not be surprised if at times he
imagines he possesses a greater wisdom.

"With this thought clearly in mind, let us contemplate, not the nature of the form or the field
of activity, but a few of the functions of the greater body of consciousness of which the
individual human consciousness is one atom. The governing mind of the human body - and
by that I mean as well the submerged portion that carries on the mechanical processes of
digestion, of circulation that causes the heart to beat and the breath to intake with needed
regularity, as well as the thinking portion that moves the hand or places your foot upon an
appointed path - to that mind the health of the body is an importance and a care. Given an
injury to one member, or a disintegration of tissue, the intelligence hurries to the point the
armies of white corpuscles which shall beat back the invading armies of infection and shall
finally restore to wonted health the inhabitant cells of the invaded territory. You have
recently become aware of the extent and the great strength of this supervision - more fully
aware, but far from completely aware. Your various excursions into auto-suggestion, mental
healing, and all the other branches of the subject have given at least a hint of the reciprocal
action toward maintaining health on the part of the larger entity in supplement to the
contributions toward health made by the individual, and which we examined the other
evening.

"There is not too remote an analogy in the infinitely larger and more complex body of
consciousness of which we are speaking. It is self-aware to an extent of which your self-
awareness is but a feeble and flickering shadow. It is the source of what you have been
pleased variously to identify as instinct, intuition, inspiration, cosmic knowledge, whatever
label you please. It is the intelligence or consciousness which answers when your need cries
out to it, of whatever kind. It is that which supplements, which fills out, which is aware of the
deficiency and the desire of its own atoms. It is that which sends by one means or another the
meed of healing wisdom, of urge to process, of divine discontent; which complements the
reaching of those atoms.

"Just as the human mind marshals its forces to repair disease, so this intelligence or
consciousness floods toward the need of one or many of its creatures the influences most
appropriate to the disharmony which has made itself manifest. In the human body - to go
back to our original example - the reparatory forces are marshaled by the greater central
consciousness only when through the nerves the report reaches that consciousness from the
affected cells. On the purely voluntary side your mind instructs your hand to withdraw from
the candle flame because your finger has reported through pain that its tissue is being
destroyed, and begs for the assistance of a command to the muscles of the arm. Should you
numb the nerves, or sever them, your finger would char unknown.

"In similar way does the greater consciousness of which we speak exercise its intelligence in
aid when it is apprised of need. But when it is not so apprised the soul may char unknown.

"The mechanism of apprisal has been variously defined. Some of the definitions are outworn;
some are even now in the process of being defined. In times past the openness of spirit has
been called prayer. That is now too tainted with formalism. You have heard it called spiritual
contact, permeability, porosity; you may search as you will for a word. I cannot find it for
you in a sentence, but you have been told of it in many forms for the past four years. But
know this; with the birth of free will what has been automatic process passes within
individual control. It is as though one had in hand a switch by which one turned the current
of his need into contact with the greater consciousness of which he is a part, or by which he
can cut himself off.
"Now this is hardly a personal attention, of the sort the old Jews thought they obtained from
their Jehovah. It is a turning of health-giving currents toward a needing part. By health giving
currents I mean figuratively of all that is required of all that the greater consciousness
contains; just as the blood is sent, to a certain member of the body. If the member in need of
something is receptive, it flows within him and accomplishes. If he is tight-bound in his
tension of impermeability, it washes by him, and but a trickle enters in.

"The personal side, which we fulfill, has been before described to you. We direct; we help
you to receive; we place you, as it were, more into the current. We try to aid you to receive
the impression. Sometimes we specify more or less that impression. There may be one or
many of us. When you ask us, how can we give you a name? We might say with the old
prophets that it is God who speaks from the mountains, and we would not be so far wrong.

"But remember what I said at first, and do not attempt to understand who this larger
consciousness can be, or in what form it is embodied. You will merely be constructing a
gigantic man to fill all space."

"I want to ask a question," proffered Betty. "How far along beyond us are you toward
understanding this greater consciousness?"

Gaelic began a facetious comment on this question, but thought better of it.

"No, to be serious," he caught himself up, "I have somewhat extended beyond the limits of
earth's consciousness. I comprehend somewhat more of cosmic relationships of harmony and
disharmony, and of the sweep upward toward self-awareness of which progress and growth is
made. I feel nearer, more in tune and harmony with the greater consciousness.

"But I do not understand!"

 Chapter VIII
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT

1. RELIGION DEFINED

Gaelic defined religion as "that device by which people live with realities." He distinguished
two aspects of religion. "The first is the essence, which is very simple and not diversely
differentiated; and the other is the outer appearance, which represents the essence to the
individual beholder. The first is always the same; the second is of almost infinite variety. The
second never completely expresses the first, but to those who hold it in sincere belief it
represents as much as is adequate. When it ceases to be adequate, it either is changed, or if
obtained, becomes not a medium of transmission of reality, but actually an insulation against
it.

"These almost infinitely varied forms correspond in their variety to the variety of receptive
apparatus. The variety of receptive apparatus is merely another reflection of the variety to be
found everywhere in nature; and comes into being from the same causes; that is to say,
because of divergent developments through reaction to different environments, mental,
physical, and spiritual. Just as the fish and the eagle are both basically creatures embodying a
common life force; nevertheless owing to different evolutionary developments, one
maintains his contact with the life force through one medium, water, and the other through a
totally different medium, air.

"It is of course from this point of view self-evident that the exact outward form of any
religion derives its whole importance from the degree to which it expresses the inner essence.
But note that this importance derives (is communicated or transferred) only to that particular
group with whose individual and personal receptivities these particular forms correspond. It
is of less than no importance that to any other group of people this particular outward form
expresses nothing whatever of the inner essence.

"Religion is a state of realization of certain simple essential things, an attitude of heart -" here
Gaelic broke off, expressing dissatisfaction over the wording. He explained that he really
meant, deeper fundamental currents: than went on. "It (religion) is a direction of currents
brought about by belief in certain things which are facts, and therefore worthy of belief, only
when viewed from the exact orientation point of the believer. From any other point of vision
they may cease to be facts and become unworthy of credence.

"Take, for instance a card. Looked at sideways it is a card. But suppose you look at it
edgeways, and that furthermore you cannot be moved -. that is your point of view - and no
one moves the card. Then to you it is nothing but an edge. Another sees it sideways and says
it is a card - of course it is a card! You see only the edge!

"Or suppose it is dark, and there is a piece of blue glass between you and a distant light. It
would appear to you as a piece of blue glass, quite obviously. But from any point where the
light was not directly behind the piece of glass it would appear black or non-existent.
Religion is the same. Unless illuminated by being directly in line with the essential
simplicities, it appears dark or non-existent."

2. THE FORMS OF RELIGION

"The difference between a religion and a superstition is in whether or not it conveys, not to
the minds, of the believers necessarily, but to the inner sense currents of their lives, any
portion of the few simplicities we have called the inner essence. The ultimate truth of any
religion is not how wholly it conveys these simplicities, but whether or not it conveys them
in such degree as has an exact correspondence with both capacity and need.

[page 52 of 129]

"Therefore, no man is justified in denying authenticity to any religious belief whatever, no

matter what its crudity or simplicity may be, unless he is able to say that such
correspondence either never has been or has ceased to exist. And since no man is possessed
of omniscience to apprehend all degrees and kinds of human creatures, it may confidently be
said that on this basis alone his judgment is unjustifiable. If he would evaluate he must go
deeper. He must first of all determine what these inner simplicities may be. He must
determine next whether the external pattern of that particular religion (and by that I do not
mean articles of creed, but articles of supposed belief, as fact) - whether those outward things
bring through the inner things and he must guess on whether the transfusion equals the
capacity. And since this could be done only by putting himself into the skin of the other
fellow (becoming him), which is impossible, he is reduced in the final analysis to a judgment
of results. And the results themselves must be evaluated as merely the representations of
inner essences, realities."

Someone brought up the question of the crass materialist who holds the belief that the
material is everything, that man is merely a chemical compound, reverting to its elements at
death. How about such a belief? Could that be considered a religion? A sort of negative
religion; a stop-gap, replied Gaelic. What value such a religion? our interlocutor insisted.

"It cannot be a positive good to anybody," admitted Gaelic, "but is not detrimental if through
the distorted intellectual image the essential simplicities happen to shine. The form is
absolutely and totally unessential, provided the basic simplicities are, not thought, but
realized, in the directing current in life. It is there that one catches the dividing line of the
importance of the intellect and the intuitions. Just as the intellect has its especial field, where
it is at least of equal importance, there is this field, which I broadly call religion, where it is
not of the slightest importance. Its focus is not upon this field. There is focused the eternal
mind which man has builded by his own experience and decision."

3. THE ESSENTIAL SIMPLICITIES: NUMBER ONE

But, Gaelic insisted, he did not wish to confine the idea of religion to any defined and
recognized creeds. "A religion," said he, "may quite well be a religion of one, a relation of
one man to reality. It is important to remember that. It is also important to remember that
Religion with a capital R is one thing; but that religions are myriad. "Now," said he, "we will
take up the former.

"The first of the Essential Simplicities," he began, "is a faith in continuity, in a progressing,
expanding and continuing personality.

"I said faith, and not belief," he distinguished.

"This faith, in some form, is an absolute essential to anything that can be truly designated a
religion under our definition. It is a tenet of belief in all formal religions, from the crude,
happy hunting grounds of the savage to the complicated hereafters of civilized systems.

"There are, however, a great number of people who believe implicitly that there is no
survival of personality after death; and an even greater number who are in an honest state of
doubt as to that point. Nevertheless, possibly the great majority of these people are possessed
of true religion as we have defined it, and that religion does, in spite of themselves, contain
its due faith in continuity.

"In their case very clearly you will get an illustration of what was said as to the real judgment
being based upon results. These people will almost invariably be found actually to be living a
life which is utterly devoid of any reasonable explanation unless its actions be referred to an
ultimate faith in continuance. A life wholly devoid of that faith would be rationally one of
opportunism solely. If death actually ended, wiped out the individual existence, and the fact
was not merely believed, but actually and scientifically known, the individual would be mad
not to live for the moment only, since the moment is certainly all there is. Duty, altruistic
effort, the obligation to others - all those higher moral efflorations that adorn the higher types
would be, not only useless, but silly. To adduce such considerations as that the individual
acts as he does through 'self-respect' or a 'desire to do the job,' or whatever you please, is
beside the mark. Such qualities themselves owe their existence to the hidden faith that
personality continues. So, however vigorously held or strongly expressed is the belief in
extinction, that belief is given the lie by the whole foundation-building aspect of the present
life. It is an excellent example of the comparative unimportance, of the form of intellectual
belief, as contrasted with the trend and direction of the hidden life currents.

"So in examining any man's religion by the criteria of the essential simplicities, we must not
examine his formulated belief, but should determine whether in essence his life is not
logically and rationally conducted as one would conduct his life, did he avow a formalized
belief in continuity."

4. THE ESSENTIAL SIMPLICITIES: NUMBER TWO

"The second Essential Simplicity which must, in some degree and in some form, be a part of
Religion, is a faith in the intelligence of, and a purpose in cosmos.

"The outward translation of this is most diverse. It may be graduated from the head of a
savage's hierarchy of lesser deities, through a partisan Jehovah, up to the widest pantheism or
metaphysical concepts of which the highest minds are capable; but it must always be an
intelligence of wider scope than those who live under it, look up to it, possess; and it must
have a purpose of some sort that extends beyond the comprehension of the believer.

"In the lower forms this translates itself merely in terms of a powerful superman with all
man's attributes; and the purpose becomes sometimes almost willful caprice. But the believer
is always subject to the power, and must be carried along with and assist in the fulfillment of
the purpose. In the higher forms often times the intelligence translates itself into an orderly
arrangement, subject to orderly laws; and while the ultimate purpose is itself obscure, the
direction of the purpose is that of mechanical evolution. Nevertheless, even in the religion of
such scientific materialists the essential is present. It is dim and small and flickers in the wind
of chill intellectual understanding, but it is still alight. The intelligent scheme is even here
beyond the complete grasp, and the man is acknowledgedly in and subject to the current of
mechanical evolution which represents to him the purpose."

5. THE ESSENTIAL SIMPLICITIES: NUMBERS THREE AND FOUR

"The third and fourth of these Simplicities essential to religion are closely akin to one
another. In the cruder aspects their exact significance is not so readily to be discerned as are
those of the first two.

"It is necessary that man should realize his inner identity with his God.

"Among the primitive religions this is so diluted that it becomes a partisan or tribal affair. His
God is as the head of a clan or family, dispensing reward or punishment as a father to his
children, demanding obedience and loyalty, imposing rules and regulations, and even
fighting tooth and nail with the Gods of other peoples. In this respect he stands as the
patriarchal head of a family, and the attenuated realization of man with this highest
conception of which he is capable, is the same feeling of identity experienced by one who
knows himself a member of a specific group.

"Truth to tell, almost every formal religion now widely held on earth, from that of the crudest
savage to that of the supposedly highly civilized members of enlightened communities, are
still of this type. In some this relationship has refined. The God no longer admits of rivals
against whom to war, and a certain mystical communion sometimes draws the relationship a
trifle closer. But actually, whatever the degree, the kind of identifying relationship is of the
primitive sort; there is on one hand the Godhead, and on the other the multitude of children
of that Godhead.

"Only recently and to a comparative few has come the beginning of conscious realization of
this identity - has become known the conception of each living organism, each individual and
separate consciousness, as actually part of, as actually sense perceptions of, organs of, so to
speak, manifestations of, awareness-mechanisms of, the Absolute, or All-consciousness.
Nevertheless, this conception, turned backward, obscured and diluted by lack of
development, is an ingredient of all religions that have been.

"The fourth Simplicity is the necessity - to speak still in theological terms - of 'loving God.'

"The utter savage 'loves his God' only in the sense that he fears him, and desires favors. That
is the first germ of any love; the desire of favors, and the wish for a friendly rather than an
inimical attitude. As mankind goes on in development and his religious ideas also expand,
this feeling is formalized into a command or an admonition that he should love his God -
generally, in truth, with a penalty for not loving his God. And still later in the higher forms of
primitive religion which are but just in the process of passing, he actually does enter into a
mystic communion with that something, still outside himself, which he looks up to as his
Deity. Also, as a corollary which he imagines wholly a separate thing, he is admonished to
love his neighbor. This counsel is particular only to the later and higher forms. But with the
illumination which shall bring him to a full realization of his essential identity with his Gods
must come also the realization that in that respect he must share that unity with all created
things; so that in obeying the old admonition to love his God, he will find that he is really
admonished to cherish all living things that be, as though they were himself.

"This meaning, also again diluted and restricted by lesser development, has nevertheless been
an ingredient of all religions that have been.

"These four are Religion. The growing understanding of them, the growing capacity for
realization of them, is what raises, purifies and will make universal unity in, religions. The
outward forms of which, sometimes in one proportion, sometimes in another, sometimes but
trickingly, and at others almost with a flow, are only the measures of man's advancement in
diversity. As he rounds the circle, these diversities, like all complexities in the cosmos, will
resimplify into a perfect understanding, a more perfect realization of these four simple but
fundamental things."

6. THE PURPOSE

"My purpose in these little talks is two-fold," said he. "First to indicate the value of all
sincerely conceived outward religions, no matter what their apparent inconsistencies, or even
absurdities. Second, to call your attention to the fact that the most unlikely people - classes of
people - do possess true Religion, complete in all essential parts; and often in spite of
themselves.

"The individual," he added, "who does not possess a faith - not a belief that comprises in
some form or degree, these essential simplicities that make Religion, is stopped and
stationary and a definitely destructive thing, which can hope from an orderly cosmic order
scant toleration."

Editor's Note: at the bottom of this sheet, Stewart Edward White has written: FAITH NOT
BELIEF

Faith: Intellectual conviction

Belief: to accept as true on testimony and probable knowledge
 Chapter IX
THE COMMUNION OR PRAYER ASPECT

1. PRAYER DEFINED

This series of discourses on Religion led naturally to a discussion of some of its practical
aspects. The discussion was started by a question as to the nature of prayer. Is prayer, asked
our questioner, simply a mechanical device by which we get in touch with assistance? Or is it
a spiritual realization?

"If you mean the formal thing called prayer," replied Gaelic, "its value is solely that it implies
a certain effort and desire to come into contact with what you differentiate as spiritual forces.
If you mean the actual feeling of communion or harmony or mystic contact which many
people describe as the state of prayer, it Is a realization.

"If it is a realization - but do not minimize the sincere formal prayer, because that sort of
effort and desire is necessary from your end, before what we have led our end can operate."

"A formal prayer may also be a state of prayer," observed Betty.

"A formal prayer may very successfully induce a state of prayer, but it is not the words of the
formal prayer that bring 'realization.' It is only that the words form an easy route," Gaelic
corrected her.

2. THE ART OF INSPIRATION

"Prayer in its widest meaning," Gaelic suggested, "is really a placing of oneself in the divine
current." He desired us to imagine ourselves at the lowest point of a great circle on the arc of
which flows this current.

"It is only an illustration," he warned us, "and not an inclusive symbol. As a figure of speech
it is intended to cover only the aspects I discuss; if you try to extend its symbolism to other
phases which might occur to you, you may find it inadequate.

"The movement of the great current, then, is always in the sweep of an arc which will
eventually close a circle. The segment of the arc at which you are situated is so placed that
the current enters from above, sweeps through the lowest point, and is about again to rise
when it escapes your conditions. This is a general law that obtains in all mediums through
which the current manifests. In normal sweep you will note that it cannot return upward
against itself, and the current must, for proper expression, swing smooth, unbroken and
undeflected from the true arc. This, as I say, is a law of universal application. We will now,
however, consider it only as applied to the inner life and that life's expression.
"The natural course is an entering of inspiration through perception down through the
focusing faculties into external expression in material form, which touches the lowest point
of the arc. Then, on the first rise, toward appreciation, emotional assimilation, and outgoing
as the circle slips beyond your ken. This is a normal course. Each step in the process is of
equal importance; each must be carried to a rounded symmetry of perfection if it would
fulfill its function properly. An attempt to reverse the current, returning the perception
mistakenly back toward inspiration, inhibiting it within you or checking its smooth rhythm,
results in all sorts of sometimes disastrous consequences. Equally, any attempt to retrack or
to omit entirely any bit results in a broken curve, or a distorted curve, or an interrupted
rhythm, all of which produce far-reaching disharmony."

3. FALSE INSPIRATION: ECSTASY

This concept he thought of sufficient importance to restate.

"We conceive, then," he repeated, "a great current sweeping downward from an unknown
apogee, through the perigee of your activity and comprehension, and upward again beyond
your powers to follow. Any attempts to interrupt the smooth flowing, rhythm, or to break its
continuity, have always had bad results. Also, any attempts to check it, or turn it back
towards its source, are equally bad."

We must keep our place, he warned.

"A certain type of sincerely indulged religious ecstasy comes within this category; the
reception of divine contact is not passed on through its legitimate channels, but, in solitude, is
reflected back towards its source under the mistaken impression that the emotional glow
thereby excited is an identifying of the recipient with the source. The ordinary mingled
impressions of ordinary humanity toward such incidents are based upon sane instincts; that
type of barren saintship has always been looked upon with awe and, at the same time, with a
trifle of hidden contempt. The awe is for the evident contact that is, which is felt by the
multitude, if not understood; the contempt, equally not understood, is for a fundamental
futility.

"The forcing type of attempted development is also fundamentally of this nature; a reaching
back up the current towards the source of power that should be obtained downstream, so to
speak, by development. The source of power is felt to be intimately near and therefore more
easily graspable in its pristine purity. The doctrine and the practice are fallacious because
they contravene this great law. This statement should be taken in conjunction, remember,
with other statements on this subject.

"A form of illegitimate checking of the smoothness of the rhythm may also be observed in
those who grasp what is received and retain it beyond the necessary formulating period for
the purpose of adding the ornamental gimcrackery of their personal egotism to it before
allowing it to take its course toward its proper recipients. This is an almost universal
roughening of the rhythm, for entire selflessness is as yet the rarest of virtues which will
ultimately become universal."
4. TRUE INSPIRATION AND ECSTASY

"The whole growing and reaching upward part of the human soul is toward its source, but the
turning toward the source is in openhearted receptivity only. The projecting, manifesting,
dynamic constructing side is turned the other way; only the same power of affinity that turns
the flower toward the sun, that draws the mists from earth to sky - that reaching vitality of
power, alone, is here exercised. Any other type whatever is wrong.

"The true type of seeking for spiritual contact is of the type that does not reach, but which
expands to receive. You are in contact if you open out your spirit. You do not reach for it, it
is with you always. But if you reverently and whole-heartedly open your heart to it, you get
it. The reaching is tension... it is down stream.

"The function of your segment is the formulating and launching for utilization. But it is done
actually after you have received through the contact. The reaching upstream by the
formulative faculties is precisely your forced-system of gaining contact.

"Do not misunderstand that in ordinary common contact there may not be a feeling that you
describe as ecstasy. I used the term in its mystic sense of tingling ... high pleasure, as in the
communion of the nuns and monks of that type. He who carries his ecstasy eventually
through the formulation period into manifestation of one sort or another, is functioning in the
normal course. It might be so that one can receive from universal consciousness direct, but he
cannot render back to universal consciousness except through manifestation. He cannot turn
upstream and barrenly turn toward the source an emotion; however elevating and satisfactory
that may seem.

"Anything normally functioning produces an emotion of pleasure; the pleasure is of a type

and intensity according to the breadth and depth and cosmic significance of the function. The
highest emotional content must be in the perfect functioning - that heart expansion which
puts a man in contact with his source. The pleasure is legitimately enjoyed to its thrill of
rapture so long as it is a concomitant of function, and does not become an end in itself. The
proper action of any major function implies the proportionate functioning of any subordinate
function. Can you not see then, that a neglect of one or more lesser functions, because you
get pleasure in a larger function, immediately implies the pursuit of pleasure for itself? It
therefore becomes a perversion as in the case of monastic ecstasy before mentioned."

"Wouldn't it be penurious to ask only for certain limited things in prayer," asked Betty
pertinently. "Shouldn't one reach out and take all possible aliments of spiritual growth like a
healthy, young animal?"

"You would become a terrible prig if you took only for the purpose of special manifestation,"
agreed Gaelic. "You receive what your instinct wishes, you enjoy what your enjoyment
teaches, you give out what you have fully in your hands. If you are producing and
manifesting in a constructive way, you will be utilizing in full that which comes to you from
above. To try to get only that which you may expect self-consciously to pass on for the
improvement of others is priggish and spiritually awful! If you were to pay too much
attention to your spiritual processes or your digestion, you would probably get a fine case of
dyspepsia in either event. Use only sufficient intelligence in the one case or the other to avoid
spiritual or gastronomic imbecilities.

"To the extent to which they consciously functioned in the period of the times they were
normal. To the extent to which they sought their souls' salvation or their own delights they
were not.

"Prayer is in essence," Gaelic concluded, "a complete conscious unfoldment of self for the
reception of the spiritual vivifying, healing and developing influence of spirit. Conscious
unfoldment means necessarily a clear-eyed, honest, impersonal understanding of oneself. The
conscious act of this understanding and appraisement acts as if it removed from each phase
so recognized the film of insulation to admit the germinating waters; until that
acknowledgment, those waters are prevented by that film from their nourishment office. In
that conception is no room for a demand for specific favors beyond the demand made by
acknowledgment of a lack in yourself.

"As to the intellectualization: there should be sufficient to produce complete manifestation.

Sufficient and no more. The intellect is a tool for the specific and only purpose of complete
manifestation."
 Chapter X
HEREDITY

1. THE QUESTIONS DEFINED

All that has been given in the preceding pages was, of course, intensely interesting to us. It
was, furthermore, of the greatest value in orienting us comfortably in the cosmos. But, in the
last analysis, it had not come to close grips with the most intimate of the problems that face
our poor humanity, most of which can be summed up in the phrase - The Pursuit of
Happiness. Why are we happy or unhappy? Why are we limited - and how much - by
heredity and environment? Why is this, apparently, a world of conflict, in which seemingly
we must bear a part? How can we do so with full justice to all? To what extent should we
sacrifice ourselves to others? Obviously we have a job. How go at it, get on with it? How
work on it most easily and effectively? These are warm and human questions. They touch us
close.

2. RACIAL INTELLIGENCE

In his dissertations on the matter of the Group, Gaelic had flirted with some aspects of
heredity. While what he said had been illuminating, it had also aroused our curiosities as to
certain aspects. Gaelic evidently considered it worth while to elaborate.

"To treat of the subject of heredity," said he, "it is necessary to go back to a consideration of
the mechanism by which quality manifests itself in individuals. I have said that it was
because of the gathering together of the proper conditions in proper proportion, for the
acting, of that law, and that these conditions are gathered by Intelligence.

"What Intelligence? The Intelligence of the quality which produces its own offspring, and the
type of quality-intelligence is that which is built up by the quality experience and the quality
memory contributed by its innumerable offspring of the past. Each has brought to its quality
the gift of its experience. One, for example, has learned that cold freezes him, and fire burns
him, and water drowns him, and therefore his quality gains from him the intelligence that in
water, in fire, in ice, is no fit condition for the production (i.e. manifestation) of itself. To that
extent it is intelligent about its own business, which is the moment the reproduction of itself
through physical manifestation.

"That is a crude illustration only. But by that illustration you can readily see that sometimes
slowly, sometimes rapidly, any given quality acquires a very complex and wide reaching
wisdom as to conditions favorable, not only to its manifestation as a whole, but also to the
manifestation of any of its components, in the proportion it happens to be needing at that
juncture.

"That is the broad general principle that governs physical production from quality of
anything and it is that type of intelligence that collects the conditions for that production."

3. THE DETERMINATION OF ONE'S ENVIRONMENT

"The quality-intelligence attains a tremendously flexible and many-sided intelligence of this

sort. It is itself a complex intelligence. It experiences a great variety of developmental needs
which vary in their delicate balance, almost from moment to moment. It is manifesting itself
in millions, and constantly; and the inception of each separate manifestation alters the
balance of the whole structure. So that compensating adjustments become a necessity. The
superintendence, the planning, and the arrangement of these adjustments; the estimate and
satisfaction of each and every developmental need, require a flexible - almost omniscient -
quality-intelligence.

"You must not forget that with the human being one is dealing with entities within the
quality, instead of manifestations from pure quality, as in the lower forms. Each of these
souls is of incomplete attribute. Just as the individual, before attaining personality,
sometimes carries over into its quality a very few attributes, and from the reservoir of its
quality attracts to himself the complementary attributes necessary to form another individual;
so analogously the human soul is constantly tending to attract to itself the attributes in which
it is deficient from the store house of human quality, - and this for the purpose of being born,
as you call it, a complete being, potentially if not actually.

"Now these missing attributes are supplied through the human quality. But I have not said
that they are necessarily all supplied from the discarnate human quality. One of the
determining factors as to whether a given human soul shall enter the body in one household,
in one station of life, in one race of men; rather than in another household, another station in
life, another race, is that in that household, station or race, either by physiological inception
or by personal development, the conditions exist, or are easily assembled, for the action of
law, which will there precipitate those attributes from the quality-reservoir, so to speak,
which are needed to fill out the completeness of that soul."

