Title:      The Road I Know (1942)
Author:     Stewart Edward White
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0301081.txt
Language:   English
Date first posted:          August 2003
Date most recently updated: August 2003


Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      The Road I Know (1942)
Author:     Stewart Edward White





"I've got a formula I've worked out. I relax my body-rock it in my
cradle of confidence-then keep just a shred of attention to see that
it doesn't follow me. And then I sneak out onto the road I know.
THE ROAD I KNOW--that's its name."--BETTY





CONTENTS

CHAPTER.

    INTRODUCTION
1.  BETTY  15
2.  EVERYBODY IS PSYCHIC
3.  BETTY'S OWN NARRATIVE
4.  BETTY'S OWN NARRATIVE
5.  BETTY LEARNS TECHNIQUE
6.  BETTY TAKES THE ROAD
7.  "SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND"
8.  THE INNER CITADEL
9.  IN-FLOODING STRENGTH
10. INHERITING THE LAW
11. LEAVING THE BODY
12. REST ON ATTAINMENT
13. THE NEAR COUNTRY
14. GATES BEYOND GATES
15. INVISIBLE ALLIANCES
16. HABITUAL SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
17. THE HIGHER POWER
18. THE SOURCE OF SUPPLY
19. THE GREAT SIMPLICITIES
20. THE NATURE, OF THE SUBSTANCE
21. KINSHIP
22. RADIATION




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 once 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 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-graded-school; 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.




CHAPTER I



BETTY


1.

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?* 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.

* Betty's name for discarnate personalities.

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.

2.

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.

* Referring to the beyond-earth consciousness into which she had the
ability psychically to enter.

"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

1.

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.

* For the whole passage, see ACROSS THE UNKNOWN, page 331 ET SEQ.

"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.

2.

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--worthwhile.
"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


1.

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.

2.

"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.

* 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.

"'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.

"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.'"*

* 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.

"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.

* Betty had always, though vaguely, felt herself under the care of the
unseen. S.E.W.

"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 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.'

3.

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 Garden 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.

4.

"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:

* 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.

"'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.'

"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."

5.

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)


1.

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 automatic writing before I
seriously arranged my busy days to comply.

"'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.*

* As a matter of fact, the time she thus dedicated averaged much longer.

"Being rather humorously inclined, after making 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.

* 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.

"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 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.

* The communicators.

"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.

"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 released, 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 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."

* The Invisibles used the term station-or receiving station-instead of
the usual "medium" because, they maintained, the latter has too many
connotations.

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."

 3.

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."

2.

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."

3.

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."

4.

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."

5.

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."

6.

"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"


1.

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.

2.

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."*

* 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.

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 before 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 us