Part 1
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PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES
RECORDED BY FRANCIS GRIERSON
Spiritual Messages from the late General U. S. Grant, on Adequate Preparation in America; Thomas Jefferson, on the Future of American Democracy; Benjamin Disraeli, on English and Irish Affairs; Prince Bismarck, on the Indemnities; John Marshall, on the Psychology of the Supreme Court of the United States; Alexander Hamilton, on the Forces that Precede Revolution; Abraham Lincoln, on the Future of Mexico; Robert Ingersoll, on Our Great Women; Henry Ward Beecher, on the New Puritanism; Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, on President Harding; General B. H. Grierson, on Japan, Mexico and California, etc.
PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES
RECORDED BY FRANCIS GRIERSON
Published by AUSTIN PUBLISHING COMPANY Los Angeles, California
Copyright, June 1921 By B. F. Austin
INTRODUCTION
The word "psycho-phone" was first suggested and used by Mr. Francis Grierson in a lecture I heard him deliver before the Toronto Theosophical Society, August 31st, 1919, a year before Thomas Edison announced his intention of devising an instrument which he hopes will serve to establish intercourse between our world and the world of spirit.
My own experiences as a student in this sphere of psychic research in Europe and America, covering a period of thirty years, convince me that we have here a revelation of a new mode of spiritual communication unlike anything heretofore given to the world, not only different in quality but different in purpose.
From personal knowledge I can state that the recorder of these messages has not acted on ideas advanced by anyone living on our plane.
Looking back over the past two decades, I am led to believe that Mr. Grierson's predictions in "The Invincible Alliance," and in that startling poem, "The Awakening in Westminster Abbey," forecasting the war and the tragic events in Ireland, were spiritual and psycho-phonic in character.
From 1909 to 1911 Francis Grierson was the acknowledged leading writer on "The New Age," of London, which at that time had as contributors, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, the two Chestertons, Hillaire Belloc--in one word, all the most prominent writers and advanced thinkers in Britain, yet not one of them except Mr. Grierson could see the approaching world upheaval.
Early in 1909 he published a series of articles in that weekly depicting the coming war, and nothing of so drastic a nature had ever appeared in an English publication. In the spring of 1913 these articles were published in book form in London and New York under the title of "The Invincible Alliance."
In the Westminster Abbey composition, published in "The New Age" in 1910, the characteristics of four personalities are plainly manifest--Coleridge, Milton, Shelley and Shakespeare--and I have not forgotten the sensation caused by this great work in London at the time of its appearance.
Having had occasion to study the social and psychic conditions in France, Germany, Italy, Austria and England before the great war, and after having been an eye witness of scenes unique in the annals of musical inspiration in the artistic and literary circles of Europe as well as the most intellectual of the royal courts, in which Mr. Grierson was the central figure, I now have a better understanding of the work he accomplished and its far-reaching import. The more complex the work the longer must be the preparation, and we are now confronted with what will appear to many as the most interesting phase of Mr. Grierson's psychic gifts, for the seer who ushered in the new mystical movement by the publication of "Modern Mysticism" in 1899 is now the recorder of messages which must induce thinking and unprejudiced minds to pause and consider such matters in a new light, and it is to be hoped that many more messages like these may be recorded by the same hand.
As I write, I have before me a unique collection of letters written to Mr. Grierson by men and women eminent in philosophy, art, music, literature and journalism, in Europe and America. Among the letters that Mr. Grierson values the most in this remarkable album are eight from members of the French Academy, with Sully Prudhomme, winner of the first Noble Prize, heading the list. Which reminds me that I heard him say one evening in Paris, after hearing Mr. Grierson's music: "You have placed me on the threshold of the other world. There are not words in the French language to express what I have felt tonight!" Up to that moment the famous Academician had been known as an avowed agnostic.
Maeterlinck writes that the first Grierson volume (in French) influenced him more than any book he had ever read. There are four letters from the Belgian mystic.
This album is filled with expressions from the most authoritative minds in literature and art, as well as statesmen, soldiers and diplomats, such as Jules Simon, the Duc de Broglie, Lord Lytton, British ambassador at Paris; Lord Reading, British ambassador at Washington; Field Marshall Lord Wolseley, General B. H. Grierson, U.S.A., leading members of the Bonaparte family in Paris, Prince Henri of Orleans (son of Louis Philippe), Princess Eulalia of Spain, and crowned heads who gave receptions in Mr. Grierson's honor during the past thirty years. There are letters from distinguished Americans, such as Col. Henry Watterson (who wrote two long editorials on Mr. Grierson in the Louisville "Courier Journal"), Henry Mills Alden, editor of "Harper's Monthly," Prof. William James, Marion Reedy, Edwin Markham, Edith Thomas, Mary Austin, and many leading professors of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, the Universities of Illinois, Wisconsin and California.