4. APPARENTLY UNFAVORABLE ENVIRONMENT

It would seem, puzzled someone, that always unfavorable material conditions are
demoralizing: that one develops much better in favoring circumstances.

"How do you know?" demanded Gaelic. "It is not the circumstances. It is the condition
existing in the parent or parents, which makes possible the manifestation of missing attributes
of the soul. The surrounding, the life which the soul must lead, may be very unfavorable, and
that soul might do much better in other surroundings - granted. But that soul could not exist
in this body, unless it could find conditions for the completion of itself. And it may happen
that in the rest unfavorable surroundings alone could that particular combination of
conditions exist.

"It is not the unfavorable surroundings, or the favorable - it is the birth that is important.
"Suppose we simplify: suppose a soul is made up, for physical manifestation of attributes A,
B, C, D, and E. This soul is lacking of E. It cannot be born unless it attracts to itself from its
quality attribute E. Now E exists only on your physical plane. If the soul is to possess E, it
must find a place on your physical plane where it is possible to gather the conditions for the
action of the law which produces E, and E in its due and proper proportions to the other
attributes.

"Now we have two families - call them G and H, G is a family whose surroundings whose
education, whose intelligence are everything to be desired. H lives in the slums. But with G,
for one reason or another, it is impossible to gather together all the conditions for the
production of E. It is, however, possible that at H those conditions may be -gathered. You
cannot grow a tree in some places, and you can in others. The soul has, so to say, to choose.
It cannot be born without E. If it is to be born with E, it must be born in the family H.

"But the necessity of its nature impels it to manifest itself in physical birth. Is it clear now?"

5. THE VALUES OF PRESSURE

"One thin spot in the argument," admitted Gaelic, "is the definition or understanding of what
I call quality-intelligence. You gained an idea of an intelligence analogous to that exercised
by a person - with some tinge of the arbitrary. Have you not noted that I used the word
'intelligence', not 'intellect'? Intelligence in this case means more a sensitiveness of response
through action to needs and situations, combined with an ability to form or gather or take
advantage of conditions that answer its needs. It is from one point of view almost like an
outpushing force which, by the very fact of its expanding strength, discovers outlets or weak
spots. In the other aspect, that of gathering its conditions according to its needs, it is almost
like what you call the action of natural law.

"You must not forget that when I say it gathers conditions I do not mean that it goes out, as
you go out, at the moment of its need or your needs to pick up wood and split kindling, and
bring them in and supply paper; it gathers its conditions through a long course of time. If the
tree quality would grow a tree, the conditions of that growth are gathered through many,
many years. The foreknowledge of what is necessary at any one juncture, and the
modifications of necessity through intervening and diverting free will, are so complicated an
interplay of adjustment that we will no more than indicate. It does not affect the principle.

"Nor must you get the image in your mind of independent action of any one quality. You
forget the very beautiful cooperation that must exist in the harmony of the whole Pattern. The
tree quality assembles its required conditions only by the interplay of cooperation with many
other qualities. As the qualities of stones and the qualities of soil, and the qualities of birds,
perhaps carrying seeds - or what not; we will not pursue in detail. You can see that that again
is part of the marvelous and beautiful combined harmony and intricacy of the Pattern.

"Another point; one of you said something in natural reaction against injustice, that it seemed
to you that any human soul anticipating birth might find in some Hottentot village its missing
attributes in better circumstances or surroundings than in the slum it happened to be born in. I
would challenge you to find anywhere, in a tremendously multiple universe, any two things,
or any two combinations of things exactly alike. I simply state that they do not exist, whether
it is the print from one thumb of any one of the billions and billions of human beings who
have ever occupied earth life, or ever will, or the infinitely greater multitude of common ants.
And since this is so, the discovery of exactly the combination for any particular deficiency or
attribute can be made at one spot only. And I would almost say, at one point of time only.
That statement is not, however, quite accurate. I said 'almost'. For physical manifestation
depends, not upon a completely rounded wholeness of attribute, but of a complete assembly
of all attribute in one form or proportion or another.

"Furthermore, one cannot skip a step. Few souls that have passed through the birth of the
individual in quality, and finally reached the birth, here or elsewhere, of the person from
quality, but possess sufficient development within themselves, of that urge of progress which
would prevent even hesitation in a choice between stopping short or going on - even through
an earth experience in untoward circumstances. The choice is at that point almost no choice
at all. One is impelled as by an irresistible instinct.

"That the untoward circumstances exist, and that they are crippling circumstances, deterrent,
warping circumstances, is indubitably true. That fact, as a fact, is a grief to us, as well as to
yourselves. That it exists at all is due entirely to the exercise, the existence and exercise of
free will.

"Why inscrutable Wisdom so offers resistance by which free will becomes so thoroughly
self-aware is beyond our comprehension; except that we can say that, just as any awareness-
mechanism requires an object for its functioning, so this awareness-mechanism of free will
requires the alternative of harmony or disharmony for the object of its development of self-
awareness.

"That any one soul requires attributes which cause it to be born in a slum, or that any slum
parents possess the potentialities of conditions for production of what that soul requires, is a
question that is too complicated to trace back. It is always the product of some exercise of
free will; some exercise of free will in the direction of disharmony, and by someone.

"The one who suffers the present consequence - either the new-born soul or its parents - may
or may not be what you call 'at fault' - what you call at fault; but this broad principle you can
record:

"That person who innocently, and because of the condition of things, suffers through lack or
deterrence, is privileged by that fact to demand from his quality compensation that will fill
out that lack. And he who, however indirectly, or through however complicated a sequence
or interplay of motive or event, is responsible for the conditions that cause that lack or that
deterrence, must sooner or later, above his own normal gift of development, contribute an
effort corresponding to the compensation accorded to the other."

"You can get away with nothing!" cried one of us. "Lord, what a system of bookkeeping!"

"There is no bookkeeping," Gaelic denied this, "It is the action and interplay of Law, and is
inevitable.

"It is simply that the responsible man at some time, now or hereafter finds within himself a
defect he must fill out before he can go on. Again, I do not attempt to tell you detail of
method, only process.

"For a small example; your slum parent. Why is he a slum parent? Because when he was
born, the same thing happened as when his own child is born. And right there, in his
everyday life, he has an opportunity of which he can, or need not, avail himself, to ameliorate
beyond his own experience that of his child. If he succeeds thus in partially compensating to
his child for the circumstances of his birth, naturally the child has received part of the
compensation of which we spoke. And the father also has received part of the compensation
which is coming to him. Do you see that? And that one effort has gone further to right the
original wrong condition or disharmony, than some spectacular and intrinsically, or
apparently, larger expansion by one more fortunately placed. So that in spite of your first
judgment that this man of the slums has been hardly treated by a harsh fate in being so
placed, as a matter of cold fact he has been more fortunate - in that he has gained more for
himself and for his human quality than has your man in 'lucky' circumstances. His
opportunity is less, from one point of view; but it is greater from another, because it bears a
closer ratio to his capacity.

"He is not", Gaelic distinguished, "born in the slums to get a harder lesson. The same
attribute might be elsewhere. The circumstances of birth have nothing to do with the matter.
It is a frequent mistake - that a person is put in harmonious or disharmonious circumstances
for the sake of development. Anyone develops better in harmonious circumstances - anyone.
Disharmonious circumstance is inevitable in development. It is unpleasant to be born in
disharmonious circumstance, but it is compensated.

"Note ye this," he added,"it is efficient in development according to the pressure.

"The mere fact of even moderate cheerfulness, for example, in squalid circumstances is a
force of development, sometimes, that is exceedingly strong; whereas cheerfulness in
thoroughly pleasant and congenial surroundings has no developing power whatever. Why?
Because it is working against no pressure.

"So do not mistake; for every circumstance there is compensation. Your slum influence on
the young and innocent child, for example. You see him little by little yielding to the evil
about him until you say 'He is a lost soul'. Perhaps so. But if that is literally a fact, he would
be a lost soul anywhere.

"If, however, step by step, even though forced back to the very wall, he has put forth the free
will of resistance, the repercussion of that force exerted has had its due effect, and though
materially and apparently spiritually he may end as a criminal, until the power of
circumstance has been weighed against the power of resistance, and the ratio evaluated, you
cannot judge.

"If," said Gaelic, "you should take a thousand people of wealth, and one thousand people
from your slums, and you would weigh accurately the happiness or unhappiness of each,
considered solely in relation to themselves, not in relation to their surroundings, you would
not find much difference. Eliminate from the examination the thought on one side, 'I would
not like to live like that', and on the other, "I wish I had all those things' - there is not much to
choose."
6. A WARNING

Before continuing the subject of heredity, Gaelic expressed a doubt or warning.

"There has been some doubt concerning the advisability of pursuing such subjects as this one
you desire, for two reasons. One is that the complication is such that it is practically
impossible to present a rounded discussion from which all shafts of interrogation would
glance. Within practical limits one can give only one or another of the many aspects. The
danger is real of considering an aspect as representing a whole. That, however, we will risk.
The other reason will amount to little if it is called vigorously to your attention. In presenting
these teachings watch carefully for one thing; the structure you build should contain only
those elements which can trace their pedigree direct through logic to your symbols of the
known. Wherever information has been given you of an ex-cathedra character, and you
cannot yourselves connect it logically and inevitably with the main thesis, it is better perhaps
to consider it as intended personally. For if at any point a reader is able to ask, 'By what right
or authority do you make this statement?' and you can not reply, 'By right and authority of
self-evident truth in final analysis,' it seems to me that you have made a mistake of tactics.
Some of this heredity subject comes under this category, I think."

7. SPECIALIZATION

"The human soul comes to earth for the purposes of one stage of its development. It comes
with the potentialities of all its attributes, else it would not come at all. Some of those
potentialities are considerably developed; others have attained only partial development;
others are hardly started toward development; and still others are more or less suppressed or
inhibited by the especial need of the moment, or the purpose of special general development
of earth life.

"I will make this clearer. It may be that a soul possesses one attribute so nearly developed
toward completion that if that attribute were given full and adequate mechanism in the earth
life, it would overbalance and draw to itself quality, admirable in itself, but not admirable in
its disproportion to other qualities. It is for the purpose of developing the other qualities that
the individual we speak of is in the earth life. In order not to starve those qualities of
opportunity by over balance by the developed quality, the latter is sometimes more or less
inhibited or suppressed. This is done, I must remind you, by that semi-automatic intelligence
of Quality which is sensitive to need; not by an arbitrary intelligence of whatever kind.

"Thus lack of certain things in an individual may be due either to a lack of development, or to
development beyond proportion."

8. THE PERSISTENCE OF HEREDITY TRAITS

"Now the parent," he then continued, "as we have said, in a manner we have not attempted to
describe, furnishes favorable conditions for the manifestation of a quality (or qualities)
needed by the soul that comes to him (as offspring). Those conditions exercise a reflex
influence upon the parent himself. They possess a power of manifestation which shows itself
to him - either by the production of some physical characteristics, or some pure trait in
character. If that manifestation is direct, that is in the normal direction of that law, the
manifestation is that which is to be expected from that law. That is to say, he has in himself
the same or closely similar physical characteristics, or inner traits, differing from the same
things in his offspring only by the pull and counterpull of his many other traits in which his
personality differs (from that of his offspring).

"If, however, the same conditions work at what we might call the negative end of the law's
action, instead of at the positive, or vice versa, the set of conditions favorable to the pure
manifestation of the desired (i.e. lacking) quality in the offspring will be so modified by the
pulls and counterpulls of the parent's individuality that you will get apparently the same
physical manifestation or inner traits but in actuality a manifestation of quite different
conditions. A long nose in the father, for instance, will mean firmness of character because it
is the outward physical precipitation of certain inner conditions. The same long nose appears
in the son. It indicates in him no firmness of character at all; it came to the son because the
condition through which the long nose was manifested in the father was also the condition
that produced the same thing in the son. But of the father's firmness of character the long
nose was only one of very many, though not so prominent manifestations; and of all these
manifestations, only that part which remained to produce the long nose in the father,
happened also to be one of many condition-ingredients such as produced, let us say, pictorial
insight - any trait - in the son.

"The thing that passes in heredity, in other words, is a common ingredient of multiplex
conditions that in their aggregate produce perhaps totally different things. They are not
passed down from father to son, they are inevitable consequences in each of the intersection
of their circles, the results of partially similar aggregation of conditions for the action of the
laws each according to its need.

"Those traits persist because when the son in his turn becomes a parent and supplies
conditions for deficiencies (in the souls of his offspring), once again the strongly
predominating conditions are apt to be similar, and therefore contain a greater or smaller
number of common ingredients.

"The persistence of hereditary traits that indicate apparently totally antithetical natures -
which is one of the puzzles of heredity - is due again to the consideration which I adduced at
the first: a parent with characteristic B strongly manifested, may from the predominance of B
in his constitution be able to permit the birth of an entity in whom it is desirable that B,
though fully developed, should be for the moment inhibited or suppressed.

"For the purposes of birth as a complete being, the father in a way lends the quality so that it
can be inhibited for a purpose, in the son. Therefore though apparently the father and the son
may have nought in common, in reality they may have more in common than many others
who seem more similar. For you must not lose sight, in this close examination of mere
mechanics, of the fact of kinship. That is a danger always in close examinations: that one
may lose sight of greater things in contemplation of the lesser.

"Traits of heredity dilute and pass away, simply by the continued pull and counter-pull of the
thousands of other traits which are not held in common: so that in regard to those traits the
circles, as it were, are drawn further toward their circumference, and when at last they part
those traits of heredity have disappeared.

"I despair that I have conveyed any clear idea - the subject is so complicated. It is a
foolishness on my part to try."

9. THE SPECIALIST

"Why have you specialists?" Gaelic nevertheless continued. "You must notice that the
specialist is made up of inhibitions. The more he is blind in general directions, the further he
goes in his own direction. Mind you, these are inhibitions, not lacks. These qualities may be
possessed but inhibited. If he lacked, how could he go up? He has not filled his level.

"When you find your able man narrowed in his view, it may be through inhibition only. It is
easier to release an inhibition than to build from a foundation of great lacks. Measure your
man by the highest point of him you can see, knowing fully that within him are all other
points reaching to that highest level; perhaps darkened for the moment, but in their turn either
to be released or given their opportunity for growth.

"A little man has no highest points; and if you know a man thoroughly, and your discernment
is good, you see in him no elevation or altitude in any characteristic whatever, then only can
you guess he is a small man. And reflect still more; it may be that the highest point you see is
a part that for the moment is illuminated for growth - because it might be the backward part
of that man. So that when in the course of time you see your narrow-visioned man as he is,
you might be surprised.

"Do not misunderstand me to be saying that every narrow-visioned man is a spiritual giant -
far, far, far from it!
 Chapter XI
CONFLICT

1. THE USE OF RESISTANCE

Resistance is necessary to development. We had that repeated, and understood its principle.
An airplane cannot rise without resistance of the air. But how about when this resistance
extends into the field of human relationships? Are we, ideally, always to turn the other
cheek? Are we to be thorough-going pacifists?

2. THE GATHERING OF CONDITIONS

"Properly to understand human relations on what might be called the conflict-and-

suppression side," said Gaelic, "it would be necessary to survey the whole field of what you
call 'the struggle for existence'. Each entity is engaged busily in gathering according to its
own and its quality experience - and hence memory - conditions for the fullest expression of
the law through the awareness-mechanism peculiar to it. These conditions are made up, first
of physical juxtapositions of various elements, corresponding to your kindling and firewood
in the making of a fire; second, and secondarily a gathering of subtler conditions composed
not so much of materials as of the actions of assisting and complementary laws; and, third,
the personal intention that places these conditions in such situation (not necessarily a point in
space) as, so to speak, to allow the current of law to flow through them.

"Now part of the material conditions may be possessed of what you arbitrarily call 'life'.
Semi-figuratively the conditions of a hawk's existence involve gathering of a shrew on which
he feeds. Without the shrew, or some other nutrition of the carnivore the condition - one
condition of the hawk's existence - is not fulfilled, and the law of his being fails to act. So
immediately you emerge from a simple uncorelated placement to an interplay, in which the
very gathering of conditions fulfilling the intention of one thing, modifies the conditions
fulfilling the intention of another.

"The same state of affairs obtains in the collection and manifestation of subsidiary and
assisting laws. In order that a culminating law of a particular intention may be made to act, it
is sometimes necessary that in extended preparation many other laws must be made to act
and produce their manifestations. Quite simply, in illustration, before a tree can grow, there
must be a succession of arrangements, beginning with a simple electronic substance up
through the formation of orbital systems, by way of planetary evolution, to the production of
soil and climate which will permit the embodiment of the tree intention.

"Each step of the process has required the action of numberless phases of law. And for each
of these phases conditions had to gather. Now, as I hinted, the interplay of those various
things is sometimes in more or less antithesis. If the laws which are to result in one thing act
fully, the laws which would result in another thing are hampered, hindered, or perhaps
estopped.

"From this you get a spectacle of an apparent struggle or conflict in which many entities
strive one against the other, each grasping with all its might for those things which it needs,
taking them when it can, wherever it finds them, irrespective of what other entities' interest in
the matter might be. Is that picture clear?"

3. THE REASON FOR THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

"But there is a larger consideration which governs. See if I can express it.

"We will say that each entity occupies its own radius of life; that which by its acquisition in
evolution - or the acquisition of its quality - it has, so to speak, earned. We are not yet
touching that point of free will where right and wrong choice, from the moral point of view,
begins. But by the health of its effort, the vigor of its quality, the perfection of its
correspondences to what it represents, its quality has nevertheless exercised a certain moral
effort, whatever may be the individual capacity of any of its offspring. In a way of speaking,
it has earned its place in evolution. Now that place, as I said, has a definite circle within
which it works. Any expression of itself within that circumscription is in harmony, not only
with its own being, but also with the greater harmony of which it is a part. Conditions it finds
within that circle are its own to use, whatever they may be; for its moral and legitimate use.

"The conflict, the apparent conflict, occurs because of the overlapping and overlying of these
circles. The decision as to which intention shall prevail in its grasp toward completing its
own conditions - which, remember, often involves the greater part, or even the whole of other
entities - depends not on the entity's desire or even his unaided strength, but upon the
pressure at that point of the greater, all-inclusive Intention. If the harmony of the whole is
balanced by the success in its effort of one entity, that very fact renders it possible for that
entity to complete its own conditions of manifestation. At the expense, apparently, of other
entities whose potential contribution is not essential to the greater harmony.

"Do you see in that a reasonably vivid picture of the reason for the struggle for existence in
non-thinking nature?"

4. DEFEAT

"It would be a fair and legitimate question to ask, how about those entities which appear to
lose out in the struggle for existence? Whose very lives, perhaps, are obliterated as part of the
conditions of manifestation of that entity which for the moment happens to survive the
conflict? It is a question often asked by the sentimentalist, and it is a state of affairs often
pointed to by the pessimistic philosopher as indicating an iron and unjust system of warfare
in the conduct of the universe. The negative philosopher even uses it as an argument against
any ordered and beneficent system at all. It must not be forgotten, however, that up to a
certain point in development - which we will shortly examine and define - the individual
importance is entirely subordinate to the Quality importance.
"The defeated entity, to adopt your classification, has in his defeat - as to the gathering of
conditions within the field shared in common with the conquering entity - had opportunity to
exercise on behalf of his Quality certain powers of resistance which are, in their very defeat,
made strong, tempered and more rapidly developed along certain lines than would be
possible in a forward moving conquering action. This development is not on its own
individual behalf. It is part, becomes part, of the possession of its Quality.

5. THE PULSATION OF DEVELOPMENT

"The pulsation of development requires two distinct motions. The first is development of
powers of compression, so to speak; and the other is the use of the power in manifestation.
The same Quality whose one individual, perhaps, suffered extinction, in the case we
examined, will in the rhythmic compensation when the time is ripe, be enabled completely to
manifest itself in another individual. Whereas, to consider merely two Qualities for the sake
of simplicity, the Quality that overcame in the first place may in its turn, in the person of one
of its individuals, be defeated in the struggle, and so furnish conditions for the manifestation
of the other.

"Of course the case is infinitely more complex, actually; but there is a rhythm of give and
take, of pressure and expansion, of tempering and of full use throughout all created things.
And remember that it is the Quality, not the individual creature, that so acts and reacts, and
the individual case is of no final importance.

6. FREE WILL

"Where does the individual become important, and to what extent?

"The individual obtains his first small importance with the birth of free will. He becomes of
first importance in balance with his Quality with the birth of the person as distinguished from
the individual. He becomes of the first importance over his Quality - that is to say, the
individual becomes more important than the species at the point where he knowingly utilizes
his free will within his knowledge to choose what you define as rightly or wrongly.

"The introduction of the free will on the moral plane alters in no respect the nature of the
struggle for existence on the side of its mechanics. A man gathers within the radius of his life
the conditions necessary to him for his complete manifestation, just as did the lower entities;
and what he needs within his circle is his legitimately for the taking. Other circles overlap
and sometimes overlay his own and conflict results because of this. In mechanism there is no
difference.

"But free will brings with it a recognition of the power of choice. A man may choose what is
beyond the circumference of his circle - his own circle - and may attempt to grasp it. We
must again define his circle as measured by that radius whose length he himself has
determined by development through the legitimate use of free will. When he so reaches
beyond his own circle in ignorance he encounters blind struggle, in which he cannot succeed;
and the benefit of his failure is to teach him that fact; and the use of his struggle is not to gain
power - as he does by his legitimate defeats according to harmonious rhythm - but to teach
him practically the truth just enunciated theoretically. If he goes beyond his circle knowingly,
graspingly intent on power which is not his right, he commits what you call a sin; not so
much against those who dwell outside - for they have the whole cosmos behind them - but
against himself alone.

"In this aspect, and at this stage of earth-embodied man's development, it is not a pretty sight,
but it is working out according to the intention of the method and in the only way by which
the All-Consciousness could become self-aware on the side of free will. For free will must
choose; that is its very essence; and to choose, it must know. Otherwise it but grasps blindly
in the dark that which first touches its hand, and knowledge can come only by actual
experience. You may be inclined to dispute that statement, but it is a fact; and you have
yourselves stated the thing inside out when you have said that you could be told nothing of
which you were not already aware. Experience can be gained only by action; and new
actions, exploratory action, can be directed to a certain extent by analogy and experience and
wisdom, but in the end there is always a residue of pure experiment. It is this residue of pure
experiment which leads man beyond his circle ignorantly into conflict which (when it
approaches) must result in his defeat and at the same time by that increase of knowledge,
expands the circle.

"So you see - perhaps - that even in the realm of free will conflict is necessary?"

7. EXPERIMENT

But, queried some one at this point of the argument; how about aspiration? Is not that an
attempt to get beyond one's circle?

"Yes" admitted Gaelic. "That is where the residue of experiment comes in. A man is morally
responsible only when he knows. The venture, in ignorance, results at least in increase in
knowledge, and hence an ultimate enlargement of the circle.

"When," Gaelic reverted to his former statement, "I said you cannot get experience except by
action, I did not necessarily mean physical action. But you cannot learn by more talking.

"You can be told no new thing. You can be told the words, but you will not understand them.
Action is all of development. The very first slight wee crawly movement on the part of the
most microscopic creature you can discern is an action whose first and foremost reason is not
existence or insuring the means of existence - though that apparently is the sole reason - but
the basic real reason is development action. By the fact that any new thing must be acquired
by experience by action before it can be told, either by you to yourself or to you by someone
else, in that resides the vagueness and the groping and the dissatisfaction of the approach to
any new thing. You must first confront it, become aware that it exists. It is something - just
something. You cannot understand because you have no experience. Then you must act; and
from the act and its result you have knowledge. For that reason you can never see clearly
ahead of your experience. Beyond must always be mystery."
8. LEGITIMATE CONFLICT DEFINED

"In dealing with the human being it is desirable to modify the rigidity of our figure of speech;
considering his placement, not as a clearly defined circle, but as an area of vaguely defined
boundaries, clearly recognized at the center of being and knowledge, but gradually fading in
definition as it extends outward into the unknown. The area of complete self-knowledge is a
compact though expanding nucleus which, as it spreads, pushes before it, so to speak, the ill-
defined penumbra about it. This penumbra, to pursue the figure, has not as its boundary a
balanced arc, but an irregular line, sometimes extending far out in promontories, sometimes
sticking at one undeveloped point or another in deep bays.

"The effect of growth is two-fold; one to extend the clearly and completely understood
nucleus within which dwells rigid responsibility, and the other to push outward boldly in that
experimental exploration of which we spoke.

"Conflict thus naturally divides itself into two classes: of resistance - within the area of fully
understood rigid responsibility - to outside power that would grasp and make its own
conditions found therein; and conflict outside that fully understood nucleus. The former is a
duty; for within that area it is impossible that outside power can find conditions appropriate
to itself which are not also appropriate to you, and the use of which does not result in a
mutual benefit and cooperation. In that area of complete self-awareness can exist no honest
doubts and within that area no conditions can be honestly used in disharmony with the great
Pattern. Whatever conflict there takes place is a righteous conflict against illegitimate
aggression. Its avoidance is as much what you name sin as is illegitimate aggression on your
own part. It is a duty to fight with all the weapons at your command within the area. You
need not fear defeat provided you put forth your full effort and provided you restrain the field
of combat to that area.

"Do not forget - remind yourself momently when you consider this question - that the
nucleus is the area of complete and satisfactory self-knowledge, however small it may be;
and that within that area - and that area only - dwells rigid responsibility.

"I wish once more to emphasize as strongly as I can that this territory of complete and honest
self-awareness is your dwelling place of responsibility. And if you permit illegitimate
aggression therein you always know, in that particular place, what is illegitimate; and you are
permitting a disharmony which is fundamental."

9. ILLEGITIMATE CONFLICT DEFINED

"But this is only one aspect of your duty towards others, and hence your duty toward
yourself; or toward yourself and hence toward others. You have also the duty and the
pleasurable instinct, or passion, toward expansion and growth. This cannot be done primarily
by building the walls of this inner self-awareness stone by stone a wee bit farther out; it can
only be done by bold and joyous excursion into your outer circumferences in experiment
toward that which calls the honest thing that dwells at the center.

"Therein, once more, is a beat or pulsation. The outflowing of aspiration is determined in its
direction and power by the compression, so to speak , of the life properly fulfilled within the
center; and the compression of the righteous conflict which we have defined; the
compression of self concentration within the limits of responsibility; the gathering of power
that comes with the satisfying and complete functioning of that which is fully understood.
These generate an impulse which must have its expression in expansion. It is again a
rhythmic process. Neither systole nor diastole of these functions can exist without the other.
An attempt to perform either without the complement of the other results always in disaster
of one sort or another.

"In the region of personal occupation outside the nucleus of complete knowledge must also
exist conflict. This conflict, unlike that which takes place at the center - even if conducted
with complete honesty of purpose and full effort - may nevertheless result, from the
individual's point of view in defeat. This is owing to the fact of the overlapping and overlying
of the fields of life of others, so that both are grasping for the same conditions but for
opposing purposes. Whether one or the other will prevail depends on the needs in accordance
with the Harmony of the moment. That has been explained before.

