Love Can Open Prison Doors

by Starr Daily

Except for idiocy and other conditions of mental invalidism, personal failure is indefensible. The failure is his own indictment and conviction.

During the last two years I have interviewed more than three hundred men and women who have openly admitted they were abject failures in life. In each case I have asked, "Why?" And in every instance the answer has been in the character of an alibi. But in no case has the failure laid the blame for defeat at his or her own door.

In my own experience and in the cases of all others I have found this to be an inescapable truth: that when a man offers an excuse, an alibi for himself, or in any way lays the blame for his weakness, conditions, or failures on some one or some thing outside himself, he is invariably wrong, and in nine cases out of ten he is a weakling and a coward who is roundly condemned by his own spirit.

His alibis may and generally do enlist the sympathy of those upon whom they are practiced. But if he is a normal human being, there is one person who will not accept his offering, and that is the person who is his real self. Mild of manner, easy-going, and infinitely patient, this real person, who dwells silently within him, listens to his excuses and then whispers softly, "You must tell it to your friend George: but not to me."

If you insist, this quiet man within will begin to shame you with a long string of apt comparisons. He will point out those who have less advantage and native ability, but who are successful. He will take you into the bedrooms of the ill and incapacitated and let you observe courage at work in the service of humanity. He will present you with a long list of names in the huge book of political, industrial, artistic, cultural, civic, religious, and scientific life. Then he will tell you how many of these were practically illiterate, inarticulate, friendless, without direction, influence, or prestige but took advantage of opportunities that have swirled unnoticed about you all your life.

This inner man once spoke to a friend through Thomas Edison. The great inventor and his friend were walking along a city street. The friend wanted to know if it were not very difficult to succeed in this high-speed world of terrific competition. Mr. Edison's eyes directed the gaze of his friend to a ragged, prematurely old man on whose bent shoulders lay a large sack of junk. Then he answered: "Yes; but it is more difficult to fail."

On a day in the spring of 1930 I sat in the cell of a fellow convict. As I had done, he had wasted the best years of his life behind prison bars. He was telling me that he was sick and tired of prison bells, profitless labor, and convict hash. But at forty it was too late to think of turning "Honest John."

I inquired into his particular brand of reasons for failure , because all criminals are failures, whether they be big protected ones who never see prison, or little unprotected ones who rarely see anything else. He had figured it all out and possessed an alibi as iron-clad as the cell door behind which we sat. He could trace it all back to an unhappy instance in his childhood when a too stern father flailed the hide off him because he wanted to see what made the wheels go around in the family clock. Had his unimaginative dad been more appreciative of the genius behind his destructive curiosity, he might now be a mechanical engineer instead of a weary slave in the prison rock quarry.

"I'm dressing out next month," I told him. "And I'm never coming back."

"Whatta ya think you're gonna do'?" he asked, giving me a wise smile.

"I learned the tricks of making dishonest money," was my reply, "and to the degree I succeeded I failed. Now I'm going to learn the art of earning an honest living. Isn't that good logic?"

He assured me that eighty per cent of the convicts were two, three, and four-time losers, and that every one of them had made that same remark a thousand times. "But it don't mean anything," he added. "It's just like the resolution a drunk makes on the morning after. He's never gonna take another drink as long as he lives. But in a couple o' hours he's all lit up again, an' everything looks Jake."

I insisted that mine was not an idle New Year's resolution. "But what can you do? You don't know how to work. When you go out you'll meet twenty million Honest Johns who do know how, and who know all the ropes about getting jobs. They'll be your competitors in the labor market. They're skilled workers; got good names an' reputations. They can face employers with the best. But what have you to offer ? Just a life of crime. A penitentiary pallor and a lock-step hitch in your gait. A fat chance you'll have. At best I give you six months to try this bug-house notion. Just long enough for the soup-line to stare you in the face. Then you'll wake up with a bang and blast open the first safe you come across."

He did not understand that I had already wakened with a bang while lying half dead in solitary confinement. There in a moment's time the folly of crime and the stupidity of hatred appeared clear cut in my consciousness, and I got an authentic glimpse of the greatest power in all the world, the power of love, which, when lived with any measure of proficiency, could see you through any emergency, dissolve your toughest problems, cause you to lives serenely, triumphantly, and successfully at any time and in any place; that with love on your side as a philosophy of life every obstacle and opposition could be discerned in its true light, as an opportunity to call forth your power.

This was a magnificent vision, although I did have to get it through blind suffering. It has sustained me in all the hard hours since I left the prison, and has turned every difficulty into a glorious challenge and blessing.

After I had caught it, my powers of recollection were stimulated, and I wondered how I could have been so blind as not to see that love and not hate was the real power in this world.

Instantly I began to recall events in my past when the truth of love's power had been made so plain that only a midnight soul could have failed to recognize it. Now, looking back, I could see how the power of love had performed strange things in my life.

I recalled a time when I was being held in jail on suspicion of burglary. For two days and nights I had been subjected to "third degree" police methods in an effort to torture a confession out of me. My head had been beaten with a rubber hose until it resembled a huge stone bruise, swollen beyond human shape, my face black from the congealed blood beneath the surface. Lighted cigars had been pressed against my flesh. I had hung for three hours with my wrists handcuffed over a hot steam pipe. My arms had been twisted behind me and my elbows beaten with black-jacks until the bones felt crunchy. Heavy heels had ground my bare feet against a concrete floor. On the third night of this I was about at the end of my endurance.

Again I was dragged into the torture room and sat down within the semi-circle of twelve big detectives. My previous sustaining energy of hate and anger had dwindled into a dull sense of indifference. I was alarmed at this new state of affairs. For I had learned that pain could easily be assimilated if sufficient hatred could be thrown against it. I did not want to weaken. Death was preferable. But could I stand the pain without the sustaining force of hate?
"You'd better open up and come clean," the Chief informed me. "If you don't you're gonna get the works. Y' understand?"

