I am here. St. John. Brother of James--Apostle of Jesus.

I come to you today because I see what your condition is and that you need encouragement, and as I am your special guardian I could not abstain from writing you as I have. So I say, trust in the Father and in our help and you will not be disappointed.

It has been a long time since I have written you in regards to spiritual things, and I desire very much to do so, as I have important messages to communicate, as have many other spirits who have been accustomed to write you.

While your material affairs are important, yet these spiritual truths are of more importance, not only to you but to the world for whom they are primarily intended. The world needs these truths more at this time than ever before, and the sooner we can complete our book of truths the better it will be for suffering humanity, and for many whose hearts are now lacerated because of the great destruction of human life caused by the war.

Well, I know that many believe that in some way God has an overpowering direction as regards the progress and outcome of the war, and in a certain sense this is true, for He is always interested in and seeks to reach the souls and hearts of mankind and, of course, desires that the great suffering and devastation shall cease. But as the cause of all this was the evil desire and ambitions of men, He will let men, themselves, control the conduct and outcome of the war. He will not by His exercise of power in an arbitrary way end the war or determine which of the contending nations shall be successful, except in this, that through the instrumentality of His spirit, He will influence the minds and consciences of these men in such a way that right and justice will prevail, and the evil thoughts and deeds of men be stopped in their operations. His spirits are working to this end at this time, and have been for a long time, and so have the evil spirits been working to bring discord and destruction upon humanity. The leaders of the nations have been, in a large degree, obsessed by these evil spirits, and have been influenced in many of their thoughts and acts by these dark ones who delight in seeing mankind suffer, and in evil asserting itself.

The spirits of truth are exercising a wonderful power over the hearts and souls of men, and one that will cause them to soon realize that evil must not be allowed to prevail and that truth and right must assert themselves to the end that the war must not only cease, but that men must become more in unison with truth and justice. In this way the Father will answer prayer, and His love will also continue to flow to men.

I know that prayers are ascending unto the Father from many men and from many of the churches of the respective contending nations for success, but only those prayers will be answered which tend to bring about the overruling of evil and injustice; and the spirits who are working the Father's will will answer these prayers only which in their answer will bring about the desired end.

As I have said, while God does not take interest in these matters by His arbitrary power and decree that the one or the other of these warring nations shall overcome and conquer the others, yet, He does by His angels exercise such influence upon the men who are engaged in the struggle, that in the end His will will be brought to pass. But men, immediately, must determine the course and results of the issue, and no miracle will be performed which will make one side the conqueror of the other; and while this is so, this determination by men will be influenced as I have stated.

Man has his free will and, as we have written you, that is never arbitrarily controlled by the Father, but in the exercise of that free will, whenever man violates the laws of God, man must suffer the penalty of that violation. This is a never changing law of the material as well as of the spirit world. When evil is sown evil must be reaped, and until this evil ceases to operate as a cause, good will not appear. The men who are directing the war must understand that this law is operating in the conduct of the war, and that evil thoughts put into execution will inviolably bring evil consequences.

You may look for an earlier determination of the struggle than some men now believe possible, yet ere that end comes many mortals will become spirits and find their homes--some in the darker spheres, and some in those of light and love, but all are the children of God and will not be forsaken by Him in the great eternity.

Well, you have not been in that condition of mind that has enabled us to make the necessary rapport with you. We must have a mind that is filled with thoughts of the higher things of truth, even though we do not use those thoughts. Our thoughts are all spiritual, and our truths can be received only by the mind in a spiritual condition, and you, lately, have not had so much of this spiritual mind as formerly. Our contact has not been so close and our rapport, necessary to enable us to express through your mind these spiritual truths, has not been so perfect. And when I say mind I merely mean the organs of the brain as influenced by the thoughts of the mind; for I will tell you what you may not know, that these component organs of the brain are not always and under all conditions receptive of the same control by the minds of spirits. You may receive through your brain a long and profound message of things pertaining to what you may call the material, and yet under similar conditions of these organs, not be able to receive messages of the higher truths; and the conditions of these brain organs are caused by the condition of the soul in the possession of things spiritual.

