Chapter 7 - The Spirit and the Individual

“I was washing my breakfast dishes one morning when it occurred to me to go to visit a friend who lived several miles away. I did my work and started to dress for my journey, when there came over me such a feeling of depression, or despondency, or gloom, that I could not understand. I kept on getting ready, all the time trying to reason away the feeling. But it would not go. Finally I got my hat on and one glove and started for the door, when such a heaviness came over me that I turned back into my room and sat down saying, ‘God, I want to know what the meaning is of all this.’

The answer came loud, strong and firm, ‘Stay at home.’ I stayed, and taking off my hat, gloves and cape I felt so light I seemed to walk on air. At the time I supposed the voice (I call it voice for want of a more definite term) had told me to stay at home because some one was coming to me for help. This was my first year as a teacher and healer. But not a soul came that day, nor that night, and the thought flitted through my mind that perhaps it was all nonsense after all and I might as well have gone.

Well, the outcome was that the train I would have taken met with a fearful accident in which many were killed or badly injured. This is only one of many similar experiences I have had. I do not stop to reason out things. The world has tried for 1900 years to follow reason, and look at the outcome I follow my intuition and it never fails me.” -- Flora P. Howard, Los Angeles, Cal.

One’s reason is not a thing to be belittled and denied. It is his crowning glory, created for use.

But it is not all the wisdom a man has access to, nor is it the greatest. The man who exalts his understanding above the wisdom of the rest of creation, and un-creation, is a fool and sure to come to grief.

But he who rejoices in his personal understanding or reason as the means by which he taps the source of all wisdom, is in a fair way to profit by his own intelligence and the universal intelligence besides.

Everybody knows his foresight is not so good as his hindsight. He has demonstrated the fact many a time, by as many little tumbles off his high horse. Really, it seems as if he might have learned by this time not to be quite so sure about his reason.

After Mrs. Howard knew that the train she meant to go on had been wrecked she saw, plainly, why it was unwise for her to go on that particular train. Her reason had been enlightened, her hindsight perfected.

By what? By universal intelligence.

Suppose New York City should set itself up as the center of all wisdom -- suppose she were to say, “What I cannot reason out is not worth knowing.” Suppose she continued to send out decrees into all the world, but turned up her nose at the messages sent in to her. What do you suppose would happen? She would go to smash in a week. It is by her reception of all those messages as to outside doings, that she is enabled to reason out her business problems and send out messages that move the world. To exalt New York knowledge and reason, and despise outside knowledge and reason, would quickly ruin her.

Intuition is the wireless line by which we receive directions from every other station in the universe. After Mrs. Howard had received and obeyed her message from the universal -- some days after -- she knew why she had been so directed.

He who is puffed up in his own conceit is eternally despising his intuitions, following his back-number reasons, and getting into the “accidents.” Then he wonders why he is so abused.

You see, we have none of us ever passed this way before. This day is a new day; this bit of road has never been traveled before. Nobody can know by reason what we shall run into just around the bend there. He may make a rough guess at it, but he cannot know. But -- there is Something which, whether it knows or does not know consciously, what is, or will be, around that corner there -- there is Something which can and does send us by the wireless line a message to keep away, or to go to it, as the case may be. Now Mrs. Howard was a woman with no desire to be in such a smash, and she believed her intuitions would keep her warned away from them.

Now next door to Mrs. Howard there may have lived another woman, just as “good” as Mrs. Howard, just as devoted to her intuitions, who received a message to go on that train. At the same moment Mrs. Howard’s heart grew heavy and she heard the message, “Stay at home,” this other woman's heart grew light and she heard the message, “Go.” So she went blithely forth to the train. She mounted the steps and walked into the car and along past several vacant seats before she felt the impression to sit down. She sat down and gazed happily out of the window.

By and by, as they were bowling swiftly along there came a sudden crash, and shrieks, and hiss of steam. Then there was work to do.

This woman neighbor of Mrs. Howard’s, beyond a little shaking up from which she almost instantly recovered, was entirely uninjured. There were dead and dying in front and behind her, but she was safe. There was work to do and she was there to do it. You see, this woman was a physician and surgeon, and the only one on the train. She had been years preparing for such work, and she believed her intuitions would lead her, strong and well herself, into just such opportunities as this. So the message which depressed Mrs. Howard brought light to the soul of this woman.

