“Have you seen my father?” Mr. Gaylord asked.
“No. He is a healer now, and has come back from the plane beyond to help the newly arrived find their balance. I have tried to get in touch with him, but he is busy and I haven’t yet met him, but still hope to. Few come back for any work here, and their greater knowledge makes them very much in demand, just as a great surgeon is with you in times like these.”
Again the talk turned into more personal channels, and Mr. Gaylord asked a specific question, affecting future arrangements.
“... Your choice will be influenced, probably, by many considerations, as choice must always be in your life.... I can influence you in ways I can’t define in words, but I can’t properly tell you how to choose—as you know better than I. You taught me that, and it’s true. Every fellow on his own feet.... Not that I’m not eager to help, sir. You understand that, don’t you? But the way I can help most is by a close and constant association and suggestion, that still stops short of definite expression of choice for you. That is your privilege. Mine is to help you see the way more clearly.”
“Do you know what we are thinking, at all times?”
“Not always. We read most of the thought of the sympathetic forces, and some of everybody’s. I can’t always answer the thought I read, though I can sometimes. But Margaret keeps up such a stiff guard, I can’t always get over a thing she doesn’t know is asked.”
I said I was sorry for that, and did not understand it, as I thought I had lowered all guards as far as he was concerned.
“You can’t understand all the barricades—and the limitations, too—of consciousness. Sometimes I sneak one through on you, but you are from Missouri, all right! You want to see the works before you admit the applicant.”
After dinner, we talked a little about the publication of these communications, and of the extent to which personal messages should be quoted.
As soon as we gave him opportunity, Frederick said: “You people can’t guess what it means to hear you talking about me, in the old, happy way. I’ve missed myself terribly, you know.... You’ve been talking about the book. If you’ll permit a suggestion from me, the plan of copious quotation from all the interviews that have bearing on the big message, as well as some characteristic extracts from the more personal messages, under initials frankly substituted for real ones, is to my notion the way to do it.... A good deal of what we have been allowed to say was because this message was given through Margaret, and the rest of us have told things that illumine and carry on the message for the world. We have all wanted you of our own to know these things, but the channels through which this has come to her have been chosen for her fuller conviction, and to enable her to deliver this with greater force.”