The one way

Front matter

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Book *^)SJ&

Contents

PAGE

Preliminary Note v

Author's Foreword xi

CHAPTER I To Prove Christianity; Live It

TULY 6th, 1920. "The message which comes to you in this book is addressed first and foremost to those, my old pupils and friends, to whom a message from me will come with greater force than if it came without my name attached to it. I therefore begin — I — William James, late professor of psychology * at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A., am sending you this message. While I was on earth — alive, as you call it — I thought that I knew a lot, but now that I have begun to learn a very little I see that I failed to know what is in truth about the most essential thing of all — namely, you cannot prove by your intellect those things which can be proved only by life. I mean Jesus Christ said: T am the Way, the Truth and the Life.' If you want to prove the truth of the gospels — the New Testament record

1 From 1889 to 1897 his title was Professor of Psychology. See "The Letters of William James," Vol. I., page xix.

of the life of Christ — there is only one way in which it can be done ; that is by living it out in your daily life. I thought that I could reason about religion and I neglected the simple method of living the religion myself. You think that the day has gone by when people can turn to their Bibles, and get guidance for everyday affairs therefrom, but I tell you, read your Bible, both the Old Testament and the New, and devour them, not in any controversial spirit, or to help you to prove this or that, but read it for the practical basis of every part of your daily lives. Now in the 20th century, it is the only possible solution of present-day needs. Let the politicians learn to read their Bibles. You who used to be — may I say my disciples — oh, I beg you to listen to me now and obey me. Read your Bibles. 'They are they which testify of me,' Christ said, referring to the Old Testament. How much more then, should you read both that and also the New Testament, in order to meet your present crisis. All that was said in 'The Seven Purposes,' about the terrific struggle that is coming, only feebly foreshadows what lies ahead of us all — us and you. You must let us into your lives and work consciously, clearly with us. There are teachers who can and will teach you how to do this. Oh, throw away your conservatism that you are so proud of and be ready to take the necessary forward path with us.

"We who have passed through that, which you call death, are ten thousand times more alive than we were upon earth; we have all the powers that we then had, intensified, and far greater and more developed powers, of which I will tell you what I can later. But right here and now, let me tell you, that there is a tremendous lot that we can't tell you, because you are wholly incapable of taking it in in your present undeveloped state. However, if you will only learn to be fluid, and be willing to be led by us, you can be told all that is necessary for us, those with you and those here, who stand for the true God, to work together for the overthrow of the powers of evil.

"You think that the Great War was a terrible time. I tell you, it is as nothing, compared to what is coming; and if you won't help us and let us help you, the race will be held back for centuries. Oh, lay aside your prejudices and help us. Men have greatly erred in trying to train the brain to the exclusion of other faculties and you must stop it now. You are trying to train the body and to some extent the hands, but the instincts are being neglected. Who do you think teaches the birds when to migrate each year? Who do you think teaches the fish where to spawn? Who do you think has led man up and up from the lowest savagery? — God, God, God ! Who do you think would teach you and all the men and women of today if you would let him? God Almighty. He has so made man that it is possible for him to 'come unto him and make his abode with him.' Do you suppose that Jesus Christ made any mistake when He said that? I tell you He did not; He enunciated one of the great fundamental truths of the whole universe, and now at the end of nineteen centuries, you are all of you seeking every sort of way to accomplish the salvation of the human race, except the one and only way, the way of the indwelling God — God in the heart and soul of every son of man, leading and guiding him all the time. It is so simple that most of you are afraid to trust yourselves to anything so simple and so easy too, if you will only learn to yield to your instinctive knowledge.

"You all speak familiarly of your consciences; the true, clear conscience of a child speaks clear and straight because his instincts have not yet been blinded and stunted by education. The foolishness of man, made the form of education, of which you are so proud. Stop it — that is, stop, the overemphasis on one side, of man's powers. The intellect and the instincts; the body, the mind, and the spirit, should each have their due place; whereas, your present-day education overemphasizes the intellect. Get back to elemental things; the men in the trenches got back to elemental life, and they at once began to have visions and to see forms about them — and those forms were real — they were there.

