Stewart Edward White, The Road I Know Copyright, 1942. INTRODUCTION THE history of this book is in itself an interesting and amusing narrative. After the publication of The Unobstructed Universe, Betty informed us that some time must elapse before she would be ready to give another "divulgence." So it occurred to me to examine onceh again the records of the work Betty did while she was still here. Twice already they had been combed for material—the extracts used in making The Betty Book and Across the Unknown. While those two books dealt to a large degree with Betty's training, the effort had been to select material from a viewpoint of universal application. Now another viewpoint might prove valuable—that of Betty's own education irrespective of any concern with others than herself. Perhaps it was largely for my own satisfaction; in any case I did again go through the roughly million and a quarter words that were the records of Betty's work while here. Passages directed at her personally, and no one else, I red- penciled. Next I cut them out and pasted them seriatim. They totaled nearly two hundred thousand words. For the first time I read them consecutively; and realized that, even with no further arrangement, I had a narrative. Furthermore, it had growth-interest, it moved, it climaxed—most gloriously, I thought. Here was obviously a book to be 7 written. Therefore, as I am a writer of books, I set blithely about it. No light job, I realized. I must tell the story as clearly and simply as possible; I must be accurate, for this sort of thing depends on its integrity; I must use, of those two hundred thousand words, only about one-fifth, lest the reader be confused as well as bored by the repetition necessary for the perfection of Betty's instruction. My first attempt was to follow chronology and to quote from the records verbatim such excerpts as would best illustrate each step of Betty's progress; with, of course, the necessary editorial connective tissue. That did not work at all. Betty's instruction was indeed from simple to complex. But definitely it was not chronological. Her orderly graduation from grade to grade was an illusion. My re-perusal of the record made clear to me that actually, in essence, she was given the whole thing at once. I can go back now and perceive that the whole plan and the whole accomplishment is laid out in the first hundred or so pages. In other words, Betty was exposed to the entire experience and instruction much as a photographic film is exposed—sharply to the dot of the opening and closing of the shutter. But, just as the image resulting is latent and must be developed out, so was Betty's comprehension and control latent, and it too must be developed out. Her training was just that. When once I had got that through my head, the reason for a number of things became clear to me. As, for instance, the Invisibles' maddening habit of abandoning one subject for another, and yet another; returning to each, apparently at random, and certainly at odd times. Now I was able to see that what my logical mind had wanted to be a building process, one brick on another, was in fact the aforesaid developing-out, the whole image becoming more and more defined only as the development proceeded. Whatever might be the illusion of a step-by-step-gradedschool; I now saw, as I struggled to work out a chronological presentation of the material, it came about because the Invisibles had successively brought to major prominence, one after the other, single details of the whole image, subduing temporarily all the rest. But never was a detail so clarified as to obviate their need for back-tracking. They were inveterate moppers-up. Realization that chronology offered no satisfactory frame for this story cleared my mind for a re-write. To do this re-write I had to use a card-index system and from it take all that had been said on any particular phase, whenever and wherever, and then piece it together into a cohering pattern. I had already found that method necessary in making The Betty Book, but as the latter dealt only with beginnings, and as this book dealt with the whole picture, I assumed it to be outmoded. So I did it in that sequence. For example, in dealing with some fundamental concept, such as Contact with the Source, I might find it made prominent from, say, about page 1200 to about 1300, but already on page 4 something had been said so apposite that it must be fitted into the later, more extended discussion And that did not work either. If I quoted a passage entire, it was too long. Worse yet, the new sequence could not be made to behave any more than had the chronological method, because it, too, skipped about. My brother Harwood did grand work in searching records, correlating them, showing their connection. I did a lot of writing. At last we produced something—not the right something. None the less we agreed to be satisfied. And then, as I was ready to pass the manuscript on to the publishers, Betty herself, through Joan, of The Unobstructed Universe, turned it down flat. It must be done over again. "You have," said Betty, reinforced by her coadjutors—I here adopt their own bold habit of putting a condensation, though an accurate one, in quotes— "collected an admirable lot of building blocks. Good building blocks. Your trouble is that you are trying to use them undressed for the job, and even yet you are influenced by the chronological order of their delivery." Now I will begin to quote the Invisibles verbatim. "You see, Betty was drilled, drilled, drilled for twenty years, over and over again in the same things, with enormous elaboration in her instruction. Of course there were many repeats, and in many places. You cannot take your readers in three hours over the whole of those twenty years. Your job is a selective job. You have the obligation to dip into any portion for clarity. You must pick out the bits that seem the sharpest illustration of Betty's systematic travel of the Road—no matter where they come. The public has to have a straight line. It just can't be expected to jump over twenty years. That helped. "Furthermore," the Invisibles pointed out, "you are not now writing a didactic book, like The Betty Book and Across the Unknown. This is a drama, and must be written as such; with three Acts. Act I: How Betty was taught to tap the Source. Act II: Her actual experience after she had learned to do so. Act III: What she did with it, and what it did to her. Only don't present the narrative as three Acts or three Parts; obliterate the joints. "Now," they further instructed, "use what you have already written as building blocks. Distribute them in three piles, as they fall under one or the other of the three Acts. Then go ahead. And slash out all but the best that applies." This was the scheme of my final rewrite. I bad this advantage: I was in weekly touch through Joan, and so could submit my results. Betty and her Invisibles did a lot of "rejiggering," as they called it; recasting, transferring, changing phraseology. So sometimes there may be found a slight variance in my quotation and the original record, or a difference in sequence. And of course it has been necessary for the sake of both clarity and case to condense as of one continuous session the material scattered over several. But Betty was right in her insistence on the dramatic form. The actual process of her development is in no sense altered by it; rather it becomes clearer, and more easily to be followed. So this book, like the others, is a collaboration. My brother Harwood and I for the spade work; Darby and Joan for criticisms and suggestions; and Betty and her Invisibles through Joan for personal supervision and approval of the final form. THE ROAD I KNOW. CHAPTER I .. BETTY . I MUST write this book for three reasons: First, to satisfy numerous readers of The Unobstructed Universe—the third of the so-called "Betty books" and dictated by her through another psychic after her death—who demand insistently to know "how Betty got that way"; second, to answer questions from the many who, in one way or another, are setting out on the path Betty followed; third, because in her own training Betty was given a pattern for living which could well be used by all of us. For one by-product of The Betty Book, and Across the Unknown, written before Betty's death, as well as The Unobstructed Universe, published just eighteen months after she died, is a widespread interest in Betty herself. This is more than a mere curiosity as to personality. The latter is well enough defined by what these books report of her words and thoughts. Rather, people want to know—to judge by their letters—how that personality came about. Flow much was her original self? How much was of her own volitional development How much was due to her training by the Invisibles? Which is Betty's name for discarnate personalities. What was that training? As applied to her, alone, or to be aspired to by others? For of course a good deal of the teachings in the three books is an account of training methods for mankind in general. In a word what hundreds of my correspondents say they want is a biography of Betty. But not a biography in ordinary definition. Rather a biography of inner life and development. What made her what her three books show her to be? After all, that is the essential aim of any biography—to evaluate the expansion of a person's life, and to examine the influences and happenings and accomplishments that brought this person to wherever he or she had landed by that pausing-time we call death. . As with most lives that grow to an ultimate fullness, material in Betty's case is embarrassingly abundant. The difficulty is not of search, but of selection and arrangement. The whole record of the work Betty did in the higher consciousness, both while she was still here and after her death, runs to two thousand four hundred single-spaced pages. From the two thousand done in her lifetime I have clipped those passages that carried individual instruction. These make over three hundred pages—all material from which to select. Besides, there are, of course, my own recollections of nearly forty years. And in addition, more than a year after her death, I came upon a filing folder containing a miscellany of papers in which from time to time she herself had set down jottings of her own attitude toward the work she was doing, and the impression she had of it. So, in order to make a start, it is necessary to adopt a point of view. It must be this: that here is an account of one person's psychic training for a specific job of what later, after her death, she was to call "divulgence" It is quite aside from the purposes—and also the possibilities—to do a portrait or a "character sketch" of Betty. She was as many sided as she was femininely elusive. When I think of attempting it, I share her own impatience with words. "It's like trying to look at the stars in the daytime," she once complained. "It's perfectly clear until I bring it into the daylight of words, and then it's gone. I don't want to be silly; but the words make one laugh: they are so long-drawn- out for the amount of idea in them. It is as impossible to put my world* into words as it is to put the ocean in a bucket." Again and again I remember her interrupting her reporting to express that despair over the impossibility of containing such things in language. Nearing the end of her long experience she wrote this, in her own person, one of the fragments I found in her files. "Seeing the thing makes it too big for words; they stumble. A condensation of words is a flat crystallized process. Reality is a rounded thing, that pulses. It overflows the mold of words. I cannot tell what my words are doing. I can only radiate myself. That is my form of expression. Take it from me as I pass: it is yours." This gives me a glimpse for my point of view. Betty did radiate herself. For example, many people, seeing her objectively, remarked on how naturally and without effort she assumed the age of her companions of the moment. She could join children or old people—or anybody between— and become for the time being actually one of them. And obviously this was by no taking thought of condescension or adjustment. She entered their world so interestedly and wholly that she blended with it. A friend had two children aged six and four. In due time the mother presented them with a baby sister; and the happy idea occurred to her that Peter and Sally could pick out the infant's godmother. They consulted. "Can we have anyone we want? Anyone at all?" they asked. "Anyone," the mother assured them, wondering which of a very large family of aunts and cousins it would be. "Then we'll take Betty White," said they. Partly because of this faculty, people flocked to Betty with their problems and troubles. She gave them tea—and radiated; and sympathized with them in her way, which was not at all a coddling way, but as bracing as a frosty morning. She seemed almost to avoid feeding them specific advice; and they went away a little puzzled over why they felt so much better about things. Not that she had no specific advice, when it was really appropriate. Nor that she lacked the moral courage to speak out in meeting when—rarely—an almost brutal bluntness would really do some good. Three days after she had died a man took me aside. "I want to tell you something," said he. "Do you remember, a number of years ago, how intolerant I was of people? About little things, I mean?" "I certainly do," I agreed. "And perhaps you noticed that all at once I quit?" "I certainly did," said I. "Everybody did." "Well, one evening, after I'd been holding forth about so-and-so's lipstick, and what's-her-name's swank and a lot of my usual guff, Betty took me off in a corner. 'See here, Jim!' said she—and I'll never forget how she looked me in the eye—'you are just about the poorest sportsman I know.' " He chuckled ruefully. "That put me back on my heels," said he. I could well imagine it, for Jim in his day had been a fine amateur athlete, and in sports had always held— and still holds—to the high code of the sportsman. "I swallowed hard and asked her what she meant," continued Jim. " 'I'll tell you,' said she. 'You like to put people into classifications, and then you get mad at them when they do the perfectly natural things that prove you were right!' "That," said Jim, "opened my eyes. Do you know," he went on somewhat hesitatingly, "there had always been a word that somehow I had never found the meaning for. I knew what the dictionary said, and how people used it, and all that, of course; but what I mean is it didn't hold a satisfying idea somehow. Didn't click—" he floundered. "I get you," said I. I use 'em in my business—words." "Yeah. And then I knew Betty, and when I saw her sitting so small and straight at the head of her table and the little proud poise of her head, and her gaiety and wit, and saw her so gracious to all sorts of people, always, everywhere— no, gracious means condescending somehow, it wasn't that—Well, I got the meaning of my word." "What was the word?" I asked. "Aristocrat," said Jim. I remember Austin Strong sitting silent at a gay dinner party, his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, watching Betty with the playwright's look of speculation and analysis, and finally giving it up with a sigh. "That damned charm! " he muttered, shaking his head. For Betty's outer person was just that. Charm—charm and gaiety. And a delightful wit, that was wit because of new angles of view, and of modes of expression so original and unexpected that the stiffest formalist must yield to it. I suppose it carried so far because it was in no way artificial, or considered, or thought over. It was Betty's normal language, the way she thought, and therefore the way she spoke. Like all wit of that kind, while unforgettable, it is equally unquotable. In report most of it becomes mere museum mountings without the breath of life. But no one was ever bored with Betty. Even though what she had to say might be dryly statistical, one found himself alert for what she would make of it. I lived with her thirty-five years, and—though there was plenty more—in all that time I was always relishingly entertained, and continually anticipating what next. However, it was not the outer expression but the inner person that made the charm memorable; made it stick, as it were. Apparently people never forgot Betty. She made an indelible impress. After her death I received several hundred letters—and I mean letters pages long, not mere "notes of condolence." An extraordinary number of them were from people who had met her just once and years before—from twelve to thirty-two years before— but who wrote as though her personality were to them as of yesterday. On my return home, after her death in Upland in 1939, my secretary told me that a very aged Negro had hobbled in to say how sorry he was. "Mis' White, she was folks," said he. Investigating, I found that this man had given the windows of our new house their first washing when the builders had cleared out, and that was all the contact he had ever had with us. The house was finished in 1919. Now I am not setting down these things as a partisan of Betty. I am her partisan of course; but my point is that so became and so remained everyone who had even casual contact with her. And, I am convinced, this has been true, not essentially because of the outer characteristics, but because of what she called "radiation." This power of radiation probably was inborn; the training of her Invisibles was directed toward its conscious unfoldment. I say it must have been inborn, for obviously there must have been something to work on, something to develop. So, though this biography is of the inner, it must be built on a foundation of outer circumstance, and we must deal briefly with the latter. Betty was a little woman. She always firmly maintained that five feet was her "official height." For thirty years I made her a standing offer of five hundred dollars —for herself or her pet charity—if measurement would prove that claim; and a further offer of one hundred dollars if she would be measured at all! These offers she always refused with dignity. Nevertheless her proportions were so harmonious, and she carried herself with so spirited a lift of the head that her tiny stature had its own unique personality. People called her "exquisite"; I suppose that was the adjective most often used to describe her. Also she seemed to have the secret of perpetual youth. Until her last illness at fifty-nine, her figure was as slender and well-formed; her hair as soft and abundant and brown—she never had a gray hair; her skin as smooth; her cheeks as shell pink as at twenty-five. This is not my own—and fatuous—opinion, but the occasion for wondering remark by so many of her friends that I have to believe it factually true. "Why!" exclaimed a visitor, seeing her in bed with her hair about her on the pillow, "she's just like a