It is difficult for me to express just what I intend to convey but this you will understand, that upon the development and possession by the soul of things spiritual, depends the capacity of the human brain to receive the various kinds of messages. A medium who is merely intellectual and morally good cannot receive those messages of the higher truths, because there can be no rapport between the brain of such a medium and the mind of the higher spirit who may desire to communicate. And thus you will understand why it is that the messages from the earth-bound spirits or from those who have merely the intellectual development, are so vastly more frequently received by mediums than messages from spirits of the soul development.

A spiritual thought--I mean a thought which can come only from a spirit who has the development of the soul that makes that soul divine--cannot possibly pass through a human brain which has never been developed by a soul in which the Divine Love has entered and worked its regenerating powers. Things of the material may be conveyed through a brain purely material--things moral through a brain which has been influenced by moral truths--and things spiritual through a brain which has assimilated those truths that come only with the development of the soul by love. This is the law of rapport and communication.

Well, I will not write more now.

But in closing urge you to have faith in us, and let your worries leave you, and pray more to the Father.

Good-bye.

Your brother in Christ,

JOHN.

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* These three messages on "Laws of Rapport" are the messages Jesus referred to in his message Vol. I, Edition 1, Page 2, 2d Paragraph.

Laws of rapport--continued

I am here. John.

I desire to write for a short time tonight upon a subject that I consider important, and you may consider interesting.

As you may know, it has been sometime since I wrote anything of a formal character and I regret very much that so much time has gone by without my being able to communicate some of the spiritual truths, and also regret that your condition has been such that I was unable to make the rapport with you that is necessary in order that I may deliver to you these messages of the nature mentioned.

I have explained to you in a former recent letter, in a brief way, the law of communication and rapport, and that law, if you will try to understand it, will enable you to comprehend the reason why we have not been able to communicate these higher truths.

It may seem to you that if we control your brain and not use or transmit your thoughts but only the thoughts which come from our minds, it would be immaterial what the nature of our thoughts might be, and that as your brain is used by us as a mere instrument we, having possession of your brain, would have the power to write anything we might desire. And upon a mere superficial glance at the assertion, it could be reasonably supposed to be true.

But, as we have told you before, rapport and our ability to use your brain are governed by laws, and one of these laws is that a high thought cannot be transmitted through a human brain which is not in the condition that qualifies it to receive the thought, just as the brain, in matter pertaining to mere material knowledge cannot receive a conception or comprehension of some intellectual truth with which it has not had acquaintance, and transmit it. A brain cannot be used by the mind of the human to make known or present a problem in geometry, when that brain has never been used by the mind to acquire an acquaintance with or knowledge of the principles of geometry. This is an incomplete analogy but it may serve to illustrate what I mean.

In the conception by the human mind of a truth, material or spiritual, the brain must be used in order to manifest or make known that conception. This is absolutely true where the idea or thought originates in the mind of the man who is using his own brain to formulate or manifest that idea or thought. The mind may have the thought or knowledge of some branch of learning, and yet when it has never used the brain to put that thought or knowledge into concrete form the brain cannot manifest or transmit it. This law applies specifically to the capabilities of the brain where it is attempted to be used or controlled by the mind of the man who owns the brain. And from this you will see that it is possible for the human mind to have thought and knowledge of things which it cannot use the brain to express.

In many of your material things of life, such as great invention, the knowledge of these inventions is in the mind, it may be, for a long time before it is formulated and expressed by the brain, and sometimes it never gets through the brain at all. The mind and the brain are not one and equivalent things; the one is the operator, the other is the thing used to operate with, so that the possessions of the operator may become manifested to others.