"I tell you the human race is one, one, one — write large, ONE, and we who are ten thousand times as much alive as you are, are able to help you if you will let us because you and we are one. You have got to be open minded and train your instincts and stop trying to find some grand new way, and go back to the old way, the simple Bible way.

"Mrs. B , you go to bed now. I canV work

with you any more to-night because the next part is so important, and you must be fresh. You must perfect the mechanical arrangements because such rapid writing is hard on your arm. You don't know how tremendously important the book is and you will have to work many hours a day. It must be published in the early autumn."

(You made a mistake and told me the other night that the doctor would not come and he walked in. I had not asked you a direct question, though I was wondering if he would come, and though I know those details have no spiritual importance, they are upsetting to mere human intelligence.)1

"Yes my dear friend but we expect you to rise above such mistakes. I knew that your boy was not seriously ill and I knew you needed the rest and so I said go to bed. Now you have got to learn to distinguish between important or spiritual thought messages and unimportant. The language of heaven is the thought language governed by love. Also you must forgive me for my mistakes. I too am just human — a little more advanced than I was when on earth, at which time I thought I knew a lot; now I know that I know nothing."

July nth. (It is hard for me to balance the ordinary daily duties and the call to this new work, which is exciting and interesting.)

"Well then, pray; you understand that; do it. God as you know wants to help at every second of your life.

"One of the most serious dangers of this time is the demand for scientific proof of spiritual things. My friends, science must have scientific proof, but the things of the spirit must have spiritual proof and spiritual proof comes only from

1 Throughout this book the italics denote that Mrs. Burke is speaking.

living the Life, and if you will accept the word of tried scientists in astronomy or any other of the scientific branches, why do you refuse to accept the spiritual dictum of those who are proving the things of the spirit by the Life. Get back to the elements; drop theological discussions and standpoints and get back to first principles. Don't imagine that I do not know how many times I have said that same thing, but I am writing to those for whom my word has weight and I have to repeat the important points till you realize that you must attend to what I am trying to get across to you. No matter what church you belong to, work shoulder to shoulder with every force that is making for true progress, and find out if they are making for true progress, by measuring them up, not against some standard you have been accustomed to thinking correct, but take Christ for your standard. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life; if things won't measure up to Him cast them off. Now, you know that this was not what I taught on earth, but oh ! don't make any mistake, it is the only way. He is the Way. I am writing like a child, but all truly great things are simple. You must help, you must listen. You must believe. One of the reasons why the messages from this side seem so unsatisfactory to you, is that many of the things you long most to have us tell you are the things you must find out for yourselves. God has already provided you with the basic data from which you could find out, and it would weaken your moral fiber if we told you those things. To speak in an old-fashioned phrase, 'it is not allowed,' that is it could be done but it is not for the best development of the race, and we could not do it because here we want to do God's will and we have already learned that nothing is to be gained by pushing our wills. Man has but one real possession, and that gift God has given him, his free will. It is a Godlike attribute and is to be reverenced and prized, but while it is the most essential resemblance to God — 'Man made in the image of God' — yet, the first thing to do with it, is to give it back to Him and say: Thy will not mine be done.

"You are almost all of you under trained in what I call making an act of will. That is another thing of which I must treat at length."

{Mr. James, when I was talking to Miss Davis about this — were you prompting mef)

"No, not at all. Of course I have been trying to familiarize you with all sorts of ideas, and trying to teach you to hear and understand my thoughts, and this is a most essential truth, and I may have thought to you (note this expression), thought to you, not talked to you on the subject.

I was not in any sense prompting you when you talked to her."

(Did you know that I talked to herf)

"Yes, I did."

Sunday, July 12th. "The gist of the whole matter is, that God has already granted unto man all the revelation that is actually necessary for his salvation, but the mass of men, having perverted their freedom and used their free will to follow out their own ways, have blinded themselves and can no longer easily take the leading God has given.

"This matter of automatic writing is far older than you suppose ; it is no new thing. It probably accounts for much, in fact perhaps for nearly all, of what we call inspired literature.