little girl!" The statement of all this would have slight importance, were it not for the possibility—worth considering—that this too may well be the "outward and visible sign" of that inner thing she called radiation—her development of which we are to deal with in this book. Continuing for the moment with the physical, Betty's small body was soft and feminine, but somewhere in it—or in the spirit that animated it— dwelt a deceptive endurance. Before my marriage I had led a rather unusually venturesome life, in all parts of the world, and this I continued afterward. And Betty went along. Horse and pack in the Sierra and Rockies; the cattle roundups of Arizona; afoot and back-packing in the trailless back country; canoe travel; fourteen months of safari in Central Africa; years of cruising along the Pacific Northwest coast. Nor was she taken along as a considered and pampered sightseer. Naturally I eased things for her when I could, but often it was not possible to ease things at all. These were no play trips. The mountain travel was before the days of made trails and guides: we carried everything we needed—even to horseshoes—on horseback, for five months at a time; we slept without cots or tents; and sometimes rode fourteen hours of a day, and then cooked and made camp. Arizona of those days had no dude ranches: Betty slept on the ground, and arose at four to a real cow-puncher breakfast of thin, greasy fried steak and soggy soda biscuits, and saw no more food until nightfall; and in the hours between rode the breakneck lava doing her full share in the cattle drive. On foot trips in the woods she carried her own appropriate back-pack. The safari of her day in Africa was no modern Cook's tour of prearrangement: we took our bearers from the savage tribes. As for Alaska—well, one day she went out on a shore excursion with Charley, who is six feet one and weighs a hard hundred and eighty pounds. Charley promised to take good care of her. On their return he flopped into a deck chair. "If ever," he cried fervently, "you get me out in the woods again with that— with that dam little chipmunk—" I remember at the White House seeing Theodore Roosevelt staring across the lunch table at her small and vivacious personality decked in the pink things and ostrich-feathered big hat of the period. "I don't believe it," he muttered to me at last. Her steady coolness and courage were probably also manifestations of an inner quality. In strenuous outdoor life there must be emergencies. She met them. If the nature of the show was one—a lion muss-up for instance—to which she could not contribute, she was behind the guns, where she belonged, and keeping quiet. When there was something she could do, she did it, calmly and efficiently. Sometimes that something took coolheadedness, sometimes real courage. Once in Africa a buffalo appeared, silently, unexpectedly, actually to crop the top of a low bush beneath which she was sitting. The instinctive feminine reaction—and the usual masculine, I suspect—would be to squawk and flutter, and so to be instantly crushed by hoof and horn. Betty slowly eased herself flat to the ground and lay immobile the eternity before I could get hold of a rifle. Of a wild and stormy day that kept me close to an ailing and uncertain engine of the little cruiser she and I conducted for some years up the British Columbia coast, a violent sea threw her against the spokes of the wheel where she stood at her post, breaking two of her ribs. I did not know this until we reached a port, three days later. "Why should I tell you?" she answered my reproach. "There was nothing to be done about it." Suffering—of others—tore her heart; but she could cut steadily and coolly into human flesh, when a backwood's accident made minor surgery necessary. I've seen her cut a deeply imbedded fishhook from a man's arm with entire coolness and dexterity, a lot calmer than the man himself— until afterward! Then she wailed. A curious and interesting angle to this is that she came to it not only without preparatory training or experience, but with what ordinarily would be called a handicap. She was raised in Newport, with subsequent backgrounds of fashionable hotels in Bermuda, Florida, Jamaica, California. From babyhood to the very noon I married her she was tagged about by a personal Negro "mammy," who dressed and undressed her, and picked up things after her. Her education was in an "exclusive" girls' school, where, she later confessed, she learned "the whole of nothing." So, for a honeymoon, I took her into the Sierra where she slept on the ground and no tent; ate camp food of my cooking; and got along by way of wardrobe—for four months—on what she could stuff into one small duffle bag. This seemed to me then a nice easy trip! I had been up in the Hudson Bay region, carrying everything I owned on my back; and here we had horses to do the carrying, and I did the cooking and hard work, and all Betty had to do was sit a horse and look at the scenery—and—oh, yes—make the bed and help pack and do the laundry and maybe wash dishes occasionally when the horses strayed! Taking a lot for granted in the beginning, only years later did I realize that I was favored with a very miracle of adaptability. For Betty had a good time always; a joyous, zestful, outflinging good time. She always had that, right through life. For her the world was, indeed, full of a number of things. She scorned the thought that it could ever be otherwise. "Old age?" she answered someone's pessimistic objection. "But why old age at all? Old age is when you stop looking at things!" Sometimes, to tease her, I would describe her as the world's greatest mongrel, and to prove it I would gabble, almost in a breath, as it were, the catalogue of her mixture. "She is half-Spanish, half-Scotch. She was born on the Isthmus of Panama, raised in Newport, and married a Westerner. Her mother was a Roman Catholic, her father a Scotch Presbyterian, she was brought up an Episcopalian, and now what is she?" And this, together with my suggestion that she was less than five feet tall, she ignored with dignity. One gift, that she had always possessed, was greatly developed, or perhaps only more clearly disclosed, by the life she led with me. That was her kinship with animals as well as with human beings. She understood them, and—more important—they understood and had confidence in her. Often I have rounded the bend of an Alaskan river to see Betty, sitting on a cut bank, talking to a raven beside her. On my appearance the bird would at once fly away—though I was, perhaps, a hundred yards distant, and Betty but two or three feet. We were having a good deal to do, at that time, with the big Alaska brown—sometimes called Kadiak—bear, and as we were taking moving pictures and not killing, the camera demanded much shorter range than the rifle. While these animals by no means deserve their reputation for ferocity, they are to be treated with respect. One day Betty, walking upstream, met one of them, somewhere between twelve and fifteen hundred pounds of live bear, walking down stream. She stopped, drew herself up to her full five feet (?), and pointed a commanding finger. "Now you are a nice bear," said she, "but you go away! Go away!" she repeated more sharply. The bear stopped, looked at her to see if she meant it, dropped his cars exactly as a well-mannered dog obeys, and turned off at right angles into the brush. After a few such experiences—not only with bear, but with deer and other wild creatures—I began to pass up the movie when occasionally she would say: "I wouldn't fool with that one, he's cross." Quite often, when we had anchored near shore, a yellow jacket would visit the cabin. Betty would hold her hands about a foot apart and extended toward the insect, and—believe it or not—that creature would go out of the hatch and away like a bullet. "I just convey to him that this is not a nice place for a yellow jacket to be," she answered our queries. But she confessed she could do nothing with flies. "They are too scatter-minded," she explained. When we married I owned a horse named Bullet. Bullet was a wonderful mountain horse, but he demanded respect. Even I, whom he knew well, had to get aboard with neatness and dispatch. Bullet tolerated no sloppiness. If I fumbled or dawdled, or caught against the cantle, or anything like that, down went his head in protest and up arched his back. But he was not treacherous. Once I was properly in the saddle, I could do anything the lawful occasions of rough mountain travel demanded, even to picking things off the ground or dismounting mounting on the wrong side, or waving slickers to head pack animals, or shooting a gun—anything; anything at all. That was for me. But he was not so tolerant of others. Indeed, I did not permit others to ride him after a friend of mine—a fine rider—found himself on one side of a high sharp picket fence and Bullet on the other, when the dust had cleared. That is, I permitted no others but Betty. She could not reach both the pommel and the stirrup from the ground, so she wound the saddle strings around her hand and literally shinned up Bullet's foreleg, and Bullet turned his head to watch benignly, standing like a rock until she was well settled in the saddle, his ears on the half-slant of virtue. My picket-fence friend was horrified when he first saw this performance. "It's criminal!" he expostulated vehemently. "Some day he'll kill her." But I knew better, and so did Betty. And so did Bullet. Anecdote of this sort I could recall by the score. But one other picture seems to insist. One day the Austin Strongs, Betty and I were wandering through San Francisco's open-air zoo. Betty was some distance ahead of us. We saw her stop for a long time before a cage in which dozed a great lion, boredly oblivious to the throngs of people passing or trying vainly to attract his attention. After a time Betty walked away. That lion opened his eyes, got to his feet, followed to the end of the cage, lifted his head staring after the tiny figure just as far as he could see her in the crowd. Then he sighed, lay down again, and closed his eyes. We pursued Betty. "What were you doing to that lion? " we demanded. "I made him pictures," said she simply, "pictures of the African veldt." I shall get no further piling up such incidents. After all it is not really a portrait that is intended, but only to show a training in spirituality. Granted that spirituality is, as Betty expresses it, such a "skiddy" word, its avowed practitioner is ordinarily looked upon as someone apart from hearty living. I have sought to suggest that Betty was in no sense apart— apart from anything She had a healthy and holy horror of anything resembling asceticism. She used and enjoyed to the full all of human life. "Asceticism means you are afraid of something," she pointed out. She had an equal horror of any taint of superiority, of the "teacher" attitude. Zest; joyousness; the glow of radiation; a genuine love "for all things great and small." Simple elements of personality, but rarely to be met unalloyed. People felt the rarity, without recognizing it. One day, months after Betty's death, I was driving home from the city, with a friend—a business man. "Wasn't it wonderful," he said out of a prolonged silence, "that they loaned us Betty for a little while." CHAPTER II EVERYBODY IS PSYCHIC THERE may have been, in the world's history, others who have been as rigorously and systematically trained as was Betty for her especial job of divulgence. If so the details of their training, if recorded, have not come to my attention. The capacity for mediumship is beyond question a natural gift. But, like any other natural gift, it is of itself imperfect, unreliable in detail. Above all, without intelligent cultivation, it does not progress. Used prematurely or excessively it often appears to deteriorate, perhaps finally to atrophy to nothing. There is close analogy to a natural singing voice that is used too soon or too much. No reasonable teacher allows that. He wants reliability, stability, and progress. Now Betty had this natural gift of mediumship to a high degree. But until 1919 nobody—not even she or I—recognized it technically. Her friends knew her as one with exquisitely delicate human sympathies and relationships, extraordinarily sensitive and responsive to the deeper beauties of life, and possessed of almost uncanny intuitions. Then occurred the small "chance" experience which presently she herself will describe. She found herself unexpectedly in what is called "psychic" touch with an unseen world. This is, of course, no very unusual occurrence. Indeed, since I came out openly on the whole subject, I've had so many people write me and recount their own experiences, that I am almost tempted to say it is a rather common occurrence! But most such persons run a standardized course. As it ordinarily goes, the psychic gets in touch, by one technique or another, with what seems indubitably to be discarnate intelligences. These latter give "communications." Sometimes these communications are convincing enough to withstand skilled and dispassionate appraisal of genuineness; though even then, more often than not, they show a strong dash of "coloring" from the medium's subconscious. Both the new-fledged medium and the sitters are enormously impressed. They feel that to them is being confided a message of sacred trust. The world must be told of it! Indeed, not infrequently they feel they have been especially instructed to go forth and proclaim. The psychic has said—and the statement has been accepted at face value—"you are chosen" to give forth a revelation. Naturally this sense of almost sacred obligation results in a book or pamphlet, generally privately printed, distributed in all good faith, and with all confidence that it is going to arouse said world. Its failure to do so is a most disheartening and disillusioning puzzle. It should not be. There are really only two things wrong in the experience, though nine-tenths—perhaps even a larger percentage—of the effort is true and constructive. One of the two things is the assumption that the "message" is intended for the world. That is natural enough. Indeed, haven't they been so told? It is flattering to be especially "chosen," and what reason, as yet, is there to doubt? But I am sorry to say that long and varied experience has made me leery of just that statement. It occurs too often. I am convinced it indicates either that the whole occurrence is phony, or that the medium's subconscious is at work. Not that the medium is really at fault, or exhibiting undue egotism. The material given is indeed important, if only a recasting of proverbial wisdom; and that importance exaggerates itself in the medium's subconscious. The "message" is real, but it is not addressed to the world; it is addressed to just those few people of that small group, fitting their need for the couching of old truths in language appropriate to their understanding; and is meant only for their own development and unfoldment. They are getting personal attention. It fits them. Also many others in the world are getting personal attention. Very rarely, and only in emergency of world need, is the divulgence intentionally conveyed in such form as to merit widespread acceptance. That is why such books as Margaret Cameron's The Seven Purposes, Lodge's Raymond, in spite of all its obvious "coloring," and the anonymous Our Unseen Guest commanded a public. An emergency existed. In Betty's case there seemed to be no such urgency. Quite the contrary, indeed. Nor were we told that we were especially selected, except for our own sakes. And it was nearly eighteen years before we were allowed to think the job was in any way public. The Betty Book did not come out until 1937, and that, I think, was conceded rather to satisfy our own uneasiness over the enormous accumulation of record, than because of any desire on the part of the Invisibles. Before that they had appeased our instinct for order by helping us put together an arrangement of the teaching comprised in the first four hundred pages of records, covering the first year and a half. This was duplicated in fifteen or twenty mimeographed copies, and had a wide lending circulation among personal friends and acquaintances. It was the basis on which—in 1935 some fifteen years later—we began to build The Betty Book. By that time the records had grown to 1993 pages. Nevertheless, we were held, in The Betty Book, to the material of that first year and a half—approximately those first 400 pages. Only a primer was called for, said the Invisibles, hinting—but vaguely—that the more advanced work would be collated and dealt with later. The "primer" was not actually published until 1937. Encouraged by its reception, my brother and I plunged into selecting from the now bewilderingly abundant material, and emerged with the compilation we called Across the Unknown. This dealt with Betty's later experiences. It by no means exhausted the records, but we had more or less caught up to Betty, so to speak, and now we could go on with her in whatever were to be her further explorations. That looked like the job; and a good job it was. Therefore when Betty fell so desperately ill, in 1938, we had every confidence in her recovery. She had been rigorously and carefully trained for twenty years, and seemed to us just to have arrived at the point of her real effectiveness as a tool: surely that tool must be put to use! It did not make sense otherwise. Nevertheless when she did die, we bad no feeling of frustration. The very circumstance of her death appeared to point the climax of truth to the whole episode of tier long training. I wrote of that in the final chapter to Across the Unknown. I have quoted from it once before in The Unobstructed Universe. Nevertheless, here, for the third time, it appears in print as necessary background to the whole picture. "You know," I wrote of my experience immediately following her death*, "the cozy, intimate feeling of companionship you get sometimes when you are in the same room; perhaps each reading a book; not speaking, not even looking at one another. It is tenuous, an evanescent thing—one that we too often fail to savor and appreciate. Sometimes, in fact, it takes an evening or two of empty solitude to make us realize how substantial and important it really is. "Well, within a very few minutes that companionship flooded through my whole being from Betty, but in an intensity and purity of which I had previously had no conception. It was the same thing, but a hundred, a thousand times stronger. And I realized that it more than compensated for the little fact that she had stepped across, because it was the thing that all our physical activities together had striven for, but—compared with this— had gained only dimly and in part. Why not? Actually it was doing perfectly what all these other things had only groped for. So what use the other things? and why should I miss them? "Does