The Other World

[Sunday, February 26, 2006]

(7 a.m.) I begin to see it, my friend. I got the outline of it, but of course can’t tell the detail or how to make it practical – and I well understand that making it practical is not my job, as it calls for talents I do not have, and would lead me away from the talent I do have. But I will help you get out the word and we will see what happens.

Yes. If people in your time don’t respond, well – like I said – it won’t do itself, it needs people to fight. But this gives ‘em a vision, for them that catch it.

All right, Joseph, proceed. And this time I’m going to raise objections and questions as I see them if only to help you to deal with your unseen audience. Continue reading 42- A worldwide anti-slavery society

[Saturday, February 25, 2006]

8:45 p.m. Good stuff. Typed, sent out. Proceed, friend.

You in your time are facing – or not facing – the same issue we finally had to look at in my time. We won, but the way we had to win, we lost, too. Mr. Lincoln could have helped us but they killed him. What you are going to do, I don’t know.

If we have a Lincoln among us, he is well hidden.

Ours was not all that obvious ahead of time. But where is your organization, your common understanding? I don’t see it, if you do.

The issue is still the issue that was behind slavery, the issue Mr. Lincoln pin-pointed when he described it as the dictum that says you sow the wheat and grow it and harvest it and grind it and take the flour and make bread, and I will eat it. Continue reading 41 – Slavery then and now

[Saturday, February 25, 2006]

Chasing discrepancies

All right, Joseph, it’s 8:40 a.m., let’s begin.

Joseph, I have resisted going back and re-reading your earlier messages, but even as we were talking yesterday I felt there was a big discrepancy between stories. Let me get straight in my mind what concerns me, then I’ll give you a crack at them. (Also I am very much aware I don’t have your life story during and after the war. I feel like you did survive it, but – well, that’s for you to tell. Curious situation, waiting.)

Elements –

When did you marry Pretty Flower [sic]

When did she die?

When did you live with her family?

I remember you saying you stayed in town long enough to hear that Abraham Lincoln had been elected, then went up to your family. I haven’t looked but I had the impression your wife was still alive.

Yes you had the impression but she wasn’t.

Let me say just a word about this process. In the past, this is where you would have quit, when it got hard to know. But that is just the time to push on, and ask, don’t evade or shirk the question. Remember, we said you was going to treat it like a story, giving “me” room to make mistakes and not know stuff I ought to know, or say things that contradicted each other. This is important. Think of it as you trying to get a story from a witness. If your witness is basically honest his inaccuracies will smooth themselves out in the over all, or if they don’t, they’ll stand out as exceptions. If he ain’t basically honest, sooner or later he’ll trip himself, ‘cause as Mr. Lincoln famously said, nobody has got a good enough memory to be a good liar. Well, if anybody is keeping track, that’s right. So – keep track. Continue reading 40 – Among Indians (2)

Friday, February 24, 2006

(8:40 a.m.) Getting harder and harder to tell who is acting in response to prompting from whom. As I have heard the question reverberating since last evening, I will oblige and ask it. Joseph, tell me about life with your family.

[Jos. Smallwood] All the work done these past few weeks of your time has been aimed at more than one thing at a time, you know. The information gets out, and other people get encouraged to try to see where their limits and abilities are, and you get expanded access by so much concentrated practice – and, don’t think this occurred to you till pretty recently – this whole process is giving you questions and thoughts on the nature of guidance, and how it works through, and all that. So you might say we’re answering your calls for help before you think to send ‘em. Continue reading 39 – Among Indians (1)

(12:45 p.m.) My friends, if I can set up a three-way link here, can we get Joseph the Egyptian on the line, and Bertram?

[TGU] You can have more or less whatever you want to have. The limiting factor always has been and always will be your own ability to receive.

Yes, I understand that now. Bertram?

[Bertram] I am here as well. There is no limit to the congregation you can have, none save practical limitations of time and consciousness.

I didn’t call us together out of a whim, or only to see if it could be done. I’m wondering – years ago (in my time, of course) I experienced the three of us as holding a note, so to speak. As was pointed out a while ago today, this was more by what we are than by what we do. Can you both say some more about that? Continue reading 38 – A three-way talk

[It just keeps getting stranger. Get used to it. It is as if — and maybe not “as if” the whole long set of interactions was planned as a teaching tool, leading me (and now you) into ever deeper waters. Bertram is a Norman monk in Salisbury, England — he wound up as a bishop elsewhere, I believe — that I became acquainted with 15 years ago.]

[Thursday, February 23, 2006]

We in the physical are focus points

Gentlemen, at your service. Who’s up? Pray bring whomever I need.

[Bertram] The word “pray” attracted me, brother. And this, by the way, is why you should watch the words you use – one reason that words are so powerful is that they vibrate particular strings, to use our “rings and threads” analogy, and so an unintended resonance may bring to light something you would rather not rouse. I do not mean this as any threat or fear-rousing picture. In my day these things were better understood than in yours, but our language describing them has become strange to you, and so for the moment our knowledge has been lost to you. Continue reading 37 – Bertram and theology

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

(9:15 a.m.) Late start today. Well, Joseph, I’m very glad for the material on Emerson. In retrospect it is very strange indeed that I didn’t think to ask you about that visit the first time I contacted you.

Maybe that should reassure you a bit. It ain’t a process under your control, though you sometimes like to think so and other times you’re very afraid that it is. The extent of your immediate control is your being open to it. In fact, let’s talk a little about the process. What’s your biggest question about it? I know your biggest fear, that you’re just fooling yourself and some others. But what is the biggest puzzlement? And there’s a reason I’m asking instead of just telling you: it’ll make you think, and the process will be different. Continue reading 36 – The process