Love Can Open Prison Doors

by Starr Daily

All bodily disease which we look upon as whole
and entire within itself, may after all, be but a
symptom of some ailment in the spiritual past.
-Hawthorne.

If this chapter might later appear to have been misnamed, I can assure the reader that such is not the case. Love operating through me made it possible to break down natural human restraints, obtain confidence in the cases described, and thus get to the real causes that were responsible for the diseases manifest.

My experiences in the prison hospital included many of such cases. Most of them I was able to cure without the use of drugs. Some I failed to cure, because the conditioning habit of morbidity had become so deeply rooted in the subconscious life of the patient that my inventive resources failed to uncover an effective means of treatment.

Before I get farther into the chapter, I wish to make it understood now that in neither of the first two cases mentioned here was there an organic basis for the diseases treated. In each case the underlying cause was mental. During this time and since, I've treated and cured scores of sick and crippled people of every conceivable kind and degree of affliction. And in every case where I was able to effect a cure the manifestation of affliction was hysterical and not organic. I have never been able to effect a cure in purely organic cases. I do not, however, wish to infer that such cures cannot be accomplished by others; but that they haven't been accomplished by me, and certainly in making this statement a great mistake would be made by any one accepting it as a general rule rather than a particular one. l can and do, nevertheless, offer it as my belief that at least half of the sickness in America, especially, is due to unwholesome mental habits, such as destructive suggestibility. The following case will illustrate clearly what 1 mean.
The man in question was highly intelligent, very sensitive, and extremely cocksure about his own opinions.

He was carried into the hospital late one night suffering from extreme pain in the abdomen. He said to me as I helped him remove his clothing, "I know what's the matter with me. But don't say anything. I want to see if the doctor knows."

When the doctor reached him and made his examination, he diagnosed the pain as gall colic. "You're absolutely right, doctor," the patient said, "I'm lousy with gall-stones." He manifested every possible symptom of this disease.
Since the case seemed to call for an immediate operation, the surgeon was called from his bed. He reached the prison hospital in no pleasant frame of mind. He examined the patient carefully, and later announced that the fellow was suffering from the effects of an exaggerated imagination; that what he needed was a metaphysical practitioner instead of a surgeon.

"Still," he added, "if you can't find any other way to reach him, we may have to operate as a gesture in order to save his life. If he gets any worse by morning give me a ring."

"See what you can do," the hospital physician said to me, and I started on the trail of the mental quirk that had brought the fellow's trouble about.

In the first place the man was suffering severe pain, and to this I responded with a whole-hearted sympathy. I made an effort to do what I could, in a physical way, for him, while at the same time I was planning how best I might approach him in my effort to help him in a mental way.

By careful and tactful leads I succeeded in getting him to talk about himself and his opinions between grunts and groans. I assumed the role of a poorly informed but sympathetic listener, eager to profit by the sage advice I well knew he was capable of giving me. Thus he revealed in due time that he had been an inveterate reader of newspaper health articles.

He was that type of susceptible person to whom health information was quite as likely as not to prove a liability instead of an asset. Indeed to one of these articles he had unwittingly fallen prey. The article had been written by a famous doctor on the subject of gall-stones.

At the time he read the article there was a slight but annoying muscular pain in the abdominal region where gall-colic occurs. The pain appeared to him to be identical with that described by the writer. So he promptly grew alarmed and began to diagnose his own case, which was of course gall-stones. And by the time he reached the hospital all the symptoms of this disease were rejected in his physical organism.

Now that I had the cause, it became a complicated problem as to how I might eradicate it. Obviously I could not do it by the use of reason or suggestion. My making myself a pupil of his, as it were, I had destroyed the opportunity to make a sudden right-about face and become his teacher. Besides, he was entirely too opinionated to be convinced against his will. There was nothing to do, therefore, but let him cure himself, while I did the directing, although I appeared not to be doing so.

As I pondered on a method, a brilliant idea occurred to me. In my room was a book written by a doctor who advocated fasting in the cure and prevention of disease. Later in the morning, I paused at his door to inquire after him, and I had the book in my hand. He asked me the title of it. I told him, and mentioned casually that I had just been reading the chapter on gall-stones. As I expected he asked to see it. I gave him the book, and went on about my duties. when again I had returned his eyes were burning with enthusiasm.

"Here's a doctor that knows his business," he said. "If I could get the treatment prescribed here I could cure myself."
"Well," I replied, "they don't allow any unorthodox treatment here in the hospital. But I'm willing to trust you and take a chance." This statement pleased him. "You tell me what to do," I added, "and I'll follow instructions."

Thus it was, I took four ounces of olive oil and four ounces of orange juice, whipped them together, and gave it to him at six that morning. During the day he refused food. At seven that night, when I came on duty again, he instructed me to give him a high warm enema, which I did. As I well knew it would, this brought away a great quantity of hard green pellets of bile. We secured seventy-seven of these small pellets in all. Immediately following this demonstration, every symptom of gall-stone left the man. He remained in the hospital, however, for six more days fasting on orange juice according to the advice given in the book. Then he pronounced himself cured and returned to his cell. Until I left the prison this fellow carried a dozen or so of these bile pellets around in a match box and never passed up an opportunity to display them to any one who was curious to know just what a gall-stone really looked like.