this sound fantastic? Maybe; but it is as real and solid as the chair I am sitting on. So much so that I have never in my life been so filled with pure happiness. No despair; no devastation; just a deeper happiness than I have experienced with her ever before, save in the brief moments when everything harmonized in fulfillment. "This, I now believe, is the 'great blossom' of which the Invisibles spoke: the final significance to which all of Betty's twenty years of work was to lead. Here is her concrete proof of one reward that can come to those who follow in her footsteps, her final evidence that her instrument of twenty years' forging is strong enough to withstand the supreme test. So we imagined the job finished—except perhaps in the further use of material from the records. Then occurred my visit to renew friendship with Darby and Joan, of Our Unseen Guest, and through Joan came Betty's "divulgence" of that amazing book, The Unobstructed Universe. Soon it was blazingly clear that without Betty's twenty years of training here in our obstructed universe such a "divulgence" would have been totally impossible from her present unobstructed phase of living there: that it would be equally impossible for her to have given it from here; that—obscurely to us at first, but evident to us now—all—along she and Joan had been developing apart as a team now to work together. That the job had just begun! As an end of effort the previous two books fell into relative unimportance. They had been only indirectly part of the intention. "They were parts of my training that happened to get published," said Betty, while giving The Unobstructed Universe. She did not deny the value so many people found in them: they were—and are—worth while. "But," said she, "they should really be read after this one." Curiously, as it seemed to us at the time, she had never taken much part nor great interest in the writing of the first two books, either on her own, or when she was working in her "other consciousness" with the Invisibles. "These books," she told us—from that other consciousness—"are not intended to reach many people—yet." But of the third book, from the very start, she, now a permanent dweller in the other consciousness, confidently predicted, "this is going to make a stir"; "this is going to be taken up by the scientists." We flatly disbelieved her. Fully as we recognized the novelty and value of the book's contents, we considered it limited in appeal to the small and very specialized public already interested in such things. We were wrong. It sold twelve printings in its first three and a half months; it elicited literally hundreds of letters; it has been preached on from many pulpits. And, as for the scientists, I have dozens of letters, from all varieties of them, some of each sort professing to find in the book revolutionary principles that open to them new fields in their own specialties. In view of this, and in view of the fact that Betty promises us further "divulgence" in due time, an account of her twenty years of rigorous preparation, seems now to be strongly indicated. CHAPTER III BETTY'S OWN NARRATIVE A FEW months ago, and quite by chance, I came across a number of folders in which Betty had filed a mass of papers and notes. Among them were sheets on which she had written down—apparently at irregular intervals—her own personal impressions concerning all this long arduous discipline and unfoldment. They are fragmentary and undated. I think perhaps they were notes for a personal narrative which was never undertaken. They do, however, give an invaluable background for the account of her training drawn from the actual records. The following—as far as it goes—is what Betty herself, in her own normal person, wrote of her thoughts and impressions concerning her experience. It is as she wrote it, except that I have here and there inserted a word obviously intended, or rearranged certain material out of logical order. But in no case have such slight alterations changed the sense. . "Most of us," her notes began, "come into contact, sooner or later, with some one who has had experiences of a startling nature, something that points to the existence of powers beyond those we ordinarily possess. If such an experience happens to us personally, it is all the more arresting because we are forced to believe in it and try to explain it. Few things that can happen to us in the course of life are as thrilling— in the true sense of the word—as staggering, as these glimpses of an extension of our powers. Something long buried in us seems to come to the surface temporarily and convince us that the thing experienced is quite possible and true. I say temporarily, because at first it has tremendous tides. The high tide of our first enthusiasm has an ebb that drains away everything, leaving us far away from the original flooding inspiration. Then everything goes cold, flat and hopelessly inaccessible, if not actually repellent. "It seems that the development of these higher powers within us runs a definite course, with symptoms almost as recognizable as measles. Exaltation and security; then flat-tired incapacities of all kinds, and doubt. After suffering long from each symptom, as if it were fatal, I have tried to sum up the whole experience from the vantage point of ten years of constant struggle. "Why the struggle? I do not know. Certainly neither sorrow nor lack of life's experiences turned me to it. It must be born in people. Perhaps it was a gift from a long line of Scotch ancestors, all of whom seem to have had to struggle thus. At any rate, it has all happened along with an exceptionally busy adventure some life, and a happily married one. "To tidy up the subject in my own mind I have hunted up some notes written in the very beginning of my psychic experiences. "One night during dinner we and a friend discussed a psychic book I had been reading. The friend then told of her success in Russia at moving tables and we were inspired to try it ourselves, solemnly swearing 'on honor' to be honest in the experiment. After dinner the lamps were put out and by the firelight, kneeling around a small table, with tips of fingers touching the top and our little fingers joined, we three sat quietly waiting. After a brief wait we were thrilled by a strange feeling of vitality in the table and movement began. Until midnight we experimented, too spellbound with our own astonishing success to carry out our original engagement to go to the 'movies.' "The table tipped once for yes and twice for no, and moved around the room in designated directions. Next we tried pencil and paper and bad a little success. Hearts were repeatedly drawn, 'love' and 'Helen' written, and a few uncertain attempts at words. These were done with a pencil held in one person's hand, with another person's hand placed lightly upon it, the elbows off the table. "On a subsequent evening some friends came to call, bringing with them a Ouija board. With the usual protective veneer of suppressed hilarity, we proceeded to experiment with this. We tried the board with different combinations of people, receiving a jumble of sense and nonsense, vague advice on business, unremembered anecdotes of childhood playmates. Some of the names spelled out were familiar and others strange. The impression left was one of confusion, but also a certain bewildering credence. The first thing that really moved me was a message from my old colored nurse, an adored foster mother, who was with me from my birth to my marriage. Then came my mother, who had died in my babyhood, and called me daughter, a name strangely novel and beautiful to me as I had never known my parents. She urged me to try writing with a pencil. "This in private I tried to do, with growing success each day. At first the letters all ran along together and had to be separated into words. I kept my eyes closed in order to free my mind of all outside distractions, but this was not so necessary later except when my attention wandered or became concentrated on the words being written. The messages were very simple ones urging me to continue, but they brought me a strange and beautiful elation. My mother confirmed my lifelong impression that my family (nearly all of whom had died in my childhood) had been watching over me and trying to influence me for years. I was pathetically almost frantically implored to have patience, faith and persistence in spite of failure or interruptions from opposing forces. Great insistence was made upon practice, constant practice, and keeping my mind a blank. "'This is only a weak beginning. You will develop rapidly if you will only follow our influence. Will you make a little shrine of yourself for us to work through? There are many of us trying to get at our loved ones. After a while you will be able to talk and act with us. We want you to begin to practice giving yourself up to us so that we can talk through you. It will take some time for you cannot know our laws. Sit quietly a while, think of cosmic things, we will help.' "In the meantime a telegram had come with the sad news that Lizzie, a much loved and devoted friend and retainer of the family, had had a stroke of apoplexy and was unconscious. I asked the Ouija board* if she would recover. "'Do not worry, she will not suffer long, she will come to us in ten days,' the board answered. "I said, 'Are you sure?' "'About,' was the answer. In twelve days she was dead. —— — * But by this time Betty had, I thought, abandoned the Ouija board for automatic writing. This may be a slip on her part, or she may indeed have recurred for this purpose to the earlier method. "At about this time, also, came a sudden written message from Stewart's father, asking him to give financial aid to a friend of ours who needed capital to give him a business opportunity. "'Write a letter at once, now,' the message urged, 'it is a question of time.' "We were at that moment in a friend's camp at some distance from a post office, with no known communication that day, but no sooner was the letter written than a man arrived who was delivering something and returning at once, and to him we entrusted the letter. Later it proved that time was an important element in receiving the information regarding the loan. "These circumstances, or coincidences, if you prefer, had at least the effect of arousing our interest. We determined to investigate slowly and carefully and honestly each step, not letting ourselves be carried away by any desire of our own to believe or disbelieve. "Mediumship was now being urged upon me in the messages. My first and second efforts at this caused a strange sensation of being lifted out of myself and almost slipping over the edge, as when just losing consciousness under ether. Before letting me go, however, Stewart demanded assurance that I was really in the hands of my friends and for this purpose asked for a test. His father was asked to give the name of an old lumberman employed years ago, a name unknown to me. A curious jumble of names of old 'lumber jacks' came, all unknown to me, some of them known to Stewart, but the desired name did not come and the test failed. "The next day this was written. 'It will be impossible for us to answer the tests for the present, because your father is not yet in our sphere and cannot communicate directly; as soon as that is made possible we will be able to convince you. At present it would only confuse you and not add to your faith. It is disappointing to us to have the delay, but we understand and do not blame you. It will be invaluable to have Stewart for us, so we must wait. We will let you know when we are ready for the tests. In the meantime we will write you regularly and try to prepare your mind for what we want you to do. We will not make you nervous. We promise that, and that no evil will come to you, for there are too many of us working over you. That is the great strength and hope of your particular case. It is all for your happiness. Dear child, fear not; tell Stewart to give you up to our care every day for a little while. From earliest times in the history of the race a few have experienced what you are now doing. It is now daily becoming more common, and we hope soon to be acknowledged before the world. "'Give your mind to thoughts of our love for you and yours for us. It is the stepping stone which brings us safely across. We cannot succeed without that. Love is a powerful medium of communication. So much depends on you, we can only succeed if you do your part.'"* "During this time and subsequently," Betty's notes go on, "my mind was exalted with my secret. I was supremely happy. There followed, however, a sinking, haunting period of lack of faith in myself. All I had ever learned of the subconscious mind tormented me with questionings. Could I be hypnotizing myself with this thing? The beautiful nearness and protection, which had been a lifelong companionship, cherished in the very fiber of me†, suddenly fell away, leaving me lonesome as a deserted soul. This temporary loss and struggle, in milder form, took place again and again after receiving various false predictions. "Several books of similar experiences read about this time, and a wholesome and too lively sense of humor which occasionally brought on a childish and rather hysterically amused attitude towards the whole affair undoubtedly saved me at this period. "My first experience of this kind of false prediction was astounding. I had asked a very foolish question, 'Will I have a long life?' The answer was, 'You will die ——— * All this—the table tipping, Ouija board, the visit to the friend's camp, the death of Lizzie—I recall as having happened in 1919.— S.E.W. † Betty had always, though vaguely, felt herself under the care of the unseen. S.E.W. of cancer of the stomach in ten months.' Feeling a great personal interest in this statement and that something really should be done about it, I rallied a little efficiency and asked if I should go and have an X ray taken. The answer was rather blighting to a happy psychic, 'No, it will do no good.' "I was not particularly depressed by this, strange as it may seem. My principal impression was that it was really sad for Stewart and that I must certainly hurry and finish up a lot of things at loose ends. It was honestly rather an exciting stimulating thought and if I could only persist in it efficiency would be tremendously increased. At once, however, a less hurried hand wrote, 'You will live many happy years.' "This was my first experience with what I later learned to call the 'Blind Forces.' I had been repeatedly warned to maintain my faith in spite of interruptions from opposing forces, so I was not altogether unprepared. A number of almost childish pranks followed at intervals. Curiously enough, in some there seemed to be an element of truth, perverted in transmission. For instance, while sitting at a table in a hotel dining room my hand had a feverishly insistent desire to write. I took a menu, and on the back, with a haste which cramped my hand, received this message, 'Your Aunt Nina is in danger. She is in an automobile wreck. It is on the grade east of Hollywood (this after a slight hesitation). Bertha will be injured. You will be called on the telephone to go to them. Do not leave the hotel this afternoon. We did not foresee it.' "Shortly afterwards my Aunt and Bertha rang up and talked to me on the telephone, as hale and hearty as ever. On returning home, however, I found that at the time my butler and his wife had been in an automobile wreck which proved very serious for her, poor girl, as her face was badly scarred for life. "A rather amusing prediction received in the same hurried manner while on a street car and written on a paper torn from a package, announced that there would be a change in my fortunes; that I was to be left a large sum of money by someone the spirits had advised to leave it to me for their work. Rather a moral lecture followed, telling me to decide what was the most far-reaching benefit I could confer with it, and to act while I was in my prime; and giving me clearly to understand that I was not to use the money for myself in any way; that they would keep a suspicious eye on me. It continued, 'You do not believe, you are not as excited about this as we are. We should like to talk to you more about this wonderful gift, but you seem apathetic,' as indeed I was, for I knew that it was not true. At the end, 'This is not true, Mother,' was written. "I felt quite resentful and indignant over these things, even though I had been more or less prepared to expect them, or some form of 'interference.' Gradually, however, my faith grew until, even in the midst of my indignation over what seemed a very flagrant case of attempt to deceive me, I still never doubted that an explanation would be given, and my desire to continue was as strong as ever. Only the surface of me demanded that I assume an injured frame of mind, as of a virtuous person badly treated. Always, too, I guard ed myself against too easy credulity. The etiquette of my world required certain apologies, but the supreme court within me was rather lenient about the whole disgraceful affair. There was no need in being huffy about it for no satisfactory apologies were given, outside of vague remarks about these scapegoat forces every failure is hung on. As for example thus—'the forces which intruded on you yesterday will not be allowed to make an attack upon you again.' I preserved a dignified and judicial silence as there seemed nothing else to do. This promise of better protection was faithfully kept, for on two evenings soon after this, when the writing faltered or became tense, the pencil was forcibly knocked out of my hand. The false messages had always been delivered with feverish haste and great force in contrast to the calm and deliberation of other communications, especially those from my father. This 'cutting-in' baste had the virtue of making me able to recognize instantly and discount anything thus received. The imitation high moral tone adopted in the announcement of my coming fortune was particularly absurd. After the first irritation had passed, it seemed rather humorous to me and I felt as if dealing with children who had dressed up 'to play lady and go calling.' . I want to break in on Betty's manuscript at this point to emphasize the strength of the opposing currents against which she persisted. As she says, the communications themselves were sprinkled with inconsistencies and crude falsifications for which, as yet, no sufficing explanations—or apologies were offered. And she had not, of course, yet learned to edit such things out. I should not have been much surprised if she had chucked the whole thing. It took some resolution to set aside, from an exceptionally busy and colorful life, so much time for anything so unreliable and doubtful. For her life was indeed busy and colorful. California in winter attracts a great variety and number of people from all over the world. Our