There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  Now it was October. Hugh Lynn was a junior in high school. Edgar Evans, who called himself Ecken because as a baby he couldn’t pronounce his real name, was in kindergarten. Peace and security settled over the family again.

  One day a man named Arthur Lammers walked into the studio. He was a wealthy printer from Dayton, Ohio; a short, powerful man with broad shoulders, brown hair, and blue, searching eyes.

  Edgar had met him casually while on a trip to Dayton. He had received one of the announcements and had come to get some readings.

  They were not to be for sick people. He was quite well himself, and so were the members of his family. He had other interests: philosophy, metaphysics, esoteric astrology, psychic phenomena. He asked questions Edgar did not understand—what were the mechanics of the subconscious, what was the difference between spirit and soul, what were the reasons for personality and talent? He mentioned such things as the cabala, the mystery religions of Egypt and Greece, the medieval alchemists, the mystics of Tibet, yoga, Madame Blavatsky and theosophy, the Great White Brotherhood, the Etheric World. Edgar was dazed.

  “You ought to find out about these things,” Lammers said. “If there is any way of finding it out, it’s through you. The world is full of notions about its own beginning, its meaning, and its end. There are hundreds of philosophic and thousands of theological systems. Which are right and which are wrong? Which is the closest to the truth? What is the real nature of the soul and what is the purpose of this experience on earth? Where do we go from here? What for? Where did we come from? What were we doing before we came here? Haven’t you asked any of those questions?”

  “No,” Edgar said.

  He couldn’t think of another word to say. He didn’t dare tell the truth: that he had always considered such an idea sacrilegious, because God was revealed in the Bible, and to suppose that he could answer the mysteries of the universe would be an open invitation for Satan to speak through him.

  That was what he had felt. Now, as he heard Lammers speak, he knew the feeling had passed. He had not been aware of its passing, but it was gone. As Lammers tossed questions he felt something spring up within himself, something which said, “This is the way to get the answer.”

  “I can only stay here a few days,” Lammers went on, “but if you will come to Dayton as my guest I’ll take a series of readings on these subjects and see what we get.

  “Philosophy and metaphysics have been my hobbies, but they only lead me to confusion, because there is no definite authority on the details. They all agree on the one God, the need of morality, the efficacy of prayer, the brotherhood of the spirit, but beyond that it is a sea of guesses. If these readings of yours are accurate, it means your subconscious mind can be reached, and if these occult and mystic theories are correct, that subconscious mind ought to be aware of its own identity and ought to be able to tell us as much of ourselves and the world as we want to know—or at least as much as we can understand.”

  Edgar could feel his own thoughts being expressed in Lammers’s words. He had returned to Selma convinced of his mission. It had taken him forty-six years to reach the decision. Now he wanted to know why he had a mission and how it was to be fulfilled.

  “Why not finish up your work here in the next few days,” Lammers said, “and come up to Dayton with me for a few weeks? You’ll be a wiser and richer man when you return, I’m sure.”

  “I’ll go,” Edgar said. “I’ll finish up the appointments for readings I have, tomorrow and the next day. They’re all local people.”

  “Good,” Lammers said. “I want to start at the bottom with this thing. The most enduring and popular belief about the universe of which we are skeptical is astrology. First we’ll ask the readings for a horoscope and see what happens.”

  “They’re fakes, aren’t they?” Edgar said. He was sure, now, that he wanted to find out about everything by way of the readings. It was just the assurance he needed. It would join together, at least in his mind, the two great conflicting forces of his life, the Bible and the readings. Out of the truth of one had come the power of the other. He was certain of that. It would be a comfort to have it proved.

  Gertrude was dubious as she saw him pack his bags, but she liked Lammers, and the subject of the readings to be taken interested her.

  “Write me all about what they say,” she said when Edgar kissed her good-bye.

  In Dayton he registered at the Phillips Hotel, an old, homey place with big rooms and lots of red plush on the furnishings.

  In the morning Lammers brought his secretary, Linden Shroyer, and a stenographer to the readings. Shroyer, a small, thin man with black hair, eyes, and mustache, seemed ill at ease.

  “What’s he going to do?” he kept asking Lammers.

  Edgar laughed.

  “What I’m going to do shouldn’t bother you,” he said. “It’s what I’m going to say that has me worried.”

  “I’m going to ask him for my horoscope,” Lammers explained.

  Lammers conducted the reading. When Edgar woke up, he spoke to him gravely.

  “There is something wrong with our notion of astrology, apparently,” he said. “It doesn’t affect us as we think it does.”

  Edgar smiled. He was relieved.

  “We leave out a factor that is very important,” Lammers went on.

  “What’s that?” Edgar said.

  “Reincarnation.”

  Edgar stared. Shroyer smiled at him. Lammers began to laugh. “You thought astrology was a fake,” he said, “and now you hand out a story that’s a dozen times more fantastic than the rule of the stars. You say I’ve lived before on this earth. You say this is my third appearance in this ‘sphere,’ and that I still have some of the inclinations from my last life, when I was a monk.”

  Mechanically Edgar put on his tie, fastened his cuff links, and tied his shoelaces.

