The abolishing of death

Front matter

ASIL.KING other books By Mr. King

Abraham's Bosom

City of Comrades, The

Foreword

FOREWORD

It will be observed that the following pages are offered to the reader not as proofs but as phenomena. Moreover, they are presented not as phenomena of an unusual kind but as specimens of a type of writing which if not precisely new has become remarkably abundant. So many are doing it that the very numbers would have a cheapening effect if it were not part of the contention that everyone can do it, and that communication with the plane next above us is as natural as speech. It is because so many people all over the world are putting forth this claim, while so many others too timid or too conservative to put it forth, are longing to see it justified, that the subject urges itself on the mind of the day as one to be taken up.

What is happening is briefly this. In some circle in which, for various reasons, the questions that have to do with death and the possibilities after death are of paramount interest someone is found with a pencil in the fingers writing in a hand not naturally his own, with a propulsion he does not consciously control, sentiments he cannot recognize as having formed themselves in his mind. As far as he knows he is to this " message " no more than the wire to the telegram. To the best of his self-analysis he neither originates the ideas nor of his own purposed act commits them to the paper. The thoughts, the words, and the tracing of the sentences seem to him to be governed from outside. The physical sensation in the hand is unlike anything he knows in his own mind-directed acts. Those who have had this experience will, I think, bear me out when I say that it resembles no other motion of the body. The nearest expression I can find for it is that it is not that of the hand guiding the pencil but of the pencil guiding the hand. The pencil becomes the intelligent thing, and the hand the mere instrument.

As authority for these " messages " names are signed which belong to people known to have passed beyond death, and who declare themselves to be in touch, in whatever con-

. OREWORD 5

stitutes love and solicitude, with those they have left behind.

Questions are then asked to which the replies are at times obviously true, at times plausible, at times inexact, and not infrequently sheer nonsense. But the important point is not whether what comes over is true or of value, but whether or not anything comes over. Of the present fallibility of the so-called messages something is said later in this preface and also in the articles. In passing I will only state that fallibility is not a decisive factor in the case. It pertains to all forms of human transmission that we know anything about. There is no certainty that the thought in one mind will be conveyed exactly to another by telephone or telegram or wireless or writing or printing or speech. By all of these methods error is not only possible but of daily occurrence, the highest ideas of the statesman, the poet, and the editor being often rendered meaningless. If correctness of transmission be made a condition of acceptance, then we must reject not only our new discoveries but our timehonored methods of communication, for all of them err. Furthermore, before we got

G THE ABOLISHING OF DEATH

our present control of them they erred more than they do now. Some of the first experiments with the electric wire were so absurd that nothing but the vision of an ultimate approximate success sustained the inventors or discoverers in making the early tests. As far as their fellow human beings went there was nothing but derision or discouragement.

There is no small analogy then between the pioneers of this new form of intercourse and those who literally compelled the world to accept the methods with which we have become familiar. The same efforts to dissuade have attended all who have tried to go forward. The same jeers have accompanied all initial uncertainties. The same conviction and pluck are as necessary to-day to stem the tide of opposition as if the world had not already made almost incredible discoveries.

My point is, however, that no discoveries have ever been made without failures at the start. It will be noted that most of the great advances have been in the direction of communication between men and minds. Easy intercommunion might be called the great human objective, certainly ever since the invention of printing. The steamer, the railway, the telegraph, the telephone, the motor-car, the wireless, the airplane are all modes of making intercourse quicker and more direct. Each one of them is a marvel; and each one of them has been derided. Fifty years ago the horseless carriage and transoceanic flight would have called up as much in the way of incredulous scorn as the idea of a living and active communion of saints at the present minute.

So that the fact of inaccuracy in much of what purports to come over may reasonably be counted out. No one pretends that the attempt to communicate with the plane next above us is in more than the experimental stage. It is where the telephone was when Graham Bell first thought that sounds might be coming over it; it is where the airship was when it gave its first shiver on the ground. Sure flight is not yet; speech easily recognizable by everyone is still of the future. But the question arises whether in view of all that man has attained to in intercommunion the endeavor to reach these higher realms should not be carried on.

II

The negative attitude of mind being so much the more general a few words with regard to it may not be out of place.