In this instance I might also add, that the case described above was only one of several encountered during my hospital experience whose causes were traced back to the reading of health articles, medical books, patent medicine circulars and the like.

Several years ago the press conducted a vigorous educational campaign against cancer. As a direct result of reading these informational articles and editorials, two prisoners developed typical symptoms of stomach cancer, one of which died a lingering painful death, and the other I treated and cured by convincing him I possessed curative powers in my hands, which I placed over the affected regions and advised him to feel the flow of curative magnetism pouring from my hands to the cancerous growth. His own belief, or if you'd rather, his own faith in the mastery of my apparent power, did the work by replacing in his mind a well thought instead of the sick one he had been entertaining.

Before taking up case number two I wish to take issue with many people who deplore the use of deception in any form or for any reason. In nearly all mental treatments, deceptions, ruses of some kind, must be resorted to in order to get the cause of the trouble and apply an effective counter-actant. The creative principle does not recognize the right or wrong of anything. But the use that man makes of a thing determines its moral quality. Any vice may be turned into a virtue by reversing its trend and setting it in motion toward the ends of virtue.

Case number two was undoubtedly the most amazing example I've ever seen or heard about in the realm of hysterically induced physical disabilities. He was an absolute wreck. He was brought from the court room to the prison on a stretcher to begin an indeterminate sentence. It had been predicted at the time that he would cheat the law of its prey long before the board of paroles had a chance to act on his case.

His hospital chart revealed him a sufferer of paralysis of limbs, hardening of the liver, diabetes, dropsy tendencies, arthritis, tuberculosis of the bowels, heart-leakage, neuroticism, faulty-vision and high blood pressure.

So the reader might, also, share the assumption of the time that this man was in a dying condition. Because of its relative importance, I wish to add one item that was not listed on the chart. The fellow was an illiterate and was childishly superstitious, as I soon discovered.

At the time he committed the crime, a shooting affair, for which he had been convicted, he had been in apparent good health.

It took me several nights to break through the wall of secrecy he had built up around himself. Suspicious and slow to trust, he was chary of strangers; he was on guard against anything that seemed like an approach to his inner life. I didn't press him, but I did evoke a strong feeling of love for him, and I missed no opportunity to express that love in tangible terms that he could not only feel but understand. Inch by inch the bars went down. Then one night he made a confession with all the naiveté of a child.

In the neighborhood where he had lived all his life was an old woman who possessed strange powers of divination. She had visited him at the jail and revealed to him that he was in the clutches of the evil one. A curse had been placed on him and a spell cast that would destroy him in a terrible way. The hands that held the gun would turn to stone, the eyes that sighted down the gun barrel would become blind, his legs would become useless, his innards like a nest of poison serpents.

Accepting this upon the infallible authority of the old woman, he promptly set his mind to the task of reflecting it all in his body. Obviously, there was but one thing to be done in his case and that was to destroy the influence of the evil one, the evil one of his own mind. As in nearly all such cases it was a matter of fighting the devil, or his imaginations, with his own weapons. Logic, reason, persuasion were puny implements compared to the implements of that devil in his determination to make the sinister curse effective. Deception had brought the man's condition about; deception would have to be resorted to in order to counteract the results of the original deception. Between two evils there is but one choice for the practitioner, the evil that can be twisted and set to work along constructive lines.

I took the doctor into my plans and obtained his permission to allow Dad Trueblood to co-operate with me. Then Dad and I worked out our campaign of attack. Since I had access to the patient's private history, and since it was I who read all his letters for him, I had in my possession a great quantity of personal information about the man, which I turned over to Dad.

Then I began to tell the patient about an old man in this very prison who had powers even greater than those possessed by the old woman he had told me about. This old man, I told him, could even tell your fortune. I could see immediately that he was interested. After awhile I suggested that he ask the doctor if he might be permitted to see the fortune-teller, and of course the doctor agreed, and sent for Dad to come over.

What a revelation it was! The patient told me afterward: "Why, he told me things no one on earth knows about but me." Time and again Dad was sent for by the patient, and with each visit the patient's faith in Dad's powers mounted higher and higher until I was able to tell Dad one day, "Well, old-timer, you've won the most exalted prize in this world, you've become a god."

"That's good," the old fellow said, "but there's much to be done. I must get absolute control of the poor devil. He's got to see me demonstrate my power over man's strongest enemy."

"You mean--- ?" I asked.

"Yep," he said, "he's got to see me raise the dead."

We carefully arranged for this great demonstration to take place in the room directly across the hall from the patient's room.

In this room we planted an accomplice earlier in the evening, a man presumably brought over from one of the cell-houses in a dying condition. For two or three hours there was much activity around his room, hurried darting about between many whispered consultations. The reason for all of this I conveyed in a most solemn and confidential manner to my patient across the hall who, of course, had been taking it all in. Finally, at the hour of midnight the accomplice died and I carried the tragic news over to our interested spectator.

"Listen to me," I said to him, "you stand in good with the doctor. I want you to ask him to let Dad Trueblood come over here and see what he can do. The man is dead, I know; but I believe Dad can bring him back to life."

"Do you reckon Dad could do that?"

I did. The patient told me to tell the doctor he would like to speak with him. A few minutes later the doctor emerged from the patient's room and winked. And in a few more minutes the miracle man, Dad Trueblood, was in the hospital. He didn't go directly into the death room; but he went first into the patient's room. Very solemnly he thanked the patient for interceding on the dead man's behalf.