  “Is that the stuff they believe in India?” he asked. “Is that reincarnation?”

  Lammers nodded.

  “You say,” he went on, “that the solar system is a cycle of experiences for the soul. It has eight dimensions, corresponding to the planets; they represent focal points for the dimensions, or environments in which the dimensions can express and materialize themselves—although materialization of each dimension is different. This is the third dimension, and it is a sort of laboratory for the whole system, because only here is free will completely dominant. On the other planes, or dimensions, some measure of control is kept over the soul to see that it learns the proper lessons.

  “The control is usually by the soul itself, if it has evolved sufficiently, because once the body of this dimension has been left and the consciousness of this life has been absorbed into the subconscious, the veil between the two is lifted.

  “The subconscious, you see, is the record of all the lives of the soul, in this system and in other systems, out among the stars. It’s the record we think of as being kept by the Recording Angel. It’s the story of what we do with our spirit—the portion of God that is given to us for life, with the gift of individuality, or separate existence from God. Our problem is to perfect our individuality, and then we return to God. Our spirit and soul, or individuality, are joined to Him.”

  Edgar shook his head.

  “I said all that?” he asked in a low tone.

  Lammers nodded. Shroyer smiled. He was friendly now. He seemed to realize that Edgar was suffering.

  “So you see,” Lammers said, “our astrological influences from the planets or dimensions we have inhabited will be good or bad, weak or strong, according to the experiences we have had there and how we handled our problems.

  “For example, we react to the earth according to the manner in which we have handled the problems of earth in our other lives—brotherly love, material possessions, sex, food and drink. Sometimes we are working on an earth problem to the exclusion of an
y influence from the stars or planets at all.

  “The stars represent soul patterns, not experiences. The twelve signs of the zodiac are twelve patterns from which the soul chooses when coming into the earth plane. They are like races—patterns of temperament, personality, etc.”

  Edgar interrupted him.

  “I couldn’t have said all that in one reading,” he said.

  He looked toward the stenographer for confirmation. She was sitting with a bemused, dreamy smile on her face.

  “No,” Lammers said; “but you confirmed it. You see, I’ve been studying metaphysics for years, and I was able by a few questions, and by the facts you gave, to check what is right and what is wrong with a whole lot of the stuff I’ve been reading.

  “The important thing is that the basic system which runs through all the mystery religions, whether they come from Tibet or the pyramids of Egypt, is backed up by you. It’s actually the right system.”

  Edgar sucked slowly at his cigarette. Lammers was excited. He was like a man who has hunted treasure for years, following old maps and charts, and finally found it.

  “It’s Hermetic, it’s Pythagorean, it’s Jewish, it’s Christian!” he said. “The Egyptians put it in the pyramids, on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, and on the Bembine Table of Isis. Pythagoras put it in numbers, and in the theorem that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Jesus put it in the Sermon on the Mount and in the remainder of the fifth chapter of St. Matthew.”

  “I never heard of any of those things except the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of the fifth of Matthew,” Edgar said.

  “The fifth chapter of Matthew is the constitution of Christianity,” Lammers said. “The Sermon on the Mount is its Declaration of Independence.

  “Jesus said He came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. The Mosaic law had to do with external acts. It did not consider internal morality except as it was reflected in physical acts.

  “Of course, the law of internal morality existed all this time. But it was the property of the priests, the initiates. That would be true today, too, were it not for the fact that the priests seem to have lost the key. They don’t understand their symbology much better than does the average parishioner. There seems to have been too much simplification.

  “The mission of Christ was to reveal this inner morality to all people, and then to give them an example, in Himself, of the fulfillment of that pattern. He is the way, He is the truth, He is the life. Sometime, somewhere, here or on some other planet, or out among the stars where worlds are as common as grains of sand on a beach, each of us must reach the perfection of Christ. Then we can return to God, and be one with Him—perfect, as Christ Himself said—as is our Father in heaven.”

  Edgar was running his hands through his hair. Shroyer was staring out the window. The stenographer sat entranced, still smiling.

  “A body is only an objectification of the soul pattern,” Lammers went on. “That’s why each one is different in build, in physiognomy, in basic health. It is a reflection of the individuality of the soul, which gives it life. The record of this particular experience, the conscious mind—that’s the personality. It’s like a day in the course of a life, compared to the actual history of the soul.”

  He spoke to the stenographer.

  “Read back the last few paragraphs of the reading,” he asked.

  She picked up her notebook and translated the shorthand characters:

  In this we see the plan of development of those individuals set upon this plane, meaning the ability (as would be manifested from the physical) to enter again into the presence of the Creator and become a full part of that creation.

  Insofar as this entity is concerned, this is the third appearance on this plane, and before this one, as the monk. We see glimpses in the life of the entity now as were shown in the monk, in his mode of living.

  The body is only the vehicle ever of that spirit and soul that waft through all times and ever remain the same.

  “You see?” Lammers said. “It opens up the door. It’s like finding the secret chamber of the Great Pyramid. It’s the Philosopher’s Stone. It’s Sesame!