"It is evident that were the field of possible conflict* the area of complete knowledge of both
entities conflict would not take place at all for the knowledge would convey to both an
intellectual appreciation of the needs of harmony, so that cooperation rather than conflict
would ensue. Only when one or the other of the entities involved is working outside the
center of complete knowledge is there a struggle. Or when both are so working. The struggle
is always beneficial, either in the direction of compression for power, or for manifestation
through success - either systole or diastole. Only when an entity knowingly grasps for that
which is not its own, is there harm and confusion and disharmony.

"That is the general principle. It is necessary, however, to define more accurately the word
knowingly. It does not mean, necessarily, that in any given case a man should consciously,
deliberately, with malice aforethought, so to speak, go on a plundering expedition. It is much
more subtle than that. In estimating any man's ignorance in the sense of his innocent
reachings, we must estimate what faculties of moral knowledge actually exist in him as a
being in a certain state of development, and to what extent he has in this case used those
faculties. An omission to employ fully those criteria - methods of intelligent estimation and
standards of human interrelation which his experience plus his natural moral aptitude have
given him - is as serious an indictment against his innocence as the actual commission of a
planned piracy might be."

____________________________

* Through the desire of entities for the same conditions but for opposing purposes,
 Chapter XII
JUSTICE

1. DEFINITION

Though Gaelic expressly warned that the subject of conflict had still many other facets for
consideration, he felt its general principle was well enough understood. His next subject was
its logical extension.

"I would speak to you of justice, not strictly from its moral aspect, but as defining another
fundamental through which the individual touches directly the primal source.

"Wherever a man is involved in personal conflict, either of interest or intellectually, his

natural unmodified course is to react selfishly. In the overwhelming majority of cases so to
act with sole reference to one's own feeling or interest is to act unjustly. The instinctive and
instant reactions of savages and untaught children are but scantily informed with this virtue,
because each primitive nature is in the extreme individualistic. They think of themselves
within the circumference of their own interests and without reference to any thought but that
which originates and acts within that circumference.

"The beginnings of justice are born when the individual thinks not only his own thoughts but
to a certain extent the thoughts of another; when, even though partially and fragmentarily, he
places aside for the moment certain considerations of his own to admit certain considerations
of another. In other words, he thinks beyond the confines of himself.

"That is the first beginning of justice in fair play. Nevertheless, it is but a beginning. He is
thinking with only two points of view; his own and - partially one other's. His own point of
view may be both fallacious and self-centered; the point of view of the other man, though
different may be also self-centered and fallacious. While an average struck between the two
may be more nearly acceptable to both than either undiluted, the average represents more
nearly fair play than justice. It is a compromise, a modus vivendi; creditable perhaps, and
hopeful, but nothing more."

2. HOW ATTAINED

"To compass anything approaching real Justice this process must be extended. One must
think, not with two brains, but with many. One must be able to substitute for the instinctive
selfish reaction that of a nation, a people, not only of the present, but of the experienced past,
so that he reflects on his little present problem the verdict of his race. In his sense of, his
perception of, this feeling of that verdict, he is for the moment at one with his race; and the
more perfect the justice with which he acts the more perfectly he has touched and mingled
with the unity. And since it is a fact that a given container can hold but a given quantity, it
follows that with the admission of a thousand million brains to think out his problems so to
speak, his own individual and selfish reaction must be infinitely diluted and almost crowded
out.

"Therefore it is that through Justice, as well as through Love, that the individual man touches
that unity in consciousness of which we have many times spoken.

3. HOW RECOGNIZED

"That is the basic reason why Justice is esteemed as one of the great moving spirits of the
universe. Its presence implies a joining with, and its absence implies an insulation from. We
cannot pass judgment on the absolute justice or injustice of a thing unless we can think with
the brain of him who does the act in question. Only thus can we determine to what extent the
person is in touch with the verdict of his race. If we can do so, we are justified in passing
judgment. It is often possible. An action originating in human impulse or human brain is, at
least theoretically, always understandable through the equipment of other human beings. The
attainments of any quality of consciousness are, or should be, available to the creatures
manifesting that quality, provided the method is understood and the proper means of
development are employed; and provided perversions and stuntings and twistings have not
taken place. There is no reason why any creature should not help himself at need to all
sustenance he requires, through the umbilical cord of what you call your subconscious, from
the quality that has made him. The bee possesses the wisdom of all bees. So the appraisement
of justice or injustice as administered by the human race may be within the province of any
member of the race. All that is required is that he think with the brains, not of one or two, or
of a patriotic little community, but with the brains of all."

4. THE NECESSITY OF SUSPENDED JUDGMENT

"But outside his own quality of consciousness how can he pronounce, how can he say that it
is divinely unjust, that this calamity happens to him or strikes his neighbor? From what
quality of consciousness, from what remote inception, extending through what train of events
have such things come about? He cannot tell. It is impossible for him to think, so to speak, of
such things, not only with his own brain, but with the mysterious and unknown Intelligence,
that has somehow directed, not that the drought blast his field, but that in the long sequence
certain patterns form or fade. Since he cannot think with these Intelligences, how can he
pronounce judgment as to what he is often pleased to call divine injustice?"
 Chapter XIII
SELF SACRIFICE

1. THE QUESTION

Gaelic had thus shown us the necessity and dignity of holding our own within the circle of
our own responsibility. He had also reminded us that without the bold outward fling of the
experiment that braves the face of danger we cannot progress. He had pointed out that
sometimes this must involve conflict; but that conflict is not discrepant with justice.

But is rigid justice the highest aim? How about that ultimate of unselfishness we name self-
sacrifice? Sacrifice of ourselves for others? Such selflessness has seemed to be the counsel of
perfection in many teachings.

And yet in most normal minds is an instinctive reaction of mild contempt for the meek, kick-
me type that is always giving way - and congratulating himself in so doing!

2. DUTY

"Self sacrifice, in one popular aspect of giving up your own to another almost
indiscriminately and without reference to conditions of the especial problem, is often bad. It
is merely an indication either of laziness or of a vain self-righteousness. Self-sacrifice, so
called, is true and constructive only when it has its inception in the field of complete self-
awareness or self knowledge; and is merely a recognition, conscious or intuitive, of the fact
that the harmonious need of the moment is for relinquishment in accordance with the
principle of rhythmic compression and expansion which we have discussed. And since this is
a natural process, it is in final analysis a joyous process as is any harmonious functioning.

A man gives up something which is ordinarily and naturally an object of desire, not because
of some rigid intellectual idea of duty, nor because of some weak sentiment or emotion, nor
because of some mistaken conception of stripping himself to present to others as a
meritorious thing in itself; but because the extension of this inner nucleus of complete
knowledge has made him aware - whether intellectually or intuitively - that the occasion
demands, for the harmony of which he is a part, a foregoing rather than an insistence.

"In this complete understanding what the world calls self sacrifice is in his case no sacrifice
at all, in the sense that it involved much pain or regret. Indeed, it is likely if pain or regret
exist, the sacrifice is not justified. Even if a man has to struggle with himself to arrive at the
point of relinquishment having arrived there the test is whether through his intellectual
decision he experiences a completely unregretful satisfaction and a sense of having done the
totally harmonious thing. If there still lingers a strong sense of mere duty, that in itself is an
indication that he has not functioned entirely within his field of complete self-knowledge.
"It may sometimes be that from an abstract point of view his decision may be intrinsically
correct and that he 'should' make the sacrifice but from his personal point of view the
struggle to be made is in the direction, not of this especial relinquishment, but within himself
to extend the boundaries of his complete self-awareness, so that they will become
coextensive, with the intellectual understanding of general principles whose logic has forced
him to a decision of mere duty.

"Or, again, it may be that his duty-decision is intrinsically wrong, though he may not know it.
To give up what he should defend may throw confusion into the harmonious systole and
diastole of which we have spoken. Knowingly to abandon to others that which is not their
right, and that which they should earn, not only may deprive yourself of that which is
necessary and which has long been prepared for you, but may also fill unhealthily a gap
whose completion by effort should have developed certain qualities in the other.

"Here once more, as in our short talk of yesterday, you must not forget that in such decisions
it is required that all the powers - intellectual, emotional and intuitional must be accorded full
play of action. A man who comes to such a decision without calling upon himself fully, may
permit surface desirabilities too great an importance. He may penetrate so little beyond his
liking as never to allow other influences access to him. Perhaps when he goes deeper into
himself, he may discover that in these particular circumstances he may not like these things
at all however desirable they may be in other and perhaps more extraordinary circumstances.
Then his feet are on the ground. But he must not be led astray by self-righteousness into the
virtuous attitude of no further than trying not to like things. That is negative; that is putting
the cart before the horse.

3. HOW TO DETERMINE

"The progress of solid personal growth consists then, in the last analysis, of an ever
widening, ever sharpening definition of this complete self-awareness. For only when that
Self-awareness is so sharpened and defined can one be completely certain, both in intellect
and in emotion, of the proper direction and scope of his action. Only thus can he defend with
complete certainty whether he should resist or sacrifice, whether he should defend with all
vigor at his command, or subdue his first desire into cooperation.

"Outside of that sharp definition he must reach by the boldness of his spirit, by the questing
of his aspiration, by the grasping of his instinct for the unknown; uncertain, whatever the
justness of his intuition, whether in that field on which he treads his unaccustomed foot he
will win new spoil of victory for that which is divinely his own, or meet with the defeat and
thrusting back which is inevitable at times to one who would explore. In the one case is the
great happiness of acting surely and with knowledge, in harmony; and in the other is the
happiness of following a great adventure.

"We have now, I conceive, covered with a fair generality the meaning and the universal
mechanism of conflict; we have at least sketched the broad principles of the thing, whether
the struggle is within the elements of a man's constitution or between himself and what he
calls the impersonal forces with which his environment surrounds him; or between himself
and other human beings.
4. THE CRITERION

"As an interesting bit of philosophical speculation these principles exhibit no doubt certain
questions of interest, but in order to make them of any value in the living of life it is
necessary by example and consideration of individual case to exhibit these same principles as
working rules of conduct. What does your busy man of affairs in his counting house know or
care what we may say of 'Circumferences of complete self-awareness', if it conveys to him
no jot of information as to his conduct of the business way he is carrying on with his rival
down the street? Or what does your average citizen anywhere feel interest in abstractions that
fail to give him a guide to the conduct which will leave him cosmic satisfaction, or, as he
would say, 'allow him to live with himself', in his attempt to put down a rival in politics, or
love, or war? Such men cannot avoid a certain effort at philosophical understanding. They
must have a framework to surround their bit of truth. But the framework must look out upon
the landscape of their own intimate personal lives. Only thus does the greater concept obtain
the body of substance which will prevent it from an evaporation into a thing acknowledged
but too tenuous for use. No general truth of any sort remains close to the earth of any man's
own personal possession, unless it is pegged thereto by a clout of his own personal
experience. Deprived of that it is visible in his heaven as a beautiful cloud, from which he
does not even fear the rain.

"Conflict or struggle must always involve the taking away from one and the adding unto the
other. This is always true whether it involves a closely material thing, such as one can occupy
or grasp or put down in a book, to the exclusion of another; or the mere maintaining and
strengthening of an attitude of mind to the weakening of the self-confidence of another in his
own ideas or conclusions.

"This being the case, and leaving out of consideration any thought of a consciously evil or
unwarranted aggression, we can conceive even an ordinary conscientious man resting much
in doubt as to whether he is justified or warranted, or even desirous, of adding to himself at
the evident expense of what another honestly believes is, should be, or might become his
own. It is of course both undesirable and unwise, and indeed unwarranted to supply any man
with a ready mechanical measure into which he can feed his problems and from which he can
draw a ready-made decision. Decision is the vital principle of individual progress, and
cannot be taken out of the individual's hands without a far-reaching harm.

"It is, however, possible to give a simple and shortly stated rule by which the general
direction of decision may be pointed.

"To begin with the general and work down to the particular; contest, outside the circle of
complete knowledge - where its righteousness and necessity cannot be in doubt - should be,
first of all, devoid of the principle of intimate personal selfishness. It should be devoid of
personal animus. It should be devoid of personal judgments as to the motive or animus of the
opposing party. The latter, as an element in the game, does not matter, because as far as the
decision of the individual is concerned, his own motive is all that counts. All else is or should
be considered to be impersonal.

"The only mechanism by which one can determine whether or not these elements are present
is to reverse deliberately the roles of the parties. Place yourself with all your own personality,
in the exact circumstances of your opponent. Consider that by some clairvoyance you are
fully aware in all particulars of what is being done or contemplated by yourself in your own
role against him. Would you - the second you of this double personality you have assumed -
consider that as a fair minded man you could object to your own tactics being applied to
yourself in the situation of your opponent? If truthfully and honestly you cannot object, if so
situated those plans were to succeed you could not yourself candidly oppose an afterthought
of bitterness or unfairness, then in all probability you can return to your own center from this
mystic excursion into the center of your opponent, and with clear conscience enter upon your
undertaking. You can then be certain that the great balance of interplay will bring you
success or failure according to the need and balance of something - much greater than
yourself. Failure or success cannot avoid bringing you an ultimate and deeper satisfaction
than the greatest temporal acquisition could be, had you not gained your own approval. And
remember once more, that you do not in this mystic excursion take upon yourself what you
might imagine or consider to be your opponent's point of view, nor what you conceive or
imagine to be his intent, whether unfair or unjustified in your suspicion. It is how you would
feel - you would feel - in his circumstances were somebody to act against you exactly as you
now purpose acting against him. That little hand rule can be applied in everything that has to
do with taking from one and adding unto another.

"It applies in the simplest business struggle or trade or custom of financial manipulation; and
on through the games of your peace and the tragic realities of your war; up to the highest and
most tragic moral oppositions, where men, for the sake of what they conceive to be the truth,
lock their souls in contests that too often drag them down into the mud of intolerance and
bigotry. In all human relation I can offer no more specific a rule, no more wide-reaching
admonition, and no more profound principle than this. It has been very simply stated before;
I have but put a new conception of my cosmos behind it, to throw it once more into sharp
relief.

5. SEEK TO KNOW

"All great truths are simple. All great truths can be stated in few words. All great truths must
have poured within them all of man's knowledge and achievement before they can be
understood.

"In simple days it was not necessary to understand truth. It was enough to feel it. But as self-
awareness expands its circle, a necessity is born for understanding. And the more a man or a
race demands to understand that which has heretofore been accepted on what you call faith,
the wider, the more embracing, you may conclude has become the circle of self-knowledge
of complete self-awareness which is his measure. Do not be deceived by the cry that human
being should go back to a mere reliance on faith - when that statement implies that the faith is
a narrow and specific faith in [a] certain thing. Men must always live by faith, but it is a faith
in what is outside; a faith that knows [w]hat has been in small shall forever continue to be in
ever-larger. There are many faiths that man does not yet seek intellectually to understand -
many. But what he feels, as in older and simpler days he did not understand but only felt; the
things which now he is said to question, he does not really question - he seeks to
comprehend. Because the penumbra of his self-awareness is gradually illuminating as it
extends outward that which has lain in the shadow.

"Seek to know. And when in that conflict, that struggle, you unwittingly seek to grasp that
which is not your[s], the inevitable defeat will also strengthen in its repression for the
outfling which must in due time take place. Seek to know."
 Chapter XIV
GETTING ON WITH THE JOB: THE RHYTHM OF EFFORT

1. PRELIMINARY

Some of the material that follows did not come directly from Gaelic; some of it, as will be
seen, was given by another station, but a station of our group. It is by no means a
comprehensive treatment; so I have called it "a few hints". However, it seems apropos to the
general subject of our personal attitude to life.

2. RHYTHM

One morning 'Joe' remarked that he was going to talk of a platitude "a perfectly
commonplace platitude." But, he added, "if you look at a platitude from in front, it's flat. I'm
going to peek around a corner and show you it's round.

"Begin with the physical constitution. After you have more or less theoretically become
receptive to the life currents, you begin to resent and become a little bewildered by the fact
that you get tired. Your argument runs something like this; bar mechanical toxic
accumulations due to physical exertion, there is no reason why the flow of energy from an
inexhaustible source should ebb. That this does not obtain puzzles you and perhaps renders
you a little distrustful of your actual accomplishment. What I want to convey this morning
through this illustration of the physical is this:

"What you receive from the primal source is sweeping through the cosmos, not in the flow of
a steady current like that of smoothly running water, but in the pulsations of rhythm, with the
ebb and flow of rhythm. The particular wavelength to call it such, that you tune in on by the
nature of your constitution, may differ from the wavelength another tunes in on. Even if you
are working alone it very often happens that the personal rhythm, or lack of it, which you
have established by overt acts of body and mind, do not correspond accurately with the
wavelength that comes to you in the way of energy from the primal source. You may have
established your peak of receptivity, in extreme cases, with the ebb of your cosmic pulsation;
and vice versa.

"This results in harmony, and is a matter of personal adjustment through catching the rhythm
of your own personality. We cannot teach you how to do this specifically. We have been
trying for years to show you how to catch the rhythm through your own expansion."

3. AFFINITY

"In working with others your completest satisfaction would be found when you are with
those whose rate of rhythm is approximately near your own. Your effectiveness and
satisfaction diminishes as those degrees of pulsation draw apart, until there comes a point
when the natural peak often coincides with the trough of the other and the effectiveness is, by
a well known physical law, completely nullified. Neither party to this catastrophe is in the
slightest degree in fault, nor need one necessarily be more advanced than the other. They
simply react to different rhythms. In the one case you have a complete affinity, and in the
other case a very worthy person you cannot get on with to save your life. There are all
degrees between the two. This situation is complicated, of course, by the probable fact that
these people themselves are not in perfect harmony with their own rhythms."

4. THE RHYTHM OF EFFORT

"Not so obviously, but none the less truly, different types of efforts have also their own
rhythms. The trick is to catch them at their peak and relinquish them wholly at their natural
ebb. Any attempt to fill that ebb by effort to induce a smooth continuous level of
accomplishment results merely in checking the forward free natural movement of the waves.
That is a very ornamental way of saying you get 'stale'."

5. CROSS RHYTHMS

"Now we are coming to something more difficult to express. All the big waves have loads of
little waves on their surface and each of these little waves has its rhythm. We will take a
present example to make this clear. You realize perfectly that every one of its days has its
rhythm, and you more or less accommodate yourself to that. You are working with us now
but you would not try to work with us all day. You catch the peak for an hour and then you
do something else in the way of both work and recreation. That, as you say, distracts you and
freshens you so that tomorrow morning you are ready for another go at it. Now the thing I
want to point out is that, just as this little wave of possible accomplishment exists in the day,
so is it part of a larger wave of accomplishment which must have its peak and ebb. It may
seem logical that if, by a balanced refreshment, you keep yourself from too great effort in any
one day and arrive at the next day thoroughly refreshed, you should be able to go on with an
indefinite series of such days. That is not true. The larger rhythm must also be allowed its
swing.

"The point is, when you get your rhythm you will arrange so that you don't contravert it any
more than you have to. You work toward it all the time."

6. CATCHING THE RHYTHM

"Now this is difficult. These rhythms are not quite in your time element. By the very nature
of rhythm they must have symmetrical regularity - pulsation - but that regularity is not made
up of time, it is made up of pressure and release. Let's put it baldly; a wave of effort might
last three weeks with you and the next one last two days, yet they would be equal in
themselves. It is partly fourth dimensional. It is not exactly intensity, it is the quality of the
thing. The nearest I can come to it is that, in diagramming your rhythm, you would have to
transpose the quality of the thing accomplished into the terms of space in the diagram, and
hence of times of course. I fear this is not transferable except in a glimpse.

"Now your problem is to adapt, as perfectly as possible, the job to the rhythm. If it cannot be
comprised within the dynamics of one upsurge, then it must be planned to be accomplished
in a series of efforts, and must be imbued with a rhythm of its own of such nature that its
natural breaking-off points, so to speak, will coincide with your own natural ebb. A badly
conceived effort does not naturally sink at the time of that ebb, and requires forced efforts
beyond the limits of your own rhythm. If it is badly planned and you drop it, you have a
jagged edge."

7. HOW THAT IS DONE

"Now," warned Joe with great emphasis, "you cannot do this intellectually. HERE IS ONE
SOLID CONCRETE PILL BOX WHERE THE INTELLECT HASN'T EVEN A LOOK-IN.
AND THIS IS FINAL; You have to depend entirely on the judgments suggested to you by
your feeling, if you have a feeling for rhythm. If not you are out of luck, for the moment. The
artist plans the rhythm of his work unconsciously, by feeling. He feels about how much he
has in him, and the proportions of that he is doing seen somehow to arrange themselves so
that they pretty closely coincide with his feeling of the ebb of creative energy, which means a
forcing if he goes beyond it. He hits it more or less according to his subtle and instinctive in
in-understood sense of rhythm, great and small.

"Now this sense of rhythm is an accompanying product of the increasing consciousness of

and knowledge of and living in general Harmony. It is nothing else; and it comes no other
way. As to its acquisition, therefore, we can say no more than that we are striving constantly
with you to lead you into it.

"This attempted glimpse today is not to set you a puzzle for your minds' manipulation, but to
reveal to you an aim, cloudy, misted and undefined though it may be, toward which to turn
your farther aspiration. And perhaps to afford you an encouragement on the way."

8. WAVES

To complete this aspect I append the following, the source of which was anonymous.

"Vibrations are life, and waves are progress in life. The thing that is made by vibrations
moves within the limits of its being, and also carries forward - through itself and its contacts -
the wave.

"Waves lift and fall, as well as move forward, and the particles that comprise them are also
elevated and depressed, as well as carrying through themselves the forward movement. The
rise and fall is in itself rhythmic and harmonious. Without it no forward movement is
possible. This is a universal law, applying to the mighty and onsweeping tide of cosmic
evolution, and alike to the little ripples in the tiny pools that make up individual affairs. The
sea-gull that exults upward on the shoulder of the rising wave, too often, instead of falling in
glory of grandeur into the troughs, plunges from its height darkened with despair - because it
has not the vision to see, nor the perception to feel, the mighty, slow-gathering force that will
lift it again to another moment of high-tossing, sun-glinted height.

"THIS IS A UNIVERSAL LAW.

"Know that. Understand that, Accept the recession into the quiet hollows, into the slow
sucking trough, as part of the great rhythm - without which there would be stagnation. Learn
to take it as the repose period, the gathering period, the period in which the mighty forces
that lift the wave upward, are quietly powerfully coming in - If you could only once feel this,
visualize it, never again could you be uneasy, depressed, low spirited, discouraged merely
because of the natural, inevitable, necessary ebb after the flow. Never again would you worry
because in this or that your powers of today are not your powers of yesterday, that your
wings are folded, that a darkness seems to have closed you about. Accept the quietude,
accept the ebb - enjoy it - as all harmonious things should be enjoyed. Rest in confidence
with your folded wings, knowing that it is the law; that soon beneath your breast the stir of
gathering forces must be felt; sure that in the progress that the law ordains you must once
more be swept upward by the glittering crests whence all horizons are far, and the whistling
winds of eternity tempt again your outspread wings.

"As I said, this is the universal law. By it you can measure your smallest needs. By it you can
measure your greatest griefs and despairs. Carry it always with you, for its fitting is to all
occasion."
 Chapter XV
GETTING ON WITH THE JOB: THE NEED OF FUNCTIONING

1. THE NECESSITY OF FUNCTION

"All things that be are in function an embodiment of reality, but in relation are symbols of
reality - they merely stand for something behind them as a note on the page stands for the
musical note," Gaelic stated as the basis of his next argument.

"A man, static in a world not only of physical objects but of emotions, invisible faculties, and
even of thoughts," he continued, "is but surrounded by a multitude of suggestive symbols
standing for, but not embodying, a reality remote from him. By their aid, and the aid of his
imagination, he may surmise the existence of realities, and perhaps to a certain extent obtain
a critical and appreciative understanding of them, but they will touch him only as a shadow
touches the wall, leaving no impress.

"From them he obtains no experience of solid fact, but lives in a world of insubstantial
poetry, whose quality is that of dreams and whose endurance is as fleeting. If he is of mystic
quality he is perpetually in anticipation of some remote time or state of existence when he
shall break down the veil of illusions as he calls it, to an undefined and rather vague reality of
an unguessed form which he imagines to lie behind.

"He does not realize that in the nature of the universe, and under proper conditions the reality
enters into and informs with life the symbol itself, that the veil of illusion is compact of
illusion itself, and that, had he the secret, he can, with the fingers of his very own spirit,
touch the living naked essence to which he longs so often in vain.

"To himself, each man is reality itself; to himself he symbolizes nothing. He is, and in the
mere fact of that being he touches an underlying fundamental essence of the real. This is
simply and solely because the life that is in him functions. His appetites, his emotions, his
passions, his imaginations, the coursing of his blood through his veins, the registration of
light through his eyes, his movements, and every activity which is his, are not to him
symbols, but are expressions of that which is his inner self, seeking outlet in a world of
movement. The living intangibles flow through their respective mechanisms within him to
produce, as far as his consciousness is concerned, a portion, limited though it may be, of
absolute reality.

"If it happens that he is deprived of all outward-reaching, acquired or natural-functioning

correspondence with things about him, he is surrounded by a dream world in which all things
are to him symbolical except himself. So true is this that certain ones, by nature
contemplative and externally almost non-active, have gravely propounded this as a
philosophical system.

"But, an extension of the same process exactly that renders certain aspects of personality, is
capable of transmuting the symbolical to the real in the environmental world about. To the
extent that man succeeds in functioning through that external world, he removes it from the
category of symbols suggesting truth into the category of things conducting truth. Whatever
man functions, whether within or without himself, becomes such a conductor and ceases to
be a symbol. Man's education and development on all planes of life and lives consist in his
fashioning tools, skills, understandings and abilities actually to function in a wider and wider
inclusion of his environment.

2. THE OBLIGATION TO FUNCTION

"Now the penalty for the fashioning of a tool is that it must be employed or it will rust. And
there were no tools fashioned there would be no rust, and rust is only another word for
deterioration and decay. The obligation, then, of having developed correspondences,
aptitudes, talents, skills, techniques, abilities to function, is their employment. Through them
one translates the symbolical to the real; but, once the transmutation has taken place, a
neglect to continue so blunts the perception in that direction that, in time, that particular thing
will cease, not only to be a conductor of truths but even to symbolize. And so it will end at
last in summat lifeless useless - and dead things must be painfully carried away!

"On reaching mature years it should be, and it will be in time, a spiritual requirement that
each man should sit down with himself to take stock of his equipment. He must examine to
see what he has learned to do in the matter of this transmutation; for what he has learned to
do cries out for its fulfillment. He has called to life a need of fulfillment of reality which did
not exist before. He has to an extent chosen a road in which some way or another he must
tread out; or, if not precisely a road, he has taken a direction. The path his feet may tread may
not be precisely that which he had in view when he started, but his ability to function must be
in some way fulfilled. He must lay his aptitude and talents, and the rest, before him as on a
table, and he must say to himself, 'These things are mine, they are in my possession, and in
some degree I am skilled in their use. Furthermore, in one way or another I must use them.
They are the obligation of my equipment in this life. I may not use them in the way I
intended when I fashioned them, but of them some use I must make. Otherwise the reality I
have called close to me will, in its nature, recede, and about me will deepen and darken the
veil I have so sore labored to thin.' Mankind is prone to greediness and, like a child, would
grasp ever more than his hands can hold.

