Wisdom of the Gods, The

LIFE, as we know it, despite its allurements and its pains, is but the shadow of our real and ultimate existence. Before us lies a vast territory of knowledge, the outskirts of which we have barely fringed.

Larger Print, 11 point font

**************

Excerpt:

So: when the explorer sets forth deliberately to explore an unknown territory it is impossible for him to forecast his path or his adventures.

And as one penetrates into the vast forest of psychic research, it is impossible to know whither the adventure may lead, and what experiences may lurk in its depths. Step by step, as advances are made into the mysterious recesses, it is borne upon one with increasing certainty that the thick blacknesses are not unfathomable, that progress is not only possible, but inevitable, and that each step forward leads to amazing discoveries.

The lure of the unknown, which still drives men to the ice of the Poles and to the perils of Everest, is both explicable and understandable. No effort of the scientist or the chemist in search of a new force or a new element, is derided in these days of materialism in excelsis, and no budding Galileo need now fear derision and persecution, as long as he adheres steadily to the material and the physical. It is only the searcher after and the student of the spiritual and the non-material who may be called upon to endure for awhile the enmity and scorn and prejudices of the mentally fossilized, the willfully inert, and the secretly fearful.

I

It was in June, 1923, that I, a slightly bored sceptic, but amiably willing to be amused, attended my first séance. Since then my experiences have been varied and amazing and profound. Those experiences of the nine months that followed from June, 1923, to March, 1924, have been published in my book "Towards the Stars," this narrative is a continuation and and development of that work, it is necessary to recount my initiation to this great truth of survival.

I was on a visit to America and one evening, while staying with Mr. Joseph De Wyckoff at his country home, Arlena Towers, Ramsay, New Jersey, at my host's invitation, the medium, George Valiantine, gave a sitting. There were present, in addition to myself, my host and his nephew. I was in a strange country, a country in which my private and domestic affairs were utterly unknown to the three men who were in the room.

For the first twenty minutes of the sitting nothing happened.

Then the silence was broken by the gentle accents of a woman's voice. I recognized the voice of my favorite sister, Annie, who had passed over ten years since, and between whom and myself there had been a bond of affection, and an intimacy in thought and outlook that was rare indeed. She announced herself by her name, and spoke to me at length with great emotion and tenderness. For over fifteen minutes we talked with each other, as only two persons of great affection and complete understanding can talk. The greater part of the conversation would have lost much of its import to an outsider, so delicate were the shades of its intimacy; and the talk was not in whispers, but in clear, audible tones. Her voice came, not through the mouth of the medium, but independently; in fact, as though she were standing some eighteen inches away from me.

I experienced no element of shock or surprise. We talked fluently and naturally, discussing intimate subjects and events which I had discussed with no one since her passing, and of which, in her lifetime, she and I alone were cognizant. She referred to incidents which occurred twenty years ago-long before I had met any of the other sitters at the séance-and of which I had never spoken, and then she, without any prompting from me, talked of events which had happened to me and affected my life since her passing over.

On the following evening my sister Annie-henceforth I shall call her Annie, because she is still alive in the spirit-again talked with me. On this occasion we spoke for about twenty minutes, and from her I gained many of the wonderful indications of the life which is to come.

During these two evenings over a dozen other spirit voices spoke to us. Each voice was distinct and individual, in accent, tone, phrasing, manner and subject of conversation.

There are, of course, many forms of mediumship, but the rarest, and the most intensely dramatic form of all is unquestionably the mediumship by means of which one is able to listen to the independent and individual spirit voice. Knowing what I do now, after two years of study and thought, I realize that I was peculiarly fortunate in receiving such astounding proofs at my first experience-an experience made, as I have stated, In the blasé, slightly contemptuous mood of the man willing to be amused, but doubtful of the quality of the amusement offered.

It was not chance that led me to this revelation; I am as certain as I am of few things in this life that it had been determined by higher intelligences than mine.

Since that night, I have seldom ceased in my study of this colossal subject. Not only have I read a great mass of the authentic literature of psychical research, but I have visited and studied almost every medium in this country-many of whom, I am sorry to say, proved to be completely disappointing.

II

I maintain deliberately that the record of my experiences, set down in many instances without any comment of mine, in "Towards the Stars" is the most staggering record of the evidence of survival ever published. This is not exaggeration; and I make the assertion in no mood of conceit.

The puny "ego," in face of the illimitable, shrinks into very proper insignificance.

At the risk of being accused of egotism, it would perhaps be as well, in order to help the reader to appreciate the value and nature of the evidence contained in that book, and in the book upon which I now embark, to indulge in a little self-revelation.

I have, I fear, naturally a cold and critical outlook on life, verging possibly upon the cynical. An adolescence in the heart of London's West End tends to remove the bloom from the peach of illusion, and in the course of my life I have met and known many rogues, male and female-some amusing, but mostly intolerably dull. Many have attempted to impose upon me; fortunately for my purse and peace of mind the majority have failed, but to the few successful ones I owe much in the experience I have gained from them. As one grows older one's critical faculties do not diminish and one's cynicism tends to harden, but I still retain sufficiency of youth to resent imposition and to despise clumsy deceit. The amusing, impecunious rogues who haunt the turf, the coulisses of the theatre, the supper-club, and the innumerable semi-smart rendezvous which the plump and desirable "pigeons" are supposed to frequent, are not unknown to me, and I do not flatter myself when I say that they pay me the compliment of leaving me alone.

In addition, I regret to say, a crudely direct appeal to the emotions has the deplorable effect of offending my artistic sense, and of leaving me uncomfortably cold.

When, therefore, with calm deliberation I decided to embark on a study of the gigantic subject which had so suddenly and so dramatically opened itself before me, I should like the reader to understand that it was no easily impressed, highly susceptible and inexperienced investigator who set himself the task, but one with a varied knowledge of the world in its amusing and unamusing phases, and possessed of that curious microcosm which is crudely labeled West End life.

Were I blessed with illusion, I should soon have lost it in the course of the investigations I undertook while writing "Towards the Stars." The mediums in this country are few-were mediumship a well-paid trade, as assert the fanatical opponents of any revelation of an after-life, the ranks of the profession would surely be more crowded-and even amongst that few I came across the dull, the incompetent, and the stupidly dishonest. But as the undoubted existence of a fraudulent bank manager does not cause one to lose faith in banking, so the existence of an occasional fraudulent medium does not alter my belief in survival after death.

My considered conclusion, reached after a prolonged series of experiments and investigations, involving many failures and irritations, is that two facts of colossal importance to the human race have been established beyond cavil. First, that there is a survival of the spirit after bodily death, and second, that it is possible for living people to enter into direct communication with those who have passed over.