The instinctive stand of the ordinary, conventional individual is that the thing which has never been done cannot be done, and that it is waste of time and energy to consider the matter further. This view w^ould so obviously limit all human undertaking that it would be folly to give it a second thought did it not unhappily express the mental outlook of the immense mass of mankind. To a large degree it is that of the comparatively enlightened, and of those who rejoice in what has already been accomplished in the teeth of just such denial as theirs. Our universities, churches, and business offices are peopled with men and women whose first impulse is to range themselves against the advance of any new endeavor or idea. Calling themselves cautious, conservative, and steady they are in reality not any of the three. They are simply retarders of the race. Without knowing it they are servants of him who defined himself in the words of Goethe as " the spirit that denies — der Geist der stets vernemt." He is also the spirit that balks progress. In his quiver he has all the weapons with which the backward love to assail the alert — ridicule, scorn, sorrow, and outraged loyalty to the past. Among the many forces arrayed against the attempt to make the Communion of Saints not a dead letter in a creed but a vital and working concept in the life the Spii'it that Denies bulks largest.

Next comes perhaps that rehgious belief which teaches that in Jesus Christ and His Church all is revealed, and that it is well-nigh blasphemous to seek further. Under this grouping may be classed most of those who regard themselves as constitutionally orthodox, as well as all those who live by exercising spiritual domination over other people's minds. " What we do not know you had better not meddle with," might be given as the essence of one kind of religious teaching, and, '* What we do not know no one was ever meant to know," might be reasonablj^ taken as that of another. Those w^ho get their religion from what Henry Talbot calls " religion-brokers," being content with these inhibitions, the direct statements of Jesus Christ are overlooked. Those statements represent His religion not as static but progressive. He never pretended to be telling His disciples all the great truths that were to be known. Like His apostle afterwards, He could have said, " I have fed you with milk and not with meat." What He did say was that " when He the Spirit of truth is come He shall lead you into all truth'' as well as " bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have told you." He never pretended to be doing all the great things that were to be done. On the contrary, He declared that for those who followed along His lines not only would His works be possible but " greater works than these shall ye do because I go to my Father." These greater works those who rest on their orthodoxy have never lifted a finger to undertake, while even such works as their Master performed they have not attempted to repeat. When others do make such attempts they are the first to raise the cry, "Don't!" It will be noted that I refer here only to those for whom it is the first article of the unwritten creed that Christianity must be non-developing. Thej^ are unfortunately many. At the same time there are not wanting sincere Christians in all the sects whose most eager demand is for a further unfolding of truth — seizing that which Jesus Christ made manifest and manifesting more, going on from milk to meat.

The third opponent of the search for new possibihties in the universe is the man for whom life is material in the first place, and spiritual only in the second, or not spiritual at all. For him a poor material explanation is preferable to a good spiritual one, and a readiness to accept material speculations as absolute proofs makes deahng with him difficult. Considering himself intellectual he is as purbhnd in one way as the narrowly religious man is in another. Both are static; both are dogmatic. With the same defects or the same good qualities there is often between them the same antagonism that exists between brothers in blood. Bunyan might have personified this type as ]Mr. Self-satisfied and Mrs. Know-it-all, and its exponents abound in our more educated walks in life. Appealing to the intellectual god of the hour the protest they make against all such investigations as this is in the sacred name of Psychology.

That psychology is right in trying to explain all the phenomena we have to class as " psychic " on the grounds of sheer physical mentality I make no attempt to deny. Physical mentality being that with which we have first to deal it must be made to go as far as it will. To attempt to make it go further than it will is a mistake of which no true psychologist would be guilty.

" The psychologists," writes Henry Talbot, " study along lines which are likely to lead to communication with us; but this does not necessarily^ happen. They are a little further ahead on the right road than most lay minds — provided, that is, that they seek the truth unprejudiced."

" What about the psychologists who deny that such communication as this can take place?"

" Those are the prejudiced, who step out of the way of truth, lose faith in science, and fall behind in the procession."

The answer to my next question raises a point on which some emphasis may be laid.

" To what extent are the psychologists right in explaining this communication as due to thought-transference ? "

" It is always thought-transference when the mind of the transmitter is sufficiently clear. But self-created thoughts on the part of the transmitter sometimes intervene, and deceive even the sincere."