Each received and interpreted the message according to her own particular character. And what about the injured and killed? They too were “led by the spirit.” Each by his own self-built character related himself to his particular “fate.” I wouldn’t wonder if a good many of them did it by filling up on the accident and criminal columns of the daily papers. The man who thinks in terms of accident is pretty sure to meet them. But probably more of the “victims” were drawn through their false religion. The man who thinks himself (who really thinks it, “in his heart”) -- who thinks himself a “vile worm” and a great sinner deserving of a “bad end,” and yet who has not “repented,” is daily relating himself more closely to all sorts of violent and horrible things.

And everywhere and at all times the violent man, the strenuous man, no matter how “good” he may be, is preparing himself to be led into whatever catastrophe fits him. There is no hit and miss about our “fates” -- we get just what we are fitted for.

And through all ages we have been fitting ourselves; and we are still at it. He who is not busy fitting himself for the best is relating himself to the less good.

He who fits himself to die with his boots on will die so. He who fits himself for “accidents” will die by an accident. He who fits himself for life may perchance never again see death.

When the bubonic plague is about to appear in a place all the birds fly away. What warned them? Oh, that was only “instinct” -- something common, that we wise beings never use.

Before Mt. Pelee spit destruction, all the wild animals (not one of which could have had any personal knowledge, or any record of volcano lore) fled from the vicinity. The tame animals whimpered and cowered and those which could ran away. Then the people’s hearts began to sink and the most ignorant of them ran after the animals. As Mt. Pelee grew more emphatic in her prophecies all hearts grew heavier and heavier and all souls heard the message “Go.”

Then there was hurried preparation for a hasty exodus. But no; the wise, educated, sensible men put their heads together and decided that they would not and others should not be guided by any such common thing as “instinct,” or by their own sinking hearts. No! Even though their hearts fell into their shoes and their knees knocked and their teeth chattered they would be sensible, they would; they’d use their divine reason, they would -- Mt. Pelee had never destroyed them before and it wouldn't now.

So the wise reasoners corralled the poor fools. And they were well corralled. Only one ever got away.

Now just what this spirit is like that tries to lead us into all truth, is a thing I don't know. But that there is such a spirit that pervades and would save all creatures from harm I do know, both by intuition (the spirit’s witness with my spirit) and by actual and repeated experiences of both kinds. I have been led of the spirit into ways of pleasantness, peace and plenty; and before that I turned up my nose at the spirit and went my own way into all sorts of troubles.

And I have a theory, based on the spirit’s witness with mine, as to what this spirit is and how it acts.

The spirit is the universal intelligence which fills this universe so full there is not room for anything else. There are just little eddies and whirls and currents and cross-currents in this great ocean of intelligence. And you are one eddy in it, and I another; and each of us sets up little swirls and currents that move us about and move other things to us. And when a leaf floats by it is drawn into our eddy, but when we swirl by a rock, the rock in unmoved and so are we. We are not related to the rock.

When gold is placed beside a horseshoe magnet it stays put. The magnet and gold are not interested in each other. But that does not prove that the magnet is stupid and dead. No, there is a great current of longing in that magnet. If it had means of locomotion it would go about the world seeking, seeking -- perhaps never knowing just what it was seeking, but still seeking. And by and by it would begin to feel a definite inclination to go in a certain direction.

Now if it is just a fool magnet without great pride in its brains it will follow that definite inclination. And as it journeys the drawing power will grow, and it will journey faster, and behold, it will fly into the arms of its affinity, a steel bar. And it will cling and cling, and the bar will cling, and joy will be born.

It takes two, and an exchange of intelligence, to bring joy into being.

Or perhaps our magnet will stay at home and long, long, until it draws to it steel filings. This is not so fanciful as you may suppose. All things are intelligent. All things are putting their little compulsions on all creation for satisfaction. And in due time all compulsions will be met. The great sea is seething with intelligence, and affinities are coming together.

It is the attraction of the magnet for the steel that constitutes what I call the spirit. That attraction is intelligence.

When in doubt as to the meaning of your solar center feelings, do nothing. Come back as Mrs. Howard did, sit down; be still; ask for the meaning; and obey.