by Stewart Edward White

Introduction

This book bears my name as author. As a matter of fact, my contribution was the plain drudgery of verbatim reporting and the professional writer’s knack of putting the material into easily readable form. None of the concepts were mine: they were dictated to me by my wife Betty some six months after her death through a friend who chooses to protect her anonymity under the pseudonym of “Joan.” Joan is a psychic of the type that would be called a “trance medium,” were she a professional. But I can count on the fingers of my two hands the number of people who know Joan as Joan.

Betty herself was a “psychic.” She had accepted this fact for some twenty years before her death, since the evening of March 17, 1919, to be exact, when she accidentally made the discovery. And between 1919 and 1939 she underwent a continuous and rigorous training as a means to what she called “expansion of spiritual consciousness.” Though the gain of so-called psychic powers was not the objective, nevertheless she acquired them as a sort of by-product, and was able to do various feats supposed to be possible to “psychic” persons. She could enter at will a higher consciousness from which she reported back her experiences and what she had seen and was taught. She was also able to transmit to me the ideas of discarnate entities we called the Invisibles, either by reporting back as though by dictation or by permitting her speech mechanism to be used directly. These powers and abilities she never used idly, for curiosity, personal satisfaction or any such lesser purposes. She sought and used them to one end only, the expansion of spiritual consciousness.

The War Dead

Some one had been speculating on the confusion that must obtain on the other side because of the numbers of those killed in war. At this point Betty suddenly took charge.

“No,” she denied, “it is a busy place but not a time of confusion. This is an orderly place. There is for each one here a certain job, for him and for no one else; and he must not abandon that task until it is finished. Want to know the procedure?”

Naturally we clamored that we certainly did – it was an old promise.

“Well,” Betty began, “first of all, we have to find one who speaks the language of the newly arrived soldier. It is a mistake to imagine that merely coming here enables us to speak and understand all languages. We don’t. Suppose the newly arrived is a Russian. He is met by some one who speaks Russian, who not only speaks to him in his language, but surrounds him with the vision of familiar things. For instance, he might be furnished with the kind of bath used in his country, or the same sort of clothes, and all that, so he could start at ease in things familiar. You must remember that most of them [the new dead] do not know what has happened to them. They probably think that they have been wounded or stunned, and that now they are in some new rest area. Most of them argue that as they can see and hear and are not under the ground, therefore they are alive.

“Next, when so many of them come here all at once, we have officers assigned who have been here some time, who assemble these men in the formations they are used to, and who explain their new status to them, en masse, in their own language, and who even may march them away to a rest place.

“Curiously, the first thing many of the soldiers want is to send a letter home. You see, they are still confused, they still do not fully understand. If they can write, we arrange for them to do so; if they cannot write then there is always some one here who can write in their own language for them; and they do so. Of course the letters cannot be sent; but just the writing of them helps somehow.

“Then most of them [the new dead] are taken to a big place –” (She fumbled about for a word, rejecting ‘hospital.’) “Well, the nearest I can get is a kind of solarium. You see a great many require treatment. For instance, a man who has been hit thinks he is without one leg. That thought must be cured here, just as the leg would have to be treated with you, in one of your hospitals. Here is where we treat and care for such – well – disabilities.

“In the case of some, when finally they realize they are dead, they become uncontrollably hysterical. We then induce sleep.

“It is tremendous, but there are millions here, and there is no confusion. Our organization is like an army. We get our orders. I have mine. I could not be as useful dealing directly with shattered people, so my work is with the actual nurses – I deal with those nurses. At first I had five under me; and then another five was added, and another five, and another, until now I have many. Roughly, I teach the nurses how to meet the dead in their own frequency, and then slowly, slowly bring them up until they are our frequency. That is my job – to teach that.

“There are places for them [the new dead] where there is nothing but peace. There each is given a vision of the future, of what the sacrifice he has made is going to mean to the world; what his contribution has been; how much better the world will be because of it. And to this place each brings whatever is his contribution for this peace. For instance, right now there is a group of Russian soldiers who have brought music. And the others bring whatever they have that can make pleasure – the enjoyments of life.

“Here’s another thing: a natural first instinct is to go back to their homes and people. They are not allowed to do so until they understand that they cannot now do so in the flesh. And when they do go, one of us is assigned to accompany each – if possible one of us who is more or less able to make an impression on some member of the family or a friend. As a matter of fact, one entity here is assigned to each one who comes here. It is a question of individual frequency, and therefore the assignments are arranged by skilled and higher beings here: what one might call the staff command.

“This staff work is important. What I am told to do, no one but me could do. It’s a matter of my own individual frequency.

“Entities here of lower development take very little part in this reception business, but a great part in the midst of battle. You see we can’t allow these entities to have anything to do with the new dead, because they would want to take them back again.

“During the night we are sometimes able, while they sleep, to bring parents, wives, sweethearts to their loved ones here. I know of one very touching incident. We brought a woman who is still there, in the Obstructed [the earth plane], to her daughter, who is here. The daughter had been a nurse, and she was killed. I don’t know just how, but she was killed with her arms outspread, like a cross, across a door. Anyway, the night we brought the mother, in her sleep, this girl insisted she must have on a nurse’s uniform. When the time came for the mother to go back she did not want to go. She threw herself on her knees to me, and begged to stay here with her daughter. Of course, I could do nothing about that. But she was so frantic that finally we had to put her to sleep here to induce her to go back; and we did not leave her until she was safely back.