"I would state it a bit differently," said Gaelic, "by the fashioning of a tool or function
through which one functions in a symbol to convert it to a reality, he calls into existence an
obligation to continue in one form or another the transmutation. The abandonment of that
aptitude is only justifiable when, through some other aptitude, that same transmutation is
continued.

"Now beware lest too close inspection of a very large and general law gets you to splitting
hairs of literal interpretation. There is, of course, room for experiment and room for
expanding in new interests."
3. THE MAKING OF REALITY

"The obligation of functioning that which one has fashioned and acquired is not so onerous
as one might fear," said Gaelic, "Developed muscles require less exercise than those in the
building and accustomed action less attention than in the learning. In the second place, a
small impetus brings an early fulfillment. The effort is to show you that it is not only
desirable but is a part of the great web of law that one should choose, and, once having
chosen, should maintain one's greater directions. It is to discourage, not only by general
precept, but also by the great web of law, too great a scattering of one's forces and too ready
unwarranted abstinence from motion forward along one's chosen path. One may be perhaps
mistaken in ones' early choice; it is not a fatal and divorceless marriage. It will, however, be
necessary to find by analysis, or oftener by intuition of the unsatisfied equation, what reality
has been worked for transmutation; and the old not abandoned until an equal transmutation of
reality is assured in some other direction.

"Be it noted that genuine mistakes very rarely result in a very high order of transmutation.
Abandonment through whim is very possibly what I am more particularly emphasizing, or
abandonment without sufficient cause.

"This evening is a crude, rough and general statement. If you dissect it in detail with your
intellectual scissors and forceps, you will probably find much to question and perhaps to
deny. That is due to the fact that a complete statement is impossible for a great variety of
reasons. But if the general principle is laid away in some absorptive corner of your spirit, it
will cause you to grow into a fuller understanding than I can at present express. Plant it and
water it; do not pick it to pieces, for I cannot myself tell from here how much or how little of
that particular reality I have functioned into you."

4. THE OUTGROWING OF FACULTIES

There was a good deal of talk about 'living through' experience, so that the value of that
experience was fully realized, and so one need not endlessly repeat. How about those
'functioning faculties' of Gaelic's exposition? Did not they come under the same category?
Once a faculty had been developed and utilized to the limit, should not one discard it? Was
that not the purport of much of the 'renunciations' urged by many spiritual teachings?

Gaelic repeated our doubts for clarity. "You have," said he, "done much speculating on what
you have variously described as the outgrowing and discarding eventually through use:
conceiving erroneously that having developed a faculty and having given it full and complete
employment, so far as full and complete subjective experience is concerned, you have as you
call it, lived out that experience and are to abandon it for summat more advanced -
erroneously, as I say, for these reasons:

"In the first place, faculties are developed primarily not only to afford yourself experience,
but to enable you so to function in the external symbol as to bring yourself in touch with as
much of reality as your effort in developing the faculty has magnetically attracted toward
you. We can best understand the second reason by considering some faculty actually
outgrown and abandoned.

"To avoid all possibilities of dispute we would best take for our example something in the
physical organism, as for instance the vermiform appendix. This at one time subserved a
useful and indispensable purpose in that it formed a large by-pass reservoir for the breaking
up and the bacillar inoculation of the food which the animal organism at that state of its
development ingested. In other words, crude though the process was, through function the
grasses and herbages, which to primitive intelligence could be naught but vague symbols of
hunger-satisfying possibilities, became life bestowing reality.

"In the course of evolution, that which we might call 'appendix faculty' was 'lived through', in
your definition, and abandoned. In your reasoning, which I have quoted, the possessing entity
had from that particular faculty extracted all the experience it could bestow, and was
therefore impelled to move on to the construction and occupation of higher faculties.

"But, be it noted that the error in this reasoning here becomes plainly evident. Before the old
faculty even began its process of atrophy, a new faculty, the later chemistry of the intestinal
tract, had been fully developed and in function. A novel apparatus had come into existence
fully capable of transmitting at least an equal amount of symbolism into reality - or grass into
energy - and probably in much larger quantity. The abandonment of the old was not
conditioned on the fullness of experience acquired through its functioning, but solely on the
fact that a replacing and higher faculty was fully completed to take its place."

5. THE SAME, CONTINUED

"Now thus we see the life of development proceeding in a two-fold manner. On the one hand,
we have the hearty use of what faculties and attributes we possess which are at least enough
perfected to admit of free function. Those we turn toward the transmutation of the great
world immediately about us. On the other hand, by means of the material of reality with
which we thus come into touch, we are slowly evolving new faculties and attributes which
will in due time begin to function and thereafter will increasingly function, until, in their
perfection they may supersede that which is outgrown. But until that time is reached, the
obligation of hearty and eager and vivid and complete activity of the old faculties and
powers, utilized on the material more appropriate to them, is the most necessary, if not the
most important obligation of existence.

"This is so true that, although a due and proper proportion between the two is essential for
that higher harmony which is balanced happiness, nevertheless a complete submersion in the
use of possessed powers is accompanied by a certain balance of comfort which is wholly
lacking if emphasis is overbalanced in the direction of new employment. You will feel a
sense of harmonious correspondence in your doggies, or in certain humans whom you feel to
be so comfortable toward their special environment that you will wonder, often, if you are
not, unawares, in the presence of some higher harmony of development. Such are examples
of what I mean, in contrast to the one whom you know to be a sincere and laborious aspirant
towards spiritual perfection but who, nevertheless, you cannot but observe is restless, baffled,
discomfortable or even wholly unhappy. He is, to drop roughly to our first simile, trying to
get along without his appendix before he has developed a stomach."
6. MAINTAINING THE BALANCE

"I will repeat, for emphasis, that in spiritual relationship man is in function a mechanism for
the transmutation of appearance into reality. That he must do to the extent of his powers. He
may not develop new powers at the expense of that function. He may not pay for expansion
by abandonment of this great reason for his spiritual being. He may not develop new powers
in advance of his ability to use them for this purpose, and this purpose only.

"The main point is, a man's whole possession of faculty, old and complete or new and half
formed, must be directed toward active function in the life of the world about him, and not
directed toward an attempt to function in an environment beyond him.

"Now do not misunderstand me. I said 'function' - 'use.' That does not inhibit exploratory
reaching and experiments in advance. Function means due and complete exercise; it need not
comprehend the whole of activity. The balance must be maintained in proportion, and the
greater proportion of activity must be in the correspondences natural to the entity's average
state. Gradual growth will perhaps change the type of application, but until the environment
is changed, as by what you call death, that point must be in your world surrounding.

"Identifying your discomfort with disproportion, nine times in ten. When one experiences
intense discomfort in what you call 'psychic development' - a bad term - it is worse than
foolish to drop 'psychics' and scuttle back to a static existence. Rather you should examine
your equipment as I suggested, and turn yourself to a more studied and complete use of it in
your natural everyday world."
 Chapter XVI
GETTING ON WITH THE JOB: WORKING EASILY

1. REFRESHMENT

This, like the last, is not from Gaelic. It also came through another station. But that station is
one of our own group; and the material seems to be part of the same effort.

"You know a child's first impulse, when you give it a beautiful flower, is to pull it to pieces,"
began this communication. "That is natural enough, but a flower is not to be handled that
way: it is to be enjoyed whole, as an inspirational thing. These foreshadowed ideas that come
are delicate things, blossoming things. They must have more effect on the inspirational side
and less in concentration in pulling them to pieces to understand. The constant emphasis is
always in putting most attention and energy on the influence of the idea: how to absorb it and
assimilate it and take it to yourselves. That is the important work of each one; and the
dissecting of it is only allowable after the rainbow influence, or flower influence, has entered
into you.

"So many beautiful things are put into the world solely to help you take the jump-off. I took
the rainbow because it seems so obviously inaccessible that no one could dream of spoiling it
by reaching and analyzing it. It was balancing in visioning. It is the refreshments of life that
you should take joyously and vitally. The beauties of things teach you how to liberate your
spirit. You ask how can you feel free and happy. Can you not relive the moments you
responded most keenly to beauty? Doesn't that give you some idea of the technique of
springing off beyond yourself? There is your guide to the way. And strangely enough it is a
circular thing; because, having sprung loose in response to inspiration or beauty, the
refreshment and replenishment of it arouses the spark of vitality, which in its turn - through
its entirely practical -methods - will help you to climb with understanding and desire, not
baffled and strained and drawn. You have oxygenated and energized, have made a natural
process of what was a puzzle and a tangle and an effort. You must not starve that rainbow
side. It is more practical than you think. It is the mechanism of liberation."

"I am refreshing myself," said the station in her own person. They are showing me how to
refresh in myself in a confined place, such as a prison cell. Still it is possible to have rainbow
feelings there. There are pieces of color around, separate soft colors, and it gives me a
different sensation when I dive - delve - into them. - A fern; just a long green fern with little
tender clinging tips that speak of growth in a perfectly suitable environment. That is one.
There are so many things. I can't stop to tell you how playing with them liberates you. There
is Nimrod (the cat). He is good for that, too, even his whiskers are amusing."

"You must not deny your rainbow soul its playtime," resumed the Invisible. "If only you
realized what wings grow during the playtimes; and how glad you are to have them, even
when you have to fold them for practical work. "I'd always like to have a sheath," observed
the station," - I suppose they are clothes - of satisfying texture around me."
"Yes," agreed the Invisible, "clothes for the sake of enlivening your spirit and not for the eyes
of fashion. It all helps. Don't scorn little things; indulge them. If you have a secret tiniest
leaning towards what seems a madly inappropriate idea, try indulging it for the sake of
liberating your impulses.

"Nothing is right if your proportion is not right. There is something so simple I want to say to
you. It is on the question of what one simple thing to do when you are puzzled or baffled or
congested. And that is this; looking up from your work. When everything else around you
may tangle up or bother; you can still know your ultimate intent, your vista. That is one of
the rules.

"That intent is a big thing. It keeps us individually from prisoning ourselves with all those
painful convolutions in the same place. Looking up, and forward, with intent, never mind
how baffled you may be. It is our collective intent with this group that will accomplish."

2. WORK WITHIN OUR POWERS

"Look up from our work! And," it is now Gaelic again, "work within our powers.

"The effective," said he. "is done well only within one's powers. The moment the element of
strain intrudes, that moment effectiveness slackens. The limitation implied by the feeling of
strain is one imposed in order to confine one's efforts within the effective.

"Strain is likewise a warning that one is stepping outside the task of which one is capable at
the moment. Work done with the infusion of strain is never work permanently completed, but
is at best in the nature of scaffolding. If it seems to you possible to accomplish only by this
extension into the region of exhaustion, that is an indication that your vision has embraced
too large a segment of the task. It is well then to retrace in aspiration to within the bounds of
the comfortable attainable. Accomplishment beyond the comfortably attainable is an illusion,
for it results in nothing of solid permanence. It is well to wait, within the permitted territory,
the growth in power until one feels able to advance with sure and easy steps. If there seems
pressure to exceed comfortable accomplishment, then be certain the pressure proceeds, not
from aspiration, but from unbalance.

"This principle by no means excludes the forevision of things not yet attainable but
ultimately to be attained. That forevision, however, implies no pressure of haste or
immediacy. There is in it the assurance of ultimate certainty, not of immediate obligation."

3. THE VALUE OF RITUAL

"Besides this," Gaelic continued, "much may be gained, in certain ways, by following the
grooves worn for us. It is all right to take one's own line; but there is no sense in it when
already established lines are going in our direction. Ritual, in the broadest sense, has its uses.

"In the necessary work that involves cooperation man works best within the appropriate
ritual. A ritual is a common denominator of those who so cooperate. A ritual may be
significant, or it may be merely an emollient of intercourse, unimportant in itself except for
that purpose. In this aspect is seen the valuable side of the human tendency toward small
uniformities even to the apparently trivial; such as the custom of the moment as respects
clothing, manners, personal decoration and the point of view as to the commonplaces.
Valuable as the quality of individuality is, it is absurd to waste its dynamics on the things that
do not matter. It is worse than absurd to insist on it in those things when such insistence
inhibits or deflects or calls attention unnecessarily among those whose forces would be better
expended in cooperation.

"In this sense all outward forms and customs are ritual, and are never intrinsically either good
or evil to be fanatically adhered to, or as fanatically deprecated. Each age, each segment of
consciousness has its own ritual, adopted by majority consent for the moment. It is effective
when it fulfills its function of automatically smoothing the attritions of unimportance. It
should never be combated through motives of personal taste or aversion. It becomes of
sufficient importance for that only when it ceases to fulfill the function just described.
Individuality of soul is a mark of development; eccentricity of externals is a mark of
eccentricity. If you were to visit another planet, you night consider it absurd and beneath
your dignity to paint your face sky blue, but a failure to do so might set you apart from those
to whom you were accredited. Your failure to conform would be submerging your purpose in
the trivial. One of the best weapons of deterrent forces is to inject into the human
consciousness small windmills at which to tilt, tempting it to remain behind for that purpose
instead of going on. The most effective windmills are those of outgrown ritual.

"The matter of decisions is a matter of development, and a mistaken decision may result in
considerable advancement. You move by making your mistaken decisions or your happy
choices, as the case may be. Once you have made a decision of a course of action, then the
principle I have enunciated of working within your powers obtains; and you must have a
greater probability of success if you remember this law, for it is possible that you may be
tempted to overstep in order to justify your decision.

"I must repeat it in a sentence; strain is impermanence. You may get results, but they are
temporary, and they must be done over again for permanence.

"In this contemplation you may see the value of avoidances, for in them, and in them only,
you may master that focusing of power that makes for solid result. We are accustomed to
think of the developing power of decision as residing solely in a choice of modes of action. A
full one-half of development resides in a choice of avoidances. An avoidance is not always of
the undesirable; it is sometimes a discrimination of essential irrelevancies."

4. RESISTANCES

"Work," said Gaelic, "is effort; and effort is a concomitant of growth.

"Movement is, and must always be, against apparent resistance. That resistance is not so
much opposition as the mere fact that you move. Only when you cease onward progression
do you become part of the static and inert through which you have been passing; and so the
apparent resistance ceases. Since this is, and always must be, a concomitant of living, one of
the first and most useful lessons to learn is that resistance and opposition are not the same.
The attainment of this simple mental attitude removes from the resistance the elements of
struggle and of personality so that, instead of resenting it as a bafflement, one welcomes it as
a sure indication that one is alive and forwardly in motion.

"The strength of apparent resistance in its variation from time to time is sometimes an actual
measure of speed of progress; sometimes a purely subjective misapprehension of the amount
of energy put forth; and sometimes a mere impatience of egocentricity resenting opposition.
In the majority of cases, whatever the external circumstances, the sense of struggle as being
stronger at one time than another, is an illustration born of the greater or lesser degree of
spiritual integrity in command at that moment. When one feels borne with a triumphant
current, it is merely that one has entered into, for the moment and fully, the realization of the
nature of resistance, and so rejoices in it, as the skilled player rejoices in the difficulty of the
game of his election. When, on the other hand, he feels lost in the rack and battle and ill-
fortune of overwhelmment it is because for the moment he has lost in extraneous detail his
perception of this truth.

"One of the great simplicities which your world must teach is the unimportance to the
compactness of spiritual integrity of any details. So that one realizes that no possible
deprivation or destruction of circumstance car deprive one of his place in the cosmos. For
ever beyond the ultimate deprivation of life itself remains still such of spiritual integrity as he
has acquired; and in due and fitting place.

"That successive deprivation of untoward chance, as it seems to you, may be disagreeable

and discomfortable, is readily admitted. That avoidance is desirable and worthy of best
forethought and skill is indubitable. But fundamental harm can come from these things only
if they move the spiritual integrity from its grasp on its simplicities."

5. BAD LUCK

"Ill luck is the breaking through of the pressure, which is progress and movement through a
weak spot. You can stop the leak by ceasing, to move; if you wish to pay that price. Until you
have attained perfection there must be weak spots; so let not ill luck dismay you. Search if
you will the leak; though it may be higher up the roof-tree than you are able to climb. Do not
seek it in relation to any individual or specific incident; rather in thinness of protection in the
envelope of your integrity. Reflect that in the imperfection of your state of development,
sometimes small and irritating bits or runs of what you call ill luck may be in the nature of
safety reliefs of pressure; so that those small things may divert or dilute from greater
catastrophe. Reflect further that the surest stoppage lies in the spiritual attitude in which these
things are accepted. If welcomed as a test of one's development, in this respect they become
of actual constructive value. Each ill fortune that strikes from the soul a spark of
dauntlessness has brought its own resolution with it. In this aspect there is no ill fortune and
no good fortune; but only the one life clad in motley. One of the simplicities you will learn is
that circumstances both toward and untoward, become of the same texture when fronted with
this selfsufficing spiritual integrity. And in each may be the same joyousness; for there is no
greater joy than the soul can experience in mastery. There is a long road to travel before the
truth of this last statement is, not merely understood, but fully experienced."
 Chapter XVII
GETTING ON WITH THE JOB: THE REWARD OF BEAUTY

1. THE ESSENCE OF BEAUTY

Anything in the world consists of two things," the principle was stated, "in spite of the
underlying unity. We have the life force of a thing, and the material manifestation of that life
force. Now, very simply, beauty is an exuberance of that life thing beyond the mere
mechanical need of producing a manifestation.

"When this subtle, outspringing, basic quality is so abundant, so overflowing, so vital, so

over-sufficient, that it not only models and molds and shapes its material into the forms of
itself, but has to spare, so to speak - we have beauty. When the life force is not proportioned
to the stubbornness of the material through which it pushes the pattern of itself - when it is so
lacking in vitality that it barely suffices to shadow itself forth in form - then we have
ugliness.

"That applies through all that we call esthetics. It applies to material things of this world as
we look about and see them; it applies also to the productions of men. If a man has spiritual
capital enough, he can afford, and he delights in, the ornamentation of his structure. If he is
straitened for funds, he creates a shed to contain merely his utilities."

2. THE UNCONSCIOUS PRODUCTION OF BEAUTY

"You see all about you in nature things that you say have 'grown naturally,' grass, trees,
flowers, rocks, birds, insects. And after you have thought a little you see that they are
material manifestations or shadowings forth of the within-contained reality - that they are all
outpourings of Universal life: taking their form from the shape of their intention, which
proceeds undiluted, as we may say, from the All-Consciousness.

"But have you ever looked down the vista of a great canyon in a city; or have you stopped
short in admiration of a serrated skyline of the piled up masses of man's habitations, milky
with mist of fading light: and have you ever thought that this thing too is an upspringing
Fountain of Life - exactly as the mobile hills of the forest area? And if you have, have you
gone one step further and realized that this could conglomerate idea of beauty and grandeur
of the shadowing of basic life comes, not undiluted and direct from the pattern of the All-
consciousness, as do trees in the forest - but have been condensed through the medium of
man's creative power? So that, at a certain point in the creative process, man's personality has
intervened, to gather to itself an attribute of the All-consciousness that no other thing in
nature has yet attained. And that is real creative power - to fashion from the raw material his
own intention.

"But note this: man's intention in building the great city whose mass has so impressed you,
has not been consciously the intention to produce this thing in the wholeness you have seen.
He has erected his buildings according to his needs; he has grouped them according to his
convenience; he has not thought to the arrangement, to that general aspect that has made for
beauty. But it was, it is beautiful. The reason is that in his reaching for and exercise of this
creative power, which he alone in animated nature possesses, he has a again joined forces
with powers of which he has been unconscious. And if his city is really beautiful - not in
detail perhaps, but in effect - it is because in his creation have been infused the exuberant
qualities - faith, enthusiasm, confidence, overflowing vitality. These, in spite of an ill-
directed esthetic sense; in spite of the deterrent qualities that make for ugliness; have had
their mysterious and invisible influence on the whole. Those influences are very subtle."

3. THE RECORDING ANGEL

"Each honest and vital effort, whether conscious or unconscious, toward beauty or that
overflow that makes for beauty, is a constructive power. And the sum-total of those efforts,
whether in a humble crocheted lamp-mat: or in an attempt at stage effects in the theater: or in
an honest though pathetic effort at decorating a hotel lobby, or a flower over the flower girl's
ear; all make in the aggregate a formidable force of onward-pushing construction, which,
even though scattered and comparatively unmarked, go far to over-balance the spectacular
disheartening destructions that get into the newspaper headlines and worry everybody with
the idea that the country is going to the dogs.

"That is the justification that would comfort many a sad comedian, doubtful whether his silly
bit of slapstick fooling, is worthy of a human on two legs. Its the aggregate. The Recording
Angel idea is not so far off - with his debits and credits."
 Chapter XVIII
THE TECHNIQUE OF COMMUNICATION:
ADVICE TO BEGINNERS IN PSYCHICS

1. TYPICAL BEGINNER'S EXPERIENCE

The main trend of Gaelic's instruction, or discourse, has always been toward spiritual
expansion, and explorations of those things which underlie spiritual expansion. He has never
gratified our inquisitiveness as to names; he has steadfastly refused to assist in decisions.
Other curiosities he has seemed willing to gratify, but only to the extent that would enable
him to set them aside.

Especially in the beginning of experience in psychics, any intelligent, alert-minded person is

bubbling over with questions as to what is going on.

What is it all about? How is it done? Taking them for what they purport to be, why is it that
so many of those alleged 'messages' ordinarily received through automatic writing, or ouija,
or what-not, are so random and irrelevant? Why do so many insignificant people entertain
William James, or Julius Caesar, or Roosevelt, or Faraday, or similar celebrity? Why so
much indirection, in getting at what should be a plain statement of fact; why the reluctance to
say a plain 'yes' or 'no' that would settle the question? Why, if this is actual 'communication',
all the fumbling?

And how - again assuming the genuineness of the phenomenon - can we distinguish the
genuine content? How are we going to say how much is 'coloring' from the station's
subconscious? How do we know the whole thing is not a product of the station's
subconscious?

Then again there is the question of what we call 'interference.' As is well known to anybody
who has experimented in this subject at all, there come times when, apparently, disturbing,
interfering, sometimes malicious entities take over the channel. Statements are made which
prove false; predictions are confidently stated that never come out. The result is confusion
and disgust. If this is interference on the part of such entities, how does it happen? Why is it
permitted? How does it become possible? How can it be avoided? If, on the other hand, it is
plain cussedness of the station's subconscious, what does one do about that?

Such questions, at one stage of experience, are not merely curious; they are vital. Some sort
of answer is necessary. Ordinarily people ease into an interest in all these things somewhat in
the following manner:

Some personal experience starts them off. It may not be much of an experience; but it is
sufficient merely because it is personal. Most often it is some such thing as automatic
writing. We will take that as an example. The pencil in the beginner's hand, moves, makes
marks, perhaps even scrawls words or simple sentences. He knows, as he says, that he didn't
do it himself. Who should know better? That is where his mind stops. He is amazed, perhaps
even awe-stricken, simply because the whole subject has been outside his normal field of
thought.

That is the first stage. The second is blind acceptance of face values. He did not do it; he
knows that. Something did. That something claims to be a discarnate entity. What else could
it be? Everything received, no matter how nonsensical, is taken as gospel. If the subject is
sufficiently enthusiastic and unanalytical, he is likely to delude himself with the notion that
all this is of world-shaking importance; that he has been especially 'chosen'. The delusion is
likely to build itself up through the subconscious, for it is a flattering delusion. Who could
avoid a sense of distinction when such big-wigs as James and Julius Caesar and what-not
take time off from eternity to spend long evenings with him? The content of the 'messages'
reflects this. They impress him with the high and holy honor conferred upon him; his
obligation to impart to the world the revelations vouchsafed him. A great many people do not
emerge from this stage. The consequence is the publication of an astounding mass of
balderdash.

Fortunately the majority do so emerge. Common sense and judgment do assert themselves.
Discrepancies and false statements cannot be dodged. It just plain isn't so!

This in most cases rounds out the experience. It is abandoned in disgust. A few, however, are
of more robust curiosity. In spite of discrepancies, nonsense and obvious intervention of the
subconscious, they seem to discover an 'irresolvable residue'. Those go on experimenting; but
with aroused discrimination.

2. THE PURPOSE OF FIRST COMMUNICATIONS

Why are so many of those first communications, assuming that they have some genuine
content, so inconsequential?

"The content of the first messages, through new stations," we were told, "is important only as
it serves to retain interest and does not discourage by too complete irrelevancy. We are rarely
at first attempting to say anything. We are merely trying to get a reaction to stimulus. If this
could be fully understood, it would be as effective to convey a single irrelevant word, or,
indeed, more meaningless sounds. From our point of view the whole importance of a
considerably extended period of first work is in the reaction to any impression on the part of
the station. Often in a long alleged message a small phrase, a single word, or even a solitary
syllable or sound is all that actually emanates from us. The rest of the message, so called, is a
mere carrying out of what the station himself unconsciously imagines to be the purport. That
minute response is, however, completely satisfactory to us, as it indicates success in actually
impinging upon our neophyte's receptivity. We have no particular concern with the rest of it,
unless, as I said at first, it may affect the probability of an abandonment of the experiments
because of nonsense or discrepancy or contradiction. Since our major interest is thus fixed
upon the process, while your interest is naturally fixed on the content, our aims must at first
be diverse. And since at first we see the trend of progress while you do not, we are naturally
reluctant to divert our purpose any more than is absolutely necessary.

"Therefore we give our attention and force to complete accuracy or to the production of what
you call evidential only when our hand on the pulse of your interest or belief indicates a
slowing down, below the danger point. Our object, you see, is to develop an instrument of
receptivity capable of something more worth while than could be possible in crude
beginnings.

"Now we try to start, naturally, with the apparatus that is most simple, both in manipulation
and in range, that it is possible to devise. The simplest of all is, of course, a single reaction, a
single impulse, resulting in a single phenomenon. We tip a table according to an almost
childish prearrangement, or cause you to thrust a thing about in a limited number of
directions, like the ouija board. These manipulations require, as one might say, a mere touch
on the button.

"Generally the next step is coherent language, generally through automatic writing. This
requires, however rapid it may seem, the choice among only twenty-six different things. You
will notice, if you remember your experience, that after a little and at times, you occasionally
anticipated a whole word in your own minds, a fraction of a second before it was put down,
That writing was - in process slowed down - an impression of one out of twenty-six things
only.

"This you can understand, was quite a different matter and a much easier matter than
selecting one out of the several thousand things which constitute your vocabulary equipment.
The latter is what must be done in the case of even fairly developed spoken communication.

"There is a curious reciprocity about this relationship. We can only reach - take advantage of
effort, and you have to supply the effort. We generally in the beginning have to snatch at
chance effort. You happen to be at a friend's house tipping a table. There is our chance. But
we might shout at you ten years. Try every technique you hear about, provided that if it does
not seem promptly to work, you will not become discouraged with the whole business. There
are no two things in the universe absolutely alike. In coarser adjustments wider dissimilarities
will respond to identical method. As the adjustment becomes finer the individual differences
exercise more influence, and the method must cease to be standard and itself becomes
individual. When this is the case, careful and slow experiment is necessary on both sides,
until the method is determined."