I continued to sit in silence, expecting the worst, and wondering if I would be able to take it.
"All right, boys," said the Chief. "Get busy. Let the rat have it."

It was the show down. Unless I broke, my life was not worth a dime. I knew this as two of the detectives stepped towards me. Then a strange thing took place in my consciousness. All hate and anger were gone. The vague sense of indifference vanished. And in an unbidden instant there welled up within me an overwhelming compassion for these men, for their pathetic ignorance, their undeveloped souls, for the pitiful condition of their minds and hearts. And as this strange sentiment reached a high peak of intensity within me the Chief spoke, and what he said constituted a minor miracle.

"Don't hit him again," he barked out. "Take him back. I was returned to my cell, and for the remainder of the night I was under the care of a doctor. The next morning I was transferred to a private hospital, where I lived for three weeks. Every day a number of women came to see me, bringing flowers and other gifts. It was all quite mystifying, and the nurses' guarded explanations did not clarify the mystery. These women were the wives of city detectives. I could not figure the thing out. I was only a friendless, unprotected criminal. They had no reason to placate me with gifts and attention because they feared what I might reveal. I was told not to worry about anything, that all bills would be paid. Nor was I returned to the jail on being discharged from the hospital. Instead I was given an envelope and told that I was free to go. In the envelope was no word of explanation. Only five crisp, ten-dollar bills.

It was not until twenty years later, twenty years filled with crime and punishment, that I was able to see through this mystery, and to know the power, because of which my life had been spared and this odd consideration shown me.
On another occasion when I was on the dealer's side of the table, I was an unseeing witness to this transmuting power of love in action. I was robbing the safe in the home of a priest. He surprised me in the act. From a stairway above me I heard his unexpected voice: "What are you doing there, my child?"

I wheeled, my flashlight and gun on him. He was in a night robe and unarmed. "Stand where you are," I commanded sharply. "I've got you covered."

"I mean you no harm." His voice had a rare accent of kindliness and honor in it. Slowly he began descending the steps.

"Stop, or I'll drop you!" I commanded him. With superb assurance he came on, reached the bottom, and walked leisurely over to a light switch and pressed the button. Turning to me, then, he said: "Put your gun down, my child. I only want to talk with you a little while."

Logically, of course, from my point of view, I was in a close place with the odds in my favour. It was not sound criminal judgment for me to accede to his request. The correct procedure under the circumstances would have been to tie him and gag him, then to proceed with the business at hand.

What a singular thing for me to do! I obeyed him and sat in the chair he pointed out. I say singular, because it was so illogical, unreasonable from the viewpoint of a confirmed crimester-- and because, also, I listened to him while he talked to me about God in a most singular way-- a way in which there seemed to be nothing offensive to my God-hating mind. God might have been my own father, or an elder brother, or a very close friend, anything but the fierce-eyed black-bearded monster of wrath, anger, and fire I had heard so much about.

At two o'clock in the morning I accepted this priest's invitation, went with him into the kitchen, and joined him in a cold bite. I left his home without taking his money. He shook my hand and blessed me. I had no fear that when I was out of sight he would exercise what the world calls duty and call the police. To this day I am sure he never mentioned my nocturnal visit.

What was this strange power he possessed over me? He did this because his love was genuine, not the romantic, sentimental emotion that men call love; but that deep sense of compassionate being which was so eloquently expressed by the Master when He said "Neither do I condemn thee." Nothing less than love could have caused me to act in a manner diametrically opposite to my habitual character as a criminal.

You see, I am introducing you to my theme. I am telling you about a power that resides in the hearts of men, which is a power greater than any power ever to be discovered in the realm of natural science.

It is a power possessed by all, but recognized by few. It is the most dynamic and readily accessible power in the universe of men. Every man can contain and express this power. It is practical. And because it is accessible to every man and because it is practical, I am perfectly safe in making again the boldest statement ever made by another human being: that, except by idiocy and other conditions of mental invalidism, failure is indefensible.

Occasionally when a man has suffered enough he will accept this power and use it. Sometimes his suffering is so great that the sheer intensity of his need will awaken him to this power which is closer to him than breath, and will heal him instantly. I call love the "last experiment," because though it is the closest and most fundamental thing in a person's life, it is the last thing he will turn to for help when he is in distress.

In talking to you about love I shall not get mushy and sentimental. For love is everything that sentimentalism is not. Love is power, while sentimentalism is the misuse of power. In its practical application love is as precise and scientific as mathematics. Without it there could be no universe, no cell organization of any kind. Because love is the only integrating power in existence. It is all that can establish order out of chaos or maintain order in chaos.

Whenever it is recognized by man he likewise recognizes harmony. Love is never a disintegrating force. Science deals with disintegrating natural forces; but wisdom deals with the power of love. Natural forces lead to change: love to permanence. Love simplifies life. All that is less than pure love complicates it. Love is endurable, eternal. It is the one ultimate expression which can combine and sustain all principles of the natural and spiritual worlds. Its application releases the soul of man from the bondage of limitation. Love is God in action. And the process of becoming the doctrine of love is to grow into oneness with God.

The beautiful thing about the doctrine of love is that it casts out all fear, all striving and struggling. You merely act and express the virtues and qualities of love, and all that is needed to sustain you in happiness and harmony are inevitable consequences of your action. You are attached to nothing except the action of love. You desire no results; but possess perfect assurance that the correct results necessary to your life at a given time will be supplied. The sense of impending insecurity is unknown to him who lives the doctrine of love.