friends derisively nicknamed our house "The White Hotel" because of the almost continuous occupation of our guest rooms. We gave dinners—many of them and because we invited people in order to know them, we never set table for more than ten. Betty served tea every afternoon, soon attracting her own little circle of the faithful who came as often as they could without shame. And beside the regulars she used that hour to entertain such visitors as she could not quite work in on the "hotel" or a dinner. The flow through our house was almost continuous. We had about everything—writers, soldiers, statesmen, ranchmen, cowboys, fishermen, artists, stage people, a Japanese ambassador, a Persian mystic, a Celanese prince. No end to them. A brilliant company on the whole; a congenial company too, made so by Betty's uncanny ability to lift people to their own tops. The graceful and gracious conduct of this constantly shifting social menagerie would seem a full-time job, but it was actually only one side issue of Betty's many lively interests. She had three acres of garden which she managed with the labor of one man—and it was her garden, not a gardener's garden— minutely diagrammed by her, down to the planting of the last pansy, on huge sheets of wrapping paper. With a truly professional eye she took into account color, height, background, arrangement, the seasons. And the results she achieved brought her literally dozens of blue ribbons in competition with the big estates employing as many as ten gardeners. In this garden also she collected and acclimated rare foreign plants and shrubs—concerning which even yet I am called upon to write very ignorant replies to enquiring scientists. It was this collection which gained her, in the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the unsought listing as Agricultural Explorer. In addition she was very active in our local Gar den Club, injecting into its numerous affairs certain quaint and Bettyish conceits of her own. For example, she established (for the Annual Flower Shows) an especial award which was known as the Smell Trophy to be given for that arrangement judged to produce the most pleasing blend of perfume! And another—in cash—to the sculptor submitting the design for a bird fountain, faucet head, or what-not which was at once the most artistic and could be the most cheaply reproduced. All this likewise would seem to be a full-time job. But she had just as much interest and zest to put into all sorts of other outlets for her insatiable energy. She wove textiles of her own designs; she had a potter's wheel and did some really charming original pottery; she modeled in clay. She was deeply interested in Oriental Art of which she made a serious study. She wrote—for her own satisfaction, since she showed it to nobody— the gayest light verse. I found dozens of such poems, good ones, among her papers. She even had a flair for catching essentials with spirited, quick pencil sketches, a talent I had not suspected until one day in Alaska after we had been married some twenty years. Something comical in a bear's movements amused her and she recorded the beast's attitude with a few quick strokes. And all these various aptitudes she used merely for her own amusement. It seemed never to occur to her to show them to anyone; and she was always surprised when I insisted on bringing them out. It was as though they were simply the varied expression of one essential thing within her, so that it did not particularly matter what medium she happened to use. She never took any of them ponderously, nor did she pursue any of them too single-mindedly. But they were part of the "busyness" Of life to which she refers. And lastly, just for full measure, she did a great deal in social service and charity work—tubercular children, the unemployed before the days of Government relief, and the like. This for seven or eight months of the year. Summers we cruised, up the Pacific Northwest Coast. As we did our own navigation, and had a vivid side interest in everything from digging clams to chasing after whales, these months also had a considerable "busyness". So when I say that throughout all these twenty years,—from 1919 to 1939,—Betty never failed to find at least one hour every day for this mysterious work to which she was summoned, the strength of its compulsion can be understood. . "Remembering the daily anxious messages I had received begging me to go on in the face of discouragement," Betty's own manuscript continues, "I went on with my experiment. There was a lack of my former enthusiasm, however, and this evidently reacted on the communications, which were labored and had not the interest of previous ones. I took up my pencil listlessly, always on guard to repel marauders. In my waning faith I demanded some material proof. "'Convince me that you are here,' I said. 'Move my arms or legs. Make me feel your presence.' "A sensation ensued of strong currents running through me, but I could not be sure that it was not mental suggestion. Stewart's arms were twisted and jerked around as if he were going through calisthenics and his hands were involuntarily clenched.* Immediately I received the following in writing: "'You will not have any success with such manifestations. We do not especially recommend trying them, we are not after that kind of mediumship; we want to protect you more or less against just such things and keep our own private wire under proper control and insulation. It may be a comfort and pleasure to feel that way—that we answer and are near—but how can you be sure who it is answering you? It is the cheapest, easiest form of communication. We are building up a different variety for you and your uses. It is a far more delicate mechanism and so more difficult to manipulate. It will, however, be much more reliable.' ——— * Up to this time Betty had, in general, worked alone, with automatic writing. However, I was now "sitting in", as a spectator. The sensation of what she described was similar to the muscle-jerk induced by an electric current. "We asked the question, 'Who is jerking Stewart's muscles?' "'An experimental pest,' was the answer. Not until sometime later did any involuntary movement of muscles come to me and then it was unsolicited. A rare occurrence. "Until the beginning of my, second period, nearly a month later, this anaemic uncertain frame of mind possessed me. It may have been due to lack of physical vitality, for I was very tired. "That I did not abandon the experiment altogether as a dangerous, useless pursuit—as so many do at this period—was partly due to an obstinate disposition and partly to Stewart's interest and encouragement— combined, of course, with that of my spirit family. Gradually the fog was lifted. By rereading the communications, piecing together bits of advice sent me in regard to control of my own mind and spirit, and by the slow subtle impressions that came to me, I worked out a crude sort of formula for myself. All of a sudden it was successful, and the pall was thrown off me." . All I have quoted in the foregoing was written as one piece. Betty's own phrase—"this is written after ten years of constant struggle"—dates it as done in 1929. The internal evidence of the context indicates that she was dealing with only the beginnings, for she had graduated from automatic writing by the first months of 1920. Her training in the technique of receiving and passing on what she was taught and what she experienced, was merely a necessary adjunct to her real job of growth and development. I shall sketch the latter process in due time; but first let us follow out all Betty herself had to say, in her own person. CHAPTER IV BETTY'S OWN NARRATIVE (Continued) IN THE same file that contained the material embodied in the last chapter I found another manuscript, dealing with the same subject—Betty's beginnings in this job of unfoldment, and how and why she undertook it. The one already quoted was written in 1929. This one must have been done earlier—in 1922. Nevertheless I think they must be read in this reverse order. The emphasis of the 1929 document is on externals, so to speak, while the earlier one deals more with the inner impulses. 2. "For a longtime," this manuscript begins, "there had been an uneasy sense within me of having strayed from the path I desired. I did not try to think it out, I just drifted along. "During my long wanderings under wide skies, in silent places, the accumulated dust of civilized matter-of-fact life was wiped off. The fresh new surface was more sensitive to reflections from the big simple forces around me, and gradually my old outlook was replaced by a wider vision. It happened quite simply and naturally, without any attitudinizing. I began to grow up. "Whenever we returned from the isolation of our wilderness travel, I took up worldly affairs with enthusiasm, but each time certain things grew a little less satisfactory and other things vaguely distasteful. Then came the war to teach us reality. "After it was over we looked again at our individual lives. I knew the secret of my vague discontent. I had rediscovered the immense possibilities—outside of selfness—in what we vaguely call the spirit. I felt my feet on the road for which I had searched all my life. The vast accumulated experience of the world had, oddly enough, been admitted only to the surface of my mind, and had left little impress on my heart. Like a child who, with wonder and fascination, discovers that water is wet and that fire will bum, I began my investigations; of the world where lives faith, vitality and the wisdom of the heart—all the big things we live by but cannot analyze in laboratories. "The first idea that came to me was disconcerting. If I were to die tomorrow, the body I fuss over would leave me, would leave me standing 'as is'? Standing in what? "The awkwardness and unpreparedness of this inevitable situation struck at my imagination. It was too stupid to slouch along in such an improvident unthinking fashion devoid of any purpose, of any inner core which I could retain beyond the moment of this life' "This rather hazy determination to do something about it was strengthened by the stimulation received through automatic writing, which began in the early spring following the armistice. Now for nearly three years I have struggled for comprehension, passing from automatic writing to a curious state of freed or double consciousness in which I absorb experiences directly somehow, and Stewart records them in words spoken through me, or by me as first hand impressions. "There has been no sudden reformation of my character, accompanied by a firm grip on destiny! During all this time of intensely interesting and puzzling manifestation I had many days of doubt and distraction. I felt like a child walking on stilts—above my usual self, but awkwardly maintaining balance. Only recently has the natural spontaneous happiness of it come to me, and with it a wonderful feeling of firmness inside, somewhere apart from my usual surface consciousness. "Now let me retrace my steps in this quickening process. "As I stated, I decided it was high time, and highly desirable and entertaining, to take control of myself. The idea was simple enough, but difficult to carry on. The slothfulness of the human creature is beyond comprehension when we compare it with his latent possibilities. Week after week came the same pleadings in "'Make up your mind to give up a short time every day to us.' "'Set aside an hour, the same hour, every day.' "'You will need months of practice.' "'It all depends on you and your cooperation.' "'Have you anything more important to do? Ask yourself that question when interruptions threaten and you are tempted to set this hour aside.' "'You will not be able to jump right into success. Do not expect it. It takes much assembling of forces and much elimination by careful experiment.' "'Remember, we can do nothing without your will to reach us.' "'Give us time every day; it is more important than anything else you can do.' "So far nothing startling, but it sounded reasonable; an intelligent beginning. I have found that the only way to learn to shoot a gun, or swim, or acquire any new ability, is by the simple method of shooting or swimming, and keeping on doing it. I was interested enough, and curious enough, to try to follow directions, and decided on at least a half hour every single day, without exception.* "Being rather humorously inclined, after making * As a matter of fact, the time she thus dedicated averaged much longer. this determination I settled myself and asked politely what I was supposed to do next. My first instructions were in the direction of ordering my mental equipment. "'Can you manage to be more in the mood and give more time to preparation? It is the only way. You did not have any success before today because your mind was absolutely separated from us by worldly affairs. We are helpless in that case.' "'You must think of us as natural everyday friends who are with you just as others come into your world.' "'Do not strain, nor think of us as supernatural. It is only that your earthly vision is as limited as that of a new-born baby.' "'Be content to let us lead you like a little child, step by step.' "'Drop every worldly, selfish thought. We cannot give you a formula for experiment. It is a case of condition of mind and soul.' "'You must abandon yourself to our method, not confine us to yours. Let it come to you by degrees, naturally, as a plant grows.' "These instructions, and some on relaxing, came sometimes very haltingly, sometimes fluently, as fast as my pencil could travel. Always, from the very first, accompanying each instruction, was a sentence or two urging me to do my part. "It took some time to get into the front of my mind, into my everyday consciousness, just what my part was. It came to me at last as a surprise. It was strengthened will power; though that does not quite express it. Firm substance; resolution, is more nearly it. My part was the holding of myself in control. This was insisted on until I could have no doubt of what was wanted of me. "I knew how good it felt to have a manageable body.* So why stop there? Why not try, as they urged, to get control of the mental and spiritual muscles? Here was training for an exciting new game. I was interested. There was no use in just sitting and listening. I would do my part, and see what happened next. "My first effort was disconcerting and slippery, a skiddy performance. What I called my mind refused to stay on the road. Before taking up the pencil I tried, as suggested, to 'prepare my mind.' Every annoyance I had ever experienced, long forgotten, returned to memory to buzz around like diabolical mosquitoes. With persistent effort I banished that annoyance, but its place was taken immediately by an insistent swarm of trivialities of different character. All my pet hobbies and pastimes took possession! It was enough to make one believe in personal devils! "An obstinate Scotch-headedness determined me to —— — * She was a competent sportswoman and no mean acrobat in an amateur way. She could stand on her head, for instance, as easily as a dog sits up. S.E.W. do battle for possession of my own mind. Something interesting was being said to me, but my shockingly bad mental manners—squirming, teasing and interrupting—kept me from hearing it. At least I should make myself listen. Then I could calmly decide on the merit of what was being said. All this traffic of mind must be dodged. The logical course was to make a safety zone in the traffic. I drew an imaginary circle around myself, and stood triumphantly ungettable. "The pencil began to write fluently: 'When worries and world annoyances come, you can rise strongly and determinedly, spend a few moments in calm, and at once descend, reinforced to the object in hand. Brush away the stinging fly before he sucks your life blood and leaves poison in its place. This alone takes much conscious manipulation to accomplish. You see I am not giving you noble, difficult tasks to perform. I am only setting a few simple exercises as a point of contact in the beginning. Master these and you will have the vision and strength to see that you are mastering yourself and your destiny.' "'We want to urge you, and keep on urging you, to remember every hour the powers you possess, the forces you have within you to draw upon. Use them in every little thing you do. The degree of success you have depends on the amount of energy put into it.' "'It is obvious that each should be big, but of his own volition stays small.' "I shall not quote much further. Day after day I was exhorted to strive for 'habitual consciousness' of unified life. The overwhelming passion of the pleading kindled the commonplace words as I wrote them. Could my own lazy, comfortable subliminal (whatever that may be) stir itself to meet such a frenzy of solicitation for my salvation? As I had lived with it many years and knew only its inertness, the evidence all pointed to an outside force trying to act on my rather reluctant personality. "The idea of communication was not new to me. In my early childhood I remembered that Grandma Marin and Uncle Calvert had been the butt of the family for professing belief in it. What if all these years they had been trying to reach me and tell me that it is true. This ceased suddenly to be merely an interesting game, and became a matter for serious investigation. I determined to throw more vitality into it; to keep my head steady, but to follow with my heart the possibility that they, my family, were trying to lead me. Whatever it was, I must find out. "So I continued my daily hour of quiet. With astonishing results. There was never any indication of their taking possession of me in the ordinary sense of overcoming a weak will by a stronger. On the contrary all my experience proves that no spiritual growth is possible without strong control of one's own earth mind; without resolution accompanied by voluntary self effort and sympathetic enthusiasm. The depth of wisdom and the exceptional technique in developing comprehension of the spiritual life, rather than the evidential material given, forced us to accept the fact that an outside being was directing a systematic course of instruction. "The old absorption in personal intercourse with friends soon gave way to a bigger scheme. It had to, perforce. As the instruction progressed they* developed a lofty disregard of our demands for more entertaining and personal subject matter. It was evidently to be their kind of thing, or nothing. Our demands for experiments, tests, stunts, manifestations were ignored. This interesting force was not to be bullied. It then occurred to me to assume the part of a rather humble minded eager pupil, and see what such a chastened attitude would accomplish. It accomplished much. "And so, finally, I bent my energies and interest to trying, from my end, to help the communications as they directed. I experimented with various forms of