3. THE ASSEMBLING OF CONDITIONS

That seemed sensible; and covered the situation. But we had, naturally, other curiosities.
How was the thing done? What were the reasons for the very evident difficulties? Why the
circumlocutions, the dodging of direct issues? Why not answer a direct question directly?
This was rarely done. Certainly, assuming the genuineness of the thing, it was not from mere
contrariness. And what about all these false 'messages'; these apparently mischievous or
actually evil entities that butt in? Why are they not kept out? These things throw people off
the subject.

For some time we obtained no satisfaction. The source we call Gaelic seems to prefer to stick
to his consciousness-expanding, and rarely condescends to gratify our desire for details. We
early learned that it was well to do no more than suggest. Insistence did not work.

"You have been told, and rightly," he came to the subject at last, "that the basis of the process
consists of an impression on what has been designated as your subconscious mind. The
Intelligence, in this case, is that of the communicator. He assembles the conditions favorable
for the conception of any given and desired idea; and, by the law, that idea or conception is
automatically manifested in the subconscious mind of the recipient. Or, to adopt for our
purpose another figure, we may conceive the equipment of any individual lying level
(evidently meaning, inert, flat, undifferentiated) - in the pool of the subconscious mind.

"By the magnetizing of the required conditions, certain portions possessing affinity in it, for
things magnetized, rise up from that level into relief. And as things in relief attract the
attention, so to speak, of the conscious mind, a desire and necessity are born in that mind for
their examination and interpretation.

"Thus the communicator is dependent upon several extremely inaccurate elements:

1. "The skillful and understanding assembly of just the proper conditions to manifest the
desired result through law.
2. "The existence in the level pool of the subconscious (of the station) of elements
capable of magnetic attraction by that manifestation.
3. "The experience-equipment the conscious individual by which accurate interpretation
or translation is possible.

"Beside the inaccuracy and incoherence due to these elements, and their manipulation, by the
unskilled on either side, there is still another possible source of confusion.

"Once the pool is sensitized by the desire, the expectation, or the practice of the process just
described, it becomes exceedingly responsive to influences either accidentally or purposely
placed within its field of action.

"Your communicator, let us say for illustration, has assembled the conditions for the
manifestation of the idea, through the communication of which he desires to transmit
information. If he would hold his message pure, he must go further. He must eliminate from
the field of response all other conditions. Otherwise, from our level of the subconscious, will
arise in relief other things than those desired responding automatically to the chance
conditions that exist in the field and have not been swept away.

"And these will be interpreted along with the rest.

"This source of confusion may be readily turned into an inimical influence, by the carnate
individual himself. The precise method must remain in detail somewhat obscure. It is
sufficient to say for this moment's purpose, that a large part of the formation and
maintenance of what we have called the Field is normally dependent on the station himself; -
not through conscious knowledge or action on his part but by the maintenance of stable
desire, unswerving faith and single-minded purpose. For the simple reason that the carnate
mind is also capable, though to a lessor degree, of assembling the conditions of manifestation
in the substance of thought. That, as well as chance, can clutter up the field: and from his
own creations, so to say, can obtain from the elements of his own subconscious mind
magnetic responses which, again in turn, he interprets. This completed vicious circle, is nine
times in ten the whole of what you have called 'interference'."

4. THE BROADCAST IDEA; IMPERSONATIONS

We were beginning to get an idea. It was not quite so simple as talking into a telephone.
There appeared to be several types of material to be conveyed, each with its appropriate
technique.

Gaelic has always insisted that his talks are not intended as proof of anything but as directing
help toward understanding.

"That aid", said he, "is applied more by directing effort than by word. The stream of life - of
quality - of spirit - flows by continuously. In each deal of that current is everything there is;
every element of every quality. There needs only the proper filter. The determining sense (of
selection) must come from the individual soul's self recognition - whether comprehended
intellectually or intuitively. In the normally constituted soul such true recognition awakens
desire: and with true desire - and only with true desire - does cooperation begin. Only then
can those who would help prepare the conditions for the action of the necessary law. Is that
clear?

"Very well. Let us now consider this general principle as related to what you call
communication. Communication is essentially the same process.

"The stream of Idea - of potential Idea, if you please, can be turned toward the individual
consciousness. There remains still the selecting and the diversion of such portions - or
trickles, let us call them - as fit the moment's need, by the Intelligence desirous of
communicating.

"In the case of communication of what for the moment's convenience we will call General
Wisdom, as distinguished from merely personal or recognitional material, the process is long
and complicated. Perhaps you can more nearly image this process by considering a rushing
torrent. Near the fountain head roughly a quarter is diverted; but that is too much, and
another working party lower down takes still a quarter of that; and lower still yet another
party divides the dwindling stream to another third. And so on on long series - until at last,
perhaps some man turns aside the wee bit trickle that suits the capacity.

"And mind you, every diversion means an Intelligence - a directing, and observing, a
selecting Intelligence."

One of us rather humorously remarked that he was getting more and more diffident in
claiming as his own idea anything at all!

"No," Gaelic disclaimed this. "That is not exactly right. "We divert certain masses of things
toward your awareness-mechanism - yes. Except in certain special circumstances, like the
present, or sometimes slightly similar case to the present, it is not too common that we
impress a specific rounded Idea upon you. We divert to you a certain mass or class of
impression, and as much of it, or such specific elements or parts of it, flow through your
actual consciousness as your individual capacity or ability of that moment selects. So it is
your thought. We have given you a favorable opportunity for that thought.

"That is a broad statement. There are many times, especially when there is a close bond,
when a specific thought can be inserted; but the general mechanism of influence is just this
broad diverting process of mass, from which you take magnetically, so to speak.

"But ye ken, that this is a communion also, and a satisfactory communion at that -of
personality. In that sense, I talk to you, and I enjoy talking, to you, and you and I touch. It
might be that what I diverted, what I thought worth diverting, if it were big enough and
important enough, might flow through or about many other of my friends. I would hold a
rout, and not make a single call! But my personal interest are affection are none the less. I
have invited guests at my rout.

"Or perhaps I make a personal call and drop in for a chat betwixt cronies."

In other words a sort of broadcast for those tuned in, by their need. We caught here a glimpse
of one possible explanation to the ubiquity of William James! About three in five of the
'psychics' we knew claimed to be personal pupils of' William James.

This was suggested and was acknowledged to be a tenable, but only a partial explanation.
There were other factors. The station himself is likely, and in all honesty, to supply them.
Someone tried to induce Gaelic to attach an identity to himself.

"Strangely enough," said he, "such details are very difficult to get through a station at all. I
can start the impression and invariably something will go through; and once it is started, I
cannot stop that something from going through. And if it goes through, it makes a groove
from which that impression can never be diverted. If I should say I was John Smith, and this
station had a friend John Smith and a friend Jasper Jones; and he was reminded of Jones, and
said Jones; thereafter every impression of Smith would bring from him the word Jones. And
what is the use of taking such risks?

"That is the basis of so much that comes from this side - especially in half-controlled or
developed stations. I doubt very much if Plato or Socrates or Swedenborg know how many
times they have spoken through various people; and only because perhaps a perfectly honest
communicator has been so unwise as to attempt to reveal his identity by forcing through a
mere name. The station has one chance in many of translating, that impression into the
correct name; and if some connotation of that name suggests another - perhaps of historical
importance - ever after the impression of that communicator's consciousness upon that
station will arouse in the latter mistaken ideas of identity. So that if ever again that
communicator attempts to speak through that station, he's got to masquerade perhaps as
Julius Caesar - or keep quiet."

5. DISTINGUISHING TRUE FROM FALSE

Assuming that, at least sometimes, genuine and actual communication does take place;
communication that is not wholly self-induced, how is one to tell what is real and what is
.false? Leaving aside for the moment any 'interference' from other supposed outside entities,
mischievous or otherwise, how can we distinguish 'coloring' the activities of the station's own
sub-conscious?

Gaelic offered no sure test in answer to the first question. Take what comes from whatever
sources and place it on file. Do this without prejudice one way or another. Leave it. "And,"
says Gaelic, "after an interval, prepare yourselves in a way to be permeable and read it over.
If it is important, we try then by exactly the same process to impress you with the truth, and
to cast into your mind a rejection of that which is not truth."

There is no communication he urged, extending over a whole evening's work, that would not
include, in fact, material from the station's own personality.

"But," he insisted, "it is possible for an expert possessed of much power and long experience
not only to suggest action - outward movement - to the station, but also by vigilance to
suggest suppressions, or at least partial inhibition. At such times we do our best to reproduce
the original impression, in your mind. In the long run nothing gives you the 'satisfied
equation' unless it is as we originally intended it." And again, "The underlying truth is and
must be a real thing. The underlying truth you can never fail ultimately to recognize. If you
entertain, in an attitude of receptivity what comes to you, you are receiving the sunlight, and
that must have its effect in development. "What dust and chaff comes to you at the same time
will be disposed of and pass away. By maintaining the willingness to receive - not to criticize
at first - all that which is intrinsically true will insensibly become part of you, and you will
ultimately and most unexpectedly find yourself possessed of a belief that will be a certainty.
This does not mean that one should try to accept unquestioningly nor that he should inanely
refuse intellectual examination. It merely means a willingness to receive and place on file for
future reference, so to speak, what cannot immediately be accepted. It implies a willingness
to leave the question open; neither to seek far-fetched explanation, nor to attempt an unripe
credence.

"If quite honestly one can do this - with entire self-honesty - the event can be safely left to - I
was going to say us, but I will say time. You see 'us' may be Subconscious Sub-one or Sub-
two."
 Chapter XIX
THE TECHNIQUE OF COMMUNICATION:
MIND AND INTELLIGENCE

1. PURPOSING AND INTENTION

Thus we have had satisfying glimpses, at least, of answers to some of our natural curiosities.
But we have had no satisfying picture of how the thing is done. It goes beyond mere
mechanisms.

This turned out to be a big subject. Before it could be directly treated we must be educated.
We must be told of the nature of consciousness, and the human mind, and their place and.
function in the universe, until at times we felt we were wandering so far from the subject that
we would never get back. Nevertheless we did get back, and with a pretty fair start toward a
cosmogony. In reviewing the mass of material, I find it impossible to do other than follow the
same method.

One primordial stream of vitality, of life, is the primordial Source. It flows so to speak,
"ceaselessly through all cosmos. It becomes evident only when arrested, or rather slowed up,
through the effort of its dynamics to free itself and proceed upon its way."

How and by what is it arrested, or slowed up? By an idea; or by a purpose; both necessarily
originated by Intelligence. Intelligence is the reflecting prism, so to speak.

"Arrested by an idea it becomes a creature or a thing, dependent for its form and its attributes
upon the nature of the idea; - what you have called the quality of consciousness. Slowed up
by a purpose, rather than an idea, it becomes a vehicle of differentiated force, dependent for
its nature and its effects upon the nature of the purpose."

Our own degree of Intelligence is obviously not high enough to accomplish pure creation.
We may, however, conceive a purpose that checks the life, or vitality or psychic force, or
whatever you please to call it, that flows through us and animates us, and thus appropriate for
our own use the resultant force. The precise effect of that force depends upon the direction
we give it by our conscious intention.

This is perhaps better understood by an example. We have in New York a friend who has
long been identified with psychic work. After a number of years she discovered, purely
empirically, that if she held her hands a foot or so apart, sometimes she, and others, thought
to distinguish a 'current' of some sort of force, passing from one to the other. These 'currents'
seemed to be of three types, cold, warm, and 'prickly'. They appeared to be soothing,
sometimes healing. Naturally we had no means of knowing whether these 'currents' were
subjective or physical: or whether their effects were mechanical or mentally induced. Suffice
it to say that those 'currents' apparently exist; that they have very definite effects; and that
they are of different kinds.

"It is all the same force," said Gaelic to this, "only the intentioning varies. All results of this
kind are gained by a slowing down of the universal current by intentioning..... Whenever you
apply this power," he told our friend, "try to remember and as far as possible duplicate your
impression of the greater current carrying into you from above, sweeping through you as a
fresh breeze flows. Imagine that picture. Always conceive of it. It will be difficult at first to
gain any sense of reality, but not too difficult to obtain a fancy. One must begin small.
Always do that. It fashions the conditions we desire in the substance of thought.

"Then try once more to imagine deflecting a certain portion of this current to pass outward in
focused form - not merely permitting the broad sweep, but focusing, as of water in a pipe."

This is a very good example of the checking of a portion of the universal flow of life by a
purpose - that of healing; and an 'intentioning' of it when so segregated in a specific
mechanism, the 'currents'.

2. THE PROCESS OF CREATION

The checking of the universal flow by an intelligent Idea results, as has been said, in a
creation. We have in cosmos an underlying reality, an ALL Consciousness, which is infinite,
and which we, as finite minds, cannot understand. Necessarily, finite creation must be part of
this consciousness, of its same stuff. But it is what it is because of its underlying Idea. A dog
is a dog, with a dog's form and attributes and limitations, because of the peculiar quality of
consciousness he possesses - and which forms and animates him. He is essentially the same
thing as everything else. That is to say, his consciousness is art of the All Consciousness; and
his body is made up of proton and electron. What molds and limits those common things into
a dog, is Idea - his dogness.

Similarly, Consciousness assumes the form of a tree, rather than any other, because of its
essential treeness. And so with all individual things. Life, as life, is obviously a single
animating vitality. It expresses itself through the enormous variety of its forms simply
because of an equal variety of qualities, of Ideas, in universal consciousness.

"But," warned Gaelic, "we must beware of creating a mental image of separated pools or
reservoirs of the different qualities, as distinct from one another as are the creatures that
manifest them. You must accustom yourself, as far as you may be able, to the idea of those
qualities as so interfused throughout all cosmos that we may literally say that each pin point
of space contains in itself all elements of all qualities of consciousness."

In other words, or so it seemed to us, the possibility of any kind of creation is always present
everywhere. Then why a tree here and a rock there and a dog somewhere else? What
determines their appearance at that precise "pin point of space"? Is it, we surmised, because
at that point the tree quality was stronger than other qualities?

"Not exactly," replied Gaelic; "rather it is because at that place the conditions are better for
the manifestation of treeness than for the manifestation of any other quality."
That was reasonable: but, like many explanations, it merely pushed the question back. Why
are conditions better at that particular place?

"To answer that question," said Gaelic, "we must first examine the method of the working of
any law whatever."

So we moved back one more step from the original subject. This usually happens with
Gaelic. The most practical or trivial discussion, before it is finished off, results in a bird's-eye
view of cosmos. Sometimes we lose sight of what we started out to talk about; but invariably
we land back on it at last. We were used to it. All right, we agreed, let's do it. How do you
make a law work?

3. HOW A LAW IS MADE TO WORK

It seems you do not! "No man, stated Gaelic positively, "ever causes a law to act!"

"He merely assembles," Gaelic answered our demur to this statement, "proper juxtaposition
and proportion of the necessary conditions. Having done so, he cannot prevent the law from
acting. You think you light the fire. As a matter of fact, you pile your wood, you place your
kindling, you insert the paper. You then supply the chemical, under those conditions of
motion and abrasion to the oxygenation of those materials."

We acknowledged the distinction.

"Who or what gathers together in like manner the conditions necessary to the production or
manifestation of your tree quality or whatever-quality? The same thing in essence which has
gathered together the fire material - Intelligence.

"There is no working of any law unless the conditions for that law are arranged. And that
arrangement comes through Intelligence.

"You may - would ye quibble - point to the gathering of certain conditions by the action of
certain laws, but that is only pushing the subject back. In the final analysis you will discover
- Intelligence."

The point appeared to be important. It was emphasized; repeated on numerous occasions. In

the event it proved to have many applications.

We do not work a law: we merely assemble the conditions for its working. Then the matter is
out of our hands; we cannot prevent it from working.

4. THE COMPOSITION OF THE MIND

But we were not yet sufficiently educated. It is all very well to talk of Intelligence; of Mind.
What are they; and how do they work? Gaelic insisted on a distinction between Intelligence
and Intellect. He defined Intellect as the focused part of Mind; or rather point of the Mind;
for he refused to accept as actual our various partitions into the sub-conscious, the super-
conscious and the rest.

What is consciousness, he demanded, but the awareness of an entity? "Awareness," he went

on, "requires for its functioning a mechanism; as all things that function, in whatever way,
require their appropriate mechanism. Now how does anything become aware? It becomes
aware by physical sensation, or response; by intuitive response; and by Inspirational response
- these divisions being purely arbitrary for the purpose of the discussion.

"Consider what you call white light. Broken up by a prism into the spectrum, it shows as a
series of separate colors, to which you give separate names, from the red at one end to the
violet at the other; separating them arbitrarily into the different lines. Nevertheless, it is a fact
that the spectrum presents an orderly progression of vibrations, without defined boundaries
between any group of constituents, from one end to the other. The whole, taken together,
undivided by the prism, you call one thing white light.

"So your consciousness, which is in manifestation your awareness, progresses in orderly

unbroken fashion from the red of physical sensation to the ultra-violet of the highest
aspiration. And if you are functioning through the nerves and contacts of your physical body,
your awareness-response is through sensation. If you are functioning in a different portion of
the spectrum, the same response in kind you receive through the blue or green of what you
call intellect. And if your awareness-response is received through those higher powers of
which you are but primitively gaining control, you are receiving the same response in kind
through intuitive faculties or through what you call direct inspiration.

"Thus from one end of the scale to the other you are simply traversing one and the same
thing - what we call the white light of consciousness. This white light of consciousness is
refracted through the physical manifestation of quality. Without this manifestation you have
that In understandable, the white light of Cosmic Unity, which you have variously named as
All-Consciousness, All-Spirit, or God. In this aspect you may call it the All-Wisdom, the All-
Intelligence, the All-Perception of All-Possibility. Refracted through the physical
manifestation of quality, it becomes a spectrum in which the entity dwells; and at various
points in which the entity centers its individuality according to its state of development - and
in a very limited way according to its choice.

"We may conceive the simplest creature, or bit of consciousness, starting at the dullest red
and progressing slowly, slowly in the course of its evolution along its rainbow path through
the various phases of awareness-responses; And you must remember that, like the spectrum,
there are no dividing lines. There are no dividing lines between the senses and the mind and
the intuition and inspiration. And it does not matter how you subdivide the mind into what
you call the subliminal, the superliminal, the superconscious, the subconscious, or whatever;
or the physical responses into this, that or the other hairsplitting categories of your
physiologists. It matters not. They blend one into the other in orderly progression and the
reason one appears as red, or sensation; and another as blue, or mind; and another as violet,
or inspiration is not because of a differentiation in the thing itself, but because of the
constitution of the perception-mechanism which happens to be more or less predominant in
the particular manifestation of the entity from whose point of view it is examined."

In this analysis we have, for greater clarity merely, considered the human mind, Gaelic
pointed out, rather than Mind itself. "From the human point of view," said he, "we have
arranged our spectrum to comprise the awareness-mechanics of Sensation, of Instinct, of
Intellect, of Intuition, and of Inspiration. Of these, the 'red' end, or sensation, might from one
point of view be defined as almost a mechanical and automatic response to stimuli. The rocks
subjected to certain influences of heat, cold, or moisture, responds invariably in a certain
manner. Progressing to the next higher step, we see in exactly the same manner, the most
primitive organisms responding automatically and invariably to given stimuli. Surrounding
an insect with certain conditions of sun-warmth, or of other climatic or material impactions -
a predictable and uniform action may be expected. That is pure instinct.

"The birth of Intellect, as distinguished from this type of automatic response, coincides with
the first appearance of Free-Will. Free-Will is that mechanism by which an organism of
advancing complexity is enabled to segregate and select, from the superabundance of
responses made possible by that complexity, in the direction of its most insistent need and
development. A complex mechanism - to repeat this thought in other words - has within itself
points of possible contact in a multitude of directions; beyond the simple needs of its mere
animal or vital requirements. And beyond its capacity of assimilation, were all to be accorded
equal attention and response. The faculty of intellect is the selecting instrument among these
superabundant multiplicities. And, naturally, it functions through what you have named Free-
Will. Have I made myself clear?

"Very well. The exact point in our figurative spectrum at which any consciousness possessed
of free will, in however small a degree, is centered, is that consciousness' point of intellect.

"The point above that center of consciousness is the point of the supra-conscious mind, of
that entity; related to its conscious intellect in exactly the same way that your supra-
conscious mind is related to your own conscious mind. And as the center of consciousness,
which is the center from which that individual entity makes its selections, moves on up the
scale of vibrations, which constitutes the spectrum, it enters the field of what has heretofore
been its supra-conscious, and renders that erstwhile supraconscious into its selecting
conscious.

"This being the case, you can readily deduce a wider significance in our statement of last
year, when you learned that your supraconscious is to ourselves (Invisibles) what the
conscious is to you in your physical body. That did not mean that in entering our estate, your
supraconscious mind in its present aspect of relationship to yourselves would then become
your predominating intellectual instrument. It merely meant that those powers and
relationships and cosmic contacts which now exist in your intuitional region, so to speak, will
be transferred into an intellectuality which will possess the same selecting and applying
powers of individual free will which you now recognize and employ in your conscious mind
of today. And above that center still will be another appreciable, but only partly translatable,
field of awareness which perhaps you may call 'intuitional'.

"The conscious mind, then," Gaelic summed up his distinction, "is the focusing point in that
environment which at the moment supplies the need of the entity. The Intellect - the
conscious mind of yourselves - is that which focuses sharply on the physical. Outside of that
the Mind - the same Mind - is blurred, so to speak."

As a corollary, that focus may be shifted, altered. Normally, this is done in due course of
development. It is moved along the spectrum.

"Our conscious mind," Gaelic referred to his own 'discarnate' state of existence, "is that
which focuses on our state of consciousness or environment."

In certain cases this shift of focus may be temporarily accomplished, we were led to suppose,
by 'occult' knowledge.

"We," said Gaelic, "are able to move that focus, more or less. Some of you a little."
 Chapter XX
THE TECHNIQUE OF COMMUNICATION:
DIFFICULTIES OF PREPARATION

1. INITIAL DIFFICULTIES: PHYSICAL

The first requisite for communication, said Gaelic, is relaxation of the station's body. The
second is really the sane thing, on another plane of activity. It is the placing in abeyance of
the conscious mind. The object is the same in both cases - as far as possible to keep the
station from interfering in his own person. It is obvious that we want the discarnate
communicator's ideas, rather than those of the station. "But," said Gaelic, "there is such a
thing as ideas in the body; ideas formed by long habits, resistances to the unusual, which in
their sum and aggregate amount to counter intention." For this phenomenon permeability to
the communicator's intention is demanded, and "if the demonstration is to complete itself, it
must not be crossed by a conscious or unconscious counter intention. It is for this simple
reason that the conscious mind is placed to a greater or lesser degree in abeyance - and that a
demand is made for at least a degree of relaxation, The relaxation of the body corresponds in
its realm to the abeyance of the conscious mind."

That much is simple and understandable. But there intervene difficulties in the way of
perfection of these conditions. We cannot set aside the whole of the conscious mind; not and
stay alive! The conscious mind, to repeat, is that portion of the whole mind that is focused for
use in that environment in which its owner is functioning for the moment. In our case the
environment is physical. We must, says Gaelic, extend our conception of the conscious
intellect. It has to do not only with thought, but "with such matters as the conduct of the
ordinary affairs of the body. Such matters, I mean, as the intake of the breath, the beating of
the heart, the digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and all the more obscure...
what you nominate as involuntary activities of the body. These are as definite a focusing of a
portion of the mind as an intellectual process. They are also a sharpened utilization in the
especial environment in which the entity is placed.

"Thus you find that many activities which you have considered merely instinctive and
therefore completely subconscious - in the old sense - are now transferred to the conscious in
the broad sense, or focused."

So at once we discover a real difficulty, and a very nice balance to be struck by those
presumably manipulating the adjustments. Though the conscious mind must be placed aside,
to be sure; at least enough of it must remain untouched to keep the station alive. But that is
not sufficient.

"Naturally," said Gaelic, "the bodily functions continue. But also a lower stratum of
intellectual focus, per se, must be retained. It is necessary that a physical message be
conveyed from the motor centers to the hand holding the pencil - or to the tongue, throat and
epiglottis that make the words. It makes no difference. I take the simplest example. It is
necessary also to retain an activity in that portion or the frame capable of recollection - not
memory, recollection. For from the unfocussed, which alone can receive the impulse of our
idea, must rise a portion sufficiently focused to manipulate the physical organism, not only a
concept but a selective faculty for the evocation and transmission of the material expressive
of that concept.

"Dinna forget that in the psychic state to which I allude, the proportions of the focused and
the unfocused are artificially altered, so that when I say our impression is on the unfocussed,
I may mean partially on what is unfocused for the moment - unfocussed for the purpose.

"The common idea is that we do not use what you call your intellect. We can use what you
call your intellect - what contains your words, your equipment, your polished tools of daily
use - provided we throw it into the unfocused. Now it is a matter - without going into a rule
book, or a handy manual of how to run a psychic - that the exact balance here is very
difficult, even excluding a tendency on the part of the station to intervene. The delicacy of
the adjustment makes for confusion."

That is difficulty Number One. Difficulty Number Two is more subtle, but not less obvious
once it is explained. The operator to the best of his skill has, by his compromise with
complete abeyance, cleared the channel. But that is not enough. "We must have," says
Gaelic, "not only a free channel, but a power of attraction drawing the vital force into that
channel." The appropriation, the checking, of vital force is apparently a matter of the station's
power. That is his own job in his ordinary life; a part of his individuality. He does that by his
desiring; purposing. Once in possession of the vital force, he directs his action by
'intentioning' it. But, says Gaelic, "automatically the degree of that force is measured by the
need. "When the mind is deliberately placed in abeyance, and the bodily functions
deliberately lowered by relaxation, automatically the current of vitality operating through
them is normally reduced." And this reduced current is not sufficient to operate the machine
in the production of the desired phenomena. "The problem," - difficulty Number Two - said
Gaelic, "is to slow down the customary functions while continuing to supply a proper
power."

"This," he went on to explain, "can only be done by an unusual expedient. The operator can
direct, check and purpose the needed force. He cannot assure its entrance into and its use by
the station. That comes at its best by a habit of alert and eager expansion and desire without
tension. Tension attracts, but at the same time constricts the channels. Therefore, this small
residue of responsibility rests with the station. If this were not so there would be no reason
why each and every human being should not possess this faculty.

"The ideal combination for this type of phenomenon, a combination of detached conscious
mind, a bodily relaxation, and a receptive and demanding spiritual alertness. I say ideal
combination: in the present state of development we obtain this combination only in lesser
and varying degrees, almost always without definite understanding - if any understanding at
all - of what is taking place.

"Given a modicum, at least, of these conditions, so that the force can be made to flow with
slight interruptions, there remains the necessity of intentioning it. You must remember that it
has already been purposed, and by that purpose differentiated into one sort of force from the
numberless potentialities of the primal force. It, roughly speaking, is the type of force that,
checked by the purpose, will manifest itself through the human physical organism.