Edwin Bjorkman says, in his "Voices of Tomorrow":--
"To Francis Grierson belongs the honor of having first attained to prophetic vision of the common goal. In his first volume, published in Paris in 1889, he suggested every idea which since then has become recognized as essential not only to Bergson and Maeterlinck but to the constantly increasing number of writers engaged in making the time conscious of its own spirit. As we read essay after essay it is as if we beheld the globe of life revolving slowly between us and some unknown source of light."
The following remarks from the London "Outlook" seem to me pertinent to the subject:--
"Grierson is an Englishman, for he was born in Cheshire; Scotland may justly claim him in that he is a direct descendent of Sir Robert Grierson, the famous Laird of Lag, who is the hero of Scott's novel, 'The Red Gauntlet'; that America has had a part in the making of him all readers of that wonderful book, 'The Valley of Shadows,' know; France can claim him since he began his musical career in Paris and published his first book in French; but no special country can claim to have developed his genius--that is cosmopolitan."
As "Current Opinion" says, in a long study: "He presents a unique combination of thinker, writer, artist and musician who owes nothing to any school or any master or system of training; and his experience is without a parallel in the intellectual world of our day."
LAWRENCE WALDEMAR TONNER,
245-1/2 So. Spring St. Los Angeles, California.
FOREWORD
These messages were begun in September, 1920, and the last was recorded in May, 1921. I little dreamed that many of the predictions set forth would be verified so soon. For names, in themselves, count for nothing. The subliminal mind may assume different names on different occasions. A message is of value exactly in proportion to the information imparted.
The first communication from General Grant was recorded September ninth. It is peremptory in tone, and contains a warning touching the insecurity of the Panama Canal. In November Mr. Harding made a tour of inspection and found the fortifications of the Canal inadequate. I then decided on the publication of these messages.
They deal with the actual. Take, for example, John Marshall's documents, which are filled with warnings no reader with intelligence will attempt to refute, Disraeli's indictment of English statesmanship in recent times, Lincoln's utterances on affairs in Europe and Mexico, General Grant on Preparation, Benjamin Franklin on the Privilege of Liberty, Bishop Phillips Brooks on the Coming Ordeals, to name but a few.
As a Judge sums up, regardless of who may or may not agree, a decision is rendered according to the vision of the one who delivers the message. Principle, not Party, is the basis of judgment.
Witness Disraeli's remark that the blunders committed by the British Parliament would have been impossible in an Irish Parliament in Dublin.
In a series of articles in "Nash's Magazine" Mr. Basil King suggests that "the means of communication with the plane next above us may be through the everlasting doors which the subliminal opens upward. Through these doors the mind may go up and out; through these doors the light may come in and down."
In our group of investigators we have had the perseverence essential for serious development, and, as in all demonstrations, whether physical or psychical, everything depends on conditions, so we have had periods of weeks when no message of any kind was received.
A striking feature of these communications is their freedom from restraint imposed by popular opinion. They contain neither theories nor appeals. Warnings are uttered concerning events and their inevitable reactions.
The psycho-phonic waves, by which the messages are imparted, are as definite as those received by wireless methods.
FRANCIS GRIERSON.
Los Angeles, California
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 5
Foreword 13
Thomas Reed, of Maine, Late Speaker of the House, on the Peace League 21
General U. S. Grant, on Adequate Preparation in America 24
General U. S. Grant (second message) 27
Thomas Jefferson, on the Future of American Democracy 30
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on the Future of American Women 33
Benjamin Franklin, on the Privilege of Liberty 43
John Marshall, "The Expounder of the Constitution," on the Psychology of the Supreme Court 46
Daniel Webster, on "Bohemian" Statesmen 47
Oliver Wendell Holmes, on the New Eden 49
Benjamin Wade, Late Governor of Ohio, U. S. Senator, on President Harding 51
Don Piatt, Late Editor of "The Capital," Washington, D. C., on Prohibition and the Blue Laws 55
Benjamin Disraeli, on English and Irish Affairs 58
Prince Bismarck, on Germany and the Indemnities 63
Henry Ward Beecher, on the New Puritanism 70
John Marshall, on Liberty and the League (second message) 74
Abraham Lincoln, on the Future of Mexico 79
Robert Ingersoll, on Our Great Women 82
Stephen A. Douglass, on War Between England and America 83
General B. H. Grierson, on Japan and California 85
Alexander Hamilton, on the Forces that Precede Revolution 89
Phillips Brooks, on The Coming Ordeals 93
Psycho-phone Messages
THOMAS B. REED
(Late Speaker of the House)
Recorded September seventh, 1920.
The formidable imbecility of the Senate rivaled the fantastic irritability of the President.