concentration. I also noted the success or failure of various impulses natural to me. And when these were successful I tried to increase their force, thus evoking my own spiritual vitality. For example: very early I discovered that this vitality was magically successful when reinforced with an outgoing from the heart, as in loving remembrance of a friend. * The communicators. "This kind of thing, however, I hesitate to emphasize. Formulas are dangerous. Your needs are not my needs. Stability may be the thing I strive for, while flexibility and abandon to spiritual imagination may be the adjustment needed for you. My spiritual strivings may therefore be a misfit for you. You must cultivate your own modeling power to proportion you so that you will attract your own developing currents. These will make you aware of your weak points and aid you in strengthening them through your conscious cooperation until the process becomes spontaneous. "Above all, get this clear: these notes are intended only to give an example of an individual process, suited to a particular person. Do not let them mummify your own life-giving currents by inducing you to expect anything exactly similar. "During the years, then, patient experiment has developed in me, together with growing wonderment and faith, a little comprehension of spiritual law. There have been many setbacks, struggles, doubtings. In weak moments I have had an almost cowardly longing for my old comfortably self-absorbed unawareness of life. I emphasize this again because the psychic books I have read describing other people's experiences lay so little stress on the difficulties. Very early I came to look upon these writers as beings of a superior clay, utterly set apart from me. I thought dejectedly how exceptionally unfit I was, with all my failures, my self tortures of doubt, my semi-paralytic state of will. If I did manage to soar serenely, I was sure to flop painfully; and then came the real test of strength in putting myself back. I shall set down the failures and discouragements, even at the risk of clouding the inspiration. We have the records of my shining hours; I shall tell of the slow minutes in between. My own method may be a painfully slow self-evolution, designed for tortoises, and the easy accomplishments of the others are a design reserved for hares, but at least I am determined to arrive some day." (Her intention as to the ultimate use of these notes, I am unable to guess. Whatever it was, she apparently postponed it for the time being. She adds this:) "The whole subject is much too big for me. What we vaguely, mistily call spiritual, and look at momentarily on Sundays, is as real, natural and joyous as the flesh and blood we accept as a fact of existence. This flesh and blood is the pod for the protection of the ripening spiritual body within us which we inhabit after death. Each of us must sometime develop this inner, bigger self. Ours is the choice whether to lie dormant or to start expanding at once from the seed to the plant, and so occupy increasingly more life. It seems to be a case of 'eventually, why not now?' And delay bears compound interest on the amount of effort to be paid out later. "This concept is as old as the earth itself. We accept it generally as true—but unimportant at present; so we are quite content with our half-life. The moment our desire for more life passes from the purely mental into absorption by our consciousness, germination begins. If it becomes a fixed habit of mind and heart, growth will continue as it was intended to, cooperating with an orderly, useful, practical life. "We have proved the wisdom and comfort of physical hygiene, why not teach the next generation a little spiritual hygiene? Teach them how to keep their thoughts clean and strongly muscled, to have faith in their healthy impulses, to keep open and expanding hearts. Why not give these their due proportion of acknowledgment and education, along with the development of the brain? Our brains are only the mortal machines we work through, very important as are good, well-oiled typewriters. Why stop education with adaptability to this life? Why not a still higher education? If only for the sake of the full lunged happiness there is in it, teach the next generation youths periodically to lift their eyes from the narrow treads they follow to the wider landscape they may inherit if they will." And she ends on a high note: "The great fact remains," she wrote of herself, "that along with the discouragements has come, in great moments of susceptibility, the setting free within me of a magic genii long bottled up. The expansion of this re leased, vigorously healthy being has been a happiness beyond anything I imagined possible. The old feeling, too, of being off the road is gone. However it may seem to others, so far as I personally am concerned, I know that I am joyously on my way, just come into my heritage, and longing to share it." CHAPTER V. BETTY LEARNS TECHNIQUE. BEFORE finally setting out to follow Betty, as well as we can, through the twenty years of her inner expansion, I must describe—very briefly—the mere externals of technique. The first Ouija board period lasted but a few days. The toy seemed to be used only to attract her attention, and to direct her to a more facile method of communication—automatic writing. Indeed about the only clearly defined "message" it conveyed was the admonition, over and over repeated, "Get a pencil. Get a pencil." I was not present at Betty's first experiments at automatic writing, though of course I saw the results eventually. She described them as slow and fumbling. The first script was ill-formed, without capitals or punctuation or spacing, like one long continuous word. She had to go over it painfully, dividing the words from one another. Sometimes it was necessary to guess at some of them, from the context. But they made such good sense that she brought the scrawls to me. We decided to go on with it. With practice the writing improved. The words were divided; the letters clearly formed; the sentences capitalized and punctuated. The whole process gained speed and certainty, until it had the facility of one writing a letter about something he really wanted to say. And the content of the instruction thus conveyed was so forward looking and yet so practical, that I settled back in my own mind to much the same anticipation as I would have had in the writing of a book. Here was material; here was the ability to write. What more could one want? And then, after only nine months of it, we were blandly informed that shortly the writing would cease! And it did! We resolved to try a new technique. Betty bandaged her eyes and lay flat. I took her wrist. This was in December, 1919. The experiment was an instant success in that Betty appeared at once to slip easily into a kind of expanded consciousness. Perhaps double consciousness would be better. Her self seemed to be mainly centered in the expansion, but at the same time she retained enough connection with physical existence to talk to me in report of what she saw, heard or did. I think my touch on her wrist was what held this channel open. And I suspect I may, in some mysterious fashion, have contributed to the conditions that enabled her to function in her two aspects at once. At any rate, when she worked alone she brought back nothing for record, though she did report in general even greater personal success. Or perhaps my touch on her wrist was merely her sort of tea leaves or crystal ball— the device that opened the channel. I preferred to think the former. For if my function was only as recorder of what was said, I shall claim a heavenly crown of patience. Even after the technique was established, I was often forced to sit for long intervals, holding Betty's wrist, while she was most happily busy at her own invisible affairs. But that is a bit ahead of the story. Though from the very first attempt Betty managed this slipping into the double consciousness quite easily, the other aspect—the reporting back—was a different matter. When she tried to tell me about it—whatever it was—her speech was halting, stumbling, fragmentary almost to the point of incoherence. Obscurely, through that incoherence, I thought I caught glimpses of something important. But as compared to our easy, rapid automatic writing this seemed to be a very ramshackle makeshift. Still, I was in it for the duration. Gradually emerged a reasonable explanation. In the automatic writing Betty had been an amanuensis; had merely lent herself as a machine. Now she was to be brought into touch with realities, which she was to absorb and tell about. Also—as herself partaker of this superconsciousness—she would receive direct impressions, would hear words with some "inner ear." While still in the supernormal state, she would bring down these things to that fragment of normal consciousness retained for the purpose, and through it report to me for record. That was the program, as I understood it, and it seemed both reasonable and interesting. She made quick progress. Soon she was able to tell me matters that made sense in what was gradually revealing itself as an ordered and progressive expansion of herself. And then once more, just as this method in turn began to be really useful, it was interrupted and something new attempted. We had no warning. On January 28, 1921—almost a year after the first Ouija board trial—Betty withdrew herself into one of her patience-trying private sessions. All I got out of it was a fragment now and then of her side of conversations with her Invisibles—"I'd like to: but can I?" "How silly!" "Where do I find it? will you show me?"—tantalizing bits. Finally—after over an hour of this—she turned to me. "They can't tell me what I'm working toward because they cannot tell yet what I'm capable of developing," said she. "They can't predict: it all depends on me. They want me to do regular laboratory work, but how can I?—How they shove! " she cried. "How they shove me! My, what a force they're putting behind me, pushing me on, on, on!—My other consciousness with you is slipping, slipping—I'm just barely conscious whether I'm talking or not—It's a new phase—I don't want to lose consciousness." She was immobile and silent for thirteen minutes. Then she sighed deeply and slightly moved her feet. "I can move now. Rouse me. It is all over for tonight. What did they do to me? I was holding intercourse with somebody, but it did not get back to my waking consciousness." I shook her wrist gently, and after a few moments she came back. Whether I liked this or not I did not quite know. But Betty seemed no worse for it. On the contrary, her color was bright, her vitality increased. The following day's session began again with some private business which wag not confided to me. I gathered that Betty was being persuaded to something. " Oh go ahead; I don't care," she muttered at one time. "I don't know what you're doing," she complained. "Oh, do be definite and don't muddle it!" she cried. "I'm not cross! " she disclaimed, "I've got to breathe! " "I don't believe it's going to work anyway," she protested. "— Well, I'll try." Then ten minutes of silence. Suddenly a guttural sound in her throat— gr—, a pause, and the sound was repeated several times, until it extended itself into an almost recognizable word, grandma. After ten seconds, very distinctly and clearly the two words Grandma White. But the voice that spoke them was not Betty's! By the same slow and painful process came my love; many more; the name Mary. And finally the beginning of a sentence, make her—. It took just an hour for these few words, with a lot of under-breath rapid comment of protest and apology from Betty. At last she said to me: "Doesn't amount to anything. I wish you'd take me out. I'm tired. It is not coherent, and I cannot help it. They dull me and then do it themselves." After this she continued daily to work—and clearly and valuably—by her old technique of reporting back, from the other consciousness, in her own person, until February 11, when a second attempt was made at what might be called "direct transmission." Here is the entire result of something over an hour. "Mary—rather hard—realize difficulties—give consideration channel— undeveloped. Progress slow" (came explosively, as one word)"—Sarah—m-mil- militate—aren't you sasf—" (meant for satisfied, probably) "—don't be so—" Here Betty broke in. "Oh, I'm working so hard! Why do I have to work so hard!" Then, very slowly, with a pause between each word, but clearly: "Method new. No more now. Good night. Wake up!" Nothing happened for five minutes. Then Betty, to Me: "Wake me up. I'm tired—shoving me around that way! I stopped breathing—but I found a new way to breathe. I felt it when it changed. I felt absolutely safe. It isn't uncomfortable unless you stop to think about it. If you don't think about it, you don't have to breathe. Everything swirled and swirled and rocked in a kind of rhythm. I felt myself to be more of a gas substance than flesh and blood. I was; just vaguely conscious of trying to force out something, working very hard." She "awakened" presently, of herself, refreshed, without fatigue. Nothing further was attempted in the new technique until February 17, though we had the usual sessions in that week. After this manner we continued, using Betty's old technique of reporting back in her own person most of the time, with an occasional laborious period of practice in allowing herself to be used as a mouthpiece. With such practice the difficulty lessened, the facility improved. But nothing important was said that way. Like the first of the automatic writing, the communication was largely personal; a phase almost completely abandoned in the other method. "We cannot yet—hold it steadily—long enough for subtle explanations—" the Invisible laboriously answered my query as to why this was so. "Your receiving apparatus very primitive—Excuse us!" Not until about the first of May did those in charge consider Betty flexible enough to use for the transmission of anything seriously integral with the main effort. And I should think it fully a year thereafter before the interchange switched back and forth, from Betty in person to Betty as a mere transmitter, freely, without checks and stumbles. Until, in other words, the instrument was perfected. People have asked me how I knew—outside the context of what was said— when to ascribe to Betty, and when to the Invisibles. Her voice was slightly different in quality and timbre, in the latter case: the phraseology was not of Betty's habit; but the most convincing, and at the same time unproveable, distinction was a decided "feel" of personality. That would, of course, mean nothing to anybody but me; and rarely, when it did not matter one way or the other, I was not myself certain. But ordinarily I was sure. I have also been asked about physical symptoms, as to Betty's condition while in this state of consciousness. It was obviously trance, but not complete as in the case of Joan, who actually seems to "go away", leaving her organism to be used. Betty was supposed to work—said the Invisibles—"with intelligent cooperation": I cannot do better than to quote from The Betty Book as to this. "She was to go to them, instead of their coming to her.—And as intelligent cooperation presupposes participation, her consciousness was not taken from her in the customary deep trance. That does not mean that she was conscious as you and I are conscious. She was unaware of her physical surroundings— she went tout of her body', as the occultists have it, to some other phase of existence. But in that somewhere else she retained her faculties of thought. She was not put out, drugged. She was transferred— Occasionally, but rarely and only for certain exact accuracies, she goes so 'far away'—as it seems to her—that apparently there remains to her only a shred of (our) consciousness. Bur that shred is always there, and through it the approach to 'intelligent cooperation' is always possible." It took about five minutes for her to become entranced, and about the same time to "come out" after the session was finished. "I'm coming down like a leaf, zig- zag," she once described her return to normal consciousness. I could see no physical change while she was in this state, except that her respiration became almost imperceptible. Nor did she ever suffer any ill after effects, even temporary. None of the nausea, dizziness or the like which some psychics undergo. On the contrary, she always awakened pink-cheeked and refreshed. Now, having finished the external mechanics of Betty's technical training, we are at last ready to back track, and take up once more her beginnings; but this time from the point of view of the inner consciousness. CHAPTER VI BETTY TAKES THE ROAD 1. AS I LOOK back on these beginnings, I am reminded of the first handling of a skittish colt; and I admire the tact and skill with which the Invisibles did the job. They had, first of all, to get Betty's—and incidentally my— confidence; they must keep our interest; they must persuade her—and me—that the thing was worth doing; and finally must arouse a real desire on her part to go on. In consequence, the early communications were sugar-coated with personal matters; but, with the proportion of the latter gradually lessening, at last the personal was dropped with a finality that resulted in complete anonymity. Only when this was accomplished did they give us a glimpse of their own point of view. "The content of first messages through new stations,"* explained the Invisibles later—six or seven years later; after they had developed Betty as a reliable channel, "is important only as it serves to retain interest and does not discourage by too complete irrelevancy. We ——— * The Invisibles used the term station—or receiving station—instead of the usual "medium" because, they maintained, the latter has too many connotations. 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 mere meaningless sounds. From our point of view the whole importance of a considerably extended period of first work is in the reaction on the part of the station to any impression. 