But this law, applying to and controlling the relationship of the mind and brain possessed by the same man, does not so absolutely apply to and control the relationship of mind and brain, where the mind is that of a spirit and the brain that of a mortal, for in such case the mind may take such complete control of the brain, that the former's manifestations are not governed or limited by the special experiences or want of experiences which the brain may have had in its use by the mind of the mortal along specific lines of expression or manifestation. Thus, as you may know and as it has been demonstrated by the work and experience of many human mediums, the minds of spirits have controlled the brains of these mediums, so that such brains have transmitted from these spirits expressions of various kinds of languages and mathematical truths with which such brains never have had any acquaintance or become exercised in expressing.

In these instances the brain is used merely in the sphere of intellect and the spirit who takes possession of that brain and uses it to express and make known the knowledge of the spirit's mind, is doing no different thing in essentials, to what the human mind, controlling its own brain, could have done had the brain been exercised in those directions. The capacity of the brain, whether exercised or not by the human mind controlling its own brain, limits the power of the spirit to control in the manner and for the purpose mentioned.

But this law has a further phase, and that is, the greater the general experience of the brain in its exercise by the human mind, the more perfectly can the spirit mind control it. All this is dependent upon facts which I cannot linger here to explain, such as the mediumistic qualities and susceptibilities of the human whose brain is attempted to be controlled by the spirit.

And the same laws apply to the disclosure of truth and principles along the moral planes. A spirit cannot possibly use the brain of a mortal to convey or transmit through it moral precepts or truths that that brain is not capable of receiving. And I do not mean by this that the brain must have had any acquaintance with any or many particular moral truths, or must have been used by the human for the purpose of receiving or imparting these precepts but must be in its essential capacity, potentially able to transmit and receive these truths. And so the capacity of the brain to receive and transmit these moral truths, limits the control of the spirit over the brain to express through it, these truths.

The rapport of the spirit with the human is determined by the development of the brain and the moral qualities of the human at the time the rapport is attempted to be made--and this means the actual development of these conditions and not what they may appear to be to other humans, or even to the individual himself. And this development determines to a large extent the power of the spirit to use the brain to disclose the truths, either intellectual or moral.

A medium can receive only such truths as his condition according to the nature of the truths, is susceptible to the forming of a rapport by the spirit. The possibility of rapport, and the kind thereof, lie at the foundation of mediumship, and determines and limits the power of the spirit to convey its thoughts and the capacity of the mortal to receive them.

When the medium is in a certain condition of development the spirit, writing, can form the rapport according as that condition harmonizes with the condition of the spirit; and it is impossible unless the harmony exists, for the spirit to write these things which require a greater degree of development than the medium at the time possesses. Hence, you will in a way understand why so few of the higher spiritual truths have ever been delivered to the world through the mediumship of any mortal who has been possessed of gifts of either automatic writing, as it is called, or clairvoyance or inspirational powers.

As to those truths which did not require a higher degree of development than was posesssed by the medium, there arose no difficulty in transmitting the same, and many mediums have been very successful in receiving the truth suited to their condition. And this fact, and law also, will explain to you why the same spirit may communicate through several mediums, and yet the communications be of a dissimilar character; that is, the communications through one medium contain higher or lower character of truth than those transmitted through some other medium; and with the result that those mortals who have heard or read these different communications, especially when critical, have been prone to believe that the same spirit was not making both communications. But this is not a just conclusion, for while the spirit was in the same condition--possessing the same knowledge--at the time of both communications, yet the mediums, because of their difference in development, were unable to receive the same character of messages.

You may search the whole history of spirit communications and of mediumship and you will not find any messages of the character of those that have been transmitted through you, and for the reasons that I have stated.