"Have you never found yourself in a situation of danger, some position wholly new to your experience, and yet in a second, quicker than thought, you knew your only chance was to follow some line of escape? Had you had more time and begun to use your reason and think out what you ought to do, ten to one, you might have become befogged and done the wrong thing. As it was, you followed your instinct. You can train your instincts just as you train a voice to produce a singer. It has to be done. There are certain teachers already at work in this matter of whom the most successio The One Way

ful is Roger Vittoz of Lausanne. He himself does not go far enough, and realise that beyond the eminently scientific method he has worked out, lies the absolute reliance on God, which is an absolute necessity if man is to work out his own destiny. And man has to work out his own destiny. God will never take away from you his own priceless gift of free will. You must say, 'Father, I have but one, real, enduring, everlasting, possession, my free will; it is Thy gift to me and I will take it and give it back to Thee, and do Thy perfect will which will give me true freedom.' All real thinkers know that true freedom instantly implies discipline. A free country is not one where every man is free to follow out his own will — you do not permit the Bolshevik to commit crimes, you restrain him by laws and no country would have freedom that had no restraining laws. Your athlete must have the most careful discipline and training if he is to obtain the true freedom which will gain him the mastery over his own body and win him the race. "If you want success in earthly things you must work for it, and the same law obtains in heavenly things; you have to cultivate the spiritual and instinctive side of your nature as assiduously as if it were a garden, where weeds crop up and grow with most astonishing rapidity. This sounds trite,

To Prove Christianity; Live It n

but I have to make the whole matter commonplace and practical. Remember what I was as you knew me on earth, searching afar off for the explanations of the great mysteries, and pay attention to what I say now; live your religion, prove its truth in your everyday life and don't go theorizing about it. It is what you are, not what you think, that counts.

"God has implanted deep in the nature of every son of man the power to know good from evil, and you must exercise your free will and choose the good. Remember you have to go on and on choosing the good, His will, and laying your free will back into his hand, and you will have to go on doing it to the end of your earthly life. The process of learning to probe deep into your own nature, is for you at present difficult, because it involves much quiet and meditation, a thing for which both the pleasure and the work of the world to-day leaves but little time, but you must make the time for it. I tell you from this side, where I know a great deal more than most of you do from your side, that nothing in human life to-day compares with the need of preparedness for the great spiritual battles that are imminent. America was very slow about preparedness for the Great War. In God's name, heed our warnings and make preparations for the far greater war that is surely coming. Most of you are not single hearted enough; you must get less complex, not only in your external lives but in the essential you inside. Make one clear choice for God and the right, and stop splitting hairs. The men in the armies, as I have said before and as everyone knows, got down to the bare essentials and you must do the same, — plain food, plain clothes and no waste of your essential powers. 'How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God follow him, but if Baal then follow him.' I want to put this in such plain language that a baby could understand it, but it is worthy of the practice of the wisest man among you.

Get back to your Bibles — because 'they are they which testify of me,' as Christ said, and you must get back to the one elemental cause of all things, God Almighty the creator of the Universe, the Father of mankind. Get God for the background of all your life and all your thoughts, get him for the centre and the kernel of your whole life. 'In Him we live and move and have cur being' is absolutely true just as it stands; you can't love your wife and children except that God in you, the imminent, indwelling God, who himself is love, enables you to do so. Whatever value the Bible may have as an historical record, or as literature, its true value is that it shows forth God's dealings with men and man's growing relation to God. God made man in his image. He made him to be His own companion. God would not want a companion who was unlike himself, and since he is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, he fills man with his own power and presence and wisdom, always provided that the individual chooses God — lays down his free will and says: 'I have my one God-given eternal possession, my Godlike quality of free will; I lay it down voluntarily to do the Perfect will of God.' When a man does that, he rises into a far greater degree of Godlikeness or becomes far more fit to be the companion of God himself, thus fulfilling his own destiny. Let your priests and teachers get back to the Bible and preach Bible sermons, simply because there you find a supreme record of God's relation to man and man's relation to God.

