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"THE LAST EXPERIMENT"
CHAPTER 1
from the book titled Love Can Open Prison Doors
by Starr Daily
Except for idiocy and other conditions of
mental invalidism, personal failure is indefensible. The failure is
his own indictment and conviction.
During the last two years I have interviewed more than three
hundred men and women who have openly admitted they were abject
failures in life. In each case I have asked, "Why?" And in every
instance the answer has been in the character of an alibi. But in no
case has the failure laid the blame for defeat at his or her own
door.
In my own experience and in the cases of all others I have
found this to be an inescapable truth: that when a man offers an
excuse, an alibi for himself, or in any way lays the blame for his
weakness, conditions, or failures on some one or some thing outside
himself, he is invariably wrong, and in nine cases out of ten he is
a weakling and a coward who is roundly condemned by his own spirit.
His alibis may and generally do enlist the sympathy of
those upon whom they are practiced. But if he is a normal human
being, there is one person who will not accept his offering, and
that is the person who is his real self. Mild of manner, easy-going,
and infinitely patient, this real person, who dwells silently within
him, listens to his excuses and then whispers softly, "You must tell
it to your friend George: but not to me."
If you insist, this quiet man within will begin to shame
you with a long string of apt comparisons. He will point out those
who have less advantage and native ability, but who are successful.
He will take you into the bedrooms of the ill and incapacitated and
let you observe courage at work in the service of humanity. He will
present you with a long list of names in the huge book of political,
industrial, artistic, cultural, civic, religious, and scientific
life. Then he will tell you how many of these were practically
illiterate, inarticulate, friendless, without direction, influence,
or prestige but took advantage of opportunities that have swirled
unnoticed about you all your life.
This inner man once spoke to a friend through Thomas
Edison. The great inventor and his friend were walking along a city
street. The friend wanted to know if it were not very difficult to
succeed in this high-speed world of terrific competition. Mr.
Edison's eyes directed the gaze of his friend to a ragged,
prematurely old man on whose bent shoulders lay a large sack of
junk. Then he answered: "Yes; but it is more difficult to fail."
On a day in the spring of 1930 I sat in the cell of a
fellow convict. As I had done, he had wasted the best years of his
life behind prison bars. He was telling me that he was sick and
tired of prison bells, profitless labor, and convict hash. But at
forty it was too late to think of turning "Honest John."
I inquired into his particular brand of reasons for failure
, because all criminals are failures, whether they be big protected
ones who never see prison, or little unprotected ones who rarely see
anything else. He had figured it all out and possessed an alibi as
iron-clad as the cell door behind which we sat. He could trace it
all back to an unhappy instance in his childhood when a too stern
father flailed the hide off him because he wanted to see what made
the wheels go around in the family clock. Had his unimaginative dad
been more appreciative of the genius behind his destructive
curiosity, he might now be a mechanical engineer instead of a weary
slave in the prison rock quarry.
"I'm dressing out next month," I told him. "And I'm never
coming back."
"Whatta ya think you're gonna do'?" he asked, giving me a
wise smile.
"I learned the tricks of making dishonest money," was my
reply, "and to the degree I succeeded I failed. Now I'm going to
learn the art of earning an honest living. Isn't that good logic?"
He assured me that eighty per cent of the convicts were
two, three, and four-time losers, and that every one of them had
made that same remark a thousand times. "But it don't mean
anything," he added. "It's just like the resolution a drunk makes on
the morning after. He's never gonna take another drink as long as he
lives. But in a couple o' hours he's all lit up again, an'
everything looks Jake."
I insisted that mine was not an idle New Year's resolution.
"But what can you do? You don't know how to work. When you go out
you'll meet twenty million Honest Johns who do know how, and who
know all the ropes about getting jobs. They'll be your competitors
in the labor market. They're skilled workers; got good names an'
reputations. They can face employers with the best. But what have
you to offer ? Just a life of crime. A penitentiary pallor and a
lock-step hitch in your gait. A fat chance you'll have. At best I
give you six months to try this bug-house notion. Just long enough
for the soup-line to stare you in the face. Then you'll wake up with
a bang and blast open the first safe you come across."
He did not understand that I had already wakened with a
bang while lying half dead in solitary confinement. There in a
moment's time the folly of crime and the stupidity of hatred
appeared clear cut in my consciousness, and I got an authentic
glimpse of the greatest power in all the world, the power of love,
which, when lived with any measure of proficiency, could see you
through any emergency, dissolve your toughest problems, cause you to
lives serenely, triumphantly, and successfully at any time and in
any place; that with love on your side as a philosophy of life every
obstacle and opposition could be discerned in its true light, as an
opportunity to call forth your power.