Swedenborg was the last and nearer perfect instrument for receiving these higher truths, and yet he, because of his want of soul development and his being bound, to a more or less extent, by his orthodox beliefs and scientific knowledge that caused him to coordinate and fit in these truths with his ideas of correspondence and such like conceptions, was a failure, and could not be successfully used to transmit these truth which we have been communicating thbough you. And after him other gifted and, in some respects, successful mediums were used by spirits, of the higher knowledge and progression to convey truths, but their conditions were such that, under the workings of the laws governing rapport, these mediums could receive only those truths which their conditions of development permitted them to receive. The workings of this limitation was not dependent upon the condition and ability of the spirits to impart these higher truths, but upon the capacity of the mediums to receive them.

You, yourself, have had experience as to how this law works and controls communication and rapport, for, as you know, it has been a long time since you were able to receive any spirit messages of these higher truths, although the spirits have been present with you many times, ready and anxious to make the rapport and deliver their messages; and you have been willing, intellectually, to receive them, but because of your condition or want of condition, the spirits could not deliver them and were compelled to wait until you get into the necessary condition.

From all this you will comprehend why so very few messages containing high spiritual truths, or even moral truths, come through mediums. The mediums, mostly, are so developed that they can receive only messages dealing with the material affairs of life, and which kinds of messages I am compelled to and can truthfully say, are those that are largely desired by the mortals seeking information from the spirit world.

Many spirits believe that what they have learned is true, and so give authoritative expression to the facts of their knowledge, and often believe what they know is all that may be known of the subject on which they communicate. And these are mostly honest in their beliefs and truthful, as they think, in their messages. And thus it is well for mortals to understand that everything written or spoken by spirits, at all times, is not to be accepted as the finality of truth. And on the other hand apparently contradictory statements should not be taken as fraudulent merely because they are contradictory. A spirit with greater knowledge using a medium in harmony with itself, can convey to men the more exact and greater extent of truth than can a spirit with less knowledge and development using a medium in harmony with itself.

Now, from what I have written, it is apparent that in order to get the greater truth, and more extended knowledge of the spirit world, mediums should make the effort to obtain larger and more intensive development of their spiritual natures as well as of their intellectual capacities. This acquirement is absolutely necessary to the reception of the higher truths which are so vital to mankind.

So, you see, communication and rapport depend upon the condition of both spirits and mortals working in unison; though more I may say upon the condition of the mortal. for, if the medium is in the proper state of development. there being always many spirits present with that medium in condition and readiness, a rapport can be made.

The Master is here tonight and has heard my communication and unites with me in saying: have faith and seek with all your soul for this Love. Believe that I am your special angel friend.

Your brother in Christ. JOHN.

Laws of Communication and Rapport--continued

By St. John, Apostle of Jesus

Let me write a few lines tonight as I have not written for a long time and am anxious to say a few words which may be of help to you.

I have been present on many evenings when you were expecting to receive communications and was disappointed because of reasons or causes that you could not understand, except that you were not in that condition which would enable the spirits to make a rapport with you.

Well, this is true, and is the immediate cause of the want of power of communicating; but it is well that you understand more than this, for in order to remedy the difficulty you must have some knowledge of the seat thereof.

I have explained to you the law controlling rapport and communication, and endeavored to make it as plain and understandable as possible, so that you, at least, might grasp its meaning; but, I see there are some things that you do not understand, and because thereof, you have had the recent experience of not being able to receive the many messages that were waiting to be delivered through your brain and hand.

As I have said, the first and important requirement is that you be in that condition of soul which will, because of its qualities, enable the spirits who may desire to write the higher messages to form a rapport or union with you, which means simply to take charge and control of your brain--a brain which because of certain qualities and thoughts having possessed it, will be in harmony with the thoughts that these spirits desire to transmit through it, just as it is absolutely necessary that the medium through which it is desired that the electric fluid shall flow, must be a medium possessing such nature and qualities as will permit the fluid to flow through it. A wire or medium may be made of wood, and the electric fluid be present, ready to flow through it, but cannot. And why? Not because the wire or wood may not be perfect in itself as such wire; but, because the wire has not that nature and quality that will permit the electric fluid to make a union with it and thus control it. And so it is with the brain of the mortal, that such brain has the possibility of possessing, when properly prepared, those qualities that will admit of this union and control, while the wood has not. But the brain, when devoid of this preparation, is just as non-receptive to the union with and control of these spirits--as is the rapport--as is the wooden wire to the union with the electric fluid.