With the light of love to guide us the idea of seeking God fades on the film of our consciousness, and we know, then, that this idea, long held and fostered by men, is as false as the beard of Hercules. It is God who is doing the seeking. It is God who stands at our door and knocks. When we consciously and deliberately set out to seek God, we are simply being annoyed by God's seeking us. His incessant pounding on our door gets on our nerves, we try to escape from the friction and irritation of it, and we call this "seeking God." We go to church, or the lecture hall, or drop a coin in the hand of a beggar, or we join a charitable organization. And the more we seek the farther we drift from the real consciousness of God's presence, for we stifle His voice and dull the sound of His knocking. God is the Supreme Shepherd, and it must forever be the logical procedure for the shepherd to seek his lost sheep, and not for the lost sheep to seek him. When we are lost in the woods our sense of direction is gone and we move about in fruitless circles. It is only when we cease seeking our way and sit down and get quiet that we regain our poise and balance sufficiently for intuition (the Spirit of God) to lead us out of our dilemma.

Our job here is to learn to love. It is the only obligation man has in the world. There is no other religion. And it is all the salvation possible. Any service rendered in an effort to placate God is futile. If you think you can serve God while at the same time you have in your mind you are serving God, then you are separating yourself from God. Service to God is present only when the thought of serving Him is absent. When you love the service and think not of rewards or results, or that you are doing it for God in return for His gifts, God will then draw nigh unto you.

The lover always question the correctness in any ethical or moral or philosophical statement that has become platitudinous and hence meaningless. Consequently when he hears the statement "Serve God," he begins to analyze the correctness of the statement. And he discovers it to be a meaningless platitude in its current sense. For he knows that you can perform your charities, your prayers, and your abnegations until doomsday without ever becoming aware of God's presence. But if you really love God, and really serve because you love to serve, and you really pray because you love to pray, then the statement, "Serve God," is not a platitude. It has meaning and salvation in it. And it is rewarded with the gift of God's grace. The statements of Jesus have never degenerated into the category of moral platitudes, because they are firmly rooted in the doctrine of love.

Now this being a very important point, as my book will increasingly endeavor to show, let us dwell just a little longer on the subject. In God service and love are one and the same thing. If we learn to love in the true sense we cannot help serving God. But if, by our wills and misconceptions, we force ourselves to serve with the mistaken notion we are serving God, or if in our service the motivating quality of love is absent, then service and love are separated, and our service is questionable; indeed, it is false and spurious. We must, therefore, learn to love first, and having learned to love, all else is added as a natural consequence.

We begin with the tremendous truth that the only world duty and spiritual obligation we have is to become love, that is, to learn to love and mean it.

Hence if this is our only obligation we begin by learning to love. We learn to love by first practicing love. The more we practice the more we become conditioned to the vibration of love. And in time, if we persist, we actually become a true lover of God and the creatures and creations of God. When this time comes we can serve God, and inevitably will serve Him, and our service will be genuine.

To illustrate this point an example may be employed. Suppose you have a very dear friend. You do something to hurt or offend him. Thereafter something stands between you and your friend. It is an invisible and nameless barrier, which you want to remove. In seeking to remove it you try various ways to serve him. You bring him gifts, or you seek to make influential contacts advantageous to him. In other words, you seek to heal the world in his heart by means of compromise and placation. But the barrier remains. All you do does not wipe away the disappointment in his eyes.
So long as this disappointment is allowed to remain you are separated from your friend, although you associate with him daily. While it remains you cannot serve him effectively, because the server and the object of service are separated. So long as this is so you cannot know how to serve him.

Finally you weary of your thankless efforts, and you go to your friend in a spirit of humility and contrition, and you apologize for your wrong, and you ask him to forgive and forget. The spirit within him meets the spirit within you. All hurt vanishes from his face, to be replaced by a smile of genuine joy. Your old relationship is instantly re-established. And now you can serve him. You bring him a gift that is a gift of real love and affection. You do things for him because you love to do it, and not because in doing it you desire to win back his friendship.

And so it is with God. When His Spirit has become your spirit, when you have actually known Him by a deep inner experience of knowingness, you are capable of serving Him in works, faith, and prayer. But to pray to God without loving God, or without the capacity to love Him, is to render lip service to an unknown God, and the only possible value in such a prayer must be psychological and not spiritual.

Finally when we have suffered and been defeated enough we shall turn to the last experiment, we shall turn to love and begin to learn to love by practicing love. As we become love we draw God to us; when we know God we cease all straining and quietly lay our burdens in His lap, knowing that He knows best how to dispose of them. But how do we begin the practice of love. Love is charity in the true sense of that misused word, and charity begins at home. Hence we start the practice of love first in our own homes. It is when we learn to love those nearest to us that we are then able to love our neighbors, the citizens of our community, and finally of the state and nation and the world. And then our love reaches out to embrace all nature. With this accomplishment the Grand Passion is born full-blown in our hearts and we love God with an affection that is holy. To love Him is not to seek Him longer; but to accept Him who has long been seeking us.

Since writing this simple chronicle of love in action behind the bars of a modern penitentiary, I have received several hundred letters from all parts of the world. Some have been inspired by reading the book; a few have been repulsed. Many have had their curiosity aroused. Others have found in it the information necessary to effect salutary changes in their lives: they have regained lost health; have solved their environmental and economic problems. All have asked questions concerning statements which were either implied or lightly touched upon in the context. And these questions are the most important features contained in the letters received.

To ask has value. To decide upon the answer has greater value. To act upon the decision is of supreme importance, whether the decision acted upon be good, bad, or indifferent. It is better to keep busy with blunders and mistakes, trials and errors than it is to sit with folded hands and a heart filled with unexpressed and frustrated wishes.
The questions have called forth this introduction. Almost entirely these pages are concerned with the deliberate and conscious application of the Law of Love to the practical everyday problems of life. My readers have unerringly sensed the power of love as being a power within their capacity to recognize and to use. But they have wanted to know more about what love is, as well as how to use it and what it does when used.

I make no claims of a last-word nature. Love can be defined on familiar levels of consciousness. Beyond that it enters mystery and awaits our arrival in another dimension.