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 with definite intent. The rest of the message, so-called, may be a mere going along with what the station himself unconsciously imagines to be the purport." Nevertheless, that bit of genuine response is entirely satisfactory to them, they went on to say, no matter how confused or false or contradictory the whole thing may seem to us. That is because their interest at the moment is in the process, and not in what is said. However, they admitted, as we at this end know nothing of the process, our interest is naturally in the content, and if that content becomes too nonsensical or unbelievable we are likely to throw the whole thing overboard. "So," they said, "we give attention to accuracy, or what you call 'evidential,' only when our hand on the pulse of your interest or belief indicates slowing down to a danger point. What we are after is not personal communication, but development of an instrument capable of something more worth while." . This was a reasonable and logical explanation of the early puzzlements and bewilderments which Betty touched upon in her own narrative. But it could not be given at the time. She must at first gain her reassurance and encouragement as she could. Her Invisibles were very gentle with her. "I am a friend," one told her, at the automatic writing stage, "you can trust me. We will uphold and care for you. No harm can possibly come to you. Stewart must not fear for you. We solemnly promise him to guard you. We wilt make every effort to satisfy him. "Only hold fast to our love for you and your faith will be justified. Never mind how discouraging the outlook is, continue to believe us. Do not ask explanations, only believe." And after a particularly confusing series of experiences: "We have not forsaken you, but we are putting you more on your own to work. We do not want to foster dependence on us. Your unhappiness hinders. Throw it off. You have gone state from being tired. Rest, and you will regain your outlook. Perhaps we have been too eager and pressed you too hard. Poor little girl, we are sorry for you and would comfort you tonight.—Good-night, dear. Are you happier now? We are as near you as ever, but we have strained you a little too much. Forgive us." Another time Betty had, evidently, been "getting instruction" beyond her saturation point. She blew up in a burst of laughter. "So much preaching! " she cried. "I've never been so doggone good in my life! Why, I just ache behind the ears being intelligent! " and then went off in a school-girl giggling fit, renewed every time I tried to ask her anything. "Now," said the Invisible, when at last she had sobered down, "perhaps you can rid yourself of the very self-conscious attitude we have been trying to point out to you. You were getting to be so busy with your attitude that you could not really listen to us. We are delighted to see you natural again. We do not want any solemn, virtuous-feeling saint in place of a very human little daughter." . The too-hard pressure of which they spoke was an unremitting effort to arouse Betty's will to persist. At this time she was far from convinced and was easily discouraged. Ordinarily the stimulus of the Invisibles was gently carried on by appeal to her trust and affection, or to her common sense and self-respect. "Do you wish to be spiritually illiterate? " they asked her. Betty did not grasp the connection. "If we can get it to you, you'll see the point," said they. "When you see a child learning to write, you know how hopeless it looks that it should ever be able to receive inspiration from the printed page. You are in just that stage. But you've got to stick to it. In fact we are going to keep you to it. You've got to learn it sometime, just as you had to learn to write. Of course anybody, if he pleases, can remain spiritually illiterate, but then he will have to live a comparatively commonplace existence." I challenged this last. I could not see Betty as commonplace. "By commonplace we mean keeping your approved boundaries beyond which you make no effort to go. By restricted imagination, by neglect of the unknown—by these you keep yourself commonplace." "But we have our ordinary daily lives to live," I objected. "It is not your application to little necessary things we worry about. It's the unbroken application. That's the thing that makes you commonplace. If you stop work, even drudgery, often enough, and switch your center of consciousness to big spiritual proportions, you can accomplish ordinary life without getting commonplace." This reasonable gentleness, as I say, was the rule. But at times they arose to an almost frantic urgency. "We lash you to our own frenzy of purpose for your own salvation. Make a vow to us to carry on our work. We cannot always come with the force of this evening, but we want these words to burn into your soul, to be your obsession, your ruling passion. Power wanes, and we want to leave you at our highest pitch of urgency, calling to the deeps of you to answer the great duty." Almost from the first hesitantly written words, the Invisibles began to make it clear that they had in mind an important ultimate aim. Betty, it seemed, was to be made an instrument for some purpose not yet defined. We both possessed a healthy sense of humor, so at first we were inclined to treat such claims with skepticism and some derision. They perilously resembled these super-solemn "especially chosen to bring a Great Message to the World" assurances with which we had become familiar through certain of our acquaintances who had stumbled on "psychics." These experimenters seemed invariably to have been taken in charge by very important people, such as Plato or Aristotle or William James or even Julius Caesar and Nero. But Betty's Invisibles had proved not to be so high-falutin. They did not pretend to be anybody in particular, and they had not as yet offered any Message. It was merely that they had a purpose in training her, which was not so unreasonable when we stopped to think of it. "It's only," said they "that we're giving you a little encouragement that you are more than a mere bystander taking notes. It's not a futile task. Once the inter- relation of all created things is even dimly sensed, one cannot again be small. The mantle of magnitude is over the most humble part of the whole." What they wanted, they kept on repeating, was to teach Betty how to expand her consciousness. As a result, said they, she would become permeable to the invisible spiritual forces from which ordinary life insulates us more or less. This, for lack of a better term, they called Contact with the Source. Incidental to it would come an improved type of this thing they were now doing so imperfectly—communication from their world to ours. "We have been a long time planning this," said they, "so do not fall us. This is a great experiment for us. Much depends on you. It is the usual thing to have a person surrender all initiative as soon as we establish communication. We want you to gain strength from us, not lose it and become dependent. Involuntary mediums are good only as long as the conditions suit them—a voluntary medium in full control would be invaluable. We do not want to be too strong on this side because it is part of our scheme to have you do your share. We can write pages very fluently and easily when we wish, but it is safer to make you an active agent instead of a passive one." It was about this time, I believe, that they dropped the word medium as too full of connotation, and adopted the word station instead. About this time, also, Betty resolved to give these supposed Invisibles a "sporting chance." The expansion of consciousness desired by the Invisibles turned out to be no simple task. Betty devoted an hour or so each day to following directions as best she could. But this, she herself confessed, was not very successful, for she could not make out just what was wanted of her. At first she struggled for a complete, clear-cut intellectual picture—largely, I think, so she could satisfy me. But the Invisibles rejected the mental approach. "How can we bring to you strongly enough," said they, "the first principle of what we want you to do? It is to expand in spirit, not intellectually. The spirit is usually like a desiccated fruit inside the brain. We fear to give you too much for that reason. You are too much in your brain. Let your spirit soak up in a simple and pleasant fashion until it is a fitting mate for your brain." Such expansion, they asserted, would in due time result in the development of an entirely new faculty. "It is like learning another language," said they, "so you can listen to us with understanding. Each time you desire to travel beyond your present country you must say to yourself: am I thinking and listening in the right language? Otherwise communication is hopeless." There was a pause; then Betty said faintly, "I'm going away off now." "This faculty," resumed the Invisibles presently "which we awkwardly call listening, thinking in another language, is an expansion of the progressive reality within you. You must strive for possession—as a subconscious fixture—of a faculty not sufficiently developed in you yet. Until you can absorb knowledge directly with this faculty, you will always be subject to dilutions, contaminations, dispersions. "This absorption of comprehension, only partial of course, carried through the present channels of contact, arrives transmuted from the reality of the source into the symbols of the brain. It is almost useless to attempt much further extension of vision until you work out this faculty for receiving direct comprehension. The brain is a physical apparatus. It will always automatically take what it is able to absorb. But the inner expansive faculty, vigorously developed, can outrun the physical apparatus indefinitely." There was a short pause. "It is so discouraging," ended Betty, "now I see that double image at the water's edge—reality and reflection. They look just alike, but they are so different! I get the reality and take hold of it; but I only give you the reflection." Betty was really working very hard to do her share well and conscientiously. In fact, as it turned out, she tried too hard. "Don't strain in these efforts," warned the Invisibles. "Keep the body relaxed, but free and stimulate the spirit to respond with a great and rising wonder, similar to that inspired by the overwhelming beauties of nature. Unstopper your imprisoned spirit; let it rise blithely and naturally. Enjoy yourself. Don't strain. Let your heart dominate, and abandon yourself to its impulses. You will release yourself from terrible intellectual bonds: terrible, however, only when unbalanced." "We want none of the usual abandoning yourself to outside influences," said they at another time. "It is all a matter of holding yourself together around a good firm core of aspiration and interest and aim as to where you are headed. "And one more tip we want to give you," they added. "Run hard from the curiosity seekers who will try to make a gymkhana out of you. Don't let them even have a look in. Tell 'em anything you like, but head 'em off, for they will queer the whole thing in your mind if you will let them. In time you will have many clamoring after your help, but you must make them seek for themselves, not attach themselves to you like leeches." These and similar warnings were repeated again and again. They insisted that the usual morbid curiosity in "psychics" led to a by-road, or blind alley, from which Betty must be blocked. And another tendency of which she must be cured was over-eagerness. That was a natural mistake—once her enthusiasm was aroused for this fascinating exploration. The Invisibles gave her some kind of a jarring, I don't know what it was. I knew there bad been something startling going on. I asked Betty. "You see," she told me, "I was just slipping over when something happened, just at the wrong moment, and checked me back too suddenly. And I was so disappointed, so eager to go on, that I flung myself back absolutely wide open, tried to get myself back by an enthusiastic abandon, and that stopped the performance. That's what brought down on my head this warning stuff. No more going ahead under these false and dangerous conditions." "False and dangerous conditions—"—we bad thought only vaguely of that aspect. And we had taken it for granted that we were going ahead, that we were on our way. Hadn't we agreed "to give them a sporting chance"? But to our surprise—to mine at least—it seemed that was not enough. We must actually enlist; and of our own free will; and with a plain statement of decision. Apparently we had not been called upon for it until sufficient demonstrations had provided materials for intelligent choice. Well, now we had them. And the Invisibles squarely called a halt. "Escape," they pointed out, "is not merely getting free. It is taking up responsibilities." "Before going on with us," they continued, "certain facts must be faced. You must pay a price to serve our cause. If you are to succeed, you must go into training. Are you willing to do it? We do not intend to interfere with normal life, but you must consecrate your spiritual life to us, and conserve its vitality and composure. "Perhaps this work, if undertaken, will lead you into paths you do not wish to tread, but once started you cannot choose. You must take all or nothing, so do not draw back if we lead you to the edge and tell you to look. You will be tried in the fires of experience to see if you are fit to endure." This, I myself considered, must be Betty's decision, not mine. I felt that the expansion she had already gained must have sharpened her intuition to a sufficient wisdom. But secretly I reserved the right of veto should this mysterious warning uncover in her mind the slightest alarm or hesitation. She considered it carefully. "I can stop where I am," mused Betty, "where nearly everybody stops—with the comfortable crowd. But the compliment has been paid me of an opportunity to surmount normal boundaries, to accept the unillumined path of apprenticeship, wrenching myself free.... Oh, the cost of the wrench!" What the "cost of the wrench" would be she did not disclose, nor did I confuse the issue by inquiry. Questions sometimes make cross currents. "It is life," she reflected. "And I want to get nearer, nearer to the source of all striving life. I want to smell the wet earth and feel the cool drip of rocks. I want to sway with the presence of the wind. That is all life, life.... "I want to keep close, close as I can get, to that. I want to sniff it, taste it, drink it, bathe in it. That's where I want to be. I don't like the dead things. Some people like intellectual conquest, mechanical things, making automatons; but I don't like that, I crave the live things; things endowed with self-structure. "I want to get near enough so I can partake of the same great vitality. Throw open all hatches. I want to go out in the wind and the light and the air. I don't know what you call that current of vitality.... Never mind its name; I'm going to get close to it!" She fell into a long period of deep reflection. Suddenly she decided. "Give me all of life before I leave!" she cried passionately. "All! All! I don't want a niche. Aren't there plenty of people to fill niches? Of course, they are happier in the peace of limited struggle. But I want most tremendously and vehemently the highest possible comprehension! I want to take the suffering and all! I don't care if it tears me to bits; I want it! I've made my choice. I don't care if it is hard. It isn't all suffering. The intensification of living is worth it." She had set foot on "The Road I Know." CHAPTER VII "SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND" FROM this high peak of exalted dedication the Invisibles yanked Betty down to consideration of the practical—rather humorously, I thought. All very well splendidly to defy unknown dangers. Any hero can do that! But how about the minor everyday penalties? "They're afraid I minimize the price," Betty told me. "The price?" I queried. "Solitude of association," said she, "—but I'm willing to pay it." I was still dumb, so they diagrammed it like this: Nobody enjoys being considered "queer," I was told; and what was going to be the use of all Betty's great effort unless she came into the open eventually, and applied it in the world of daily living? The prospect did not dismay her, though it made her a little sad. "What a pity if my friends misjudge me," she regretted. "They could withdraw so much of the nice, warm human interchange. I know there will be an assault of misunderstanding. They'll all be critical, I'm afraid; watching me in a suspicious way. It will be hard for me to rise above their attitude and work unaffected by it. Well, I know there's a price. There is so much disapprobation of boundary-breakers." She considered the situation. "Well, now we've settled that," she went on, after a while. "I'll think over how to repel impertinence with some dignity and conviction of superiority, and not merely withdraw, or combat in lower terms and with lower weapons.... "I know what I'll do—I've a right to my own life. I won't get combative or superior or scornful; I'll get confidential. I'll say: "'Well, I'll tell you. A few times in my life I've seen treasure trove, something that had nothing to do with money, or position, or fame, or anything else I can name, but just a deep, powerful sort of happiness, and possible to obtain too; and I'm going to get it if I search through every law, sacred and profane, until I find it. Wouldn't you like to have it? Wouldn't it be worth living if you got track of it, even if you did make mistakes? "'Well then, leave me be: I'm exploring. If I find it, IT let you know. In the meantime I am discovering many by-products well worth the having, well worth the effort of discovery. We all want happiness; but I don't want the passive kind. I want big, powerful, creative happiness, and I want it all packed up and ready to take with me when I die" "That's the way I'll talk to them. I'll just take them into my confidence as to what I am after. And it's the truth, and that's all there is to it." An excellent attitude of mind, but the Invisibles seemed not certain that she even yet understood what she might be up against. "You see," they said, "everything one does for self—development— awareness, expansion, contact and all the rest—has a certain acceptability to the ego concerned, and nobody objects. But when you reverse that, and begin to insist on outgo, offering something of your own attainment, testing it against the world's resistance and misunderstanding, then you must expect a harder time. It is one thing to have a neat chapel to visit occasionally, and quite another to carry its influence into 'practical' life." And, said I, while an attitude of mind helps fortitude, it does not protect from suffering. "Sensitiveness capable of absorbing wisdom through direct impression suffers enormously from the world of combat," the Invisibles agreed. "For as awareness increases, so does suffering. Because of this, unfortunately, the spiritual aspirant often prefers to seek a sheltered life and become a bystander. Such a person may have an exquisitely sensitized vision, but he is absolutely sterile because of lack of human contact. The bystander probably regards his reaction as one of fastidiousness, but it is really inertia, atrophied force, over- cultivation, loss of productiveness." Betty recurred to a picture they had seemed to be showing her. "I want to look at that chap again," she begged. "He's quite fascinating, quite exquisite but useless. If he were set in action, so much of him would break or crumble or change. What a pity he couldn't be used! He's such