This was a magnificent vision, although I did have to get
it through blind suffering. It has sustained me in all the hard
hours since I left the prison, and has turned every difficulty into
a glorious challenge and blessing.
After I had caught it, my powers of recollection were
stimulated, and I wondered how I could have been so blind as not to
see that love and not hate was the real power in this world.
Instantly I began to recall events in my past when the truth of
love's power had been made so plain that only a midnight soul could
have failed to recognize it. Now, looking back, I could see how the
power of love had performed strange things in my life.
I recalled a time when I was being held in jail on
suspicion of burglary. For two days and nights I had been subjected
to "third degree" police methods in an effort to torture a
confession out of me. My head had been beaten with a rubber hose
until it resembled a huge stone bruise, swollen beyond human shape,
my face black from the congealed blood beneath the surface. Lighted
cigars had been pressed against my flesh. I had hung for three hours
with my wrists handcuffed over a hot steam pipe. My arms had been
twisted behind me and my elbows beaten with black-jacks until the
bones felt crunchy. Heavy heels had ground my bare feet against a
concrete floor. On the third night of this I was about at the end
of my endurance.
Again I was dragged into the torture room and sat down
within the semi-circle of twelve big detectives. My previous
sustaining energy of hate and anger had dwindled into a dull sense
of indifference. I was alarmed at this new state of affairs. For I
had learned that pain could easily be assimilated if sufficient
hatred could be thrown against it. I did not want to weaken. Death
was preferable. But could I stand the pain without the sustaining
force of hate?
"You'd better open up and come clean," the Chief informed
me. "If you don't you're gonna get the works. Y' understand?"
I continued to sit in silence, expecting the worst, and
wondering if I would be able to take it.
"All right, boys," said the Chief. "Get busy. Let the rat
have it."
It was the show down. Unless I broke, my life was not worth
a dime. I knew this as two of the detectives stepped towards me.
Then a strange thing took place in my consciousness. All hate and
anger were gone. The vague sense of indifference vanished. And in an
unbidden instant there welled up within me an overwhelming
compassion for these men, for their pathetic ignorance, their
undeveloped souls, for the pitiful condition of their minds and
hearts. And as this strange sentiment reached a high peak of
intensity within me the Chief spoke, and what he said constituted a
minor miracle.
"Don't hit him again," he barked out. "Take him back. I was
returned to my cell, and for the remainder of the night I was under
the care of a doctor. The next morning I was transferred to a
private hospital, where I lived for three weeks. Every day a number
of women came to see me, bringing flowers and other gifts. It was
all quite mystifying, and the nurses' guarded explanations did not
clarify the mystery. These women were the wives of city detectives.
I could not figure the thing out. I was only a friendless,
unprotected criminal. They had no reason to placate me with gifts
and attention because they feared what I might reveal. I was told
not to worry about anything, that all bills would be paid. Nor was I
returned to the jail on being discharged from the hospital. Instead
I was given an envelope and told that I was free to go. In the
envelope was no word of explanation. Only five crisp, ten-dollar
bills.
It was not until twenty years later, twenty years filled
with crime and punishment, that I was able to see through this
mystery, and to know the power, because of which my life had been
spared and this odd consideration shown me.
On another occasion when I was on the dealer's side of the
table, I was an unseeing witness to this transmuting power of love
in action. I was robbing the safe in the home of a priest. He
surprised me in the act. From a stairway above me I heard his
unexpected voice: "What are you doing there, my child?"
I wheeled, my flashlight and gun on him. He was in a night
robe and unarmed. "Stand where you are," I commanded sharply. "I've
got you covered."
"I mean you no harm." His voice had a rare accent of
kindliness and honor in it. Slowly he began descending the steps.
"Stop, or I'll drop you!" I commanded him. With superb
assurance he came on, reached the bottom, and walked leisurely over
to a light switch and pressed the button. Turning to me, then, he
said: "Put your gun down, my child. I only want to talk with you a
little while."
Logically, of course, from my point of view, I was in a
close place with the odds in my favour. It was not sound criminal
judgment for me to accede to his request. The correct procedure
under the circumstances would have been to tie him and gag him, then
to proceed with the business at hand.
What a singular thing for me to do! I obeyed him and sat in
the chair he pointed out. I say singular, because it was so
illogical, unreasonable from the viewpoint of a confirmed crimester--
and because, also, I listened to him while he talked to me about God
in a most singular way-- a way in which there seemed to be nothing
offensive to my God-hating mind. God might have been my own father,
or an elder brother, or a very close friend, anything but the
fierce-eyed black-bearded monster of wrath, anger, and fire I had
heard so much about.