The psychologist, as I understand him, admits that the transmitter may be reporting the transferred thoughts of someone on this plane. Why then may he not just as readily report the transferred thoughts of someone on the next plane? It has to be assumed, of course, that the next plane exists, and that those who have reached it are able to be near us. But many people who have no difficulty in making this admission still find it easier to believe that the transmitter reports the thoughts of someone a hundred or a thousand miles away on earth rather than what comes from an invisible person standing close beside them. My only argument here is that if we once admit the continuity of life, as the majority of Christians do admit it, with an enhancement rather than a diminution of powers, then thought-transfer from that plane to this would seem to be comparatively easy, while between those who are stiU on this plane it is acknowledged as comparativelyhard.

Of psychology in general I have only to add that in this connection it has nothing to say, as yet at any rate, which is not confessedly matter of opinion. The science itself is far less dogmatic than some of its professors, while its professors are less dogmatic in their turn than many of those whose knowledge of their teaching goes little beyond a smattering. It may even be contended that the wider the knowledge the more generous the liberality, and the smaller scope for the Spirit that Denies.

The last form of objection of which I should like to say a word is that which considers this investigation dangerous. Of course it is dangerous. No step forward was ever taken by the human race that was not dangerous. If there were no danger there would be no daring, and if there were no daring there would be no courage, and if there were no courage we should all be flabby and inert. Danger is that quality in life which teaches us not to be afraid.

" There is much danger in imperfect understanding of these things," Henry Talbot confesses. " A transmitter with violent desires and opinions can persuade himself that these opinions and desires are heaven sent. He can become quite wild and intoxicated by the discovery that communication exists, and then obtrude himself upon the clear road, making an obstacle of his own thoughts which like a poison villify the water passing over them. His faith becomes turbid, and evil and good are inextricably mixed, while the transmitter contends to both others and himself that he transmits the unadulterated truth."

No high aim was ever pursued by man without some men pursuing it unwisely; and yet if one man's folly were urged as a reason why another man's search for truth should be abandoned human endeavor would cease. A poet and a painter have both expressed regret that I should lend myself to an inquiry which to their knowledge has in specified instances done harm. But so has the writing of poetry and the painting of pictures — on the part of the unskillful. Much talent, otherwise good, has been wasted in these ways, and many hearts tried; and yet my friends would never stay their own hands because of this consideration. The bringing of the motor-car and the airplane to the point at which we have them to-day cost tragedy and grief throughout the world; but no one balked at the price when the thing purchased was to be such a triumph. In the same way other friends have lamented my taking up an interest discredited by frauds; but who would refuse to work in a field because freaks and fakes had entered it before him? The very fact that they have confused the issue is a reason for trying to make it clear.

In speaking of people attempting to get communication Henry Talbot says:

" It is best to tell them how to do it, but to warn them of the miscarriages and self-deceptions against which the sincere can guard themselves. ... It is best to warn them emphatically against dangers, as well as to tell them that if they become too intensely absorbed in the things of this world to the neglect of their own earthly duties communication will be cut off from this side. We wish to help, never to hinder, and we refuse to create freaks or to have transactions with them. ... A sincere and single-hearted transmitter," he writes elsewhere, " will know the state of his own mind, whether prepared to receive messages or not. He must act according to his feehngs. Do not work when tired, worried, or preoccupied by thoughts of an absorbing nature, whether sorrowful or joyful.'*

Of the difficulties inherent in all efforts to reach truth he says, in speaking of philosophy in particular:

" You have got the facts of existence tangled in your minds, and your philosophers attempt to unravel the skeins. Sometimes they help, and sometimes they make the trouble worse by pulling facts out of place to help their arguments. The best that can be said of philosophy in general is that it is a sincere attempt to straighten what is twisted. There are so many different knots to be untied that any sincere philosophy or religion helps in the straightening process; but there are times when the disturbance caused by unsympathetic co-operative methods of unraveling seem a remedy worse than the ill itself. This is, however, not the case. Every search after truth, in whatever branch, helps toward intelligent harmony and the establishment of conscious rhythm."