a highly developed specimen." "The whole point is," insisted the Invisibles, "any sensitive person is useless in employing the force of the higher consciousness if he is always vulnerable to the return blows of the world. Suppose he is trying to accomplish something, and everybody begins irrelevant personal attacks, obstructions of all kinds. The minute he becomes susceptible to all that he is automatically shut off from the power-current which was going to help him accomplish. "You yourself must look out for this. You have gained access to a shining substance. Now you must learn to use it against a lower element superior in quantity. The toughening process which will make your bit of strength available must rest with you. Little by little, in small matters at first, you must learn to protect your mind against the darts and arrows which poison resolution." "Hardihood," commented Betty. "That is a nice word. It just happened to come around." "No suggestions are offered today," concluded the Invisibles. "The problem is merely stated for your solution. You stand at the crossroads. Either you proceed faintly shadowed by a strange experience, or you strive onward toward a hold on the vitality of spiritual life which will remain unbroken even in your darkest hours. "Better think it over," they warned. As I look back I doubt if the Invisibles anticipated that Betty would encounter any considerable degree of criticism among, friends and acquaintances because of her interest in psychic development. As a matter of fact she met almost none. They were testing her only, am sure. Very well, the Invisibles told Betty, in effect, when she failed to be impressed by their warnings, if you are really going on with this thing, you must first of all realize that mere assent is not enough. "There is," said they, "no suction quality to passive willingness. We cannot start things, that part of it is your job; we can merely complement your own effort." And—they added this impressively for Betty's own instruction—it must be done by your own "heart-desire and not mind-desire." They made much of this point: it was all-important. "It is useless just to sit with mental preparation," said the Invisibles. "You must have the soul preparation, too—the spirit, not the letter of the law. As soon as you have yourself established the right condition, we can come. That is why we are trying to go only as fast as you can assure your own grasp and accomplishment. Otherwise we would be taking you from useful things of the world into a no-man's land of idle speculative dreaming. This is far from our purpose. When you do not succeed, seek the reason in yourself. Your surface mind may be going through certain evolutions which have no growth or corresponding demand from within. In that case you are not truly seeking; you are apathetically making an appeal which has no power behind it to accomplish." They continued, over many sessions, to return to this concept, and ever the more strongly. "Only steadfast determination and striving will bring you the step further you must go. It is all in your hands now. We can do little more than watch you gain this necessary strength before we can help further. That is the law. We may advise and influence, but you must make selection and experiment. "Always hold in mind how much depends on arousing yourself. The energy with which you demand of us will measure what you get. It is not the energy of commanding, but of showing the force which begets its complement. It is the energy of measure for measure, given and received. This is all very indefinite to you now, but remember you are experimenting with forces not recognized in your world of sense." "What do you mean by unrecognized forces?" I demanded. It seemed to me highly desirable to know with what we were supposed to deal, for I was still in somewhat of a doubtful frame of mind. My query caused some hesitation. "Let us call the whole a matter of inspirational force, for the sake of giving it a name," was the reply. "It comes from a combination of conditions created by the person himself. We only take advantage of this combination. Once a person of his own choice established it, we can act on it. The initial step is your work. We hesitate to use words like soul-yearnings, for instance, because in your mind they have a set significance. But the idea is that we cannot work on an unreceptive person in any satisfactory degree. Roughly speaking, the forces we use are emanations from you. They meet complementary forces not your own that unite with them and so open up a further process of creative selection."* A little later they summed up very neatly this necessity for more than acquiescence. "It is just by determination and faith," said they, "that you accomplish the first dead lift. That manifestation with yourself and by yourself, you must get be — —— * Those who have read The Unobstructed Universe may find in this last a foreshadowing of the truly great theory of creative selection there set forth. fore you gain any response. This is what people do not realize. They don't put any strength into it, and when it will not work at once, they go the other way. You must get that strength for yourself." Another point on which the Invisibles insisted was that Betty must make haste slowly. "Do not look on this thing that we want you to do," said they, "as something that can be accomplished in a year or two. Think of it as for eternity. You are stronger than we hoped, and we can go faster than we expected, but we dare not strain you too far. A few simple tasks at a time are all we ask. You will soon see the plan and be impatient to go faster, but you must not try to fly until you are sure of your wings. We prefer to keep you a little clipped until we are surer of your endurance. Some day we will take the air together and all your work will be rewarded. Meanwhile break down your barriers; let in the flood of spirit we are sending to you. Welcome it and feed upon it greedily. Remember every waking moment to be really trying to live according to the few rules we have given. You will understand better as you go along. "Above all," they cautioned, "do not strain for psychic power, dividing and disintegrating your force. Rather weld together. Hold yourself a responsible being, capable of limitless possibilities, and so lift up your spirit healthy and whole, asking to be stimulated to greater effort. "Don't you see, the instant you try to create, to pump up, to reach for definite things, you are in grave danger. You will never get anywhere if you are thinking of what you are going to get. In that case you would be just a curiosity seeker along with so many other people! "Belief in the attainability of higher powers is a legitimate ambition, but such powers must be grown into faithfully. Meanwhile simply lay bare your problems to the influence of the great expansion, which will bring your solution. This is the only real channel which will bring permanent wholesome psychic influence. It is the safe and open highroad. There are other ways, of course, but they are exploration." CHAPTER VIII THE INNER CITADEL SHRINKING from being misunderstood may be only one way of thinking too much of one's self. "The first line of attack here," said the Invisibles when in due course they did get around to suggestions, "has to be in the direction of elimination. And that implies a deliberate inspection of egoism and coming to terms with it. Always you are dealing with the ego. You desire generous and spontaneous blending with other lives, but there is a toughened membrane—call it the ego—which obstructs that blending. "Now in place of this toughened membrane of an ego—which can be wounded, and is sadly scarred by contacts with life—we substitute an indestructible self, a self held together by intention, and by cooperation with universal force; a self vastly more flexible, permeable and self-controlled." This substitution of a non-ego self proved to be no mere figure of speech. At the next session the Invisibles resumed the discussion. It was in process very simple, they protested. You do withdraw yourself, in a sense. There is in every individual, they told Betty, an inner citadel, a "Psychic core." "It is his enduring center, his seed that will endure." Search yourself, they urged her, for this constant within. And then consciously establish it. "You will not find it in your brain," they said. "Look for it rather in the region of the heart; or more accurately the intangible sensations that have no organic position. This is the great security, the foundation for any superstructure of effort you may want to build. "The first step in control is the recognition of such an inner fortress for protection and refreshment. There is nothing more important than creating this abode of emotional security, spiritual order and demonstrable strength. "You see, the great question is: how are you going to stabilize yourself among all the shifting pursuits of the world, the varied points of view, the conflicts and uncertainties? How are you going to reach reality in the midst of them? And the only answer is, first to make within yourself an individual bit of reality over which you have complete jurisdiction. That is your one method of approach to the ultimate attainment of complete reality." A fine blueprint but a large order, thought I. Very simple. For Betty! First you establish the inner citadel, and then establish yourself in it. Then from it, as headquarters, you act. "The top layer is much the nicest place to establish yourself," Betty volunteered. "You can look at all your troubles, humorously and in proportion, as most objectionable mosquitoes, but still as only mosquitoes, and yourself as outlasting them. That's the way to live." "Things surge beneath, picking and battering and fuming, but cannot destroy you," the Invisibles took it up. "As long as you have this inner power you needn't mind what is battering against you, nor what tools or dynamite are used. Such can be only a surface nuisance. The shell may be scarred, but you have withdrawn the part of you that can be hurt. "Take your moments of discord and entanglement," they challenged. "How are you going to possess yourself? "There is only one way, but you must have prepared it beforehand and practiced it: let go your hold of everything and withdraw into the magic-working center of life within yourself. It is always possible to check your nervous reactions momentarily by suddenly commanding a relaxation, like making yourself stop shivering. Then quickly combine this momentary release with a swift retreat to your inner citadel. Go apart in it and rest the tensions. Stay in peace and quiet of volition, acquiescing in your whole being to the reharmonizing power of your higher consciousness. It is to your ordinary faculties as is an adult sympathetic mind to a child's troubles. It helps you clarify your vision and gather strength to make your decisions and plan your actions." And, they added, it is a sure refuge when outside pressure threatens really to overwhelm. Then is justified the complete withdrawal for recuperation. Betty caught at this aspect, considering it for some time before reporting it to me. "When too weak for aspiration, too sick for effort," she said at last, "what would I do to get buoyant again? Huddled down, hating my own darkness; the divine spark imprisoned, held captive; the physical shackled—I don't like it, but what to do? "I'll burrow down still further inside myself. I'll lie in close to the divine spark imprisoned there. Weary-hearted, I'll acknowledge my plight. Achingly I'll unite with the light that I know is there. Nothing else. No expectancy; no hurry. To my quiet relief, even amid aching inharmony, harmony must rush to succor. "That sounds pretty abstract, I know, but it really is the process in zero conditions." "But," Warned the Invisibles, "do not forget that if you would progress, you must inevitably go forth again to take your full share of the buffeting of the elements. This, however, does not mean that you are called upon to plunge heedlessly into the muck and mire. Do what comes, bear what comes in natural course, but do not overweight beyond what your serenity is capable of floating. Distinguish between withdrawal and hearty but undamaged living." The session was about over, so Betty did not pursue the subject then; but she caught the point. "I am coming out now," said she, "and the reality is getting thinner and paler. As I drift away from it, all I can be sure of is that it is not enough to say with great dignity: I withdraw my consciousness. That is no good. A dignified withdrawal from earth frets looks rather silly!" CHAPTER IX IN-FLOODING STRENGTH I MUST confess that the early period of Betty's instruction was a tough one for me. I see now that she was being given the basic foundations, and that some of them—like the "Inner citadel," for example—had to be given content before they could become practical. But at the time the teaching was—to me—merely a point of view. It was fragmentary; it was vague; it came slowly. For her part Betty was enthusiastic. But she was having the experiences; I wasn't. All I did was to sit there for an hour or so, with pencil and paper, taking down what little there was to take down. A great deal of the time nothing was said by anybody. I patted myself on the back for being so long suffering. Now I see I might have made a positive contribution through some kind of enthusiasm of my own; but the Invisibles themselves realized that this was a good deal to ask on the basis of what was offered me. "You are very patient," they told me appreciatively one day, "—and that is all," they added dryly. My job was distinctly side-line sitter; and recorder; of course. I listened to directions given Betty as to processes unseen by me— "Too expectant—not enough relaxed." "You are striving so much to make your mind receptive that you defeat our purpose and open your mind to other sources." "We have decided on a slight change of plan for you. We are going to make you put in practice as nearly as possible each phase as you acquire it. Roughly the plan is this: we will lead you into our world for your lessons, but in order to obtain any further instruction you must do your practicing at home. We are not trying to lead you away from world experience, only to strengthen and enlighten you about it." "Open up more naturally, and do not keep such a stem hand on yourself and your emotions. It won't harm you if you go to the opposite extreme for a while until balance is gained." "Now try to regulate your breathing: several short quick breaths and a long one, and then let go. One after the other. When you breathe do not strain for anything. Try to forget that part. Just go in and out with the tide." "We are putting you through a time of slow preparation, and you are not standing still, as you think.... At present you are necessarily muscle-bound in your mind with too much effort." "Push. Push through as you would in walking against a strong wind." That sort of thing. Stage directions. Of a drama that I, in the wings, could not see. Once in a long while the Invisibles tossed me something personal, a bit of "evidential," a brief explanation. As a fish is tossed to a trained seal. Betty herself realized that her reports back were incomplete. "Are these words right?" she asked me, rather anxiously. "They did not get laid just right.... Words! Words! Words! " she cried, exasperated. "We have to string boundaries of them around even the dimmest comprehension. And more is there than can ever be contained!" But right then the Invisibles apparently did not care whether or not there was any mental comprehension—in either of us. They weren't interested in our minds. Minds came in later, they assured us. "It is the amateur method to seek growth or spiritual freedom," said they, "by an intense concentration of mind; but this must be replaced by expansion of the heart. That reestablishes the proportion of spirit over the material, and welds the being into a new functioning body capable of volition. There is a great difference between the terrible diffusions of seeking occult power and the expansion of the heart which arranges your proportions and makes you a workable reality. You are past the first danger posts. Do not wonder at silences on our part. Daily strengthening of purpose by silent contemplation of your intention, that is what we have been trying to lead you to, not to daily seeking for adventure." Nevertheless even I could perceive certain definite steps of instruction. The first thing Betty was to accomplish was permeability to the invisible spiritual forces, or Contact with the Source. The result of this was to be spiritual consciousness. At first she gained it only in touches, flashes. Next she must extend the duration of spiritual consciousness until it became habitual. Once she was able to transfer her headquarters for living from her old limited, earth consciousness to this expanded consciousness, she must learn how to utilize her new vantage point, and her new powers and insight, in her ordinary conduct of life and her relations to the people about her. That, stripped of all technique, was the program. And its emphasis on mundane utilization; the immediate application to life, not to some impractical mysticism, gave it common sense to me. The ultimate aim, the fashioning of Betty as an instrument for work after she had left earth life, was not then apparent to us. None of this burst upon Betty all at once, as an "illumination." The idea and the practice of Contact was introduced to her gradually, as one might teach a beginner to swim. One day she had been quiet for much longer than usual. I began to get restless. "What are you up to?" I demanded at last. "Getting porous," Betty replied. "Porosity. . . ." She paused to savour this, then chuckled. "That's a nice fat juicy word! It sucks in and out. "When you are cold and enter a room, a warm room, you say to yourself that you are in a different atmosphere, and instantly expand to it. That is the difference between ordinary life and the element I'm in." "What element? " I tried for even a glimpse of understanding. "It's a new medium of sensation," she explained, "the most relaxing and yet vigorous state you can imagine—so abounding in beauty and vitality. It's too wonderful for me to grasp just yet." "Can't you tell me more of this new medium?" "Could you imagine a substance made out of Spring? " she replied. "Not of individual fresh willows and buds and blossoms and tender greens and bursting colors—not those details, but the very sweep of an entire world decked out; the substance of Spring. Don't you see how fresh, delicious, exciting, exalting it would be compared to ordinary things? I am in this superlative beauty and freshness and exquisite delicacy. It is hard to describe in clumsy terms, or name anything but just the 'substance of Spring."' Which sounded pleasant and poetic, but those were the days when I was