Born with a Utopian temperament, Mr. Wilson has a Herculean passion for generalities and a Lilliputian penchant for details.
You scratched the Teutons at Versailles and found a new species of Tartar; you scratched the Japanese and found a Pacifist camouflage; you scratched the Poles and found a pianist with his hair uncut; you scratched the French and found a tiger with his claws unclipped. Your mania for scratching other nations will keep your nails manicured without the aid of scissors.
Never since the Declaration of Independence and the first peal of the Liberty Bell did a chief executive walk up a winding stair into so pretty a parlor as when Mr. Wilson, with the naivete of a Princeton president, faced that cacophony of sectional jazz bands to witness the cryptic hand-writing on the wall at the peace table. Who was his adviser? Was it a gentleman with owl spectacles from the oil fields of Texas? And was there no one who could have cautioned him against the finesse of Clemenceau who spent sixty years sharpening his wits on the political grindstone of Europe? Was no one in America aware that the French Premier is a fluent speaker in English?
Mr. Wilson could speak no French, which reminds me that Jack Spratt could eat no fat and his wife could eat no lean, and so betwixt them both they licked the platter clean. But a clean plate does not mean a clean slate, and the President brought one home filled with the riddle of the Sphinx. Yet the Peace Conference revealed the secret of perpetual motion and conferred a timely service, for the hubbub created by the Wilson-Lansing-House-Party at Versailles kept the Senate from passing into a trance.
A blind man can tell the difference between pepper pods and apple dumplings, but who can tell where tweedle-dee ends and tweedle-dum begins? No one. Then how can your statesmen distinguish between the psychological characteristics of the Hungarians and the Bohemians, the Bavarians and the Saxons, the difference between a polka and a polonaise, a pig in a stye and a pig in a slaughter house?
Patriotism often depends on an influence too subtle for analysis, and yet they would enact drastic laws to bind all Europe in one bond. They will hardly succeed in a thousand years.
Some pay through the nose, some through the pocket and some through the stomach. Americans are paying through all three. Danton declared the secret of the French Revolution was audacity, and audacity, and again audacity, but what you need today is vigilance repeated ad infinitum.
I am placing you in communication with some of the most far-reaching minds of the past hundred and fifty years. The psycho-phone is new and we are using it for the first time.
THE LATE GENERAL U. S. GRANT
Recorded September Ninth, 1920
The imbroglio started by President Carranza is beginning to influence the politicians of Buenos Ayres and other centers in South America. They have secretly repudiated the Monroe Doctrine. Their next maneuver will be a public repudiation.
I would say to Congress, stop juggling with phrases and attend to the business of the hour. The majority have been chasing shadows in a sphere of politics illumined by moonshine bottled in the Blue Ridge. I was more careful of my brand. When President Lincoln asked for the label, so he could recommend it to other generals, he was not far wrong in his surmises. It is not so much the thing as the quality that counts. Most of you at Washington will have to learn the difference between inhibition and prohibition.
The United States will be isolated within three years from this date if the blowhards from the woolly constituencies are not suppressed. You need a broncho buster in the Senate and a donkey muzzler in the House.
When a boycott is started by the countries south of the Union your enemies in Europe will begin to act. It is not a question of commerce but of common sense. I repeat what Lincoln said in 1862: "The times are dark and the spirits of ruin are abroad in all their power."
My message to Congress is: See that fifty thousand troops are stationed permanently near the District of Columbia.
My message to the Governors of New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois is: Get ready! The troops on the borders of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona are inadequate. The fortifications of the Panama and at San Diego and San Pedro are inadequate. You are in the same condition the French were in previous to 1789, when the motto was, "After us the Deluge." The Deluge came but it did not consist of water.
Our foes of the old Germany and the new Russia count on crippling the United States through South America, with the aid of Japan; but he who delivers the first blow will be the victor.
The Germans still believe they can eventually invade France, enter Paris and cause a revolution, found a new empire to include France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, with Italy later on. This dream includes a practical understanding with Soviet Russia, which, by that time, they expect would be weary of futile experiments. Plots will be exposed that will make it apparent how vain some of your optimistic surmises have been. Diplomats who are not psychologists will be balked by developments in Switzerland, that nation having become the rendezvous of disillusioned wire-pullers without a country.
You are now at the cross roads. Take the wrong turning and you will come to the skull and cross bones.
I could say much more but we are not yet experts in this new mode of inter-communication and must be brief.
GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
(Second Message)
Recorded May Third, 1921
I concur with Alexander Stephens when he says: "Congress has never been so supine and so serpentine."
Millions are sent to the people of distant countries in no way related to our Government or people, and yet Congress permits thousands of veterans of the great war to continue in a state of neglect, suffering and humiliation.