The following statements we can comprehend:

We cannot escape love. If in the physical body we ceased to love for an instant we should die. Hate is nothing more than an intense form of self love. It is a twisting of God's love, causing it to operate negatively rather than positively, destructively rather than constructively in the direction of our own best interests. Because God loves, we love. Our love does not create that which was before. Before our love, was God's love. It is His love which created our love, and which supports, sustains, and expands it. We are partakers of God's love. We act in the direction of those qualities of being which we conceive to be of God. God's love is always creative. We are creative when we express His love in action. As to what His love creates, through us, is a matter of our own choice. To act in the direction of kindness, faith, discrimination, gratitude, reverence, forgiveness, is to build the qualities of constructive love into our personalities. To act in the direction of hate, doubt, in discrimination, ingratitude, unforgivableness, is to build into our personalities the destructive qualities of misused love.

As Robert E. Speer has pointed out in his work, Seeking the Mind of Christ: "His love is the power of our loving. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. If God so loved us we also ought to love one another. We love because He first loved us. God's love did not begin when we began to love God. We never would have loved either God or our brother had it not been for the love of God. His love, whether we knew it or not, begat all our love. Our love of God . . . is but letting Him love us. Our love is but a faint shadow of His, a shadow that advances and retreats and quivers uncertainly. The great and steadfast love of God is not the child of the shadow. Unchanging, measureless, utterly forgiving, rich with the wealth of His infinite nature, the love of God is beneath and above and about our weak human love, and we can rest upon His love as the great certainty beyond all our impulses.''

We swim in an infinite ocean of love. To become increasingly conscious of our oneness with love, is the mark of exercising intelligent self interest. To this end, we do not labor and strain in our search for love. It is above, beneath, and about us. It is seeking us.

To respond is the secret. To exercise the capacities we have for love is to expand our capacities for receiving and expressing love. Seeking love is to attempt to define a love which we have not yet developed the capacity to express. How can we understand the love of the Supreme Lover, except we approach His love through the process of practice or of daily becoming? With only a modicum of His capacity for love, how can we understand the things He did not do:

"He might have built a palace at a word,
Who sometimes had not where to lay His head;
Time was, and He who nourished crowds with bread
Would not one meal unto Himself afford;
Twelve legions girded with angelic sword
Were at His beck, the scorned and buffeted;
He healed another's scratch, His own side bled,
Side, feet and hands with cruel piercings gored,
Oh, wonderful the wonders left undone!
And scarce less wonderful than those He wrought;
Oh, self restraint, passing all human thought,
To have all power, and be as having none;
Oh, self-denying love, which felt alone
For needs of others, never for its own."

This is the great love. We move toward it. In this high sense, love is all a bestowal, a giving of ourselves with a discriminatory purpose-- that of moving in the right direction. The very air we breathe is a bestowal of God's love to us. To become aware of this fact is to be grateful for the grace which makes breathing possible, and to become aware of love in the smallest degree is to partake of more of love's inexhaustible supply. Our out-breath is a bestowal of love whose chemical qualities support and sustain the lower forms in nature. To become consciously aware of this unselfish process is the important thing for us, for increasing awareness is the measure of expanding consciousness, and expanding consciousness is the increasing capacity for receiving, containing, and expressing the love which God has bestowed upon us.

This book, therefore, is an indication of a way. It points out the modus operandi of one man who caught a glimpse of the love theme in the stillness of a dungeon cell. Its keynote is response; its purpose is not definition, but inspiration. To be inspired is to want to act. The book being true, it must inspire, to cause the reader to want to act. How to begin to act and how to continue to act; in a word, how consciously to apply the dynamic power of love to the every day problems confronting the personality life-- this is or should be the aim of any book dealing with personal experience of this kind.

One thing is certain, no man or woman can act in the direction of bestowal unseen or unrewarded. Man acts and the Spirit observes.

CHAPTER II - LOVE VERSUS DUNGEON DOORS

When I say that love can open prison doors I mean that literally. When I say there are doors n much stronger than the doors of a punitive prison, I mean that literally also. But when I speak of this love I'm not referring to it in the usual Pollyanna sense, as something to be hazily realized and half heartedly applied.

Love is a dynamic force in the world. It is the most powerful creative force in existence, and it is responsible for nearly everything created by and through man. Love for God, for charity, for service; love for money, for power, for fame-- all or any one of these urges will drive men and women to use the creative principle that sends them to the top of their respective desires. But since all human desire is insatiable it is never fully gratified. Creative progress is made in proportion as the driving love medium behind ambition goads the goal-climber into action.

Love for debauchery, for crime, for the gratification of pigsty appetites send men and women toward the bottom that represents the goal of their respective desires. But again since human desire is insatiable, the gratification sought is never found. Creative degradation is advanced in proportion as the love driving media for degradation is used toward its end.

Behind the creation of an infant lies the contacting medium of love. And since that love is human it produces a human being, and thus perpetuates the human race with all its human desires and aspirations, its human follies and mistakes, its trials and errors, its tragedies and humors, its enormous conceits and egotism that cause it to survive through all the elemental cataclysms and plagues to which the earth is heir.

Love for opinion makes saints and scoundrels, martyrs and tyrants out of men. Love for publicity and notoriety makes heroes and dare-devils. Love for self creates bigotry; for others, tolerance.

Always love is a medium through which man contacts and applies the creative principle of the universe. And what love is allowed to create through man is up to man himself. His love attitude determines the course taken by creative principle. Inevitably, the creative principle operating on and through man, creates something; something noble or ignoble, constructive or destructive.

The principle in itself is ultimate unity, and is therefore not subject to finite discriminatory limitations. It is beyond time, space, duality, judgment, because in it all things are dissolved into the changeless whole. It has but one purpose, one nature, one reason for being, and that is to create. And create is what it does. There is neither good nor bad connected with its creative purpose. These are human discernments recognized by man and obeyed by creative principle. The principle being infinite and discernment finite on the plane of duality, it follows that man can use creative law only in the ratio of his capacity to receive it, and no more. One may sink as low as his faculties of invention are capable of carrying him; one, may rise as high as his understanding and application will reach.