  “Come on, let’s get some lunch, so you’ll be ready to give another one this afternoon!”

  During the meal Lammers continued his explanations. He spoke of the medieval Rosicrucians, the oracles of Nostradamus, the Enneads of Plotinus, the mysteries of Eleusis, Bacchus, Mithras, and Osiris. He told them of the “lost keys” of Freemasonry, the Hindu samadhi, Saracen mathematics, tarot cards, the precession of the equinoxes and its connection with the worship of the bull and the ram, the meaning of the scarab, and the Tetragrammaton of the Jews.

  “Every 2,160 years a different sign of the zodiac is in the position dominating earth,” he said. “It goes backward, and is therefore called a precession. During the heyday of Egypt the sign of Taurus, the Bull, was in the commanding position. So the people worshiped the bull. But Taurus ruled only by reflection, as it were. It was the overt sign. The sun, actually in Scorpio, was shining across into Taurus. So Scorpio, the real sign, the spiritual guide of the earth, appeared on the foreheads and staffs of the priests of the time.”

  Edgar shook his head.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” he confessed. “What interests me is this: You say that I agree with all this stuff in my reading. Does that imply that my subconscious mind understands it, or was I just being a stooge for your suggestions?”

  Lammers laughed.

  “You not only understand it,” he said, “you explained several things that heretofore had no explanations, so far as I know.”

  Edgar nodded. “Good,” he said. “Now answer me this:

  “Is all this stuff which you’ve been telling about, and with which my subconscious mind apparently agrees, in conformity with the best ethics of religion and society? Is it really Christian, or is it pagan?”

  “One at a time,” Lammers said. “First, it not only agrees with the best ethics of religion and society, it is the source of them. It is the ancient wisdom which inspired them and gave them to the world with a simple explanation which most men could understand. Christ—or God, who sent Him—believed the people were ready for a higher conception of their living code, so He gave it to them.

  “He spoke to the people in parables. The symbology was simple. But the morality He taught was a higher one than they had been following. It was the next step in the revelation of truth.”

  Edgar started to ask a question, then stopped. He paled noticeably. Lammers took his arm and smiled reassuringly.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You wonder if I’m going to say this is the next step in revealing truth.

  “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t be that audacious, and this particular truth has been in existence and known to a minority of the people ever since man began inhabiting the earth. He brought it with him, and such phenomena as clairvoyance have always been available for aid in checking the mistakes that occur from generation to generation as the wisdom is handed down in writing and by word of mouth. Both are treacherous in the hands of amateurs.

  “No, it has all been put down many times before, and taught to initiates over and over again. What I have not been able to find out is just how much of it Christ taught to the more intelligent of His disciples—or to all of them, for that matter, because its understanding requires native ability rather than training—and how much He left unsaid. Obviously He knew it all.

  “I’ve often suspected it’s all in the latter part of the Gospel of St. John, in the chapters covering the discourses at the Last Supper. At any rate, after the church ceased to be an extension, or sect, of Jewry and began to rise in power in the Roman Empire, its leaders made a decision to change it from an idealistic philosophy appealing to intellectuals, to a broad, practic
al religion for the common man. From that time on it made great strides, but over the course of the centuries the original metaphysical structure has been either lost or permanently submerged.”

  Edgar still was worried.

  “If the leaders of the church thought it was best to keep these things secret, why should we expose them?” he asked.

  Lammers did not answer immediately. His brow pressed vertical wrinkles into place above his nose. His round face was solemn.

  “I don’t know whether it is meant to be exposed now or whether it was meant to be exposed nineteen hundred years ago,” he finally said. “It seems always to have been available for those who sought it. Maybe that’s the answer.

  “First we’ll get it, from the readings. Then we’ll find out what to do with it.”

  They returned to the room to prepare for the afternoon reading. The stenographer was already there. She had typed the morning reading. Edgar, looking it over, could not find all the things Lammers had mentioned, but there was enough to indicate the broad outlines of a theory and to prove that his subconscious mind was as much at home with Lammers’s metaphysical vocabulary as it was with the language of anatomy and medicine.

  When he woke from the reading, Lammers was nodding his head.

  “Just as I thought,” he said. “Just as I thought, only better and simpler.

  “Now, it’s like this. The conscious mind is the record of this life. Just as an emotion is the experience of a single moment, so the conscious mind is the record of a single life. This conscious mind is located in the pituitary gland. That, at least, is its focal point—the gland has a purely physical function also. “The thoughts go from the conscious to the imaginative, or introspective, mind, which is seated in the pineal gland. There the thoughts are compared with all that has gone before that is in any way related to them, and when this is done, the thoughts—properly conditioned and judged—pass on to the subconscious, or soul mind, which is seated, with its spirit, just above the heart. There the thoughts are kept as a record, and as they are constructive they quicken the spirit and lower the barrier between the soul and the pure essence of life. As they are destructive they are rejected, but kept as a record, and as they are repeated they build up the barrier between the soul and the spirit and dim the radiance of the life essence that shines through the subconscious to the imaginative, and by refraction, or hunch, intuition, and yearning, into the conscious.”