I said something here of the progress in communication that might be made if philosophy, psycholog>% and religion could all be induced to work together. To this he replied :

"It would be a wonderful help, certainly; but knowledge of every sort — the finding of truth — helps us to establish communication, as it enables you better to understand creation and its resources."

I asked if our communication with the next plane could be considered the culmination to all earthly knowledge.

"No; it is only a branch of progress. There are other culminations, or rather crises, of discovery of a different nature. There is no termination to knowledge; but temporarj^ acquisitions facilitate the progress onward."

I had already begun to speak of something else when he reverted to the same train of thought.

" It is like children playing with the separated parts of an automobile. The parts are useless to them, and yet full of a potential power. One child puts two parts together, another three, as he progresses in understanding, until these groups of machinery are joined to other groups, and gradually the whole machine is put together as it should be. Then with the necessary equipment and an intelligent driver it can move forward, with every part working harmoniously with every other. It is so with life; and discovery in every branch of knowledge is a step forward in grouping the parts of the machine. The day is not yet, but will be, when the perfect complete automobile, equipped and driven faultlessly, will move forward as the embodiment of man's discovery and imderstanding of the use of God's gifts."

Ill

In some such spirit as this, and with an immense diffidence, I venture to offer these pages to the public. I feel myself like a child who has picked up an object which may be part of a great machine, or may be only a bright pebble. Personally I believe that it will be found to fit into something else, which may fit into something else, which may fit into something else, till knowledge is linked as a vast unit revealing God. Of those who do not think so I beg no more than the tolerance of my point of view which I honestly extend to theirs. Of all clangers, since we have been speaking of dangers, that which seems to me the most dangerous is the closed or the hard-shell mind. Better any credulity than that, any chasing after wandering fires! I ask here not to be misunderstood. I am not pleading for the easy mark in wild ideas, or a foolish volatility. I am only saying this, that if one had to choose between being a bigot or a simpleton I think one would choose to be a simpleton. The open mind is among the most beautiful gifts of God. The man who has it wears among other men a kind of radiance. It makes him kindly, genial, open-hearted, open-handed, and in some measure everybody's friend. In such a man there is nothing prejudiced, nothing narrow, nothing bitter, nothing hard. He may be shy and reserved; he may have faults and weaknesses; he may be far less morally perfect than some whose minds are closed; but he will have the adorable quality of being human, with the bigness of nature which goes into that splendid word.

And of all human characters with whom I have ever had dealings Henry Talbot begins to assume for me the largest and most lovable proportions of the soul. I am willing that the reader should think of what I say as applying to a real character, or to one whom I have little by little built up out of my own imagination. Literature is full of fictitious men and women who are as real to us as our friends. Think of this man in this way if you hke, while I try to tell you something of what he has come to mean to me.

In the first place there was never anyone more approachable. His welcome is like that of a generous wide-open door. " I am all love," he kept saying in the first days of the intercourse, and, as I have hinted in the course of the articles, that conviction has been carried over from his atmosphere into ours. Love, yearning, help, and an overflowing sympathy fill at least the imagination the minute we begin to talk.

And then I must emphasize his geniality. Intercourse with him is not solemn, it is not portentous, it could not be qualified by the connotations of the eloquent word " highbrow." It could more easily be summed up under the somewhat similar word " homey." Our conversations are easy, simple, and familiar, and though I have quoted chiefly its high lights, it is always in touch with the things of every day. It is in touch with the things of everjT- day as those things are when seen through a lense that gives them dignity, bringing out what is worthy in them and noble, while keeping to the sunny air of cheerfulness. He is often amusing, often witty, though never ceasing to be solicitous with an extraordinary tenderness. Into the midst of a discussion such as some of those I have reported he wiU interject a question as to my other professional work, making useful suggestions and throwing out a hint for future work. For the novel he has the same respect as for any other manifestation of eternal energy, a trait in which he differs from many who are with us on this plane. Wise, kind, patient, sjTnpathetic, human, humorous, big-hearted, broad-minded, he gives one an idea of what we all may be when the evil is left out of the composition, and nothing remains but goodness. It is the only instance in which I have ever come mentally face to face with what St. Paul calls the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ on the part of a man like ourselves. It shows in quite a wonderful way what a man like ourselves can come to. Even if the contact be no more than that of my imagination with an imaginary being — as the reader may easily believe — I must acknowledge it as a privilege.

rv

Lastly I must say that I have only my word to offer that all I state happened just as I have stated it. During the progress of these articles through the pages of a magazine several have written to ask me if I were not hoaxing the public with a purely fictitious adventure. It is needless to say that I am not.