"The intentioning is of two parts - first, as to its definite nature; second - as to the specific
thing to be done by it - as, for example, whether it is to be a healing current, or a force that
will push the hand. That part we can do ourselves. The definition of exactly what is to be
done is a definite manifestation of reality on the physical planet and can only be done
through the intermediation of the carnate equipment. There the station must intervene and is
necessary. I do not refer to the hand or the pencil; those are the tools. I do refer to the inner
self.

"Having determined that the force will be that to push the pencil, we must then turn to the
consciousness of the station to convey what the push is to be. We must impress upon the
station's consciousness what we would convey, and then permit that consciousness -
independent of ourselves - to send the message to the tools. We give the content, and must
trust to its safe delivery.

"In this ideal condition which I have sketched, the discarnate intelligence has intervened in
several ways. He has assisted to keep the force pressure at normal when the circumstances
would indicate a reduction; he has purposed the kind of force to be produced and utilized; he
has impressed upon the station's consciousness the intention and content. That is his part."

2. INITIAL DIFFICULTIES: MENTAL

Those two might be called difficulties of preparation. But when conditions are once
established, they are by no means stable. "There remains," said Gaelic, "a remnant of focused
consciousness. This must be so, as far as bodily functions are concerned, of course, as far as
human recollection is concerned; and the memory evocation of words is also necessary. Now
you have no doubt noticed that concepts do not stand alone. You have a game of your own
when you name one thing and say what that thing reminds you of and another guesses..."

"Association of ideas," someone supplied.

"Now there are a thousand reasons for the affinity of concepts in anyone's mind; but the fact
remains that touch one and you tend to evoke another. Now suppose that within the area of
unfocussed consciousness there lies a primitive concept very close in affinity with some
function of the remaining focused mind. Touch that concept, so to sneak, and you get a
reaction, in the realm of the focused mind, in its complement. That complement may result in
direct action by word, or it may in turn reverberate into the unfocussed, to be translated in
exactly the same way as an impression.

"Suppose, for an example, that the beating of the heart is within the focused mind left for the
purpose. Now, when I say 'heart', Betty, what comes to your mind? Betty! Quick! Heart!"

"Beats!" cried Betty.

In the unfocused part of your mind is a rhythm of forces due to some part of the manipulation
which is a beat. Now, for the moment, those two concepts are linked. That translates itself,
though an old fear, an old bit of reading, and the pencil writes; 'You will die of heart disease
in one year.' This, he told us, is difficult to avoid.

"It is the source of nine-tenths of what you call coloring. It starts the machinery of the
station's own equipment, no matter how well under control, and that impetus must run down
before pure communication is again resumed.

"Suppose again," he is speaking now of a 'raiding intelligence'; but the principle applies
equally to ordinary 'coloring' by the station himself. "We have adjusted the station's ordinary
focused mind so that one-third remains focused and two-thirds is thrown into the unfocussed.
That is our adjustment for our purposes with the station. Your raiding intelligence tries quite
simply to alter this proportion. He may do this by figuratively sticking a pin in the station and
waking him up somewhat. He touches a physical nerve, perhaps, or an old thought, but he
alters the adjustment, and before it can be restored in balance, again what you call coloring
has come in, due to the fact that for a space of time a certain proportion of the station's mind
is out of control, has been subjected to a stimulus, and is working independently."

A shared emotion, or indeed an emotion experienced by the station alone is capable of

altering the adjustment. "It often happens that this very emotional power is released by an
idea, an emotion, a desire, or even a physical reaction induced by some extraneous or
accidental circumstance, directly impinging on some portion of the station's make-up. This
may or nay not be something that is apparent to the bystanders, or to any conscious portion of
the station.

"A sound unnoticed, a movement of the body, especially - and here we impinge upon another
type - an association of ideas, will touch a button and loosen a dynamic emotional reaction.
This will, according to its strength, set into vital motion a greater or lesser degree or area of
the unfocussed mind. That force, unless it be skillfully deflected and utilized by ourselves,
must find its outlet in a translation of that untouched area.

"Thus a very definite interference is induced, originating wholly in the station, perhaps
connected by subtle and mysterious bonds with summat deep buried and long hidden.
Unskillful manipulation from this side is very likely by its clumsiness of approach, to arouse
these irrelevancies.

"Notice this point. It is the only point that has not already occurred to you. For self-
interference there must exist an emotion. The emotional basis is necessary for the
appropriation of a force that must find an outlet. A mere intellectual conception or
association does not suffice. The dynamics lack.

"In the type of interference that has to do with the balance of focused and unfocussed
consciousness, the main, actuating principle is rather an instinctive resistance to allowing the
consciousness to be placed in abeyance. It is as though a swimming man instinctively fought
against submergence. And the result is that a certain portion (on the border, so to speak) is
alternately focused and unfocussed, and perhaps focused again, in that struggle.

"It is from this indeterminate zone, sometimes rapidly shifting, that - first - focused
intellectual ideas may be formed; then submerged to that realm whence those
communications proceed, or partially impressed on the unfocussed; and finally raised to a
deliberate intellectualization, which you can see must be personal."
3. INITIAL DIFFICULTIES; EXTERNAL

Naturally it had occurred to us, as it has occurred to all who have experimented with these
things, that those present in the room must contribute cross-currents to modify, distract,
perhaps annul the purity of the material communicated. What effect, for example, the
presence of an avowed skeptic? Of one distinctly antagonistic? Gaelic agreed - with an
important modification.

"Opposing opinion, skepticism, contradictory argument," he said, "have no effect whatever in

themselves. Indeed, they are sometimes of a help. They have no more dynamics than the
intellectual thought in the mind of the station, of which I spoke a time ago. But supply them
with dynamics, and their effect is sometimes almost fatal, for the reason that, given equal
dynamics in a carnate and in a discarnate, other things being equal, a carnate has more points
of affinity with another carnate than have we. The contest is not equal.

"Dynamics is supplied here, as in the other cases by emotion. The desire not to believe - I
mean desire - the desire not to be intellectually fooled or wrong, the desire to support
intellectual pride, the irritation that contradiction sometimes rouses through hidden egoism,
the fear sometimes that a painfully built structure of thought is threatened, and many lesser
emotions, down to the desire to be considered a fine smart-Alec, each in its kind and in its
way impregnates the thought with a force that will make its impression and cause an
interference. Your intellectual skeptic expresses his skepticism coolly and calmly."

The rest of this statement was too rapid for the reporter to take verbatim. The gist was that
cool, calm, intellectual skepticism, lacked dynamic force, and makes no impression on the
unfocussed mind of the station, therefore creating no interference. Belligerent statement of
skepticism, being emotional and therefore dynamic, does create interference.

"Then anything that emotionally stirs the station opens the gate for interference?" asked
someone.

"It is more than that. Emotional stirring of the station is the result. The dynamics are supplied
by the other person, the carnate ... well, let us be personal. Conceive that Betty is about to
question my statement. She says, "But I am not a belligerent person." And in that she places
no resentment. The station is unaffected in his unfocussed mind by the contradiction. On the
other hand, if Betty rejects this statement with indignation she has furnished the form in the
substance of thought with wings, and it is impressed on the unfocussed mind of the station.
One Is an intellectual thing, an idea; the other is force."

Gaelic then said that this was one reason why such circles as we had been talking about lately
- i.e. the Margery Committee in Boston - were perfectly futile because of the conflict of
dynamics surrounding and impinging upon the situation. He added, with great emphasis, and
repeated for notation:

"It is even possible that if in the chamber is sufficient detailed conception of specific fraud,
backed by sufficient dynamics of emotion, that that impression of fraud and the method of it
can be impressed upon a station with sufficient clarity and sufficient force so that the fraud
will be brought about."
 Chapter XXI
THE TECHNIQUE OF COMMUNICATION: INTERFERENCE

1. MALICIOUS ENTITIES

There is another type of 'interference'. Everyone who has the smallest experience in these
matters is sure to come across it sooner or later. Unlike the 'coloring' injected by the stations
own personality, this appears to emanate from mischievous or malicious outside entities.
They seem to try to mask themselves by pretending to be what they are not; either friendly or
beneficent people, or as actually the usual communicators. I am assuming, of course, the
whole phenomenon is to be taken at its face value. Margaret Cameron, in The Seven
Purposes, describes vividly a dramatic example of one of these raids.

The object seems to be deceit, confusion. Too often it is successful; especially with
beginners, who are confused enough at best. After a time one learns how to recognize the
subtle identifying symptoms to develop a technique of defense.

Do these originate actually in deterrent or destructive outside entities?

If so, why are they permitted to operate? Why is not the station protected by his customary
'controls'?

2. A BIT OF ADVICE

Before hearing what Gaelic has to say on this, I want to interpolate two bits of advice out of
my own experience with other stations.

Whenever there is great haste demanded or advised, be wary. Hurry! Hurry! There is just
time! The stock-is-going-up-at-nine-o'clock type of exhortation is just as indicative in this
matter as it is in business life.

Whenever you are solemnly informed that you have been 'specially chosen'; or that a 'great
revelation' is in the offing which you have to give to the world, then also you may be pretty
certain that you are on the sucker list, so to speak; and that ultimately you are going to get so
tangled in discrepancies and falsities that you are likely to chuck the whole investigation
overboard, in disgust.

3. THE POINT OF ATTACK

Up to a certain point, Gaelic pointed out, a certain process has to be carried out whoever or
whatever is to use it. The initial 'purposing' of the current of vitality must take place; its
differentiation from the universal current into a force for especial use and an especial person.
The necessary relaxation of the physical body, and the necessary amount of abeyance of the
focused mind must be imposed. The current of vitality, automatically lowered by this, must
be reaccelerated to a proper degree for efficiency. "Within certain limits," said Gaelic, "these
must be standard if any result, by anybody, is to be obtained."

"The interference can be applied at several points of all this rather complicated process," said
Gaelic. "And that applies," he pointed out, "to any interference, whether from an outside
intelligence; or the station himself; or from the carnate people in the room." However, it is
with the outside intelligence we deal for the moment.

Since communication is carried on by means of an impression made upon the station's

unfocused mind, the control of that unfocused mind is the obvious field of contest, assuming
that two intelligences, or sets of intellgences, desire to communicate at once. "The one with
processess most controlled will thrust aside the other, or will sufficiently drown out the
other's attempts to imprint the main purport of its own intention. Sometimes it does not
succeed wholly and a confusion exists which is a reflection of the conflict. That is so simple
as to be hardly worth stating.

"What interests us more is to examine why it should not be always possible for strong
organization to guard aside and fend off completely such chance or isolated and unorganized
raids. That is because at times the interfering intelligence is able to ally itself with summat;
either in the consciousness of the station - or in what corresponds to general meteorological
conditions in your atmosphere, the effect of which alliance is temporarily to place that
intelligence in either the current of some dominant personal trait, or in the natural sweep of
some cosmic current. I will explain this.

"In the personal consciousness of each individual there exist certain experiences, traits,
faculties, emotions, desires, and memories, which each finds better its counterpart in one
individual rather than another of those outside himself. It is the old concept of points of
affinity. In a search for that magnetic contact with consciousness which permits us to make
any impression at all, we seek for that memory, or desire, or faculty, or traits or whatever in
the station's equipment most nearly and most powerfully in correspondence or affinity with
the same thing in ourselves. And through that, and the expansion of it, so to speak, to cover
the field of consciousness ... I speak in parables, almost; illustrative merely - we permit the
intentioned current to flow through us in one blending sweep.

"Now your interfering intelligence tries to do exactly the same thing. His correspondences
may be of a very low order, or perhaps merely of an undesirable order; but if, helped by
mood or outward circumstance, he may seize upon that affinity and with it usurp a sufficient
field of consciousness, he is able to make his impression, and until that expansion is again
contracted to such a point that we may take command, he will himself retain command,
wholly or in part.

"Now it is very difficult to illustrate or symbolize this. But let us suppose the staton's
consciousness as a circle one foot across. Our interfering intelligence has seized upon a point
of affinity and expanded it to occupy a diameter of seven inches. This leaves only five inches
as the field in which any other intelligence can expand the affinity. Now it may well be that
this first intelligence is weak and alone, and that it would be impossible for him to
accomplish more than seven inches; and it may well be that the second intelligence, while
possessing sufficient power to expand to the whole limit of this consciousness, had he the
chance, nevertheless possesses only five inches in which to work - and seven inches is
stronger than five inches. Until something happens, the interfering weak intelligence will
hold the field against all the heavenly hosts, because only from the station's initiative -
intellectually conscious or intellectually unconscious initiative - can a change in the status
quo ante be brought about.

"This is a rough example of complete interference. Your conflict (to continue our figure) and
your confusion comes about then the expansion wavers, so to speak, about the six inch mark.

"The second point I would discuss is more often of importance. It is the changing conditions
in our element, which correspond to weather changes with you - not exactly correspond, but
which are the reality often of weather changes vrith you, especially in elecytical [sic]
conditions. These sometimes supply an atmosphere, so to speak, which renders easier the
magnetic affinities of the lower strata of consciousness rather them the upper. A change in
the weather will often reduce the power of the interfering intelligence below the six inch
point; then we thrust him aside. This is highly figurative, you understand, intended to convey
a glimpse. It is not a statement of mechanical process."

"Why don't you reason with these interfering intelligences, man to man, and show them what
damage they are doing?" enquired one of us.

"That is always a part of our work, to raise and expand consciousness wherever we find it,"
said Gaelic, "but you must remember that action is a gauge of development, and that an
intelligence undeveloped is incapable of receiving certain concepts. A destructive
intelligence is acting always from misapprehension, and that misapprehension must be
outgrown. I discount what you call malignancy, which is a term that represents little in itself,
but much in an inclusion of many negative qualities, such as selfishness and fear."

"I see what you mean," agreed the questioner. "Here, if we can close the mouth of an
individual, we can stop his destructive activities.We cannot control his thoughts. You must,
control his thoughts to make your policing effective."

"Exactly!" approved Gaelic. "Of course, in the case of stations such as this and others who
have been well developed, we take care as far as we can to guard your every moment, and to
prevent such an affinity being established at all, by the simple expedient of crowding him out
if he attempts. A valuable station we literally try to guard every moment."

4. WHY INTERFERENCE AT ALL?

But why this interference? What is the point? What urges these 'deterrent' entities to the
effort?

"Unfortunately," said Gaelic as to this, "a knowledge of, or a desire for cooperation for
Progress, Unity - whatever you call it - is not a gift that comes with one's passing to our
spheres. You carry to us no more, and no less, than you have made. And while the
stubbornness of material blindness is considerably lightened, nevertheless there are many
who retain the disintergrating ideas they have brought with them from earth. Their own
magnetic attraction is toward their kind; and when it becomes known to them thus that from
whatever cause - mistake, accident, ignorance - a center, however small, of disintegration has
been established, they there attempt to establish conditions for the working of the law - but
according to their own mistaken ideals.

"The condition of doubt, the condition of fear, to name two things, offer strong footholds.
And whether or no they prevail in their attempted usurpation of the field, depends entirely on
the strength of the conditions so established.

"You will remember," continued Gaelic, "that whether at a given point in space the tree
quality produces a tree, or the granite quality produces a boulder, depends on whether at that
point the conditions are stronger in favor of tree quality or of granite quality. But as the stone
spreads its ripples, so spreads the impulse from any given condition, anywhere established.
So that the reality which that condition affects, wherever it may be in the cosmos, becomes
aware that at that one point fertile ground is ready for itself. And from the farthest depths of
imaginable space it surges toward that point.

"Make no mistake - the minutest point of disintegration, of whatever sort, is known to all
forces of disintegration, wherever they may be. And, obeying the law of attraction, they are
impelled to throw their forces in its direction.

"For this reason - to return more specifically to our first topic - the plague spot of
'Interference', self-induced by the station, is a dangerous thing. Unless checked and guarded
it may spread to a putrefaction of the whole being.

"Fortunately, as you well know from your physical world, the Power of Healing has its
source in mightier things; and if the conditions are gathered for the manifestation of that law,
nothing can withstand it.

"Such in vague outline is the struggle, the battle, on this side. But mark you this: it differs in
no essential from the battle on your side. It is different in manifestation, as everything differs
in manifestation according to the substance in which it is precipitated. That is all.

"So, to return, your 'interference' originates always - always, I say - with yourself. It is an
automatic thing, and is of little consequence so long as you do not yourself offer conditions
of doubt, of fear, of discouragement to manifest disintegration, and so attract tremendous
forces which might conceivably prove your undoing, and which certainly will bring about a
great struggle.

"Much is done from this side in your aid. But, again, as though endlessly rings within rings,
that aid itself cannot be manifested until you have provided the conditions."

Somebody instanced an experience where apparently a regular battle had been fought by
opposing intelligences for the possession of a station's facilities.

"Was that an entity, or merely a personification of the station's subconscious?" she asked.
"A breach was made in the walls," replied Gaelic. "The Intelligence you speak of was merely
busy collecting the conditions favorable to his own purpose as your friends were busy in
collecting the conditions favorable to their own. For the moment, aided by yourselves, his
conditions grew strong enough to elbow the others aside."

The Law is neutral. The Law acts. And it matters not whether it acts through the destruction
of a great typhoon, or whether the same law blessed the fields of grain. Law is Law.
Intelligence offers the conditions through which the Law must work. The Law works good or
evil according as the intention of the Intelligence is evil or good.

The Law is in itself a duality, based upon its inherent unity. It will work one way with
positive conditions, and diametrically the opposite way with negative conditions so that
ordinarily you say you have two laws - there is but one.
 Chapter XXII
WORDS AND DEEDS

1. (NO TITLE)

The following record seems to follow with a certain logic the whole question of
communication; for it deals with the differences in language. In spite of its deprecation of the
utility of words, the little essay is a gem of extemporization.

2. (NO TITLE)

"Words as you know them are always following limpingly behind the winged thing they
would express and which they can never overtake. They can but fix glimpses, shadows. The
thing they can sit down to examine is already a shell from which life has all but flown. That
is why an expression in words is always lacking in the vital principle; why it fixes merely a
thing that has ceased to move. An idea that in living always moves, and can itself be
embodied only in a thing that is similarly fluid.

"The language one must speak in telling of the higher and spiritual essentials is made up, not
of words, but of those moving, everchanging things known as actions. We have often told
you in one way or another that the mere intellectual formulation is nothing. It expresses
nothing, and in final analysis it conveys nothing of value to the only true auditor of the
deeper human life, which is man's real speech. It is because of this truth that we have in times
past, bunglingly urged you to 'make it so', and have urged you to act more on impulse.
Impulsive action is the instantaneous and directest expression of that which, when
unperverted by false habit, comes to you from primal sources. It is then undiluted by passage
through the fixed and stationary medium of words by which reflective wisdom formulates.
One might almost say that the language we who are advanced into a more liberated spiritual
medium hear from your side is the language, not of this reflective deliberation but of your
actions.

"By that, however, you must not always understand that the sometimes deflected or distorted
physical manifestations of those actions, nor must you fall into the error of substituting a
histrionic 'intention' as the reality - I mean the sort of 'intention' hell is supposed to be paved
with. But you must all have known those unfortunate people whose desire is to love, to be
kind, to enjoy the affection of those about them but who nevertheless, by some fatal twist of
inhibition or unlucky quirk of temperament antagonize and repel and live in wistful solitude.
This is an illustration of what I mean when I said that the physical manifestation does not
always represent the deed.

"Action is a language we speak and understand; a fluid flowing language, ever changing,
ever moving in company with that which it expresses. That is why we look, not to formulated
belief for our encouragement of progress, but to the moving force within which causes a man
to do or to refrain from that which comes to his hands. The one is an arrestment, a fixing
perhaps of a dead thing, while the living thing wings its way out of sight; the other is an
expression of what man perceives, though he may not intellectually know. In the ultimate
freeing from a mechanism temporarily useful there comes a time when this language of
action is a natural method of expression and communication between entities, when one does
not say, 'I love', but loves; when movement follows rhythym beautifully; when the
construction of thought - which, you must remember, is a reality, is a joyous fashioning.

"There are two examples under your eyes of instant translation into action of direct impulses;
a flock of birds in evolution; and a school of fish. You have often seen a dense mass of such
birds as sandpipers or pigeons wheeling, turning and changing direction in close formation
with all the speed and precision of a perfect drill. The hesitation of a tenth of a second by any
single member must inevitably throw the whole into jostling confusion. There is manifestly
no room for the communication of an idea through any medium required for expression, no
matter how simple or instantaneous, that translation through a mechanism- such as a brain.
The expression must of itself be the action. It is not a question of receiving an impulse and
deciding to act on it; or of receiving an impulse and diverting it into the groove of even long-
established habit. It is, to repeat, necessarily the accompanying external manifestation, in
direct expression, of the impulse.

"What the impulse signifies in bird life is not the question here. It is sufficient to say that it is
not without its meaning; that the apparently aimless rapid twinklings through space are, not
too fancifully, phrases of the directer language of which we lately spoke. The illustration is
mentioned, not as an important thesis, but as an enriching corollary to our other talk.

"Impulsive action in the case of the human entity in earth life must not be confused with the
following of a whim. Whim is merely the product of capricious desire. It should not be too
difficult to distinguish that which wells up spontaneously out of the inner being from that
which merely flashes across the surface, illuminating perhaps a desirable possibility.

"At first it may be almost impossible to obtain that flexibility of spirit which will receive
accurately and undistorted the real impulse from the depths of being - the impulse which will
translate itself into the sure action that is its expression. One stammers and hesitates and uses
wrong words and awkward phrases in attempting any new or little accustomed language. One
who tries blindly to follow impulse in action will make many blunders and mistakes. This
will occur for two reasons; first, because of the distortion or perversion of habit of thought or
doubt of experience; and, second because the first and pure impulse is not brought to the
conscious attention before it has been diluted. Thought for all its mechanical nature, is
extraordinarily swift, and fairly before the flash of perception has reached the consciousness
it may unconsciously interpose a hundred considerations that modify it. What we think is
pure impulse has thus become a hybrid before it reaches its expression in action. Only with
practice and with mistake can fluency and accuracy in this languages as in all others, be
obtained. But this should not discourage the attempt.

"Let this consideration hearten you; if you will review the decisions, and the results of those
decisions, to which you have come by painful intellectual process, which you have weighed
and measured and balanced and considered, you will if you are honest - be forced to admit
that the proportion of mistakes has been as great and as disasterous and as little shot through
with success as could possibly attend even the blind following of all you might suspect to be
impulse.

"But do not lose sight of the fact that the intellect is a useful tool. With it, in its analytical
aspect, you are enabled after the fact to analyze and parse the construction so to speak, of the
expression you have made in the directer language. Not to question its wisdom or unwisdom,
but to search back unflinchingly to the original naked impulse which you have clothed in the
expression of action. Determine, if you can, whether that expression has been a true one,
whether you have actually followed the real first impulse, or a perversion or dilution, and try
to see if in actual fact an accurate following in action of the real first impulse would not have
placed you in the path of wisdom. By this means little by little your command both of your
perception and your ability in accurate expression will grow.

"It is almost impossible to introduce through this inflexible medium all the modifying and
explanatory qualities necessary to a satisfactory complete exposition. I must call your
attention briefly to the fact that the intellect has its undisputed field of activity in that which
concerns it. It is a physical thing, and it is created to deal with physical things. It would be
absurd to act on impulse in the common acceptance of the term when dealing with the
correlations and vagaries of physical crises. Experience plus reason must guide you through
conscious intellectual thinking. Solve the difficulty with the tool that is adapted to it. But in
dealing with affairs that you may loosely designate as moral or spiritual, which includes your
relations with yourself, with your fellow beings and with the greater unities, then the tool you
must use, the language you must speak in order to be understood where you must be
understood, is the direct expression of which we are told.

"This is very fragmentary, open to many doubts and questionings. It is necessarily so because
of the fact that it is translated from that identical, flexible, closely corresponding language
into an alien tongue, as one should turn Shakespeare into Chinook. But the central idea is
there; and being entertained, even if not completely understood, must force its own
expression in its own proper tongue."
 Chapter XXIII
SYSTEMS OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE EAST AND WEST

1. "DEVELOPING" SYSTEMS OF THE EAST

Anyone who moves aside from the ordinary course of life to an interest in actual spiritual
development steps into bewilderment. Unless he watches himself warily he is likely to take
quite innocently what the occultists call The Left Hand Path. There are tens and dozens of
systems from which he can choose. Teachers of them swarm.They come in robe and turban;
or in the ordinary garments of western civilization. They are mysterious, and remote, and
occult and ritualistic: or they deal in plain words, plainly used. They call themselves
religious; or sciences; or philosophies. They are all quite certain of themselves, and generally
where they differ, they are mutually exclusive. Their followers are ordinarily enthusiasts.
Furthermore, these systems all sound reasonable and logical; and, catch him right, they are
capable of our seeker's belief and fanatic adherence. At least for a while.

Some of them are based on truth and reality and so are good. They differ one from the other
only in the externals that make them adaptable to different types of people. But a lot of them
are based on half truths. Some may be valuable enough in their native soil, but cannot bear
transplanting. Some are baldly fake systems to catch suckers. Some are clever imitations of
the real thing. Some are downright perversions. How is a man to determine? There are so
many; New Thought; Unity; Christian Science; Sufism; Theosophy; yogism and others
derived from the East; Occultism - to mention but a few, at random.

Some of them are very detailed. They offer minute instruction and how to go about it. These
are likely to be the fashionable systems. We find amateur Yogis posturing and breathing and
trying to meditate in the eager hope that these exercises will, and promptly, confer on them
expansions and powers. To find others earnestly 'holding the thought' in the expectation of
'manifesting' for themselves what they think they desire. We have every once in a while
imported messiahs and teachers who promise great illuminations; who gather swarms of
worshipful followers; but who in most cases eventually disappear. Yet there is to the
thoughtfully unprejudiced something genuine about some of them. How much? and which?
That something genuine is so fundamental that it gives pause. And yet there seems, to one
with sensitive antennae, a catch in most of it.

The difficulty is to find out what the catch is. Much of it seems, in some degree, to work.
There are results. Are the results good? Are they good for us?

"Beginning with the simplest concept of the lot; how about the 'holding the thought' stuff, for
the purpose of 'manifesting' what one desires? Can that be done? A great number of worthy
folk believe in it. Some very sincere people devote themselves to teaching it. Compared to
some of the more elaborate systems, this is a moderately simple magic. Nevertheless, if one
examines without prejudice its structure, it seems based on laws that ought logically to work.
Testimony is offered that is difficult to dismisse as coincidence.
"There is evidently," said Gaelic as to this, "somewhat of a puzzle in your minds concerning
the law of acquisition; the drawing to yourself of that which is outside yourself for your own
use. A thing is for your own use if it passes through your manipulation, whether its object is a
satisfaction of a personal desire, or is supposed to subserve a purpose. The underlying
principle that clarifies the logic of the whole situation can be very simply stated. Nothing can
be acquired without the price for it is paid.

