The Other World

[Monday, February 27, 2006]

Slide-switch as a concept

(8 a.m.) I went to bed asking Joseph to give me his biography in a dream. Edgar Cayce pointed out years ago that dreams are the purest form of psychic experience – presumably because the common self does not infect the content with assumptions, wishes to be fulfilled, and an active interpreting mechanism ready to leap to conclusions and thereby distort the experience. So I spent a night that was – well, different! No dreams remembered, however. So let’s see.

Joseph, was it a good idea, asking for you to send me information while I slept? And was it your idea? And – did it work? I don’t seem to know any more this morning but I notice that in these past few weeks I learn by writing it out; it isn’t like I knew ahead of time what I was going to write.

Any idea is a good idea. How do you know it won’t work ahead of time? But this assumes common sense, of course – for them in the studio audience, as you would say. Was it my idea as opposed to yours? That’s way too big a question for the moment because it means tearing down a lot of assumptions and building ‘em back up different, so let’s put that aside. Did it work? Well it didn’t work the way you had in mind, did it. But not many new things do. You might look at it this way – your asking for a dream giving you my life story translates out to your pushing your slide-switch all the way up. On your control panel you have got these switches for things in general, and for other lives you set it to 80% so you wouldn’t be overwhelmed. But you just set up a separate switch for me and pushed it as far as it would go. You see? It’s just a way of looking at it, but it does give the idea. Continue reading 44 – One Life. Two versions.

[Sunday, February 26, 2006]

8:30. I could get quietly excited over this. It almost seems a way forward.

It is a way forward, and maybe the only way forward for millions of people. And, you see, all the threads we been weaving these past sessions are a part of it.

I wouldn’t be able to summarize them but yes, I get the sense of it.

Well, that is where you are wrong. You can summarize it, and that is something you can do as well as anybody. I know what you mean – you don’t have it all in your head ready to spit out again – but after all that’s why the good lord made pencils and paper.

Now, consider. If you’re going to have a world-wide movement, one thing you don’t want is a center and somebody in charge. That’s just King Stork all over again. But instead you are going to see a whole boatload, as you say, of different movements, different organizations, different bodies, and the only thing they’ll have in common, maybe, is that they start to see the problem in more or less the same way. Continue reading 43 – A way forward

[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