The foregoing is no attempt to define love, because that cannot be done. All definitions limit and the limitless cannot be limited, pigeon-holed, or labeled. He who would seek to define the indefinable would only curb his capacity for using it. Consequently, what I have said should be taken for what I have intended it to be, a description rather than an exposition.

Also, when you read this, please understand clearly that I am not a reformed convict, because the term reform has lost the whole of its pristine meaning. Its purity has been defiled by many unwholesome connotations; too much Comstockism, commercialism and hypocrisy have been attached to it in recent years, especially, to warrant my associating myself with it in these pages. The term has become the living symbol of suppression and all that is mean and narrow in human conduct and behavior. Rather, I wish to be looked upon here, not as a reformed criminal, but as a fool who has been privileged to shake of a little of his foolishness; at least to the extent of realizing that a fool's paradise isn't all it's cracked up to be.

In every prison they have many unjust rules, the same as every nation has many unjust laws. One of these rules in the prison where I was last confined had to do with what is called, for some strange reason, "the right to trial."
This right was vouchsafed the prisoner charged with violating prison law in what was known as "High Court." This court was in session twice weekly. It consisted of the deputy warden, who was its prosecutor, judge and jury. When you entered in to answer the complaint placed against you by your warder, the deputy would read the charge and then command you to admit your guilt to it. Why all this mockery and waste of time that could have been better employed was, of course, a mystery. Certainly the court was unnecessary since your accuser's word was infallible. If you denied your guilt and thus dared to infer your innocence, your action was equivalent to calling your warder a liar, and this implication was certain to increase the amount of punishment meted out, unless, like Galileo, you were diplomatic enough to change your mind and recant. The theory seemed to be that the aspersion "liar" was a natural characteristic of the prisoner, but that all prison warders were George Washington who couldn't possibly tell a lie.
Naturally, nearly every one recanted sooner or later. Some had to be persuaded by a few weeks in the dungeon on bread and water, it is true. But so far as I know I was the only man haled before the prison court who preferred slow death by starvation rather than life by an admission of guilt. There was no principle involved in my stand. None at all, other than just plain hard-headedness. I was not rebelling against an act of injustice, because I was sufficiently honest to admit that my whole life had been built upon injustice toward others, and that all things being equal I had injustice coming to me. No, I was simply exercising a foolish prerogative to remain obstinate regardless of the pain and physical consequences.

It was in the middle of an exceptionally bitter winter. The torture chamber was damp, foul, and dark. The stone were full of frost; the concrete floors were wet and icy. You were put into a cell with nothing but a thin, much-washed shirt and overalls. Your shoes were taken away, but you were allowed to retain your socks. At night the keeper of the dungeon brought you a thin and filthy cotton blanket.

Such is a brief picture of the place I entered to carry out my own self-inflicted verdict of death. When he put me into the cell the deputy warden said: "When 1 let you out you'll crawl to me on your knees and whine and beg like a dog. And while you're in here eating bread and water, I'll be living on ham and eggs and sleeping in a good warm bed."
Knowing the man as I did, I had no reason on earth to believe he might suddenly become chicken-hearted and relent. On the other hand, I told him in reply, and I knew I meant it, that his rats would carry me out a chuck at a time before I'd ever whine to him. Obviously, therefore, my fate was sealed as tightly as it could be sealed by two human wills in conflict.

And yet I was finally released from the dungeon weak but alive and an infinitely wiser person. I had done no whining or begging of any kind. In fact, from the day I entered until the day I was released no word passed between the deputy warden and me. He came each day and opened the solid door of my cell, stood there a moment in silence to give me a chance to speak, then he would close the door and pass on to his next victim.

Although I am engaged here with a few chosen events in my life, and in nowise with an autobiography, it is necessary for me to digress at this point if the reader would be spared the annoyance of numerous digressions later on. Certain things in my life prior to the dungeon experience touched upon, which have a relative importance as bearing upon that experience, must be traced out for a clearer understanding of what might otherwise appear to border on the miraculous or the impossible.

It is the usual thing to suppose that one's dream life is closely associated with and to a great extent influenced by one's conscious life. And this is true to a great extent. No doubt the dream which I shall later describe would seem too far-fetched and contrary were it to stand alone unsupported by conditioning causes.

Since I was a person who for many years followed a criminal career, whose every thought and action during those years had been in violent contrast to all precepts of common decency, it is only reasonable to conclude that my dream life would have revolved pretty much around a similar pattern. Or at least that my dream life could hardly have been expected to revolve around holy and superior things.

But even though the years have a way of blurring the most vivid experiences of childhood, the historic cycle has a peculiar penchant for resurrecting those experiences, both in the conscious and subconscious realms of activity; of duplicating events; of repeating incidents, which in their day were passed over as having no apparent significance.
I wish to say now that as a small child my dreams were frequently woven around the personality of Jesus, although in my home there was no particular stress laid upon religious things, or upon the Saviour's ministry as it was recorded in the Bible. I had no leaning toward church service, and I was not compelled to attend Sunday school. Despite these omissions, nevertheless, my early dream life invariably had to do with things of a holy nature.

Then at twelve years of age I began a series of minor crimes, which soon developed into major ones. At fourteen I was a confirmed criminal with all the bitter, negative philosophy possessed by the toughest of the men who prey. This transition did not affect the intensity of my dream life, but it did greatly affect the quality of my dreams.
My early dreams of Jesus had always been laid in a strange beautiful garden, different from any garden I had ever seen, heard of, or read about. It was a shoe-shaped valley plot surrounded by gently sloping tree and shrub-dotted hills. There were many varieties of flowers growing wild. At one end of the garden a great white grey rock jutted out and from behind it or through it, I could never quite tell which, the Master would emerge and walk toward me, carefully avoiding the flowers as He moved slowly along.

The pattern of these dreams changed promptly with the pattern of my life. The peaceful garden through which the Master strolled under Judean stars and dew-freshened dawns, became a merciless jungle filled with gun-toting enemies, emissaries of the law, all bent upon my capture.