The habit of preaching from one short text has been overdone — take your Bible in bigger doses, feel the swing and the power of the stories. The real reason for reading the Bible, is to get an introduction, as it were, to God — then you must pursue the matter and grow into the most intimate possible relation to him by talking to him, by consulting him in your perplexities, and remember, that if you go to consult an earthly friend, out of mere common politeness you pause to give him a chance to answer while you listen. It is this art of listening to God that is the most important lesson for the world today and it must be done in the quiet of your own heart. Our Lord said: 'Enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut thy door pray to thy Father which is in secret and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.' That closet is the silence of your own heart. Marcus Aurelius said: 'Man know thyself, it is the sum of knowledge.' You must have times of quiet, of retirement, if you are going to learn this most profound side of prayer. The old conception of prayer to God, man asking for things he wants or needs, is a very childish, one sided conception of prayer. Prayer should be intercourse with God and if you do all the speaking and no listening I think it is easily seen that your knowledge of, and friendship for, God will not grow very fast. Great public meetings for silent prayer are of immense power and importance. Get a thousand or two or three thousand persons together and let them join in silent prayer and you will find great power from God Almighty descending upon you.

I have spoken of the book called the 'Seven Purposes'; therein is set forth with great truth the fact that the crisis of the Great War is but a small incident in the crisis of the whole universe that is upon us. If you don't help us and let us help you, the progress of the whole human race will be delayed (and please remember that the human race is not merely those who live on your tiny star but that we here also belong to the human race.) Choose whom you will serve, God or Baal, and have no double-mindedness in any of your ways. Men pursue wealth and nothing else, and they become rich in filthy lucre; pursue God and let everything else go, and don't make any silly mistake and say, 'that's all very well, who will provide for my wife and children?' You fools and slow of heart to understand ! Keep God in all your thoughts, have him for the end and centre of your being and then live your common daily life as in his sight, 'not with eye service as men pleasers but as servants of Christ serving the Lord.' Of course you have to attend to the daily earthly life. The man who is mad to make money lives his daily life with the basic idea of becoming a millionaire, or still better a multimillionaire. I am only asking you to pursue the natural daily duties of your earthly life, with the basic idea of serving God first and last and all the time. I have lived on earth and I know what human life is, and now I am in a more advanced stage and I know what I am talking about. Perhaps you will laugh and say, 'James used to think he knew what he was talking about and evidently he hasn't changed much.' Men don't change much, they develop and evolve here slowly or fast according to their abilities, but chiefly according to the degree of spiritual development that they had obtained before they came here. I tell you a titanic struggle lies ahead, join forces with us, choose whom ye will serve; if God be God serve him. 'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.'

"What I have already written should show you a little of that knowledge which I have gained. It is nothing and yet such as it is — I give it you. The fear of the Lord — that should be translated the awe or wondering contemplation of the Lord — is the beginning of wisdom. He is omniscient, the source and end of wisdom. If you would only learn how to open your whole natures to him and let him into you, — the indwelling God, — you would attain to wisdom, not through the painful process of committing to memory through your brains only. Of course God gave you your minds and of course they are to be used and cultivated and I would be an utter fool to say stop learning and studying, but I do say you must cultivate the whole man, and the instincts are a part of man that has almost atrophied. The intellectuals of the world do not know the debt that they owe to the religious teachers and thinkers who have made their religion practical, living out in their daily lives those things which they believe, for they, and they alone, have kept alive the instinctive powers of man among the more highly cultured peoples — and when I say instinctive, don't think I mean emotional. It may include emotion, but is far deeper and greater than mere emotion.

"The only real freedom comes from following out those laws which govern the thing with which you are dealing. Take for instance the force of electricity, it is a very dangerous, death-dealing force; work within the laws that govern it and you control it. You are free from its dangers. A parallel law works with spiritual things. You must learn the spiritual laws. As I shall try to show you, in the chapter in which I shall deal with the lives of the saints, you have already all the revelation about those spiritual laws which are necessary to your human life on earth. There are greater degrees of spiritual life here and hereafter, but the basic principles — all of which you stand in need — have been given you already, therefore go back to straight old fashioned, apostolic, Bible Christianity, leave the discussion of theology till you are able to understand what you are talking about.

