To the many inquiries as to how direct communication may be established between persons here and the dear ones gone before, this message of David Bruce’s to his wife contains the briefest and most comprehensive answer.
She said: “I wonder what he’s going to tell me?”
“I’m going to tell you to be calm and serene of spirit, no matter what seems to be happening to disturb you. Most of the disturbing factors of individual life on your plane are ephemeral—things of the moment and of the place. Others are more important than they seem. I am not always able to tell you about them. It delays you, instead of helping you, when the decision is not your own. One way that I can truly help when you are troubled is by what we can best describe as the free communion. When you are perturbed in spirit and full of doubt, it is difficult for us to reach you.... Open the door of spiritual force to forces here, and we can always help. That is what we hope to establish as a recognized truth in your life there. That a force as yet unknown to science is operating between the planes, and can be developed and used in your life there—to a less degree than in ours, but still with great effect. It is for this that we work in this communion, which is more definite to you now and less so to us. We know the limits to which material manifestation like this is confined, and are eager to teach you gradually the freer and fuller way.”
XV
“A thought that will occur to many persons is that the truths we endeavor to teach are not entirely new.
“Truth is fundamental and eternal. There is no new truth; there is only new understanding and application of truth that has always existed. No great teacher has ever told new truth. No great teacher has ever told truth in a new way, until the older teachings had begun to lose their hold on the minds of men. No great teacher has ever found an audience for his new interpretation of truth, until the minds of men had groped through darkness toward a light dimly perceived, if at all.
“The time is ripe now for the crystallization of new application of eternal truth. Men hunger for bread of the spirit, and thirst for the waters of eternity. This is the answer of eternal forces to their search, and it comes, for the first time, not through a teacher or a prophet, but through a human instrument sensitive to a high degree to the influence of the force that is life’s motive power.
“There are many conditions affecting the application of that force in these communications, that cannot now be explained; many conditions influencing its direction, that you do not understand. Some day your scientists will discover and prove by experiment certain laws now unrecognized, and these days of doubt and scoffing will disappear in a past filled with denial and discouragement of almost every discovery now called modern and progressive.