Do the authorities believe that when the day of trial arrives the friends and relatives of these veterans will hurry to volunteer for active service? The country is being fascinated by incidents and events in far-off regions, and the tragic conditions at home have entered a chronic stage.
There are too many old men in Congress--men who never did more than fight grasshoppers or watch a game of football from reserved seats.
We do not like the looks of the President's pronunciamento. It contains too many side issues. He is making Mr. Wilson's mistake of being verbose. Mr. Wilson tried to hypnotize Europe; the Senate is trying to hypnotize Mr. Harding. Popularity breeds as much contempt as familiarity. No President can ever succeed in conciliating all classes, sections and parties.
The politicians of Buenos Ayres have now spoken as I predicted in my first message. They have attacked Mr. Harding for his speech on Pan-Americanism, all which goes to prove that the President is repeating for South America Mr. Wilson's blunders in France.
Remember what Lincoln said to Judge Whitney:--
"Those fellows think I don't see anything, but I see all around them. I see better what they want to do with me than they do themselves."
The politicians of South America see better what the President wants to do with them than he does himself.
The administration will face a critical period in the early fall. There will be a break in the dominant phalanx. A social and political readjustment will compel mediation in quarters the most unexpected.
The new political and commercial dispensation for the English-speaking countries will begin on September twenty-second at two P.M.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Few politicians understand the difference between scene-shifting and progress. Things shift, new names are applied, but the vicious circle continues.
I see no evidence that human nature has changed since my time, in this or any other country.
If the Republican Ship of State is leaking, the Democratic craft is drifting without sail or rudder. What your statesmen fail to understand is that progress is not induced by force but by free will. New political planks rammed into your platforms against the wishes of the majority are without significance. The phrase, "The Solid South," which meant something vital at one time, has no meaning in these days of quick change and movie-show influences.
Democracy, in some sections, is a matter of climate. If you have come to a point where science and sentimentality are engaged in a drastic war, then the Democratic phalanx must undergo some rude changes.
The Democratic tail wagged the Republican dog for some time, but that curious spectacle has lost its hold on public interest. It is not now a question of one end wagging the other, but who will wag both. If Republicans stand for crude force, and Democrats for antebellum sentimentality, both are doomed together.
In the South, Democracy means politics at the polls, aristocracy in the parlor. In the North, Republicanism means the aristocracy of wealth.
However, your conception of social equality is undergoing modification.
In Washington's time the slogan was revolution; in Lincoln's time it was abolition; in your time it is prohibition, which reminds me that laws passed in haste bring long periods of repentance.
Effective effrontery is the result of courageous ignorance, for millions are more easily influenced by illusive promises than by the lessons of experience.
Modern civilization has hurried to meet four deadly things--riches, pleasures, materialism and war. But the tortoise is a better example of progress than the hare fleeing before the greyhound.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
It appalls the normal mind to stop and consider the criminal blunders made by the educated Prussian and the educated Englishman prior to 1914. No statesman had the vision to see what was going to happen to the man-made world.
Since it is a question of intuition and feeling versus cold reason and business logic, let us see which side is the more vital and all-enduring. Let us consider for a brief space what it is that influences people. Let us consider the influence exerted by the arts. What is music? Emotion created by sound vibrations. What is dramatic acting? Emotion created by vocal vibrations combined with gesture and physical movement. Has anyone ever witnessed automatic acting that left a profound impression?
Orators become famous when they unite deep feeling with knowledge. But what gives expression? The power of awakening emotion in others. Feeling is always more convincing than intellect. Intellect is full of theories, notions and superstitions. But where you find deep feeling combined with knowledge, you will find reason directed by qualities which pass through the surface and attain the heart-throbs of the real.
There are many kinds of emotion. There is the hard emotion of anger, the confused emotion of fear, the painful emotion of jealousy, the indescribable emotion of despair, the radiant emotion of joy. But the greatest emotion of all is that of knowledge united to feeling.
Men, as a rule, speak of emotion as a weakness, and they confuse it with impulse--a very different thing. Impulse is often the result of weak nerves, uncontrolled by the will; but we must not confuse it with the emotional quality which underlies all great achievement in art, literature, philosophy and personality. The more impulsive the individual is, the more primitive the reasoning faculty.
English and American business men are limited in general knowledge. I have never been able to discover any distinctive difference between the two. In France and Italy many business men are able to discuss art, literature and music on the same level with the masters. The Latin races and the Celtic races possess a culture that can be traced back for two or three thousand years, but Anglo-Saxon culture only to the time of the Saxon invasion. The Anglo-Saxons were the mushrooms of our civilization. They were a stolid business people who lacked creative genius.
The outstanding intellect of England today is Celtic. The Scotch, the Irish and the Welsh combine emotion and power with tenacity of purpose, and it is this Celtic element that keeps America in the front rank of nations.