"There are no free and gratuitous acquisitions. If a thing is acquired apparently without
payment by the one demanding it, be certain the payment is made by someone or some group
force, and the price deferred is charged against that one's credit.

"The simplest method for acquiring material possession for any purpose whatever is through
the economic law that each clearly understands. The payment is made in the token you call
money, which represents a well-understood and defined need of effort, service or exchange.
If you desire an object, you know exactly its price; and furthermore you know what payment
of that price means to you in those terms. So you may evaluate exactly its desirability as
balanced against its price.

"Material possession may also be acquired by the invocation of more subtle laws than those
of economics. The acquisition is certain to one who thoroughly understands this law, and can
inject into it enough dynamics for its operation. But the material object does not come into
possession from a storehouse of gratuities. There must be expended for it a price. That price
is not a fixed unit, as is the money token of the lesser economic law. It is a variable,
depending on what coin you possess, and what coin you owe. There is also a dependence on
your purpose of investment and its singleness. Each alloy of lesser purpose alters the coinage
which must be paid. Only a Master is in a position to see as clearly and as accurately as does
one operating under economic law the amount and kind of payment. As for the others who
invoke law blindly, he is a foolish man who takes from the shelves careless and unknowing
of price, of kind of payment, of time payment, of rate of interest.

"That, in brief, is the danger of the knowledged invocation by rote of laws not understood,
except in effects. Nothing comes into your hands but you are charged with its price. Know
that you must pay before you strike the bargain. Know from whom, if anybody, you are
borrowing your credit, and what repayment will be demanded of you. Aside from higher
considerations, it is a grave foolishness to take, on such blind credit, that which may at least
be worked for, if not obtained, by a comprehended law.

"Another danger in the invocation, the concerted invocation of half-understood occult laws,
is that one thereby affiliates himself psychically with a group whose individual constituents
are unknown to him. Affiliation in a group for those purposes, if the affiliation is active,
implies a certain degree of responsibility - a certain degree, mind you, of each for the others.
It is always well to pause before undertaking blind liabilities. That is the reason why, beside
the danger of coagulating formalisms, we consider it generally undesirable to teach
miscellaneous and unchosen groups. Spiritual matters are rarely, after the first simplicities,
susceptible to mass dissemination. A teacher should be responsible for and very sure of what
he teaches, of course; but he should not forget that in the gathering together of those whom
he would instruct he has also a responsibility, in that he is exposing them, more or less
uninsulated, one to the other. A chance-gathered assemblage, called for aught but the
universal simplicities, is a formation of an entity of mutual responsibility and influence.

"The usual protection is a ritualism that soon hardens to the crumbling point of
disintegration; or a formalism which bears in rebound from the surface of the mind.

"This has always been recognized by the genuine teachers of the world. Those Masters who
have addressed the multitude of mankind have told but a few and simple things. When it has
become desirable to teach higher matters, it has always been to the few chosen. So in general
distrust the one who would instruct you together with the multitude in the higher things of
spirit. He offers you but the outward shells that have contained, but contain no longer; or, if
the thing he offers has power, that power nay be misused, and yours be part of the
responsibility to work out.

"Now I must not be misunderstood. It is very difficult to illumine the facets, all of them, in
the space of an hour. The prophet vivifying the spirit of the multitude is a real and living and
constructive force. The seer who opens to vision the flash of a vista performs a necessary
spiritual vivification. But whatever he tells the multitude - if you examine it when the glory
of irradiation has cooled - is but an old simplicity which men have known. Nor do I decry
those gatherings in the temples of understood worship which have as their end, not
knowledge or power, but communion with the source. The formalisms and rituals of such
gatherings, and they be not the lip service of rote, are simply the opening hands to the door.

"With these discriminations I leave this imperfect warning to your consideration. The Master
said, 'if there be two or three gathered together in my name,' He spoke not of a multitude.

"I might add a wee word. It is very unlikely that any of you may feel yourselves called upon
to stand in the market place and instruct. That you may instruct, I doubt not; but it will be in
the more personal way. But he who addresses the multitude in occult knowledge, himself
stands in grave danger of entering the darker path, unless he well understands. For in the
powers he passes on he must himself follow or resolve the ultimate use to which they may be
put. I do not say he will be responsible in the full sense, as is the misuser: but he has
endorsed the note. One may of course enunciate the principles of spirituality. I have talked
this evening of the occult."

"How about books conveying such knowledge? Are they harmful?" one of us asked.

"If you ignorantly put the practices you see in books into use: yes. If read for formation for a
rounded knowledge; no. Specific directions for the acquisition of specific powers we of the
Wisdom do not knowledgably place in books. If innocently disclosed, it is through ignorance
or half-knowledge. I speak now of formulae for power. I do not speak of formulae for purely
spiritual growth. There is a great distinction. If formulae are given (for self defense, etc.) they
are an antidote to uncountenanced disclosure."

2. DEVELOPING SYSTEMS OF THE EAST

That seemed satisfactory. It covered, in Principle, a larger field than the direct question had
contemplated. But it did not fully answer another that had to do with higher matters than
mere material acquisitions. At that time there was a great interest among some of our
acquaintances in Yogi practices; or what purported to be such. They pointed definitely to
certain methods which promised definitely a shortcut to certain results. Were these methods
effective? Were they legitimate? Were they wholesome? What was their effect on the Yogi
himself?

"On what Yogi?" asked Gaelic pertinently. "You might ask me the effect of rain. On what?
Salt? Grass?

"It is a large subject. I will do my best. I must use figures of speech, and I must be be
permitted to change my figure without being accused of inconsistency.

"The evocation of powers or forces is a purely natural thing, just as you evoke the power of
steam by knowledgably building your fire, containing your water, and compressing your
vapor into the proper channels. Any fool can make steam if he knows but a simple procedure,
purely mechanically. Any fool can evoke any natural force provided he knows the more or
less complex circumstances necessary to call it into being. The power is always the same.
The effect of the power depends upon the machine through which it works. If one develops a
steam pressure of, say, five hundred pounds, he may usefully employ it in a machine adapted
to that pressure; whereas in a frailer structure adapted to one hundred pounds only, he would
meet with disaster.

"Now there are, to abandon the figure, certain degrees of power that are generated according
to the strength of the machine. It is as though, when you had builded a mechanism capable of
withstanding and using a hundred pounds of steam, the hundred pounds would be
automatically generated and supplied in exact force and quantity by the mere fact of the
machinery's existence. And when you had constructed a machine of five hundred pounds
capacity, the pressure would also automatically and without intervention on your part
accompany the mechanism. It is actually thus with the power of the human entity. The
machine in this case being the stable and external character or soul or spiritual body or
degree of development or evolution to which he has attained, and so-called psychic and other
powers are the steam pressure that automatically accompanies the machine.

"Now conceive that by a shortcut, as you call it, your possessor of the hundred pound
machine should by artifice, and not by automatic means, raise his pressure to a hundred and
fifty pounds, instead of building up the machine to that capacity and so acquiring it in the
usual course. Without doubt the machine would run in an accelerated manner until something
broke. In a broad and general way this is the difficulty with any forcing system aimed at
acceleration of personal evolution. It is not constructing a machine of added capacity; it is
building an additional fire to raise the pressure. The attention is directed to the wrong end of
the problem. Instead of saying, 'if I develop the capacity the powers will be supplied,' one
says, 'if I develop the powers I can do more with the old machine.'

"The measure of capacity in the human machine is character, the soul capacity, the degree of
evolution, the eternal body, whatever you will; and that, like the human body, is a complex
thing. By lifting a heavy weight in mechanical manners you may develop enormous muscles;
but if, at the same time, a corresponding nervious vitality is not also developed, the result is
not a stronger man but a weaker man.

"To change the figure, it is possible by the application of water and artificial forcing methods
to grow enormously and fairly in a very short season, but it is not possible to grow sturdily
without the stiffening and stablilizing ingredient of time. There is no known system, Yogi or
otherwise, which in the finite world conditioned by space and time - which are indeed one
thing and interchangable - can successfully rid itself of this one ingredient. For there is an
inextricable fiber of all finite things, and sooner or later its lack makes itself known by that
absence of stability which indicates lack of fiber. The systems you speak of, and many
others, are incomplete. If they possessed in themselves all the ingredients of evolutional
development, instead of only a proportion, then indeed it might be possible by the very
harmony of its completeness to accelerate the time ratio. But they do not contain all the
ingredients - only those which mechanically bring about the fair and watery fruit without the
substance.

"This is in general true. It is not, however, to say that there are no apparent exceptions. I say
apparent. You have often seen a wee rain fall upon the seeded earth, and the sun has shone,
and once more the earth is dry and brown. And in the days later it has rained again, and once
more in a few hours the grasses have sprung from the hard brown earth; almost unnaturally a
forced growth, one might say. Yet beneath the hard surface the regular and orderly process of
nature had been going on in due course, until the seed was developed to the very point of
germination. Had not the second rain come so soon, naught would have happened until by
the slower moisture already accumulated the shoots had come more slowly forth. The second
rain did not force the process, did not bring a development by a shortcut, but merely
furnished a favorable condition for the earlier unfolding of what was actually already
complete. In this manner it may happen that conscious exercises, consciously performed, in a
very few cases might bring a result; but it would be a result already achieved."

A little later in the evening he added this; apropos of striving for receptivity.

"One does not strive for it. It comes. It is a good thing. It is a part of the pressure that comes
with the machine. Build your machine. Let force, power, the ability to make rabbits come out
of hats, take care of itself. When you have a rabbit machine, rabbits will be plentiful.

"You build your machine by building yourself. You build yourself by the exercise of
decision, moment to moment. You get the materials for decision from what you have
received. You receive in proportion to your receptivity. And thus you have chased your tail
in a complete circle."

We returned to the subject on another evening. One asked whether the 'adepts' of India
actually exist as so often described.

"They exist, yes; as described, no," replied Gaelic. "There are certain consciousnesses and
always have been on your plane who are in reality advanced beyond the need for its
particular conditions, but who, for reasons of service, or as one enters a condition in order to
better understand it, do dwell upon your planet. These are the true adepts, and are generally
unknown, except for some special and individual purpose. They are above the necessity of
personal contact in order to do their work.

"They possess methods of reaching those capable of receiving what they have to offer, which
transcend in certainty the ordinary methods of human intercourse. As usually described,
merely incidental and accompanying insignificances are portrayed as the living reality. They
are advanced consciousnesses furnished forth with attributes which naturally and inevitably
accrue to that growth. They are not men who have, by practice and study acquired powers as
one collects jewels."

"How then does it happen," objected the questioner, "that the practice of 'certain exercises' is
always mentioned in connection with these adepts. I never heard the Masters spoken of
without mention of Yog Vidaya, as though the one were made by the other. It is all very
confusing."

"Men have confused the symbol with what they believe to be a fact. All this expression of the
East is rich with symbolism," replied Gaelic.

"In order to gain the advancement in consciousness to which the so-called adept has grown,
certain phases of growth must be reached, lived out, and passed through. This is true
throughout all nature. Before the human infant can be born, it must review its own biological
history, before it gains the elements of moral consciousness, it must in brief pass through its
own history of their acquisition, through fears, through hungers, through the simple passions,
until the moral nature has become subtle.

"Now symbolize these things. Say that in place of passing through the inner experiences of
growth, you illustrate each of these stages by a physical symbol. Can you not see that the
visitor from another planet, to whom our processes were unfamiliar, might take the symbol
for a literal fact, and report to his fellows on his return that, to reach the beginnings of a
moral nature, the human young must perform certain ceremonies of casting out fear, etc.?

"In exactly the same way the symbolism which was intended to shadow forth in illustrative
form the perfectly normal steps in development and growth which lead to that higher
consciousness you call the adept, have been taken in their literal meaning."

"According to that," said someone, "what we need in our evolution is brought to us step by
step, quite naturally and without seeking on our part!"

"Have you ever heard the text, 'One cannot add a cubit to his stature by taking thought?"
demanded Gaelic.

"How about K?" asked someone, naming an American practitioner of these so-called Yogi
exercises, and one of decidedly mixed character. I say 'so-called' advisedly in view of a
warning expressed at another time.

"I qualified the statements of Yogi by saying 'the so-called, commonly understood practices.'
There is an underlying truth in the true form that fitted certain stages of spiritual development
historically, and since the human race, like the embryo, runs through its spiritual history, and
since all stages of development have still their representation on earth, it has even yet its
significance. We try now rather to give you working materials for your own present, than to
indulge in historical speculation.

"He," went on Gaelic, answering the question as to K, "is a representative of a very large
type.
"The artificial stimulation of powers, beyond that which is natural to the state of
development, merely accentuates and makes more vivid those traits of character which the
individual already possesses. His better parts work for good more easily, his selfish parts are
more selfish, his evil propensities are made more potent. There is no change in the
proportionate ensemble. There is furthermore, grave danger of a disunited personality, and
for this reason:

"In even a fairly harmoniously constituted human entity the lowest possibilities are not so
very much lower than the highest possibilities, and as the top rises so does the lower level, so
that always there is in the constituent makeup of that man a certain compactness. But if with
the same characteristics and without intrinsic change therein, the good is intensified and
thrown higher, so to speak, and the selfishness and evil are intensified and thrown lower, so
to speak - as of diverging lines - then, you can see, that the compactness is in danger of
becoming scattered and lost. That is another of the dangers of forced growth.

"I would change the figure. It is important.

"Conceive of the human entity as a sphere composed of atoms of a certain size, these atoms
representing all the diverse psychic characteristics of which mankind is composed. Now in
the natural growth of this sphere, in expansion, the atoms also increase pari passu in size, so
that always the surface of the sphere remains, through the always intimate juxtaposition of
these increasing atoms, unbroken.

"But conceive the sphere enlarged in its circumference of power by artificial methods rather
than natural growth. The atoms of which it is composed have not enlarged in correspondence.
How could they, since there is no growth, only an extension of the radii of power? And since
this is so, they are no longer in juxtaposition on the surface, and your entity is open to
whatever winds of destruction may be astir."

"In case a person highly suggestible came under the evil influence of a person like K,"
proposed one curious one, "what would be the best method of resisting it? Suppose, for
instance, the person were very young, and inexperienced in such things."

"If your person is so suggestible as you think," said Gaelic, "and the suggestion from the
other person is as evilly intended and as evil as you think, then the receptivity presupposed
by this suggestibility will quite clearly also receive an intuition of the evil. The only possible
danger is that the intuition should fail of recognition. A suggestion from a friendly source,
not against the possibility of evil suggestion, but in the direction of assurance that an intuition
will surely come and will be recognized and should be obeyed, will, if clearly conveyed and
definitely conveyed, prove an ample safeguard.

"There are several classes of very definite results to be obtained from any of these practices.

"First of all there are those who strive for the purely mechanical acquisition of certain
wonderful-seeming but actually trivial powers. Those, if pursued for themselves, are at worst
dangerous, and at best unbalancing as we have seen.

"Another class, a grade above the last, is actually and earnestly striving toward an ideal such
as is depicted in the popular conception of the adept. These people are in no danger except
that of losing a balance that they must later supply. In essence their only mistake is in striving
to become something and using certain means solely with that end in view, instead of
realizing that in any growth that is sure and solid, each means, no matter how small and
trivial, is for the period of its employment, the end itself, and must be so approached and so
considered.

"Then of course, there is the third class which realizes this point, the members of which are
developing in the only possible way, and who in real truth supply to the particular religion or
sect or cult of philosophy or what-not, its only real life. All the rest are merely the showy but
parasitic growth; and were the cult actually dependent on them alone, it could not endure."

A discussion followed concerning retirement from the ordinary trivialities of ordinary life, in
order to concentrate more effectively on spiritual growth; in other words, adjusting the lesser
things in life to the greater.

"You have the thing wrong end to," Gaelic negatived this, "John Jones could not withdraw to
the Himalayas and do the things in the certain way you speak of and become an adept. It is
only an adept that can do that. It is not by conscious taking of thought, and withdrawing from
life for the purpose of pursuing spirituality like an elusive and rather solitary fox, that one
attains; - unless the withdrawal seems, not a question, but the most natural thing in the world.
It is not at that point that the necessary effort which is the price of all growth must be applied.
The effort must always be to expand, to reach out, to gain more contacts, to live everyday life
with a leaven of sympathy, and to walk on the highest plane of which one is capable. If these
things are done naturally and simply, and eagerly, and with a will, spirituality, as you call it,
will flood in, bringing with it all its gifts of intuition, of spiritual wisdom, of cosmic contact.
But that is a thing which must be left to take care of itself. All the other is yours to do, and to
its doing you bring all that you can of that which comes to you on the flood. In that way you
have again chased your tail in a circle.

"For that you will find there needs no years of solitude, no hours of meditation; but in the
ideal perfection of the process, the flash of time between the raising and lowering of the
eyelid will be quite sufficient to your enrichment."

"Is there any truth in the people who are always running down the intellect and its
cultivation?" it was asked.

"The intellect is the focus point of consciousness, most favorable in that environment (earth
life) to the development of any entity. In that case shouldn't it always be the first step to get
your focus point in the best possible working order?

"It is important. The main difficulty is that people tend to build a lightproof and completely
impermeable wall around the intellect, to the exclusion of all other influences. It is a manifest
absurdity to concentrate all one's attention upon a temporary habitation, to the entire
exclusion of preparation of those fields in which one will shortly roam. There is a due and
balanced proportion in all things. A focus point, by its very nature as a focus, is of paramount
importance for the immediate need, but is of decidedly secondary importance as compared
with the whole field."

"Isn't it true that, if you develop the focusing point very strongly, less experience is required
for the same amount of evolution? For instance, if you develop your intellect eight times its
original capacity, wouldn't you require one-eighth as much experience of any given kind to
complete your evolution in that particular field?"

"Not if the intellect is expanded at the expense of the intuitional faculties; then it does you
only one-eighth as much good. I say your remark is perfectly true if the extremely strong
intellect has not been strengthened at the expense of the more important intuitional faculties -
if the balance is kept. It is all a question of proportion.

"The reason that the intellect is cried down and the intuitional faculties are exalted by men
such as your friend, is that in ordinary life the reverse is ordinarily true. All education is
directed towards the intellectual at the expense of the intuitional. Thus a precept which is in
general true is overemphasized by those who have not a full comprehension of truth."

"You stated some time ago," said someone, "that we must establish the connection between
what you call our 'essential simplicities' and our intellectual belief. The Yogis offer their
exercises as a means. Is this profitable? Or are they never advisable?"

"That is very difficult to answer in general terms," replied Gaelic. "Some people of certain
types these exercises will - "

"He won't tell me any more - just shows pictures," interpolated in my own person. "He is
showing these seeds that are germinating and ready to come up out of the ground."

"Yogi exercises are adapted to that particular type of people. Other people taking those same
exercises will through them obtain a totally different class of result. We discussed all this
under the title of forced growth.

"People not of the Yogi type meet this conscious contract in due time when they have grown
into it, when they are ready for it, through a great variety of means or experiences, depending
on their individual makeup. Some, like William Bucke, suddenly attain what they describe as
cosmic consciousness. Others, like Swedenborg, are illuminated. Others, like St. Theresa,
think they see visions of Heavenly Hosts. Still others receive merely an enlightening
intellectual inspiration. Each of these experiences is led up to by as definite an unfolding
formula as the Yogi exercises you speak of.. In some cases these are consciously employed,
like the Yogi exercises, as in the cases of the saints who fasted and prayed. Others are
apparently insignificant and often unnoticed sequent events of everyday life which,
nevertheless, when examined in retrospect with an understanding eye, may be seen to have
been as though prescribed and arranged by an intelligence."

Here I again interpolated. At these junctures, instead of words floating down the surface of
that upper stream of consciousness, which I reported, I seemed to catch ideas and concepts.
These I expressed in my own words.

"He says to tell you something," said I. "He says that all these different systems are adapted
to different people. The mistake, and the deadly mistake, is in going out consciously and
intellectually and selecting one of them - that it will select you. When you consciously
review these formulitic systems and pick out one for predetermined experiments without an
inner urge of the sub-currents toward it, the result is invariably bad. That is where your
intellect comes into its own. Obtain an intellectual understanding of everyrthing you can, but
without consciously determined selection. If there is in what you thus intellectually encounter
a whole or a fragment, fitted for your unfoldment from the unconscious to the conscious, of
what you already possess or are developing into, be assured that without volition on your part
it will do its work."

"A young friend of mine down south," pursued Ward, "has been urging me to take his yogi
exercises, and in support of them has repeatedly quoted the text; 'Seek ye first the Kingdom
of Heaven, and all things shall be added unto you.' I feel that that is not a right application of
the text, but do not know quite why."

"Why don't you hunt up a text of your own," suggested Gaelic. "Texts means nothing. That
text, is true, but - do not be misled by the sophistry of begging the question in that text. This
man states a truth; Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all things shall be added unto
you.' And implies that that refers to his own method, whatever it is. That is a non-sequitur. At
least the burden of proof is on his side that his method is designated. In reply to him I would
say; do not seek consciously and foredeterminedly the Kingdom of Heaven - you seek it in
every action of daily life.

"This text, like all the richly figurative Oriental texts of that day is a generalization based on
indirections, and like most of those texts has been wrenched from a figurative to a literal
meaning. Turn it the other way around.

"The most unfitted men conceived they were obeying the text and seeking the Kingdom of
Heaven by going into monastaries. As a matter of fact, that kind of life was the very last way
men of that particular type could seek the Kingdom of Heaven.

"The text merely means, lead the best life of which you are capable in the station to which
you are called; and it has not been wrenched from that meaning by two thousand years of
contrary interpretations."

Thus the matter rested for some months. Then Gaelic returned to it of his own accord,
extending it to include some wider aspects of occultism.

"I would not have you think," he began, "that I am trying to undermine the valuable portions
of what has been given of truth to the world in the name of what you call occultism. But like
all truths of long-standing growth, there has accumulated a sort of fungus of
misapprehension, unwise practice, and extraneous matter, which, like all fungus, obtains its
body, not from the parent stem, but in true parasitic form from the outside. The most striking
example of this I have hinted at before and have pointed out in its own fallacies; but I have
never expressed the fundamental fallacy. I refer to the forced growth, the accelerated speed
along the path of progress induced by certain formal practices.

"It is perfectly possible to acquire powers beyond those possessed in the ordinary course of
development. These powers are not illusory. They can be employed to produce certain
effects. Their possession may even be said to indicate an advanced state of development in
the person of the possessor. Nevertheless such practices are perilously close to what might be
called black magic, and for this reason:
"The primary object in your physical world of any development whatever, whether of a
person, a living thing, or the very rock of the fields, is not to produce a definite result by
means of a process, but to enable an added portion of ultimate reality to clothe or manifest
itself in physical form. You may take a man, and without demanding effort on his part
beyond the mechanical performance of a certain specified exercises, cause him to come into
possession of the power to perform very definite, very wonderful and very startling things.
By so doing you apparently cause things to happen of far-reaching effect. As an actuality you
have done nothing more than bring about a rearrangement of the affected elements,
abnormally, and in such a fashion that although the apparent effects are of great magnitude,
the final effects are almost nothing - because in the balance of nature a readjustment into
what would have been the result of the original form will inevitably take place.

"This is because no reality, no portion of reality, has been precipitated, manifested, clothed
by, and so made an entity of the physical world, by this process. The only way this can be
done is by a definite, normal and ordinary effort of the free will, acting seriatim, without gap
in the course of its regular progress of development. Any effect, no matter how large, of the
former method, as respects both the individual who performs it and the portion of the
universe by which he is intimately surrounded, is illusory and fleeting. In effect, no matter
how minute, that is a product of directed effort but is permanent, both in building up the one
who evokes it and in adding to the sum total of universal progress. The one is of no
substance; the other is as solid as the foundation of cosmos itself.

"That, then, is for the growth caused by 'occult', mechanical practice. You must add to this
what I said the other evening.

"Precipitation on the physical plane must come from those endowed with the physical
faculties. It must be a living human being - living in your sense - who performs. No others
but the great creative intelligences are able by the checking quality of their ideas actually to
create on the physical plane. If we would effect an actual manifestation or clothing of any
portion of reality in your sphere, we must not only work through the intermediation of one of
yourselves, but we must do it indirectly, so to speak, by arousing you to make your own
effort. We can direct you straight away to do a certain thing, simply by telling you to do it;
and you will do it and will apparently gain to a certain effect. But in the result will be no iota
of the substance of reality, nor permanence and in the inevitable readjustments it will be as if
it never had been. Of what avail then to lead you on by direct advice? One blows down the
wind! What you want, what the flow of progress wants, what we want, is rather the single
grain of sand than the oceans of drifting fog.

"And I must repeat that the only mechanism we know to place this clothed reality in your
world is the carnate human will. And for exactly the same reason as that which underlies the
insubstantiality of these occult practices - that is why you are not more helped by us."
 Chapter XXIV
DANGER AND ITS AVOIDANCE

1. THE BASIS OF ILLUSION

The basic danger in psychics, according to Gaelic, is illusion. This may be of different
degree, naturally. At one end we are like to have mistaken partisanship on the other
downright insanity.

"The first step in illusion," Gaelic began, "is an overeager expansion. This, as in an old figure
we have used before, so extends the radius without corresponding growth of its comprising
particles as to bring about a condition of undue permeability, without that solid individual
constitution, that compact inner spiritual core, which provides its own insulation. This undue
permeability, at first a little, then a little more, admits a heterogeneous influx of influence
without constructive plan or purpose.

"A dominating entity or force, or group is by chance or tempermental predilection enabled to

attract attention, as it were - to obtain the subject's attention. From this slight beginning a
single small seed or idea of one sort or another is implanted. That one small seed or idea is
sufficient to establish a preliminary premise, on which at first a simple, and later a more
complex syllogism may be formed. This syllogism is irrefragibly formed on the laws of
logic; and once the initial premise is either forgotten or accepted, obtains sympathetic
acquiescence. Note the word sympathetic. Sympathy involves always a partial identification
with its object. This identification becomes little by little more and more complete. A time
comes when what you call obsession may supervene."

2. OBSESSION

"Obsession faces in two directions. This is not generally known. The obsessing entity
functions on your plane through its object - that you understand. The object also functions on
the obsessor's plane through the obsessor.

"We will leave aside the earth experience of the obsessing entity as self-evident. The victim
of obsession - either partial or complete, mind you - functions on the other plane through the
obsessor. What are his experiences there? It is almost self-evident that they are either those
possible to the obsessor's knowledge and capacity, or they are those which the obsessor
desires him to have. Whether they are real or illusory, or partially one or the other, depends
on the obsessor's capacity and good will; also on the obsessor's cleverness in building more
syllogisms, based on a speck of irrefutable reality, but carried in the direction of his own
purposes."
3. THE RELIEF FROM OBSESSION

"Whatever of your earth is comprised within your personal awareness comes to the
experience of a disembodied possessing entity only as you yourselves see it. In corollary:
experience of other planes comes to you only as the obsessing entity sees it. Only those two
awareness mechanisms are available, on the one side and on the other side, for the purposes
of perception.