You have been told on numerous occasions that you were not in condition and that the spirits could not make the rapport, and that you must make the effort to get in condition; and this assertion and advice are all true. You were told to pray more to the Father and think of spiritual things, and then you would become in that condition. This is true, and the advice is helpful. But you were not told what this praying to the Father or thinking of spiritual thoughts means, and, hence, you may do these things in a way and yet not get in the condition.

I know that during a long period in the past you have been receiving many messages of the higher truths, and for the delivery of which a brain highly prepared was necessary to receive the same, and the thought has come to you, why were you able to receive these messages at the time of their delivery and not be able to receive them now because, as you further think, your brain is in as good condition now as it was at those times. Well, in the latter thought you are mistaken, and the fact of such mistake should be sufficient to convince you that your inability to receive the messages should not surprise you. During the periods mentioned you prayed more often for the inflowing of the Divine Love and your longings were intense, and the desires to possess this Love, which is so vital to the preparation of your brain, were so much more active. And also your thoughts of things spiritual were so much more frequent.. In other words, you were then seeking with your whole heart to learn the truths of God and to possess His love; and, hence, your brain was continually in that condition which enabled the spirits to make the union and control it for the purpose of their higher expressions.

Lately you have not had the longings or prayed the prayers for the love as frequently and, as a consequence, the qualities and elements of thought that have possessed your brain were not such as to put your brain in that condition which made it receptive to the passing through it of those thoughts of the higher truths. Now from this, you must not infer that this condition is a mere matter of brain condition, produced by itself, for it is not. You have had the intellectual desire to write and receive the messages as much as you ever had, and also to receive messages of the higher truths that should be new as well as edifying to you, and your desires were real, and you were disappointed because they were not realized. And this merely demonstrates to you that there is something more than the mere mental or intellectual necessary to prepare the brain for the reception and transmission of that, which partakes of the nature of truth that has its source in something else than the mere human mind. These higher truths come from spirits whose minds, as you might say, are of the soul, and as only soul can deal with soul, it requires that the preparation of the brain should come from the exercise of soul powers upon the organs of that brain. And, hence, the necessity for your soul being in that condition that will produce in the brain the qualities that will unite and permit the truths of the soul to be received and transmitted.

You must not only pray to the Father for the inflowing of this Divine Love but you must pray often, until you realize almost constantly the possession of this Love in your soul; and also, you must turn your thoughts, and I do not mean the merely intellectual thoughts, but the thoughts of the soul, which as you have already had you may have again, to the spiritual truths which have been revealed to you, and to the spiritual realm where you believe other spiritual truths are waiting to be revealed. If you will thus pray and think, you will find coming to you the desires and expectations of the fulfillment of these desires and an enthusiasm which will come from the development of your soul by the possession of this Love, and also the soul thoughts. This is what is meant by the condition necessary to enable the spirits to make the rapport.

Of course, as to the ordinary matters of the spirit world where no special soul condition is required, the spirits can make rapport as they desire, and in your case many of them could have written at the times you thought you were unable to receive any writings. But we thought it best that no spirit be permitted to write you, as it might endanger the probability of your getting in the condition that we desire and which is necessary in order for your brain to receive our vital and important messages. And, hence, your Indian was directed to not permit any spirit to write you, and he did not though many made the effort to do so.

Well, I am glad that I can write you in this manner tonight, and hope you will consider what I have said, and realize the importance of your getting into the condition of which I speak. The brain must be used by the soul having the Divine Love active and so prepared to receive the rapport.

I will not write more tonight, but will merely say that we have many more messages which we desire to transmit.

So believe that I am frequently with you in my love and desire to help and protect, and make your mission a success.

Good night.