"Do you think you can really bring him back to life?" the patient asked eagerly.

"I don't think anything about it," was Dad's reply. "I know I can. He's not dead, but sleeping. The evil one has cast a spell over him and a curse on him. I am greater than the evil one. Before my words the evil one flies back to the darkness where he came from. I am the evil ones's master. Before me he cannot stand. Watch!"

And the patient did watch. He watched every gesture and heard each word that fell from Dad's lips. He saw the dead man raise up in his bed with the motion of Dad's hand. He saw Dad back slowly toward the door and heard him say "Come" to the man who a minute before had lain cold under the evil one's spell. And he saw the man follow Dad into the hall and disappear down the corridor, never agin to return to the bed of death.

And on a night a week later, the miracle man performed the same sort of ceremony in the room of out patient. He broke the evil one's spell, and that moment the hysterically produced diseases that had held the man in their grip for months fell away as though they had never been.

I once recounted this incident to a practicing metaphysician, a woman who had an excellent record of accomplishments to her credit. The end attained, she thought, was a worthy one; but to her the method employed was extremely revolting and sacrilegious. Had we employed the deceptions of our own invention instead of closely copying the methods of Jesus by which to perpetuate our deceptions, her criticism would have been withheld.

In my opinion, however, there is no valid parallel between our method and that of the Master. It is assumed that He was above the need of employing deceptive methods to accomplish His ends, and since we possessed no such development as this, we could not copy what we did not possess. I have no fear but that the Master, recognizing our limitations, would have readily condoned our means.

There is a vast difference in the attitude of a patient entering a prison hospital and one entering a hospital on outside. Such hospitals no longer hold the terror for the sick they once did, but the belief still persists among most prisoners that in the prison hospital there, is a mysterious black bottle always at hand for midnight service. One dose from this bottle and there is one less convict to provide trouble for the law.

Of all the fears that harass men in prison, the worst is the fear of dying in prison. Why this should be I do not know. But there may be a touch of superstition connected with it. To a prisoner his prison represents a living hell on earth, and it might be that deep down within him he fears to die in this hell of sin and iniquity, because to do so might lessen his chances of escaping that other hell lying just across the border. Ninety-nine out of every hundred prisoners possess a psychopathic religious streak in them that comes to the surface in the form of fear when they become seriously ill.

"If I could only live long enough to get out," is the plaintive cry one hears in the prison hospitals. And it's a soul-rending cry, because of the utter hopelessness of it in most cases. It appears that in their minds is a belief that death on the outside is something of a pleasure, whilst on the inside it is something to be viewed with dread and trembling.

I stress this point here for the purpose of showing that the very desperation involved, sometimes proves the factor most needed in effecting an ultimate cure, especially in cases where the causes are organic and the affliction genuine. [Editor's note: The religious doctrine of hell, or eternal damnation, becomes "man's inhumanity to man." God's grace far exceeds our limitation and this is seen in "where sin abounded, GRACE did much more abound." We must not sweep away the revelation presented to us in II Corinthians 5:18, "God was in Christ personally reconciling the world (all mankind) to Himself."All human history is consummated in Christ].

The following was such a case. In it there was no mental cause to be probed for and eradicated, and yet everything depended upon establishing in the patient's mind a strong personal desire to overcome. In this instance, therefore, my duty was to discover some method whereby this desire could be planted and fostered in the patient's mind.

Consequently the resulting progress was not one of those sudden healings that occur in the lives of the hysterically afflicted; but it was a dogged, slow-moving, determined process of mind over matter, of will over the fatalistic tendency to accept a physical condition as being hopeless.

The patient was a young man of fine physique, who had always been proud of his bodily development, his masculinity, and his ability to fend for himself and for his young wife and two children. In his mind, to be crippled or deformed in any way represented the tragedy of tragedies.

He had been curried into the hospital one day from the rock quarry with both arms broken, each one in two separate places. The unusual method employed in setting bones proved inadequate in his case and surgery was resorted to in the end.
The bones knitted splendidly, but there was the faintest overlapping of nerve lines, which left the boy's arms from the elbows down log-like and lifeless. Apparently nothing could be done about it; but the surgeon dropped a hint that if the unfortunate could be made to concentrate the full force of his will on the problem and keep trying to move the dead fingers, he might eventually succeed in bringing about a realignment of the nerve carriers and thus regain the use of his arms.

The patient, however, had been completely overcome by the tragedy. All the interest he had ever had in life seemed to have left him when the full truth of his condition was finally forced upon him. Almost daily some of his relatives visited him. At first he could hardly bear the thought of seeing his wife and children. Unfortunately, through their strong efforts to pacify him, they succeeded in establishing in his mind a sort of dull acceptance, and he began to reconcile himself to a future of invalidism. Of course, so long as he remained in this attitude of mind, there was no use trying to reason with him about the necessity of making an effort. Every one about him did that to no avail. He would pretend to try, tire quickly, and slump back in his pillows.

While I watched these futile attempts being made to arouse an interest in him, I came to the conclusion that his case was to be absent of pandering sympathy. This fellow had to be handled with brutal frankness and infinite patience, and infinite encouragement. To that task I dedicated myself.