"But suppose an entity still on your plane, functioning also on the other plane, obtains
obsession over someone; and suppose him possessed of a malignant or selfishly limited
understanding. Then it would be quite possible for him with that dual comprehension of
conditions to build for his own purposes a complete but false system of logic, and to show a
solid but illusory cosmos, complete to the extension of finity. And the whole vision would be
comprised within the pinpoint limits of a single malignant purpose - a pinpoint so minute that
its importance in troubling the great sweeping tide of cosmic movement would be laughable
were it not at the same time tragic in the view of one."

"I am for the moment sketching a process, exposing a situation. I will go on to expose also,
not only how unimportant this is in itself, but its large and dynamic ultimate effect in final
development.

"Now it is almost impossible to assist one in this condition, as long as it remains fairly
complete, for the simple reason that whatever we may do or say, if it be reality - as we try to
make it - is seized upon in its interpretation and formed into a symbol appropriate to the
desire or purpose of the obsessor. This point is unimportant, but I mention it merely in
passing to account for what may often appear to be abandonment. It is not really such - but
we bide our time.

"Now I must say summat which may be misunderstood, but it is necessary to understanding.

"Possibility of this type of obsession can come only through a mistake on the part of the
victim. Mind you, I say mistake, not fault. Mistakes are unavoidable in any walk of life, even
the most accustomed. They are increasingly probable when one ventures from the beaten
track over the pathless countries. They are certain when one rushes forward in haste, heeding
not his footsteps, which in itself is a mistake. And the more obscure the way, the more the
haste, the harder the fall. But the very spirit of undauntedness that leads one forth into untried
ways, the very eagerness of purpose that hastens one's steps beyond safety, are a warrant of
the will that will pick itself up again. Only he who strays like a thief in the night, seeking
power and aggrandizement, only he who hastens grasping guiltily of forbidden things, once
fallen rises not. And the moment when once more one stands upon his own two feet we may
take him by guiding hand."

4. THE FIRM FOUNDATION

The third principle, said Gaelic, applies not only to this subject, but is inherent to most other
activities of the human race.

"It is impossible to function safely in advance without a foundation of complete functioning

in the plane of life in which one is placed.

"Those few who have safely attained in your earth life and elsewhere have done so on a
foundation of complete earth function. This is an invariable rule and an indispensable
safeguard. Life in advance is a blossoming on firm earth roots. Perception in advance is a
true perception only when it is a growth from complete earth living. All other perception is
partial and veiled with phantasms of illusion."

5. INSANITY

"Insanity, as the world understands it, is not an abrogation of intelligence, except in such
cases as a diseased physical mechanism places the person in a position of complete insulation
from his environment. Insanity is intelligence acting quite normally and smoothly in a
mixture of several environments, harmonized completely with none. The mind is unimpaired
in the sense that its mechanism of function is unimpaired. It is acting often on realities, but it
is interpreting the realities of one sphere in symbols of another, or vice versa, or even more
confusing is the intermingling of the two in both. If that could be fully understood and
worked out from this point of view, the benefit to all of humanity at large, here and there,
would be greater than any other one thing I can think of at the moment. The principles I
enunciate are a very short step in that direction.

"Nor must it be understood," Gaelic continued his definition, "that insanity in its wide
acceptation invariably implies obsession by an external entity. It may be so that obsession
exists - varying from almost complete substitution to undue influence only - but it is not a
necessity of the situation.

"Insanity is an orderly functioning of intelligence in a wrong or mixed environment. Note I

say intelligence; and use the word orderly instead of normal, merely to avoid
misunderstanding. Mind, in the narrow sense, is confined to the physical while normal has
become synonymous with its functioning in one environment. But in a wider sense of normal
the intelligence is always so functioning. In any understanding and treatments of the future of
insanity this one fact must be accepted and understood; the mind is functioning normally
according to the laws of its being, but the materials on which it functions and which it shapes
into the pattern of conduct and actions mental and physical, are incongruous one to the other.

"If drawn entirely from an environment in which the patient is not placed, the action and idea
are also divorced wholly from the environment, and the patient is what you call quite mad. If
these materials, however, are drawn only partially from another plane, then the incongruity
expresses itself in a similar mixture of action and idea. I speak now of the type in which no
obsessing entity has taken charge, or attempted to take charge, of the patient.

"In the treatment of such a case one must first of all assume that the action of the intelligence
is rational, that it is orderly, in its own environment, however constituted. One must then,
through experience, imagination and empirical accumulation of observation, try to determine
of what that environment consists. If that understanding can be reached, then one has a solid
foundation of knowledge of the case upon which to build. Seek first of all the rationale of the
case. Upon these principles future treatments of such patients will proceed."
6. THE HEALING PROCEDURE

"In the case of one who is, or has been, wholly or partially taken over by an obsessing entity
or entities the situation is more complex. One must attempt to determine, first, whether the
purpose is actuating the obsession, or whether it is a chance affiliation without definite larger
purpose as distinguished from mere motive. This larger purpose is certain to be in inception,
either mistaken or malignant, for those in knowledge of constructive purpose do not adopt
these methods. In either case the healings of the future will attempt to disentangle, in the
structure built up as the habitation of the mind, the realities from the syllogistic illusions
attached to them. The healing process will then begin by a stripping of illusion, and the
subsequent relating together of the remaining bits of reality, thus reestablishing the lost
harmony with truth. For when this in either case is accomplished, the intelligence, which, be
it remembered, is in function only impaired, will by its very nature, once its eyes are
unbandaged. proceed to its proper function in the environment in which it actually is by its
own specific gravity, so to speak. That is all I would say upon that subject."

7. THE DAMAGE SUSTAINED

"Now to take up another aspect; what of the damage to the one who has so wandered in
functioning of intelligence? The answer to that is that there is no damage to that person's
reality. You have been told before that of real gain nothing can be lost, and that is still true
now as when we first told you. Furthermore, any experience whatever contains within itself
the raw material of gain - not the finished product, mind you, but the raw material. When
material is offered you in any sphere you may leave it dumped in your close, or you may set
to with wisdom and intelligence to order, to sort, and finally to build it, not only into an
enrichment of your own eternal property, but mayhap a shelter wherein one storm-buffeted
may find refuge. Of the experience so utilized nothing essential is destroyed by
understanding. Only illusions or false hopes built upon mistake and overvaulting desire are
reduced to what they have been all along.

"I have, told you today the manner of illusion. I will not repeat. Read that over again to fit in
here.

"The tearing down of the false structure requires a certain boldness and courage to face the
reality of the actual; to acknowledge that evolution is harmonious and self-effacing; that the
difference between the highest entity and the humblest atom is in the face of eternity of no
account; that each can do his appointed task according to his capacity; and that that task will
fit into the unhasting, untarrying course of progress; that there never has been and never will
be, in the finite, however appearances may perceive, an exceeding of capacity; that capacity
is finite and limited by the laws of harmony. Understood; faced; utilized; the apparent
destruction of years of perhaps earnest effort will result, not in retrogression, but in a
progression even farther in reality than the fondest hopes built on illusion might aspire. So
that in final result life is not estopped, is not even checked, but overrides magnificently and
proceeds upon its appointed path."
8. A TYPE OF ILLUSION AND ITS HEALING

It was no part of his purpose, Gaelic informed us, to deal with details. Nevertheless, the
discussion of one very common, and very annoying, type of illusion harbored by the mentally
unbalanced might illustrate his point. That is, the illusion that food, or certain foods, are
poisonous to them. Sometimes this illusion is carried to the point of starvation - it is absurd.
"Nevertheless," said Gaelic, "there is in that statement more than a mere core of reality. He
apprehended it correctly, and he has reasoned correctly from that apprehension; but in that
reasoning he has transferred the application of a thing from an environment where it is true to
an environment where that truth is not active. I will now speak entirely figuratively, and not
literally. Understand that.

"In a certain plane of existence it might be that the reality of what is on the earth plane, a
peach, for instance, would as a matter of ingestion, to put it that way, have certain effects -
we will assume them deleterious. Now the precipitation of that reality on the earth plane, in
combination with the earth embodiment of exactly the same entity would, as a matter of
ingestion, be beneficial, not injurious. I speak figuratively, illustratively. Now an intelligence
operating on the first plane acts reasonably and properly in avoiding this peach. On the earth
plane he acts as reasonably and properly in accepting the peach. Acting on an intermingling
of the two, an acceptance of the peach on the earth plane might well be deleterious - literally
so because the consciousness, being badly centered, functioning outside its proper
environment, brings to the earth environment the effect not natural thereto. As long as the
functioning is thus confusedly intermingled the effect may be real. When functioning is
resumed in its proper environment and unconfused, the influence of reality on the first plane
disappears.

"I cite this merely as an instance of how functioning outside an environment, without losing
touch with reality results in illusion."

9. THE DEFENSE

"Any human experience," Gaelic reverted to his main theme, "no matter what its nature, no
matter what its inception, no matter what its guiding influence, may be analyzed into two
elements; a reality which is its core and substance; and its interpretation, which may be deed
or thought. The core of reality must always exist, for if a thing is in this orderly universe it
must have back of it an indubitably real essence. The interpretation varies according to
circumstance. In the most harmonious adjustment it may approach a comparative
correspondence, and in any case will encompass what may be called a working
correspondence. In circumstances involving maladjustment or activities mistaken, the core of
truth may be so overlaid with uncorresponding interpretations as to suffer almost complete
falsification. In the simplest direct working of an accomplished evolution the interpretations
may bear to the reality almost an equalizing ratio. This general principle may be stated: that
for the nearest perfection of function of any reality a minimum of interpretation is a
desideratum - provided that it is sufficient to assure the working of that inner truth.
Multiplicity and complexity of interpretation may so accumulate that the initiating reality
may become a mere pinpoint in a luxurious but noxious growth. Nevertheless in all cases the
reality is existent, indestructible, untarnishable. The disentangling - or rather the brushing off
- of the parasitic however, is all that is necessary as a prerequisite for further forward
movement. Then, and then only, can the progress be evaluated.

"How must this be done? Not by a detailed intellectual puzzling out. That way lies confusion
in a maze of misunderstandings through further interpretations. Understanding will come,
and the truth be very evidently placed to one side from the illusion; but that will come about
as a natural sequence to a manner of inner life. One must, after accepting the bare fact of the
situation, after acknowledging the condition of affairs, after ceasing regret at what is not
regrettable after all, retire calmly and peacefully within the inner citadel of quiet heart
relaxation, there to dwell while the inevitable natural processes take place. Rest calm in one
thing, and one thing only, confident that given the chance these natural processes will not
only take place, but cannot be prevented. In the meantime ordinary outside common interests
of life should be followed as the appetite for them grows. The only needed precipitating
element is a spiritually calm acquiescence for the moment. Then, as certainly as the stars
revolve in their appointed orbits, the pattern will silently adjust itself, the gold of reality will
shine in indubitable genuineness and all else will fall away as a veil that is rent asunder."

10. THE ONE SIN

"As a general admonition to all who push ahead in pioneering," Gaelic made this statement:

"No genuine truth," said he, "no good that comes to mortal man is to him aught but simple. If
it be not simple, and beautifully in the order of the universe as he knows it through his own
capacity, then either it is not a truth, or it is not a truth intended for him. Revelation
accompanies due and natural growth of capacity. The reception of revelation also is, if
genuine, simple, humble. To him who receives it, it appears, not a departure from the normal,
beautiful natural order of things, but an extension in kind. If it departs from that, it is suspect.
And furthermore, again, to him who receives it seems a natural and simple thing that it
should come to him in the ordinary course of the life he is leading. In his own thought it adds
not one tittle to his stature above his fellow men, above his conception of himself.

"For at this point enters what one would call - if one admitted such a thing at all the one sin. I
would prefer to call it the one corrosive. It is the one element of one's nature within one's
control. It is the one element of character capable, on the one side of turning into mistaken
direction the experience of reality; and on the other side, by proper understanding, of
rendering possible safe acceptance of whatever may come. That one thing is pride.

"There is a physical pride, which is amusing. There is a mental pride, which may be
annoying. There is a spiritual pride, which may become dangerous. It was of pride, and pride
only, that Lucifer was said to have fallen.

"That in a way is a simplification, for it narrows the point of safeguarding so that one may
watch at a sinple portal for the danger of disintegration. If one begins to set himself aside as
differing, then he should beware. We do not differ. The greatest of all who have lived the
earth life did not differ save in legend; nor did he, nor will ever anyone, by sudden quirk or
twist snatch aside the appointed order, and no true promise will ever be carried out that such
will be the case.

"I might almost say, in one sense, we do not hasten progress. I would not be misunderstood.
That which I mean is that our best efforts, our highest efforts, our utmost efforts within our
capacity are needed to prevent us from hindering progress by our inertia, our omissions, and
our hangings back. All there is of power, of energy, of good will and eagerness of spirit have
full scope within our possibilities for their exercise. It might almost be said that none ever
does all he could, but that pushing forward toward our present limitations is a continuous
process. In that sense we have no right to assume that far in advance or in the o'erleaping of
intervales lies a capability unearned by sequential approach. It may well be that such a thing
is within our radius. If so we must approach it properly. A leap in the dark may project us
where we should not be."
 Chapter XXV
THE FOURTH DIMENSION

1. SPACE AND TIME

Gaelic never made any attempt to explain such subjects as that of the chapter heading.
Apparently he never considered it of immediate importance to his main objective: that of
spiritual expansion. Nevertheless, incidentally from time to time, he gave us glimpses which,
assembled, read as follows:

"You look down the barrel of your microscope. You see one of your little boatshaped pets set
sail from his harbor and dart across a channel to another port. He lingers there for a fraction
of a second; then again darts up a waterway and out beyond the field of your vision. 'Lively
little devil,' you say. 'Wish I could get around as fast as that.'

"How long did he take to make his little voyage? A second, or perhaps two? No. As a matter
of fact, he was coaling-up in his first harbor - about a week. And he had a long monotonous
voyage of three days across the inlet; and it took him four days more in the second harbor to
unload. And then he started out, like Christopher Columbus, over vast and uncharted seas!

"Space and time are inextricably intermingled. The Indian measures space by time. With him
it is not 'one mile' or 'three miles' between two given points; it is one hour, and he will so
inform you if you ask him. It is obvious enough that space is the time it takes to get there. It
is not so obvious, but none the less true, that time is the radius of space occupied by any
given consciousness.

"One function of consciousness is to reach out and occupy more space. And the measure of
that occupation is the speed by which its diameter may be crossed, or its area traversed;
whether this be done by mechanical means of transportation; or the projection by mechanical
means of thought; or by occupation through what you call 'psychic' means, by some portion
of the personality. A simple example of this principle is the development of transportation,
and the consequent shrinking of the space formerly occupied, and the corresponding physical
expansion into space formerly unobtainable. A few hundred years ago, a man's normal radius
per unit of time was measured by the distance he could cover on horseback. His normal
'known world' was circumscribed by this fact. His neighbors were next-door. The automobile
extends his radius, and his neighbors may now be twenty miles away.

"This is a simple example, and its analogies may be more readily discerned through your
own reflection than by this difficult means of expression. A hint is enough.

"So, as we have said to some of you, development from this point of view consists of an
alternate reaching-out to include more in the field of life, and then bringing by one means or
another the scattered elements included in that field into closer juxtaposition. We called it
'squeezing out space', which is a lively enough illustrative figure. You can, starting from your
microscopic organism, trace its gradual expansion of field from the explorable vastness of
your drop of water on the slide, to the equally unexplorable spaces that separate the stars.

"Inside each circumference of development, if we may call it that, time and space bear to
each other an exact ratio. In applying the standard of your present circumference to the
activity of your microscopic friend, you unbalanced this ratio and so obtained a distorted
intellectual image. This is true all along the line. In order adequately to evaluate the spatial
and temporal subjective impressions of any one circumference you must know or be able to
enter or manipulate this ratio. This knowledge is not at present within your command.

"You have, however, stumbled against it in various ways, obtaining not a complete nor a
practical demonstration but merely a fragmentary glimpse. When this mathematical
coefficient of the human brain is varied by fever, or some sort of drug, it enters or is partly
influenced by ratios outside, or perhaps way inside of its own circumference, a minute
stretches into the dimensions of an hour. The night is 'years' long. One effect of certain drugs
is to create an illusion of racing time, so that a man appears to himself to be almost
instantaneously transported from one end of the city to the other. And, conversely, cases have
been reported that the journey from a library door to a fireside has seemed actually to have
consumed hours.

"The knowledge of this mathematical Law of Ratios is not beyond acquisition; though not in
all probability at present in your earth-nanifestation. This is merely a preliminary statement.
Space and time are subjects with which it is almost impossible to deal in clear-cut logical
conceptions. It must suffice if we sketch vaguely a little glimpse."

2. INTERLUDE

With the sometimes almost imbecile literalness of the human mind, several discussed that
microscopic boat-shaped bug; speculating on its size as proportioned to the length of its
voyage; its length of life relative to the actual time of its voyage and a lot similar meticulous
foolishness. This, naturally, annoyed Gaelic. "We are discussing principles, not facts," said
he. "We use facts illustratively as we find them arranged, or separated and uncorrelated,
within yourselves. We may use them without taking the pains to enquire whether they
themselves are based on accurate observation or knowledge. We do not know what that 'boat-
shaped thing' is, though were it worth the trouble we could investigate what reality is actually
back of the image we discovered, and employed from this station's equipmient."

3. THE TIME CONSTANT

"In each circumference containing a given ratio of time and space," he went on then, "is a
fixed mathematical equation to which this ratio may be referred by any entity circumscribed
within that circumference. Otherwise individual subjectivity would be enabled so to confuse
its relations with other things, and itself, that the harmony of the whole would be disturbed.
The example within your own circumference can be readily examined in considering how
long or how short a minute, an hour, a day, or a year may seem to any individual human
consciousness. Time drags; or time flies. The equation of time is, however, fixed. There are
minutes, there are days, there are months and years; and these are determined by the fact that
the earth revolves completely once, every twenty-four hours, and completes the ellipse of its
orbit in the space of a year.

"That is the constant of your human circumference. Each circumference possesses its
constant, varying as all realities vary, in its physical manifestations, according to the
substance in which it is expressed. A knowledge of this constant, as well as of its ratio, is
prerequisite to the manipulation of the elements of space and time in any circumference. This
manipulation is gained to greater or lesser extent by the entities of any given circumference,
solely in accordance with their needs of development. You annihilate space, and therefore
time, according as that annihilation furthers the purpose of your progress. And for no other
reason. Not forgetting that part of the purpose of your progress is also service to others.

4. TIME AND SPACE IN THE INVISIBLE

"In the wider circumferences, which we inhabit, and which you will in turn inhabit, these
manipulations are increasingly possible. Nor must you forget that both the constant and the
ratios differ for different spheres.

"Thus when you have been told, in a by-product of other discussions, that space or time mean
little to those of your friends who are on this side, it merely indicates that they have acquired
a power of manipulation beyond your present conceptions. When they say that space or time
mean nothing to them, they mean merely your space or time - not theirs. They mean that they
have come to an understanding, more or less complete, of the relations of your constant and
your ratio. We say 'more or less complete'. It is in essence on the mathematical side, if you
choose, and the manipulations can be applied with mathematical accuracy by one knowing
fully, so to say, his algebra. But one whose algebra is either unaccustomed or incomplete
often gets the wrong answer, or a mere approximation. I need hardly commend to your
intelligence an extension of this principle into explanation of various discrepancies in time
and space, which have puzzled you in experiences from this side. We have felt with the
greatest interest the reaction from your - pardon us - rather groping discussions of, so to say,
the future estate of time and space.

"It is very simple. Why have you not seen it?

"Time and space will cease to be when their need as elements of progress has ceased to be.
They extend to the very Footstool of God. They extend to the farthest horizon of possible
comprehension - short of complete self-comprehension - which is God. That they will
throughout progress retain the same constant, the same ratio, or the same physical
manifestation, is as obviously nonsense as that the tree quality should remain to human eyes
of earth what you see as a tree of the forest, in every cosmic clime and circumstance. What
that manifestation will be we can no more tell you than we can tell you the circumstances of
our own existence. And for the same reason. We must be content if we can give you a
glimpse of ever-widening possibility and power.

"We told you we live among real things. We have told you that many qualities you formerly
have considered as abstractions, are in themselves real things. And you have accepted that
statement. Time and space are real things. But as we have, again, told you before, your earth
eyes need not necessarily recognize them as just the thing you know there, were you to
encounter them elsewhere.

"Undoubtedly this sounds to you very vague and very unsatisfactory as have appeared many
other aspects of creation which we have evaded under questioning. These present permitted
attempts are intended less as explanations than to show you in understandable form why
certain things are impossible; and to fit the understandable form into a logical pattern which
you already knew and have accepted. We wish so to arrange the beginnings you are capable
of comprehending - so to arrange them in step by step inevitableness - that when they extend
out and vanish beyond your ken, your faith be firm that they go on according to the pattern
and plan Forever."

5. THE FIFTH DIMENSION

In his approach to a glimpse of the Fourth Dimension Gaelic did not depart from the accepted
bases. But after he had established his foundation he expressed new and illuminating ideas.
He did not expect to give us any clear mental image. He confessed that. "But," he added, "its
influence you will eventually discover to have an extraordinary permeation.

"You in your earth life, in a three dimensional world, experience the elements which are
within your manipulation. The adumbration of a fourth dimension is, strangely enough, not
only present, but a controlling factor of what one may call your flow of life. The three
dimensions may be comprised by the single term Space. The adumbration by the single term
Time.

"You may, at your own will, place yourself for as long or as short a duration as it may please
you at any point in space within the control of circumstances well understood - and you may
there remain, in continuance, for as long as your pleasure or need. This is the basic control of
which I speak. You have not the same dominance over time. Time is the flow of life, and you
may not linger even in its most desirable moment, but must move with the current. I speak
here the self-evident.

"But to us who dwell in, not the adumbration merely, but in what you might call the rounded
dimension - which you number or call the fourth - the same control obtains which you
yourself exercise over the three. In an analogous manner we may place ourselves in Time at
such a point as our pleasure or our need dictates and may there dwell or linger until the
pleasure or need is satisfied.

"That you may not be able to grasp as a picture. You must accept it as a principle for what I
am to say next.

"If this were all, entities escaping the three dimensional would seem to be flies in a trap,
capable of movement but not of progress, occupying a static, completed and immobile
scheme of things. There must be another dimension, moving as Time does to you, in a
progression beyond our power of arrest, beyond our power of manipulation, to conduct the
eternal flow of life. This dimension must be, as Time is to you, conditioning of our
movements, carrying forward our activities. This fifth dimension, which conditions our
activities here, as Time conditions yours there, may be defined as spiritual development.
"I could, if time permitted, go into a long series of analogues, taking as my basis your
relation to Time, to show the exact correspondence it bears to this new adumbrated
dimension. For, just as there is the mere adumbration of the fourth dimension with you, so is
spiritual development, not the completed dimension, but the adumbrated dimension with us,
and with the next stage to which your progress will lead you. Just as you can place yourself
in space, but are unable to dwell, except in fancy or hope or plan or memory, at any other
point in time than the present; so we can place ourselves both in Space and in Time at will,
but our relations to them both are determined by our point in the flow of spiritual
development.

"A significance of this may be dimly illustrated by imagining any single locality on your
earth's surface, and contemplating the position of yourself thereat in contrast to the position
of a man who had placed himself at identically the same spot in Space a thousand years
agone. You are both coincidental in Space, but the inexorable flow of Time has made of your
experiences wholly individual matters. In a sense you may be said to dwell together in the
three ddimensions, but not in the forth. So in your next step you may dwell together in four
of the dimensions but not in the fifth.

"This is not a subject that can be elucidated," warned Gaelic. "It cannot have, in its partial
comprehension consequent on it very partial exposition, much obvious value that you could
call practical. But it is one of those basic, expansive room-making concepts that widen the
chambers of the soul to contain many unrelated things. Any attempt to puzzle it out to its
logical intellectual comprehension, you will find yourself in one dimension - which is flat!
But if you accept it as an honored guest, you will find strange and unexpected Illuminations."

6. A PHILOSOPHICAL FATALISM

That, evidently, Gaelic thought a sufficient glimpse for the time being. But some time later
he seemed to think our ideas were tending, in this particular philosophical compartment, to
verge a trifle too much toward fatalism. If everything that has happened or is happening, or
will happen is, in ultimate, comprehended in the Now, what could anyone do about it?

"Our wee glimpse of the other dimensions," he reminded us, "was more of a consciousness
expanding feeling than an intellectual understanding.

"It is not so difficult, and is often done, to consider the dimensions of space in terms of time;
as one says, it is three hours from here to there. It is necessary for the present discussion, to
try to think of time in terms of space, figuring to your imagination all finite time as the
superficial area contained within a circle. Imagine that all the past and all the future is so
contained. All that has happened and has been done in the past is in that area. All that will
happen in all the future of finite time is equally represented and existent within that circle,
which may be named in broader aspect the Present. Thus one arrives at an often expressed
philosophical concept, that all that has or will occur co-exists now. That is one of the
concepts in all attempts to deal with the fourth dimension. To ordinary thought, that is at best
puzzling and confusing, and at worst self-contradictory, Let us attempt now as a natal
exercise to remove a little of those elements from the statement.

"On its face that statement would seen to imply a rigid and Calvinistic foredetermination
leading to stark fatalism. Following it literally might lead to a negation of effort on the
grounds that what is to be will be, and cannot be altered. That is the the narrow view. We
must in examining the subject indulge in a highly figurative illustration, as is always the case
in dealing with truths only partially within our own dimensions, and extending largely into
other dimensions of which we have no conscious grasp."

7. THE RESOLVING OF FATALISM

"Let us consider, then, our circle as containing all future events. If this circle were to be
considered only as existing in three dimensional consciousness the doctrine of fatalism would
be correct, but within its boundaries is not only the three dimensions in which you exist, but
all other dimensions. No matter how numerous these may be, of which an infinite
consciousness is composed. That a future happening may enter a three dimension experience
and so become manifested as what a three dimensional consciousness considers a reality is
wholly dependent on that consciousness.

"To alter the figure for purposes of illustration, suppose a dot to represent an individual
consciousness passing through experience. That dot enters our imaginary circle. In that circle
is comprised all possible experience. That experience is part of reality. It is not merely
potential; it is actual.

"In its progress through its three dimensional experience, which we will call its life, that dot
moves across the circle. The parts of the future which it brings within the scope of its focused
consciousness depends upon the path it travels in the circle. Those things it touches become
real happenings to it. Those things which it touches not are unknown to it. The things it
touches are to it real. All others are unreal or nonexistent.

"Nevertheless, neither the one nor the other is more, or less, a part of absolute Reality.

"The sequence of events it thus touches to life depends partly on the impacts and deflections
of its experiences as a billiard ball hits and rebounds at the angles of its incidence; and partly
upon definite, individual spiritual effort. Thus, though the Now holds past, present and future
- all things that have happened and all things that will happen - that Now does not hold them
within the compass of any one, two, three or more dimensions; and one may touch them only
as one may contact with them in the dimensions in which he functions.

"This applies to us as well as to you. The more dimensions in development one occupies, the
greater his occupancy not only of the past, but of the future, so that ultimate expansion tends
toward all experience that may be within one's power of manipulation."