In rapid succession of events, I would envision myself under arrest, of being tried in court and convicted. I would hear the grim verdict read and listen to the terrifying pronouncement of sentence. I could experience all the agony of suspense that stretched between the day of sentence pronouncement and the day of its execution. Sometimes 1 would see myself being escorted to the scaffold or the electric chair behind a dour-faced individual mumbling gloomy prayers for the safe journey of my sin-tainted soul. Very often I would reach the lethal monster and feel the black cap being drawn over my face, like a fiendish bandage, or the straps being adjusted to my legs. But invariably I would wake in the nick of time, trembling, sweating, exhausted.

I've passed through the hot pits of many tortures, but none to compare to these subconscious hours where deferred judgment assumed all the hideous aspects of actuality.

That they were prophetic dreams I have no doubt. Criminal activities always lead toward the commission of murder and murder toward the executioner. And yet the fear of these sinister prospects was not sufficient to alter the course of my criminal tendencies. In fact, neither fear of punishment nor persuasion, kind treatment or brutal, had any effect on the type of life I preferred to live.

During my many years in prison I was the object of a great deal of well-intentioned kindness, as well as harshness. Different social workers tried to influence my attitude. These good people were called sobsters in the prison vernacular. We used to vie with each other for their gifts and favors, and whatever influence, political, they might bring to bear upon parole-boards in our behalf. But always their advice was an extremely obnoxious service which we assumed to relish, lest we forfeit the opportunity of using our advisers toward other ends.

Sometimes they would come to the prison chapel and make sentimental speeches, exhorting us to put on the raiment of reformation. And we would appear to be moved by their soul-stirring appeals, even to the shedding of realistic tears. Then when the ringing call would come for us to resolve to lead new lives, our hands would go up in eager unison, a gesture that was supposed to pledge our souls and minds to the straight and narrow path ever after.
They would leave the prison burning with the enthusiasm mighty things accomplished for the Cause. But if the could have heard our remarks following their departure I'm afraid they never again would have had the courage to face a prison audience.

These good but misinformed souls would spend much time and money in the prison crusades, and I suppose the still do so, but so far as my own experience can reach, I've never known a man who was reformed because of their well-intentioned efforts. Personally I am convinced that a man changes his life pattern only when he himself is definitely ready for such a change. And that until he is ready, no pressure, reason or persuasion on earth can influence him one iota. I am convinced, also, that reform is wholly a matter of transcending old desires and habits of life, and not the suppression of them through fears and other forces of the will. No man can claim to be reformed who is still in conflict with the old habits of his life. So long as such habits are not risen above a relapse into them is constantly an imminent possibility.

But in spite of what I've found to be true in my own experience, I would not presume to set my findings up as a criterion. I have no desire to discredit or discourage the activities of prison social workers. Nor would I wish to discredit or discourage those engaged in the field of juvenile delinquency because of what I have experienced as a juvenile delinquent myself. It is important nevertheless, that I be honest in presenting my early attitude and conclusions as a youthful outlaw.

Naturally I came in contact with all the reform movements that were active at that time. If they taught me anything it was sharpness of wit. I soon learned that through these movements I could escape the consequences of much of my wrongdoing. I became an artful maker of promises and a skillful creator of lies. These I would trade for immunity whenever it could be done.

Quite often I was made the object for scientific study and treatment. These laboratory adventures, instead of helping me, served only to furnish another excuse for carrying on against whatever restrictive conscience I had left. They made me conscious of my difference from other kids. I was what I was because it had to be that way. I was born with a quirk in my brain. I wasn't my fault at all. Crime was just something that belonged to me; and any act I performed no matter how vicious was merely an expression of my natural self.

And later when the power of reason began to assert itself, I developed a cynical attitude toward all reform movements, I became skeptical of their motives, and even while I took every advantage of their influence, I resented their patronizing sentimentalism; their self righteousness; and particularly was I embittered by all psychiatrical attempts to dissect, analyze and label me in the manner of some queer zoological specimen.

Out of this resentment and bitterness grew the most deadly philosophy in the world. I call it convict philosophy. It contains the whitest logic ever conceived in the brains of men. It batters down every sham behind which people hide their weaknesses. It tears at all personal inconsistencies with tiger-like fangs. It makes all men, women and children criminals at heart; gives every one the impulse to kill, steal and ravage. To the criminal in prison it distinguishes but one difference between him and the person outside of prison, and that difference is enunciated with a sardonic sneer. The one is in, the other is out. That is all. A stone wall makes the only difference.
The danger of this philosophy lies in its very truth, for potentially and actually all men and women have come short of the law.

The philosophy, also, has it self-condemnatory side. The criminal on the inside arraigns himself brutally for being fool enough to get caught in a trap others skillfully evade. After he is in for awhile he begins to see a hundred ways by which he might have escaped punishment. And he resolves thereupon never to make the same mistake again. And in this respect, at least, he leaves prison with good intentions, according to his own code.

All in all, the only positive thing that can be said about convict philosophy is that it is positively deadly to the man who entertains it. One who is inoculated with it is dogmatic to the point of fanaticism. He cannot be reached by either reason, punishment or persuasion, because his mind is set as hard as concrete against every attempt made to change him by those whose motives he questions. A prison sentence only adds fuel to the fires of his world-girdling disillusionment. He is a confirmed fault-finder, an absolute destructionist, and he seldom wakes up before it is too late to prevent his own physical, mental and moral decay.

During the time I was engaged in the following experiences-- a period of three years, perhaps, in all-- I made and preserved certain notes, a few of which I later published in a short series of brief articles. These together with the remainder lay fallow in my trunk for many months. Then they were shown to a friend, a man who had done something along the same line himself with, as he said, more or less nebulous results. He became quite interested and urged me to work my notes up in a book form. At the time I was unable to respond to his suggestions.
He thought that I was obligated to such a task; that I had no personal right to hide experiences of the kind. I, of course, was interested in his reason.