The articles, as mentioned in at least one of them, were written for an important magazine ; but I may be permitted to amplify here what lack of space obliged me to curtail there as to their inception.

I had been asked by the editor of that magazine, as I say later, to write a series of four articles on the general topic of Immortality. Three of these articles were written and two were in the proof before this writing began. They were written according to traditional Christian principles, were constructed along the solid, didactic lines to which we are accustomed, and in them the reader would have found everything he had heard before and which would not have called out in him a new thought.

Among the first things that the writing said was, " Do not teach — do not propound." Going on to state that the speaker was taking much interest in these articles, it bade me be content to narrate what happened to me at first hand, and let the reader form his own opinion. Thereupon was poured out a mass of material from which I had only to select certain portions to explain. I could have selected more and explained less, but in following that method the whole would have lacked cohesion. It must be remembered that these things were said in conversations, brief, broken, or when longer, pursued, as conversations are, without continuity of thought. Some explanation and arrangement was necessary to enable the reader to follow what was perfectly clear to those present when the " talks " took place. While the explanations speak for themselves, I may call the reader's attention to what I say in the prelude to the first article, that, beyond bringing such matter as had to do with the same theme into immediate connection, and a little punctuation, I have taken absolutely no liberty vnih the text. Once, as I have said, I suppress a redundant " the," at another time a " which." A few times some simple word that the transmitter has left out in haste has been restored, as in the rewriting of a cable dispatch in full. Otherwise all stands as originally written. In no case has there been the slightest tampering ^vith the sense.

I may add that all that I have quoted was given me expressly for the articles. Much more has come over, far more remarkable in range of thought and beauty of expression; but that I am told is for a special purpose which will be announced when the time comes. I have been careful to refrain from citing so much as a line of it.

It is not pretended that in what I give everything is new, or striking, or of equal value. A feeling exists in some minds that all that comes over — assuming that anything comes over — should be something never before uttered. But man has done some thinking for himself, and where he has arrived at truth his conclusions cannot be improved upon. There were many subjects on which Jesus of Nazareth, the most original of all thinkers, could only repeat what had been said long before His time, though undoubtedly throwing on old deductions a new light. Similarly, by far the greater part of the fragments here — they are only fragments — cover ground with which we are familiar. On that ground, however, there is here and there a sudden flash of beauty, while at times old concepts are re-expressed with meanings which, I venture to believe, will be to at least some others as new as they are to me. At certain points, which I have not the space to indicate, the utterances amount to what is almost a revelation, though in saying that I speak for myself alone. The eternal permanence and success of all right-minded production as described in the second article, and the conception of age as given in the third, are to my knowledge not only new to our sphere, but valuable to the spirit.

The articles having been wi'itten as articles are left as articles, with no more than an occasional verbal change and a few additions.

Of the transmitter I will merely repeat what I declare more than once, that as far as she is concerned deception is out of the question. That there may be subconscious participation she is prepared to learn; but consciously she is no more than an instrument. As an instrument, like any other instrument, there are moments when she is not at her best. The chief speaker mentions the fact that occasionally she shows " signs of haste," and it is plain that she is sometimes fatigued. When that is so the message is blurred, not in the meaning so much as in the expression. The somewhat long passage in the second article — The New Heaven — which speaks of those who go over through violence, is a case in point. The significance is evident; the verbal cast is not quite exact. In general, however, as I think will be admitted, the style of the speaker, simple, lucid, and supple, is admirably given. In no case have I seen the transmitter pause as much as a minute for reflection, and the longer replies are written with no more than a vague comprehension on her part of what she is taking down.

In conclusion I have only to remind the reader that I am not putting forth a theory or trying to convince anyone. I am neither teaching nor propounding. My task is finished when I humbly place this material before him, trusting with confidence to the freedom and tolerance of the open mind.