I pictured to him with all the powers of description I could command, the horrors of an armless future, of his being a life-long object of charity, depending on others for every crust he ate, for every rag he wore. He was forced to grit his teeth to keep from screaming while I savagely mapped out the course his life must take. In the face of it he did exactly what I wanted him to do, he became desperate, he had been stirred to the foundation of his soul. At this juncture I said: "Remember, kid, it's up to you. If you want this sort of future you can have it. If you don't want it, you don't have to take it."

My last sentence kindled fires of hope in his eyes. He could not wait to begin the battle. I patted his shoulder in appreciation of his courage. "I'll explain how to go about it," I told him then.

And with this I told him about the creative principle that operated throughout the universe that could be contacted by love; that if his love for his arms was strong enough to make him try ceaselessly to move his fingers, the creative principle could be made to do his bidding.

His efforts were pathetically heroic. In order to make it less difficult, I advised him to direct his will into the right hand first. For three weeks I spent every spare minute I had at his bedside giving him encouragement. Sometimes he would think he felt his fingers move. And I would say, "You're right, they did move just a tremor." These lies were creative lies, because they created in him greater determination and greater effort.

As I watched one night my long vigil was rewarded. His thumb moved. I grabbed him around the neck and shouted. I staggered from the room blind with gratitude.

I was never to have the satisfaction of seeing much further progress than that made, however, for about this time his relatives succeeded in getting him paroled because of the injury he had received while in prison. He was the only man to whom I've ever begrudged freedom. I believed then and I still believe that had I been given another month with him, his arms would have been restored. But during my remaining period in prison I heard of him from time to time. They had him in the care of many doctors who had tried in vain to help him. He had promised me on the day he left that he would keep trying our method. But many over-indulgent hands, I'm afraid, eager to do the work that his were made to do, broke down the desperate desire I had built up in him. At any rate, the last word I had of him proved him to be no better off than he was on the day he left prison.

Always love causes something to be created. But always love must direct the creative principle toward constructive ends if such are the ends desired. I do not say this boy's friends and relatives consciously sought destruction for him. Indeed they did not. But the love they had for him was not the wise love that gives others the necessary stimulus and encouragement to help themselves.

The mother who loves her child so much that she relieves her child of self developing effort, is not loving constructively, and because she is not loving constructively a price will later be exacted of both her and the child. For always the creative principle creates that which it is directed to create This is its nature. And this is what it does. It is man's duty to use the creative principle toward constructive ends to the fullest extent of his capacity to do so. And this capacity is sometimes greater than man might at first realize. In other words, one never knows what one can do until one tries.

If every man would pause to question the course his desires were taking, and change that course if he found it to be destructive, this old world would soon notice a mighty falling off on the debit side of misery.

In this last particular I have saved a most unusual case through which to show how the creative principle, reversed, brought happiness to a man who for years had rolled himself about in a wheel-chair, grumbling at his fate, bored with the terrible monotony of his existence.

His physical handicap was of small importance compared to the sullen, brooding melancholia that made the contemplation of life far more terrible than contemplation of death. He had to be watched constantly in order to prevent him from carrying out and achieving what he had attempted on two or three occasions. A sufferer from insomnia, he would lie through the endless nights wide-eyed, cursing and grumbling; with the coming of morning he faced the day with the deadening horror of exhaustion, each moment passing with the slow pace of a century. All day long he would roll himself back and forth from his room to the clock at the far end of the corridor, note the time and then curse the hands that moved so slowly round the dial.

Being irritable and constantly cranky, he had no friends. In fact, he was one man who seemed unwilling to share his misery with others. To speak to him in a friendly tone was to court immediate rebuke, and only those unfamiliar with his scathing tongue ever invited it.

He had been a patient in the hospital for nearly a year when I began my duties there. I was promptly warned against him, told that no one would have anything to do with him. But this well-intentioned advice, instead of prejudicing me against the man, awakened within me a compassion so great that I found it difficult to contain it. I wanted to pour it out on him in a torrential flow of words. However, I held myself in check, bided my time, studied him minutely, and watched for him to show some sign of responsiveness. My reward came one day when I saw him watching the antics of a stray dog that had somehow slipped by the guard and found its way in to the prison yard. This display of interest struck me that he might be interested in a pet. I revealed my finding to the warden and got his permission to allow the man to have a small pet in his room.

I first thought of trying to secure a white mouse; but before I had a chance to make arrangements for one, a friend of mine found a young sparrow on the flag-stones of one of the cell buildings. The little fellow's right wing was broken. I brought it into the hospital and began to set the broken member. As I worked the patient rolled up in his chair and sat watching me silently. I turned to him and said, "I think I ought to wire the bones," And then I asked him to hold the bird while I went for the silver wire.

In a few minutes we were working together over our little cockney friend. With the operation completed, I hinted that I hated to turn the bird loose till it was well, but I didn't have time to look after it.

"I'll take care of it for you," he volunteered.

And how he took care of it! No bird ever got the love and attention that he lavished on Molly, as he later named her. She thrived on his care. Her wing knitted and grew strong. He taught her many little tricks. She would ride about perched on his head; she would cling to his ear and chatter, while he chattered back. She would cling to his finger and take food from his tongue.