"Why haven't I a right to keep them?" I prompted him.

He thought such a book might be helpful to others. Frankly my conceit was neither large enough nor my knowledge broad enough to include this reason. The knowledge I had gained, extremely meager though it was when compared to what I had failed to gain, had been sufficient to convince me that one man's experiences could do little more than stimulate interest in another; that they could not convince another of the efficacy in applying abstract principle to practical problems by merely reading about such experiences.

"That is a great service in itself," he said, "to stimulate, to encourage others to think for themselves and then apply their thinking to their own problems."

In his inimitably enthusiastic manner, he referred to me as one who had conquered an inferno. He said my methods had been practical and my accomplishments so obvious that merely to read of them would prove an inspiration to many with similarly difficult problems.

"In other words," I smiled at his fervour, "the world is in need of a brand new Messiah and you've picked on me for the job."

To my surprise and amazement he nodded his head. My smile became a hearty laugh. I the new Messiah! I whose numerous names adorned every police blotter in the country ! I whose picture could be found in all the rogues' galleries, and whose measurements were tucked away in every bureau of criminal identification! I who had just recently emerged from a prison cell to point the way for honest folks to follow! I a burned-out burglar taking up the exemplary task of teaching ethics!

"It isn't so absurd," he said dryly. "There's been some pretty good men in prison cells, and there's been some pretty good things come out of prison. As I see it, it isn't that you were in prison that counts at all: it's what you did there that might be of help to some one else that really matters."

The upshot of it was that this friend convinced me finally that such a book might truly have some value as a contribution to human encouragement, if nothing else.

Certainly I approach the task humbly. My hope is that some of those in whose hands the book might fall will be moved to try the simple principles in their problems as I have been privileged to try them with highly beneficial results.
Throughout these pages I offer no false claims. There isn't a thing new or original between these book ends. In presenting what is as old as the universe itself, I haven't even the claim of an original literary style, whatever such a thing might be. I deal wholly in the obvious; but it is an obvious that for many years I refused to see, even to deny, and to continue to deny its presence until the scorching fires of prison hell had welded it into my soul.

I am not an author by any means. I am not even a very well educated person, having had practically no formal schooling. I am just a common ordinary human being who had to be taught horse-sense the hard way: by strong-arm methods.

The simple methods I have used were here with Adam. Many have used them before me. Many will use them after I've shuffled through the last dark door. All knowledge is a common property that may be appropriated, thank God, by those who need it and wish it. Knowledge is the one thing in existence selfish greed has failed to put a fence around and post with No Trespassing signs. Too, any intelligent person can do far more with a little knowledge than I have been able to do, for I am neither intelligent nor keenly receptive to the finer shades of wisdom and understanding.
As a plain matter of fact, I am handicapped with an overabundance of that sort of peace and contentment not attracted toward the ends of vigorous ambition. I am what some call a confirmed homebody. I'm satisfied with simple things: my books, my meditations, my thoroughly harmonious home, my club, my friends. I've entered the calm after the storm and I find it pleasant.

So far I've tried to use the creative principle with great determination only in the hard pinches; and if by recounting a few of these some of you are enabled to take another reef in your own flagging determinations, I'll consider my feeble effort repaid with multiple compound interest.

For about twenty years I used to engage in a most idiotic pastime. Like most criminals I had not yet discovered humour, so I took this pastime very seriously. I claimed as my pet aversion ignorance in everybody else, except of course, in myself. And since I had not discovered humour, my voice was raised in bellowing proportion against one particular form of ignorance. It goes without saying, I made a fool and a nuisance of myself. One of my most imposing defiance against this particular shade of ignorance, was a declaration of denial.

"If there's a God," I would roar heroically in the presence of some one whom I knew to entertain religious beliefs, "then let Him prove Himself by striking me dead."

Once I made the silly remark in the company of a sardonic: old safe-blower, who replied laconically: "God don't strike fools dead. He throws 'em a rope."

The droll remark came back to me when I had just about let out enough rope with which to hang myself.
I started out by hating God and wound up by hating everything, including my own infallible wisdom. I was a little too wise in those days to know anything about the psychology of hate and all other forms of negation. For example, I didn't know that hate could disturb the digestive and assimilative system to the extent of bringing on attacks of indigestion and constipation, sluggish blood circulation, and many other conditioning reflexes of the mind and body. I went right on suffering them all and hating. Besides it was popular in the circle in which I moved to evince the rebel spirit by hating all things sacred and decent.

I took great pride criticizing everything that did not conform to an attitude of destruction. As for human life, I held it in contempt. Nothing was cheaper, and nothing was so worthy to be preyed upon.

Consequently, being a criminal, and being so poor a criminal as to carry around with me a whole pack of defeatist's philosophy, I spent the greater portion of my time behind iron bars.

Now short terms in prison are not such terrifying experiences as most people imagine them to be. They terrify the beginner for awhile, but he soon becomes adjusted and settles down to make the best of things. It is the long prison terms that make of prisons a living death-house. When it's all said and done, there is just one punishment inflicted by prison incarceration, and that falls upon the long-termers. But this one punishment is sufficient to defeat any purpose the prison system might hold in the way of correcting criminal tendencies or eradicating a criminal causes.

There is no normal outlet, physically, for the most purely animal dynamic force in existence; no normal way to gratify re most maddening hunger that ever gripped the human side of man ; no way to turn the procreative impulse into normal human channels of expression. No way, that is, that prisoners have discovered, save a remarkably few. Only a very few have been able to sublimate this energy and turn it into useful purposes.

The usual attempted way, the vicarious way, and it represents all the ways possible to imagine, instead of gratifying the hunger only adds to it. Men and women in prison sacrifice themselves mentally, morally and physically to this relentless appetite without avail. Their sacrifices lead only to disgust with themselves; and occasionally it carries them on to a padded cell.

