We fell to wondering, then, whether these messages could be flashed to us from a distance, or whether the person communicating must be present, and I asked Frederick whether he could send me a message from a distance.
“No, but we travel in a flash.”
We who had had some experience in receiving these communications spoke of the fear we all had lest we might unconsciously influence the pencil, at times, to write our own imaginings.
“You people have such a fear of imagining things that you shut out a lot we try to tell you,” Frederick interpolated. “We can’t get through doubt, bitterness, resentment, or selfish grief. Fear can be conquered, but doubt shuts the door in our faces. Please relax a little of this too rigid vigilance, and at least entertain the idea we are trying to put over.”
“Do I shut things out by too much vigilance?” I asked.
“You bet you do! But you do it for the best of reasons. You can’t take chances of giving the wrong message.”
To a question about the desire of others on his plane to communicate with those here, he replied: “They are all eager to get in touch, just now. Every one of us here is pulling every thread of connection he can there, because this is a critical time and because never before in the world’s history have so many people been reaching out for the thing that means co-operation and progress, in the biggest and broadest sense, if we can only reach them and convince them that we are all working together, and that we here can help if they will let us.”
Mr. Wylie spoke of some one whose “make-up,” he thought, might enable him to receive these communications.
“Make-up has a lot to do with it,” Frederick returned, “but the peculiar quality of following accurately a thought put forth by a force so subtle that science has failed to detect it is a thing that none of you recognize until it has demonstrated itself.”
Some one asked about a prominent politician, whom Frederick had known well in this life, and he replied: “—— is working his way back to a place in the forces of Production. He had a great opportunity, and used it for personal ends, and now he is learning how to use it for Progress. He is not destructive, nor even deterrent. He is a fine force, delayed a little.”