Then one day he grew pensive and told me he had decided to give Molly her freedom. I'll never forget that day. I went with him to the window and pushed the screen back for him. When Molly flew out, all that life held for him seemed to go with her. We watched her as she flew chattering here and there, lighting on this building and that, until finally we lost her and turned from the window. She remained away all day. But late in the afternoon I was awakened by his shout at my door. Jumping up I ran into his room. And there was Molly clinging to the outside of the screen, fussing and fluttering her wings in the utmost impatience with our stupidity and slowness in coming to her rescue.

Every day after that Molly was allowed to go out; but always about the same time in the afternoon she would reappear to be let in again. When the clock told him it was time to expect Molly home, he would roll himself to the window to welcome her.

Out of this incident I was able to establish other interests in this patient. He became an expert with needle and thread and made many beautiful things which he sold to visitors. A part of this money he set aside for charity purpose which he conducted among the hospital patients. Little things they needed that were not furnished by the prison he would buy and distribute. His name became a symbol of kindness throughout the prison. They called him a square guy, the highest compliment one convict can pay to another. And those he befriended during their stay in the hospital seldom forgot. Though he had no friends or relatives outside, on holidays, when boxes were allowed to be sent in, he was the recipient of more gifts than any one else in the prison. All of these gifts would come from his inmate friends; men fortunate enough to have friends and relatives outside to remember them.

The money he didn't use for charity was hoarded carefully until he had enough saved to purchase a set of books on commercial drafting. With these books he was busy preparing himself for a useful future when I was released. So completely occupied was he with this and his numerous other activities, he found it necessary to budget his time, allowing so much for this thing and so much for that. He has been given permission to use a bed lamp after the regular hour for retiring, and in this way he could carry on until midnight, at which time he would go to bed. Having trained himself to induce instant sleep, he would rest perfectly for six hours, at the end of which another busy day would begin.

How different his life was from those other days of dragging torment and those endless nights of sleeplessness. Then, each minute in the twenty-four hours meant just a link in an endless chain of monotony; now, each minute was a gem, too precious to be wasted in destructive thought and idleness.

It was a miracle in the realm of transformation; but it was an inevitable miracle. It could have been no other way. The moment he began to use the creative principle of life in the right direction, that moment he began to displace misery with happiness. This man confided many jewels of wisdom to me before my departure, but I've always held the following to be his richest bit of prison philosophy.

"Don't seek peace," he told me, "but conflict. By conflict we grow, and growth is just another name for happiness."

CHAPTER VIII - LOVE CAN OPEN PRISON DOORS OF STEEL

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger
than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.
-Emerson.

All men accept the idea that love and thought are synonymous, that the former is the first expression of the latter, and that the combination of the intellectual and emotional form a unity inseparable one from the other, and that this unity, acting upon creative principle, constitutes the strongest creative force in the world.

All men admit that thought-force is capable of performing miracles, of constantly changing the face of things, of brushing aside the impossible, and out of the impossible of yesterday establishing the commonplace of today. Men will agree to the truism that the possible accomplishments of thought are limitless; but when you say that thought can open the doors of a modern prison, unsupported by collusion or political influence, men will shake their heads, thus indicating their Missourian disposition to be shown.

On an evening in 1924 I sat in a cell alone on the receiving gallery of the prison mentioned throughout this book. My outlook was as black and hopeless as any man's outlook could possibly be. That morning I had been up before the board of paroles, and the chairman of the board, who had done the talking, had been in no mood to spare my sensibilities.

Only a very short while before I faced the same body of men, and I had made them the usual run of glowing promises. "Yes, gentlemen," I had said on that occasion, "when I go out this time I intend to make good. I've learned my lesson. This jolt has taught me that crime doesn't pay. I'm done with it forever. Me for the straight and narrow from now on."
"Well, this has been your second offence in this prison, the chairman had replied. "Yet your prison record has been fairly good. We've decided to give you another chance. But if you fail, if you come back again you may expect no consideration at our hands."

And I had gone out a few mornings later. The man who signed my parole and who had worked for my release because of his friendship for my father, received me in a spirit of paternal trust and confidence. And that very night I took up again where I had left off when the prison door had cut short my criminal career. I had no intention of trying to make good. I had merely repeated my old meaningless promises in exchange for official favors. So when I sat before the parole board on this morning I wore the brand of an habitual criminal. The chairman said to me:
"You've betrayed the trust we reposed in you. You were told what to expect if you did that. Now what have you to say for yourself ?"

I had nothing to say, of course. what could I say? I had reached the end of my purring promises. I was at the end of my old reliable resources. I could say nothing but face the music and pay the fiddler.

"You've made your own bed," the chairman went on ruthlessly, "and you've made it out of sand-burrs. It's going to be pretty tough to lie in. But you're going to lie in it this time. Your sentence calls for from one to twenty years. I wish we had power to make it life. You've forfeited every right to our sympathy. We cannot inflict more than the maximum sentence upon you, but we can inflict that, and you shall be made to serve every minute of that twenty years, which will amount to eleven years and three months under the 'good time law,' without ever again having an opportunity to appear before this board for consideration of parole matters."

My rating was not only that of an habitual criminal. My criminological rating had me listed as abnormal, criminally insane, incurably anti-social. I was hopelessly beyond the influence of reformation. The warden told me no power on earth save a miracle could ever shorten my sentence one minute.

And yet I sat before that same board five years later and listened to them talk to me in the friendliest tones. And again, a year later, I appeared before them again and received their assurance that I was deserving of another chance. They gave me that chance and I went out five years in advance of the time set for my release. Nor did I use any political or other influence whatever. Indeed, I had only one or two letters of recommendation on file in my behalf, and these were from persons who had no prestige or influential power with the state administration.