pragmatic and still somewhat skeptical. For satisfaction I wanted both reasons and results. Nevertheless I held my fire and awaited developments. Much instruction followed, whose purpose I fathomed not at all. For example: "We would like you," the Invisibles speaking through Betty told her, "to cultivate to the utmost your instinct for beauty: form, poems—anything that has been achieved by man in his brief moments of triumph and contact with the over-soul. It is the biggest uplifting material thing you can possess.... Do not be afraid to drink deep of beauty. It is an open door through which you can glimpse what is to come: beauty, all that is harmony and in opposition to discord. Beauty is a great and quiet teacher. Detailed education is very important, but it is beset with many restrictions and pitfalls. It is a wise teacher who keeps his pupils looking at the end of the vista instead of watching their feet on the narrow path they walk." To me, sitting on the sidelines, that sounded a good deal like urging Betty to be Betty! But day after day they kept her at whatever lay behind their words. "Beauty and love," they insisted. "You hear us say love so often that the word ceases to convey any idea to you; but it is the all-containing, permeating essence which will unite your world to ours. We wish we had another word for it. But we see it as the first principle of growth. Open the flood gates, let the great current of the universe pour through you to others, if you would live." Much of Betty's instruction was given in this mood of poetic imagery. Again the Invisibles would express themselves in what seemed to me more practical terms. "Don't try for anything," said they on one occasion, "but just the feeling of a substance as physically permeating as ether or gas or something like that. Try simply, in relaxing, to feel that this substance permeates every inch of your body. Accustom yourself to the feel of it. You will find it will rest you and bring happiness even in the very beginning. You have tried it before; but this will visualize it. Do it at any time; momentarily. It's an actual fact, this inlet of strength." There was a pause, evidently for experiment. "Anybody could do it," said Betty presently. "It is a matter-of-fact law. I don't see anything 'psychic' about it. I am just studying the law; and little by little I am demonstrating it. The biggest thing you can study is this permeating strength, and how much of it you can take. I lie here and strive according to the poor little rules I have discovered already, and something like a slight chemical change takes place that makes me aware of my own possibility. I am just a poor feeble beginner, but I can see so much ahead." "Here are the only tasks we give you now," concluded the Invisibles, "first, love—attract unselfishly; second, as we told you before, walk through your days as a creature with folded wings, conscious of the possession of another element and of your ability to enter it; third, Eve enough in spirit to invite inspiration, and act promptly without questioning on what comes to you. For a while Betty seemed to be considering this. Then she said: "I feel like Columbus after weeks and weeks of travel, holding fast to the faith that it's there on the other side. I mustn't relax that faith." Betty's faith was not ill-founded, but also its fulfillment was not immediate. Other things in her makeup delayed matters for a time. Notably caution. Betty was far from being credulous or an easy mark. Her long line of Scotch ancestors had given her a certain hard-headed skepticism. At the time it seemed to me a mighty useful trait in this kind of a job. It still does. But also its use could be overdone. The Invisibles pointed this out. "Don't be afraid to accept your dreamland," they advised her. "You have enough ingrained practical, habits to bring you back to balance whenever necessary, but unless you let go your present control you will never be able to do our work. The fact that you have that control is your greatest asset if you can turn it off at will and control it. Do you see what we are doing? Step by step we are trying to break the bonds which tic you down to your earthly village and help you to enter the wider world we live in. Yes, it is like getting you off sticky flypaper. You want to do it, but you must conquer your bodily instincts and habits first. You have the imagination and control but the abandon must be acquired." Betty must have been able to obey orders, for shortly she reported: "I am being taken along with some Strong Ones. Their association invigorates me so. I am going through some kind of an experience on a higher level. Before, I was like a little skinny chickabiddy thing that refused to come out of its shell—crouched in its little shell because that was all it knew that was comfortable. Now someone is helping me to step bravely out and I am feeling strong and sure, and not regretting the sacrifice of my shell." "You can have little conception now of the intense happiness toward which you are progressing," the Invisibles encouraged her. "We don't want to entice you with statements that—misconceived—would endanger a simple approach to the reality. But no inner vision must ever have a wall instead of a horizon." For some little time Betty was silent. Then she announced: "I've always before stuck my head up through a hatchway and tried to look around; but now I've climbed up. I'm all here but I don't know what to do." She chuckled. "This is a great game—a great game, I tell you what! Like a fairy story.... My, but this is the life! Again she was silent. "Well, I've got to do something about it now. I can't just stand and say how nice it is. All the old ideas and sensations are under-foot, as though I had taken off my clothes and were standing on them ready to swim.... But what'll I do?" "Never mind," said the Invisibles, "just go on." "You must have brought me here for some reason," Betty insisted. "What is it? I'm listening." Once more the interval of silence. Then she laughed. "Supposing," she began, "just supposing you suddenly found yourself free as air, released into the bigness of the solar system as compared with the earth. Supposing you were just jumping with energy and eagerness and enthusiasm, and the only danger seemed to be spreading out too wide and maybe dissolving yourself. And if you had no plan about what you'd accomplish with all that bursting energy—That's just my trouble now. Generally people make plans first. Then, when the plan is big enough, energy is meted out. But here I am, all dressed up in energy, and no place to go! I don't know what to do first. It's too big. . My inwardness isn't big enough for it. I want to give it to you— lots of it. Maybe that's the reason it is given to me." She contemplated this for a moment. "If I could only thicken it up a little," she mused, "so you could use it." There was a short pause. Then, sadly: "I can't thicken it up enough!" "The general trend is toward a more spiritual life," hinted the Invisibles. "All right," I put in my oar, "what is 'spiritual'?" "It is just daily life carried on by a self with higher associations," was the answer. "That daily life can either go on growing, or be dwarfed and stand still. When it is dwarfed, you are not conscious of it, just as you are not conscious of an atrophied organ. When it begins to grow it takes possession of you and pushes other things aside. "You'll see the point, in time," said the Invisibles, addressing Betty. "All you can do at present is to embody, in your daily life, your aspiration and kinship with the stars. Above all be patient. Go about your affairs and do not expect us unless we manifest. We are lifting you. Play and laugh and love and work to rise. Cannot you feel even now that you have set a little harder task for yourself and that you can see a little farther?" In other words, she must first absorb the concept—whatever it was— and then understand it. But understanding, in the Invisibles' definition, seemed to be something more than mere mental appraisal and judgment. It was a kind of incorporation into the substance of one's self. The Invisibles called this "make- it-so," borrowing the phrase by which a navy officer makes official a happening aboard ship. "You must not only understand it, but you must make- it-so before it is your possession," the Invisibles summed it up. CHAPTER X INHERITING THE LAW MANY different primary phases were mixed in with the first development of the idea of Contact. In addition to the inner citadel, there were, for example, such things as insulation, elimination of undesirables, and a half dozen other technicalities fully treated in The Betty Book, but out of place here. That is what I meant when I said that to me at this time the instruction seemed fragmentary. As far as I was concerned the lack of sequence was maddening. The Invisibles would bring up a brand-new topic of instruction or discussion; would get my interest just nicely started on it; and then drop it in favor of something entirely different. They gave things in dabs. Sometimes they had four or five subjects going at once. Talk about keeping track of a three ringed circus! I have—or had then—a tidy mind. "Why don't you finish a thing once you've begun it? " I complained, "instead of romping around like the giddy goat!" I got no exact answer at the time; but I had ceased expecting exact answers to that type of question. To answer would have been, I suppose, to defeat the very purpose of the indirection. In other words, arousing too directly the interest of Betty's subconscious mind would have resulted in what we called "coloring"; which means that the said subconscious would take over, more or less, and inject its own ideas. In the early stages of Betty's training this had to be carefully guarded against. After about five years, however, such precaution was no longer necessary. Betty herself had command; and the "sub" had not a look-in. Then, to my satisfaction, the little-dab method was abandoned. That was one answer to my question. There was another, but the Invisibles gave it only after Betty had gone beyond the need for that technique. "For purposes of study there is over-magnification of a part," they now told me. "To avoid misshapement there must be occasional pauses to contemplate this magnified part in relation to the whole. That is, the part must be shoved back and diminished to its proper relationship. The constant changing of subject to which you have always objected is the only method we could devise of accomplishing this purpose. It allowed the picture to retire to its proper proportions. That satisfied my mind. An unusual concession on the part of the Invisibles. For a long time they seemed to have almost a contempt for intellect. That proved not to be really so. Merely, for the moment, the intellect was not the appropriate tool; and moreover as a usual thing, in our ordinary processes, we use the intellect almost exclusively, forgetting the non-intellectual—shall I say intuitional— equipment which now the Invisibles wished to bring up to correct balance. But, as usual, they did not explain this until the fact was accomplished; and that one thing came nearer throwing me off the whole business than anything else. My life had been one that required a very active use of the intellect. And if my, mind could not endorse a thing, then it was out, as far as I was concerned. Now, apparently, I was being asked to accept things without that endorsement! I say apparently, for later I found out this was not at all what they were asking. I understood, finally, that I was not to set aside intellectual judgments: but merely to postpone them until the accomplished fact. Then I could use my mind as critically as I pleased. Indeed, the Invisibles wanted me to do so! The whole thing boiled down to one simple statement: the brain is the executive, not the originating, branch of our personal government. Why did they not tell me this, in so many words, right at the start? I did not know, and I was annoyed. But that was not the Invisibles' way of doing things. They never told us until after we had experienced. Evidently we were supposed—as the cowboys express it—to "roll our own." "There is no substance at all in pure intellect," the Invisibles answered one of my protests. "It is just a very fine shadow. The simplest achievement is so much more important. Pure intellect is aloof, unrelated." From her vantage point in the other consciousness Betty accepted this more readily than did I. "There's such a great difference between your brain and mine," she told me. "Yours is a much better human faculty—so much stronger." But she added, "I can't see why it's so much less absorbent than mine. I don't understand that. It's very puzzling to me—very puzzling. I don't see why brainless instincts like mine are so much easier. . . ." Neither could I. And even the Invisibles refused help. "They've gone and left me to puzzle this out," said Betty. "I admire brain so much.... I don't understand. It looks like some nonconducting quality—a sort of gloss, like glass. There's something...." She broke off for a moment, as if listening. "Where's the catch? " she ventured. Again the listening pause. "Oh, I see! Looks like a ship running with a very strong starboard light and almost no port light. It's a one-eyed thing. It's the other eye they're trying to develop in me." She studied this a few moments. "I am getting to understand it a little now," she concluded. "The brain looks like a petty officer. Whatever it is incapable of handling it denies. Through generations of denial it has arrested the development of the wiser inner self, which is adapted to handling the higher world of senses and possibilities, the vitalized world around us, what lies outside human-set limitations. They are not really limitations except as we cramp that inner self." Betty seemed satisfied. I was not. I wanted to see, with the practical eyes of my mind, where I was planting my feet. The Invisibles were patient. "Make the leap," they urged. "Dare to do it. Take a chance on our being right. You cannot connect up in an unbroken series of steps with what you know. This reality is not on the outskirts; a gap must be bridged. It is very necessary to employ the measuring stick of your mind ordinarily; but lay it aside intermittently. Hurl yourself into space, as it were. It will not hurt you to go bravely out to pick up a clue or two. You've been trying to creep up on things on the scientific side, but they've got to be boldly taken, artistically, in the present case." "I see what they want! " cried Betty. "Supposing you had to prepare a turtle to become a lark.... I'm showing you how to break up the inertia. This leaping, hurling business; this releasing—whatever you want to call it—is definitely the only way to take possession of the wider, freer life." All of which, to me, at that time, tended dangerously near to conventional metaphysical fuzziness; and that was something I did not approve at all. I was very difficult at that period; and if I seem to be doing a lot of talking about myself, it is only because I believe my first view was that of the hard-headed, practical, average man in the street. The phrase "Insult to one's intelligence" occurred to me. "Don't be offended in your intellect," the Invisibles told me. "Give us a chance. Your precious intellect will have its innings. We won't do more harm than present it something to work on for the rest of its natural life. Leave it in soak and keep it flexible, and we can go on. It's bound to be satisfied later. When this other faculty becomes the leader, your intellect must immediately react to it: it must, just as the blood goes through your body to nourish all parts. Do you get the idea, now? Something beyond what you can understand, can explain with the brain? If that is what we want to get to you first, how could we get it through your brain without the slowest of evolution?" As a statement that made sense. "Please note," they pressed home their point, "you will not get scientific explanation such as you expect. You will get the reality as we can manage to give it, which you can deduce as theory later. We cannot tell you in words which would convey anything to you, what we must accomplish by molding you to the thing itself." The molding, it proved, had a definite and ordered method. Betty was much amused at the process. "It's like children dressing up and playing lady," she commented. "I'm pretending I'm what I'd like to be. It's absurdly dignified." She laughed heartily. "You ought to see me! It's the way I feet when I wear a train. It all still looked fuzzy to me, and I said so. "Couldn't you just take it on faith?" they urged. "Couldn't you just pretend for a nine, to give it a chance to work? If this reality is ever to be recognized, it must be by something hitherto unrecognized in law. Put your energy and your daring into throwing out to your farthest limits in search of comprehension of the hitherto unknown. You must gain it in imagination first: and then work back through slow steps to connect it with observed facts." And there I was stopped again! By a word! Imagination. I am a fiction writer and I know something about imagination and its power to conjure elaborate structure out of thin air. Also it had kin-folk, such as "wishfulfillment" and "compensation fantasies." Even Betty was doubtful. "I don't think," she objected, "that's a very good word—imagination. It's too cobwebby with unrealities." The Invisibles seemed openly astonished. "Imagination?" they cried. "Why, that is the very gateway of reality! You call it a plaything. You've always called it a plaything. But actually it's the one thing you possess that connects you with the next substance. It's a transmuting chemical." "It's been the father of a big brood of mistaken ideas," I grumbled. "Nevertheless," they insisted, "It's the way to get outside yourself. How else could you function beyond your fleshly limitations? But use imagination masterfully—not as an onlooker: as a partaker. "The whole trouble," they added, astoundingly, "is in using too little. A little imagination has no strength to fight. Instead of freeing, it is captured, a poor little helpless thing. A little, taken and concentrated on, shut off from its source of supply, is devitalized, dead. They had made one convert. "One must try harder to get hold of the idea and play with it in symbols," agreed Betty enthusiastically. "You've got actually to be, in imagination, dripping big-leaved plants in the sun against the blue sky. You've actually got to breathe that idea in before you can make it work, because you are not working in our accustomed substance; you are working in a higher creative form that you don't know how to use, except unconsciously and as it were, relaxedly. When you get to a certain age and dignity, you don't play that way. For the rest, google this book title and read the rest. I was not able to make the complete book into audio.