Otherwise, they are eventually released with the hope they are now purged of their pernicious tendencies. Such a hope is tragic in its pathetic disappointment. Wardens know it. All prison officials know it. But society doesn't know, because society would rather pay the bill, perhaps, than take an interest in such sordid facts. Such conditions do not and cannot prove beneficial to the social system. At any rate, such is my opinion. I'm willing to leave the matter in the hands of sociological students. So I'll go no farther into it here. I may even be wrong. It may be that these poor demoralized objects of an experimental penal age, are an asset to society. I prefer to think otherwise.

As I said before, the deputy warden came every morning to the door of my dungeon cell, tempting me to confess and go free. I held out doggedly for weeks. Emaciated and filthy, I was many times tempted to crawl to the door and accede to his wishes, but I always managed to steel my will against the course. As time went on the torture of starvation became less noticeable and less painful. Too, I felt myself gradually becoming inured to the cold. It seemed that my life was running out into a sort of dull, insensate chaos. Mine was a case of stubborn will versus the law of self preservation, with the former showing every indication of complete victory.

Why such a thought flashed across my mind I don't know-- it had been years since I'd had a constructive thought-- but there came to my soggy brain about this time a thought of wonderment. I wondered where such determination of will would end if it was directed differently, if it was turned toward a purpose of intelligent self interest.

There followed a period of mild, dreamy delirium in which I seemed to exist half awake and half asleep. For awhile the content of these dreams was like a confused and pointless riddle. They had no beginning and no end; but drifted and drifted and drifted through my head without continuity or consistency. As I grew weaker, however, they appeared to take on more definite outlines, to become more rational, more vivid and meaningful.

And then one day there occurred in my dream the man whom I'd been trying to hate for years, Jesus the Christ.
He appeared in a garden in every way similar to the one I had seen Him in as a child. His physical appearance was also similar. The whole picture had that quiet clarity about it that draws out thematic details of expression, of feeling, of thought, of purpose. He came towards me, His lips moving as though in prayer. He stopped near me eventually and stood looking down. I had never seen such love in human eye; I had never felt so utterly enveloped in love. I seemed to know consciously that I had seen and felt something that would influence my life throughout all eternity.
Presently, He began slowly to fade in the manner of some casual process of dematerialization. Out of what had been a vision of Him there emerged a vision of the word Love in large gossamer irregular letters, which remained a moment, and then as He had done, slowly vanished.

Following this particular dream I lay for a long time enveloped in a keen sense of awareness. Even though the visual aspects of the dream had disappeared, its quality lingered. It seemed to have become a part of me. Where I had been the recipient of the Master's love, I now felt myself exuding love. It seemed to pour from me in the form of some mighty sense of blissful gratitude, not for any one thing or things, but for all things, for life. I had no discernment or consciousness apart from this enchantment of universal love. I seemed to have escaped from all the personal bodily and environmental limitations that had hitherto tortured me. I was not aware of dungeon walls, but my thoughts seemed to roam afar both in space and time. (In fact, neither time nor space appeared to have definition or the modification of boundary lines).

And later I became aware of still another sense of freedom. What I had always thought to be imagination, occurred to me as reality. While I visited places undoubtedly historical but ancient, I experienced no difficulty in adjusting myself to the modes and customs of these places. I seemed to possess infinite versatility, readily speaking the language or dialect of the various peoples of these places, and to be perfectly familiar with their laws, their religious beliefs, their government policies, their art and literature. In the reading of the latter, I seemed to possess an amazing proficiency. I read manuscripts and books by pages at a glance with an accuracy that was unerring.

By and by I became aware of my actual whereabouts, but not in the same sense I had been aware of it before. There was no sensibility of discomfort attached to the dungeon now, no feeling of bitterness or stubbornness. The place seemed to radiate with a wholly congenial and alluring atmosphere. My imagination appeared to function in an acute and consistently pleasurable manner.

I would experiment with the barren cell, reappointing it to fit the convenience of special guests, which I would later invite. Always these were men of wisdom, and always the dominating subjects discussed by them were subjects of life, and truth.

It was at these imaginary symposiums that I first heard of the creative principle, of the media of love, discussed in an analytical manner, which later, applied, not only opened my dungeon door without an overture on my part, but opened In trying to describe this state of temporary being, I'm not I desirous of being drawn into controversy about its causes or its scientific qualities or its lack of them. I am merely describing what occurred, its effect upon my future conduct and behavior, and what I was enabled to do with the knowledge I had gained in this manner. Nor do I wish to leave any egotistical impressions on the minds of my readers. I was lifted into this state through no conscious efforts of my own. It came to me unbidden, unsought. It was a gift to a man who, from the human standpoint, had rendered himself unworthy of human consideration. That it was an act of Providence I've never doubted. Why or for what purpose, I've been able only to guess. Left to my own devices my body soon would have been destroyed. I was doing all in my power to bring about that finale, and certainly the time for it was dangerously close at hand.

From the moment I was drawn into the state, unusual things began to happen. The prison doctor stopped at my door for the first time to inquire after my health, and to linger at my door and talk. He came three times in that one day, eager to do something for me in his professional capacity. Courteous and kind, he pressed me again and again for a different answer in regard to my health, and seemed bewildered when I re-affirmed the fact that I had never felt better than I did at the moment.

The keeper of the dungeon, a man who had taken a violent dislike for me from the start, came to my door with gracious words on his lips. I had hated him and now I loved him. He offered to disobey the rules and smuggle in a sandwich from the officers' dining-room if I'd only say the word. I thanked him, but explained that I was not in the least hungry. He went away shaking his head.

But during this period the deputy warden, who had been making regular daily visits to my door, suddenly stopped coming. Often I thought of him with an all-consuming compassion. I believe it was on the third day that he opened my door and said, "Well, buddy, I think you've had enough. You can go over to the hospital and clean up and rest for awhile."

A few days later I received a complete new outfit of clothing and was assigned a new and easier job in the prison shirt shop.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. Jude 1:24-25

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