In that night in 1924 as I sat in my cell on the receiving gallery, my thoughts were fog-bound. I had been able to face short terms with a certain degree of equipoise for I could see through to the end; but now there was no end. Already dissipation had stamped me with premature old age. After eleven years and three months I would be fit for nothing, save to join the pathetic ranks of old broken-down prison lags who, after making their weary rounds of the various prisons, usually wound up by appearing voluntarily at some prison gate begging for admittance, pleading for the privilege of entering and ending their miserable days in the only sort of home they had ever known.

Yes, by that time, my nerve would be completely gone. I would not have enough left to commit another crime in order to break back into prison. I would come doddering back, burned out and shriveled up, whining and begging for a home and finally a hole in the prison grave-yard. I could see that sort of end; I could see no other.

It was to be eleven years and three months on the calendar; in the terms of emotion it would be a thousand years. I hated myself that evening as no man has ever hated. One does not know hate who has only hated the conditions in which he lives; the emotion of hate that reaches no farther than to God, to decency, to fairness, to other men, is not hate in its blackest and bitterest sense. One must hate one's self, wholly, completely, utterly, really to know what hate means. And that is the way I hated on this dreary, futureless evening. I could see but one way out. A safety razor blade would twist me out of my misery. But a better way would be to die with the guns of the guards roaring in my ears.
At least if I was rubbed out in an effort to escape I would have made that one effort. The chances were one in a thousand perhaps, for success. But, there was still that one chance. It would be better to gamble everything on it, than to go out the cowardly way.

As I was trying to choose between these two extremes, I hadn't known that self destruction actually was a cowardly way to avoid a bad situation. The prisoner in charge of the gallery brought this fact home to me. I told him in answer to his comment, "Looks kinda tough for you this trip," that if it got too tough I knew how to remedy the situation.
He cackled mirthlessly, "You won't be the first weakling to take that way out."

"It takes nerve to wind up your own ball of yarn," was my reply.

He cackled again. "No, you're wrong, it takes nerve to face the jolt you're facing -- more nerve than you've got, old man. It's easier to hand in your checks."

I hadn't thought of self destruction in that light. Obviously he was right. Under the circumstances, it required little courage to face death; but to face the lingering torment of this living death, eleven years and three months of it -- to face it -- that took real courage.

It was courage, thank God, that challenged me to combat. I would not advertise to the whole prison that I was too much of a weakling to pay the piper. Nor would I knuckle down and become the docile, broken-spirited lamb. I would face the music, but I would face it as a rebel, a firebrand, a prison revolutionist.

Naturally, in this attitude of violence, I did nothing but injure myself. It was the same attitude I carried with me into the dungeon some three years later -- and left there, never again to be resurrected.

That I could use the love medium to gain my freedom never occurred to me of my own accord. After I had discovered that medium and had began to apply it to my life and the lives of those around me, I was so thoroughly in harmony with my environment that time, place and conditions meant nothing. The days and nights came and went with a smoothness and velocity that was simply astounding. I seldom could tell any one the day of the week, and the date of the month was a thing I rarely ever knew. Once I was asked the day of the week. I didn't know. Then I was asked the date of the month, and I didn't know that either.

"Well, do you know what year it is ?" asked my questioner. And studying some time I was able to answer that one. But my questioner promptly informed me that I was a year behind time.

So one day when a fellow, and he an official, asked why I didn't try to get my case up and get out, I was forced to admit that it had been a long time since I had thought of my freedom. I did think of it after that, however, although not in a way to disturb my peace of mind. I had reached the point where, like my old cell-mate, I didn't care where I was on earth, so long as I could carry on my experiments for the improvement of myself and others. The idea of gaining my freedom now held out its reward, not in the freedom itself, but in the proof or demonstration that it could be gained by the application of love and thought to creative principle.

When I made up my mind to try it I bumped into a string of questioning qualms. Always before I had used the principle for service to others or for the purpose of furthering my own spiritual and mental interests. To use it now merely to gain my freedom left a selfish tang in my soul that I drew back from in a sort of moral recoil. Even though Dad assured me that my qualms were unwarranted, the feeling continued to persist.

In meditation I sought assurance which didn't come immediately. The reason: I was shutting myself from the reservoir of intuitive knowledge by squeezing the channel with strain. I learned that when you seek the super consciousness for knowledge about a particular thing, you usually wind up disappointed with knowledge about nothing. These are most unsatisfying meditations.

My meditations before had been all-embracing. I sought meditation for the sheer joy of entering that far-flung realm of super joy. And consequently, having no human desire to hinder bodily relaxation or to prevent the gradual slowing down process of the heart and lungs to the state of pulse lessness and breathlessness, I had been able to contact general wisdom almost at a moment's notice. But with a particular desire in my mind, I could neither relax nor receive, because the nature of the desire was always there, and nothing else could get through or around it.
However, as it later panned out, these futile attempts did impress themselves upon my subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind, in turn, took its directions and passed them on to me.

These directions were specific, but not understandable as applying to my problem. I got them in the form of a dream during subconscious meditation. I did not at first act upon them, because they seemed to have no connection with the one thing I wanted to know: "Would I now be justified in using the creative principle against others in order to influence them to grant me a favor I had come to consider purely selfish?"