“So you see, I am very busy, for this is only part of what I do.”

“What I’d like to do,” she continued, “would be to get out a little book for soldiers. A short one, not over fifty pages. To sell for twenty-five cents. It should be sold for something, and not given away, for they don’t value things given away. What does man live for? What does he seem to lose by death? What does he gain when he passes? He finds over here what he wanted to find there.

“I would want to explain it in simple words and sentences. Something a man could remember and pass on. What does a man want of life? He gets exactly the same thing after death.”

No Real Separation

What I have called the “war dead,” the multitudes passing over from battle, are the bereavements that hit with the strongest impact. Yet actually they differ in no manner from any other loss by death. We are inclined to think more of their mass, their sheer weight of numbers, than of the fact that each carries its full of poignancy. Indeed, it may even be some small comfort to reflect that others are grieving too! And there is the sustaining glow and pride in sacrifice for a common cause. But each death on the battlefield is to some one the full measure of bereavement. We forget that. No matter in what manner we lose our dearest, we feel exactly the same grief. And the cry for help in the lone instance is often the more anguished because there seems to be no reason.

Immediately following the transition we call death, what generally is the first thing of which the ‘dead’ person is made conscious – what I mean is, is he ‘asleep’ for a greater or lesser period, then awakened and some one assigned to make him aware of his present surroundings? Is he still a creature of free will? Is his progress in wider fields, greater horizons, and better understanding, slower or faster according to the individual? If he is instructed, what briefly, is that instruction? What of those, who, by suicide, hurry their departure? What is one of the difficulties that confront those over there, in the same sense that poverty causes unhappiness and discontent here? Shall I find and recognize and know a lost one, or will she have developed beyond me into a higher plane?

“The two best assurances I can offer in reply are these: The one who is gone on is unchanged, busy, and not in some far-off and amorphous ‘heaven’; he is still in intimate touch, and there is no real separation.

“There is no genuine separation, and the only unhappy barrier that can be interposed between yourselves and those who have gone on into the Unobstructed [the astral plane] is undue grief carried to the point of desolation. That interposes a barrier. Your dear ones understand perfectly, of course, how natural it is that you grieve. But the very closeness of the tie brings us [it is Betty telling this, from her vantage of the Unobstructed] a complete awareness of your grief; and it must make us sad to see you suffering. Those on this side do not suffer or sorrow as you do there.” Betty was expressing the general principle, not speaking personally, of course. “We too regret the separation, but we understand and we cannot grieve. But we must share your sadness when you grieve so much. You love us who are here, and you would do anything for us, would you not? Then if you want to contribute something to us, do something for us, keep away from undue depression and grief. That is the one positive thing you can do for us. You can at least avoid casting a shadow on our new estate.

“Or, to put it bluntly in another way; we certainly cannot be sorry for them, where they are now. If we are sorry for anyone it is for ourselves, and that is really a form of self-pity. We are hardly justified in indulging that, especially at the expense of our loved one’s peace of mind.”

Even to those convinced of immortality come doubts and uncertainties as to the completeness of the separation; both now, of course, but also in the future when they themselves shall enter the Unobstructed. They fear one gone before may have developed, grown, far beyond reach. To this Betty was much amused.

“Do not worry about that. The development of consciousness in the Unobstructed universe is indeed, in a manner of speaking, passing from one plane to a higher. So people there do live on different planes. But right here on earth it is exactly the same. You are on a different plane of consciousness from the man digging the ditch for a sewer in front of your place. You can go out and talk to him – on his plane – but he would be unable to meet you on your plane. That is to say, he would assuredly fail to meet you were you to talk calculus to him. In that sense you and he certainly live on different planes, do you not? Nevertheless you are not physically separated. And you can meet on whatever ground is common to you both. The mistake is in taking ‘planes’ as geographical.”

Suicide Retards Growth

“In general principle nothing one has earned spiritually is ever lost; and one must go on in the evolution of spiritual development. One can do things to retard or make difficult that progress, but can do nothing to lose it or stop it. Suicide is one of those things that make it difficult. Very difficult.

“One of the reasons we are on earth is to fill out as best we can the capacity with which we came here. The degree to which we accomplish that determines our status – and our capability – in the next phase of life. Naturally if, of our own volition, we cut this life short, we are handicapping ourselves for the future. No, I don’t think it wrong to look forward to another life, but not at the expense of this one, and certainly not to the extent of suicide. No matter how much we look forward to a new existence – or why – as long as we feel we have a job to finish here we should not choose to quit it and step over the border, even if the free choice were offered us. Only when we have finished off are we ripe and ready to go.

“I wish, I were possessed of greater wisdom than is given me. I can only give you generalities on which you can work yourself. But, our Invisibles say, it is the work that one does himself, and not what is handed to him ready-made, that has the real constructive power. Suicide is no solution to anything. The very act of suicide cuts one off, for a long period, from normal participation in life. One does not, as in normal death, go on at once there from where he left off here. He is not ‘punished,’ but he must first get back to normal, so to speak. Like getting over a shock; and it is most uneasy and uncomfortable. He is not escaping one bit from anything. There is no possible gain from a mere shift of environment.”

Excerpt from The Stars Are Still There

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