CAN WE teach the so-called “dead?” Can we talk to and help a person after he has passed from his earthly body?

The following true story indicates that this can be done. At any rate, it shows that there are invisible powers who work with those who selflessly and earnestly seek to help those who have passed on to the Spiritual world.

Some years ago, one of my friends, a romantic young widow, requested me to accompany her to Madame B——’s fortune-telling establishment, which proved to be in a collection of small shanties on a lonely little farm in the suburbs. I did not believe much in fortune-telling, for I could always foretell my own future better than anyone else, but I fell into the humor of the situation, and went with her. The fortune-teller was well known as a kindly young woman who had recently lost her own husband, but was keeping up her work as she had no other way of earning a livelihood. She was reputed to find lost or stolen articles, to give good advice on love and business, and to foretell the future. I had once tried her, but in my case she was hopelessly mixed, and her advice, if followed, would have been almost disastrous to me.

We found the fortune-teller in her booth, and after my friend had come out with a smiling face, much pleased over a happy future foretold to her, I went in and opened my own hand to have my fortune told.

To my surprise, the fortune-teller made no attempt to read my palm; instead, she launched out in a wild appeal for help and advice. She became almost hysterical in her appeals for me to help in her dreadful predicament. She was a likable person, I knew her through many of my friends who had patronized her, all of whom had given her a good name, and I was kindly disposed toward her. I listened and questioned her, and what she told was as weird as some of the tales of Bulwer Lytton.

She told me of how she had married when quite a young girl, a traveling hypnotist. He had a great deal of this power and had hypnotized her to make her a mind-reader. When in the hypnotic or mesmerized condition she could read other people’s minds, find lost articles, and even foretell the future to some extent. For twenty years she had lived with her husband in this way, sometimes traveling from place to place, finally settling down on the little farm where she was the chief provider of necessary money, made by the powers her husband had developed in her.

After his death, the influence of his mind over hers was even stronger than when he was alive. Daily he visited her, she said, and her life was becoming intolerable. For a while he had advised her, but now he was telling her that he could no longer do without her; that she must kill herself and come and be with him in the spirit world. Daily she visited his grave, and only when she laid her hand upon it, was she free from his mental influence.

“What shall I do,” she enquired. “Must I kill myself? Is there no other way? I know it is wicked to kill one’s self, but his will is greater than mine. I cannot hold out much longer. Help me, help me!”

I was amazed that she should appeal to me. I had never tried to work in a metaphysical way, but I had read a great many books on the subject, and had passed through some wonderful experiences of my own. I had kept these to myself, however, as well as the fact that I had taken a short study course under a most wonderful teacher who had spent most of his life in study of the occult. My own knowledge was rather limited, but her presence had evidently penetrated to the fact that I held the means to free her from her terrible obsession.

Yielding to my impulse of pity, I told her of a book I had read and of a course of lessons which I had finished a year or more ago. I told her that I would bring her the book, “The Ancient Wisdom,” and that I would also lend her the manuscripts of the lessons. I directed her to get rid of, to pack up or do away with, everything that her husband had used when he was alive. Knowing something of psychometry, this was to relieve her of his vibrations which filled the place, and which even I could feel. I told her to read the book to him as if he were present, thus informing him how he was keeping himself and her from further progress. The book gave detailed information concerning life after death, something I had not given much thought to before this interview.

She promised faithfully to study the lessons as directed and to read the book to her “dead” husband, and I left soon after taking her the book and manuscript for an extended trip over the country.

Three months later, when I returned, I went out to see her. To my surprise, she had moved away, and the buildings had been torn down to make room for military purposes. I followed directions from neighbors and found her living in a very pretty, brand new bungalow, which, apparently, she had been occupying for some weeks. She was greatly changed for the better, both in mind and health.

She told me that soon after I had left, her land had been confiscated by the government, and that she had been given this pretty home in a much better location. Thus nearly all the objects which she had associated with her husband’s memory had been done away with and could not be restored. Nearly all of his personal belongings had been implements used on the little farm, and she did not need them any more. She had kept little of her former life. She told me that she had carried out my instructions fully, and no longer was drawn daily to the cemetery. She said that her husband had seemingly recognized and accepted as truth what she had read him, so that his mind had ceased to visit her.

As she talked, I thought of the damsel in Acts 16:16-19, who had followed the disciples, crying out, no doubt, for help from her masters, the hypnotists, who had made great gains from her seership. In this woman’s case however the miracle had been wrought so quietly and without opposition that it all seemed natural. Yet both she and I know that the same God-force which healed the damsel had healed her. She had experienced a great spiritual uplift, and has become a happy and useful woman.   —D. V. S.

The Knowledge possessed by any one of us, even the wisest, is a limited thing, and the man who depends upon what he thinks he knows is like a tank of stagnant water; sooner or later it becomes corrupt. We are, or should be, channels for the LIVING WATER, for a flow of knowledge from a Source infinitely HIGHER and GREATER than we ourselves.—Brother XII.

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