Finally one evening, during a desire less meditation, I received the information that there was no such thing as selfishness. There was a misuse of supply and a right use of supply.

And with this, of course, I realized that my freedom rightly used would conform to life's purpose of spiritual growth, just the same as my imprisonment rightly used had done. We were punished not for our right uses of law, but for our misuses of law.

The directions I received had to do with the transmission of telepathic thought over a distance of many miles. The object of this thought-transmission was the chairman of the parole-board.

It entailed my having to learn something of this man's habits. Which I did, working through a friend of mine in the prison record clerk's office, and he in turn working through the private secretary of the chairman. I learned a great deal about the home the chairman occupied, its location. I learned that he usually retired at ten-thirty each night that business or pleasure did not prevent. Also, that for about two hours before retiring he sat alone in his library with his books. I learned many details about this library, its general appointments, its shape and location in the house, the reading lamp and the chair where he sat.

With all this information in my hands I was ready to begin the biggest experiment I had yet undertaken, that of impressing my personality upon the mind of a man across a vast distance of space. I had achieved the same thing many times at close range, and I had no doubt but that the same thing could be accomplished at long range. And I might add that this very faith was a great aid to that end.

What I did therefore was to visualize the chairman in his favorite chair in his library. I did this every night so as not to miss him on the nights he actually occupied this place. I surrounded him with an imaginary atmosphere of peace, contentment, comfort, receptiveness. I thought of him in terms of love, of Christ likeness. I talked to him with my thoughts, wishing him well. Night after night, in this imaginary manner, I hovered round. For several months I kept faithfully and patiently at the experiment, not once allowing myself to become discouraged in the face of the fact that nothing seemed to happen. Indeed, as the effort was extended, it seemed to become almost effortless. In time it grew into a pleasant endeavor. I grew to feel an exuberant joy in paying this man my nightly visit, and I also came to feel that he was finding his library period more and more pleasurable.

Eventually there was added to my directions another piece of business that apparently had no connection whatever to the business at hand, but was so urgent that I was forced to get in touch with Dad Trueblood, who of course had been informed of my experiment from the first.

I was given an urge to write an essay on a certain topic and to submit it to the editor of a certain welfare magazine. At this time the rules of the prison had not yet been lowered to that place where prisoners were allowed to write for publication. This restriction, however, was lifted soon after the event just described.

Dad's advice was prompt and to the point.

"Write the essay and send it," he said.

"But the warden won't stand for that," I told him. "Besides, what do I know about writing?"

"In this case you may find out you don't need to know an-thing about it after you get started. If the urge is genuine, the thing will write itself. Anyway it's up to you to go ahead."

"Well," I told him, "I don't know what it's all about, but I'm game to try anything once."

I don't know whether the essay was good or not. Dad said it was. The warden said it was. The chairman of the board said it was. The point is, it was because of it that I was called that second time before the parole-board, five years after my first appearance before that body, at which time I had been told I would never be called there again for consideration of parole matters. As a matter of fact I wasn't called there for the consideration of parole matters. But of that later.

After I had finished the essay I carried it to the warden and asked him if I could send it to the magazine indicated. His answer was a flat refusal. But he read the essay. When he had finished, he looked at me with surprise.

"Did you write this?" he wanted to know.

I admitted the fact.

"Well, it's good," he said, "and I'm going to put it in the hands of the chairman of the board."

As I rose to leave he added: "You've been making a mighty good record lately. Keep it up."

When the parole board held its next session at the prison I was called before it. My essay was lying on the table in front of the chairman when I entered. I was greeted cordially and told to sit down. The chairman informed me that I was not there because they had decided to reopen my case. He picked up the essay and asked me if I had written it.
"Yes, sir," I replied. "Or rather it was written for me. My work was merely stenographic."

He laughed. "Well, whoever wrote it," he said, "has expressed sentiments that make for good citizenship."

There was more said, of course, and while I have not given the verbatim account of the conversation, because I do not remember the precise words, I have employed dialogue to express the general trend of the thought. So it has been throughout the writing of this book wherever conversation has been employed. Where I have been able to record conversation verbatim, I've done so; where I haven't, due to a lack of memory, I've tried to copy the actual as nearly as I could.

Following this incident, I no longer pursued my experimentation along the telepathic line. I knew that the chairman of the board now had me in mind and I knew that my prison conduct was being closely watched at the chairman's request.

I conducted myself as before. I went ahead with my work and proceeded to forget all about my freedom. When an opportunity arose whereby I could use the creative principle constructively against the problems of my fellows, I did so. A year thus passed. Then I was called before the board again. This time to receive my freedom.

The subject of thought transference is today under the fire of controversy. I have neither desire nor intention of presenting this experience as a contribution to telepathic lore. The argument for or against has no appeal for me whatever. There may not be such a possibility as transferring thought although my belief is on the positive side. The weight of my evidence is found in the results obtained through my experiments.

In this chapter I have described as nearly as I was able, the exact method used to gain my freedom, to open the door of my prison. That this method was responsible for the opening of that door, I sincerely believe to be true. The reader may believe otherwise. That is a privilege I deny no one. But I might say in addition, that apart from my description of what occurred, there is some documentary evidence. The record of this prison will show that I entered there in the year previously mentioned; that my sentence was set at eleven years and three months; and that without political or other influences of any kind, I was released from there five years in advance of the time fixed by law.