"This sums up my present position about the revelation of the Bible. I have tried to make it clear, but it is not easy, because we no longer use human language, and it is not easy to be sure of getting the matter through. The most troublesome thing we have to deal with is the doubt of our amanuenses. That is not a wholly bad thing, because a person undertaking this work carelessly or out of idle curiosity, is in danger of becoming an instrument in the hands of unscrupulous or deterrent spirits, and it needs the greatest vigilance on the part of the person receiving the message not to be interfered with.1 Yet, in order to write,

*I have not interrupted the book to tell of the many interferences which have occurred. At one time, during the summer, I could do no work for several days, because as soon as the words "William James Control" were written, the pencil would either run around and be silly, or a woman, whose handwriting never varied, and whose manner of writing was utterly different from that of any other person, would persist in trying to tell me a story of her little children. She said they were in great need, and begged me to go to them and help them. At her direction

I wrote to a W B , 10 Speedway, Providence, R. I.

That letter was returned to me by the post office authorities. There was a lot to it. She knew exactly how to appeal to my sympathies, first for her husband — whom she afterward claimed they must sink their own personality to the disappearing point, chain their imagination, and at the same time, be keenly on the alert, reading and following what is written. Hence, you ought to be able to see that shades of meaning can easily be blurred — therefore read with an open mind, ready to receive the truth and to prove it by practical daily living, not in a harshly critical or analytical mood. If it is not absolutely correct, remember I too am human, though you are not in the habit of applying that word to those of us who have passed through the change of death. I too am fallible, and whereas I once thought I knew a lot, I now know that I am but the humblest of learners — although teaching is still my work and my purpose is progress."

had committed suicide — then for the children. I felt she was evil so I did not want to put it in the book. At the end of that period my husband wrote of having had a great fight, and Dr. James wrote : "Now are you satisfied that that woman is deterrent? You let her in."

Chapter II

The Value of Certain Philosophies; Both of the East and of the West

UA"pHAT the Western and the Eastern philosophies have very widely diverging points of view, is the current opinion I know, but in truth, there is much greater fundamental agreement than you know. What few thinkers have as yet realized, is that the whole human race is one. In our Western minds is deeply ingrained the idea of the Jews as Chosen people of God. When they failed to fulfill their destiny and recognize their Messiah when he came, we feel that we Christians inherited as it were, their place and became the best beloved of God. In a sense, there is just enough of vital truth in that idea to have helped us to go off at half cock and accept it as the whole truth. Now the fact is, the whole human race is God's creation one and in a sense indivisible. Backward races hold back the whole progress. The so-called heathen nations hold back the progress of Christianity, and the self-satisfied attitude of the mass of the Christian world has prevented them from recognizing, that at the heart of the so-called heathen religions lies an aspect of truth whereby God was preparing those people to be ready for the teaching of Christianity, which should have been brought to them centuries ago. It is hardly possible to speak too strongly of the importance of missionary work among the so-called heathen nations. The luke-warmness of many Christians on that subject, not to speak of the actual antagonism, is a fearful blot and disgrace on the church and should be ruthlessly cut out by individuals and masses of men, like any other cancerous evil growth. The family dies if no children are born, the church must atrophy and decay, unless it is spreading and increasing — not only at home but abroad. You have seen how the world has been rocked almost to its foundation by one nation determined on destruction. Germany's population at the beginning of the war was only one seventeenth part of the population of the world. What do you think will happen to business and art and science if you let things go on as at present? China, Japan, Africa, with their teeming millions of non-Christians getting education and external civilization and no real Christianity? Then add to that, the vast numbers of heathen in our own so-called Christian lands — and right here, let me tell you that Christianity pure and as it was given to the world nineteen centuries ago, is the final religion; put that on your housetops and let it be engraven on your hearts. 'Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life.' There is no other way. Live it out in your daily lives. Nevertheless, the full revelation of the gospel of Christ will never come until Orientals and all races of men are drawn in — adding their interpretation of the Christ to yours.