My experience in the prison hospital was rich with evidence that thought was easily transferred from one mind to another. In one of the many cases of hysterically induced diseases, I used the telepathic method exclusively.

The boy was a patient in the tubercular ward. A few months before he had been in the best of health. Then one day he picked up a handkerchief near the hospital, took it to his cell, washed it and began to use it. A day or two later a friend seeing him with an outside store-bought handkerchief, asked him where he got it, and the boy told him.
"Why you big fool," said the friend. "I'll bet one of them T.B.'s over there threw it out of the window. They're always doing things like that. They want other people to catch the T.B."

The boy became panicky and began to brood constantly on what his friend had told him. His appetite began to fade away. He lost weight and lived in daily and nightly dread of the terrifying disease. Then he caught a slight cold and developed a cough. He was sure he had taken tuberculosis. He came on the sick-call to the hospital and voiced his fears to the doctor. He was put in a room while an examination was made. He carried no temperature; a sputum test revealed the presence of no germs. But he could not be convinced, and a few weeks later when another test was made, he was running a temperature and the sputum revealed germs.

In the tuberculosis ward I tried every way I could think of to rid his mind of this morbid disease-thought. But the thought was so deeply grooved in his subconscious mind that no amount of conscious suggestion could counter-groove it.
I decided to try telepathy on him while he slept. I knew of course that these patients were supersensitive and super receptive to thought force during their waking hours. But I had never tried to influence one of them while he slept.
At night time in the ward, after nine o'clock, all the lights were turned off, except one red one in the middle of the room. Thus I could slip in quietly, make my way through the semi-darkness, and thus reach his bed-side without disturbing his slumber. Crouching directly behind the head of his bed, I mentally called his name, concentrating the full force of my faculties upon its clear deliberate and sonorous enunciation.

At first I got no visible response. Duties intervening, I was compelled to conduct my experiment at short intervals throughout that first night. The following night also evinced nothing

in the way of reward for my efforts. But about three o'clock in the morning of the third night, he began to manifest a sense of restlessness during the period I slowly pronounced his name. When my thoughts of him were withdrawn, he would immediately become quiet and begin again to breathe evenly.

Of course, I was elated. To me these incidents were not the accidental disturbances of dream states. I was firmly convinced that he was being influenced, not by internal forces, but by a force of thought exuded from my own mind. However, before I accepted this conviction, I saw the same thing demonstrated repeatedly in more than a hundred precise experiments.

The last one of its kind conducted, that is, in which his response was merely a nervous display, happened in the presence of the night-warder of the hospital and the night-captain of the guard. More than a dozen times they witnessed his disturbance while I called to him.. And then when I would raise my hand, indicating to them that I was going to withdraw my influence, they saw the tension leave him while he began his quiet even process of breathing once more.

The next experiment brought forth in addition to his physical reaction, a verbal response. Yet I refused to accept this as anything genuinely connected with the experiment until he had repeated it numerous times during the period of my operations. He at no time spoke over the one word while the experiment was going on. That one word was mother. It was garbled somewhat, as most words spoken in dreams. But the thing that was striking about it was that the inflection was always the same. It was as though his mother appeared to him in a dream and as though he had been expecting her to come. Now the boy's mother was dead; but it was obvious the memory of her still influenced his sub-conscious life.

At this point I made an assumption that, naturally, I had no way of proving whether or not it was working out as I assumed it to be working out. But when he would speak the word mother, I would assume that her personality and influence were with him in a dream, and I endeavored to make her say the things I wanted her to say. In other words, while her personality was visible to him in his dream, I assumed that I was she and I spoke to him with my thoughts in terms of his health, seeking always, through telepathic suggestion, to counteract the effect of disease-thought held in his sub-consciousness, and to replace the disease thought with the thought of health.

This treatment, together with a carefully planned tissue-building diet, I am certain was responsible for this patient's final and complete recovery from the disease that had taken him very close to death. I am aware that this incident can prove nothing on behalf of the believers of thought-transference. But then the motive for my experiment was not to seek proof for or against a theory. My first interest was in the welfare of my patient, and my gratitude came when I was able to witness his steady but certain progress toward recovery. My big thrill of joy arrived on the day the doctor dismissed him from the hospital with a high rating of health.

Love and the creative principle. These words mean absolutely nothing. But to take what they symbolize and incorporate it into the daily livingness of one's life, means that one has the key that will unlock all the doors that limit one, in proportion as one's capacity increases for receiving and using creative power through the medium of LOVE.
Jesus could use creative power greatly, because He LOVED greatly. When one's sense of brotherly love is strong enough to die for the future betterment of one's fellowmen, such a one becomes a magnificent user of creative power and leaves a heritage the like of which has kept and will continue to keep the human family in existence and growing toward its goal of spiritual perfection.

What I have been able to achieve with creative power is small when compared to what I should like to achieve. In the minds of my readers, my achievement may not seem great; but to me it is monumental. I have no doubt, that without this key, my prison door would still be locked against me, had I not died long ago from the toxic poisons generated in my system by hate and the philosophy of negation.

For this key I am humbly and enormously grateful.

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

Webservant for TwoListeners.org

a non-profit project for the edification of Christians worldwide

Hit Counter