At two o'clock in the morning I accepted this priest's
invitation, went with him into the kitchen, and joined him in a cold
bite. I left his home without taking his money. He shook my hand and
blessed me. I had no fear that when I was out of sight he would
exercise what the world calls duty and call the police. To this day
I am sure he never mentioned my nocturnal visit.
What was this strange power he possessed over me? He did
this because his love was genuine, not the romantic, sentimental
emotion that men call love; but that deep sense of compassionate
being which was so eloquently expressed by the Master when He said
"Neither do I condemn thee." Nothing less than love could have
caused me to act in a manner diametrically opposite to my habitual
character as a criminal.
You see, I am introducing you to my theme. I am telling
you about a power that resides in the hearts of men, which is a
power greater than any power ever to be discovered in the realm of
natural science.
It is a power possessed by all, but recognized by few. It
is the most dynamic and readily accessible power in the universe of
men. Every man can contain and express this power. It is practical.
And because it is accessible to every man and because it is
practical, I am perfectly safe in making again the boldest statement
ever made by another human being: that, except by idiocy and other
conditions of mental invalidism, failure is indefensible.
Occasionally when a man has suffered enough he will
accept this power and use it. Sometimes his suffering is so great
that the sheer intensity of his need will awaken him to this power
which is closer to him than breath, and will heal him instantly. I
call love the "last experiment," because though it is the closest
and most fundamental thing in a person's life, it is the last thing
he will turn to for help when he is in distress.
In talking to you about love I shall not get mushy and
sentimental. For love is everything that sentimentalism is not.
Love is power, while sentimentalism is the misuse of power.
In its practical application love is as precise and scientific as
mathematics. Without it there could be no universe, no cell
organization of any kind. Because love is the only integrating
power in existence. It is all that can establish order out of chaos
or maintain order in chaos.
Whenever it is recognized by man he likewise recognizes
harmony. Love is never a disintegrating force. Science deals with
disintegrating natural forces; but wisdom deals with the power of
love. Natural forces lead to change: love to permanence. Love
simplifies life. All that is less than pure love complicates it.
Love is endurable, eternal. It is the one ultimate expression which
can combine and sustain all principles of the natural and spiritual
worlds. Its application releases the soul of man from the bondage
of limitation. Love is God in action. And the process of becoming
the doctrine of love is to grow into oneness with God.
The beautiful thing about the doctrine of love is that it
casts out all fear, all striving and struggling. You merely act and
express the virtues and qualities of love, and all that is needed to
sustain you in happiness and harmony are inevitable consequences of
your action. You are attached to nothing except the action of love.
You desire no results; but possess perfect assurance that the
correct results necessary to your life at a given time will be
supplied. The sense of impending insecurity is unknown to him who
lives the doctrine of love.
With the light of love to guide us the idea of seeking God
fades on the film of our consciousness, and we know, then, that this
idea, long held and fostered by men, is as false as the beard of
Hercules. It is God who is doing the seeking. It is God who stands
at our door and knocks. When we consciously and deliberately set
out to seek God, we are simply being annoyed by God's seeking us.
His incessant pounding on our door gets on our nerves, we try to
escape from the friction and irritation of it, and we call this
"seeking God." We go to church, or the lecture hall, or drop a coin
in the hand of a beggar, or we join a charitable organization. And
the more we seek the farther we drift from the real consciousness of
God's presence, for we stifle His voice and dull the sound of His
knocking. God is the Supreme Shepherd, and it must forever be the
logical procedure for the shepherd to seek his lost sheep, and not
for the lost sheep to seek him. When we are lost in the woods our
sense of direction is gone and we move about in fruitless circles.
It is only when we cease seeking our way and sit down and get quiet
that we regain our poise and balance sufficiently for intuition (the
Spirit of God) to lead us out of our dilemma.
Our job here is to learn to love. It is the only
obligation man has in the world. There is no other religion. And it
is all the salvation possible. Any service rendered in an effort to
placate God is futile. If you think you can serve God while at the
same time you have in your mind you are serving God, then you are
separating yourself from God. Service to God is present only when
the thought of serving Him is absent. When you love the service and
think not of rewards or results, or that you are doing it for God in
return for His gifts, God will then draw nigh unto you.
The lover always question the correctness in any ethical or
moral or philosophical statement that has become platitudinous and
hence meaningless. Consequently when he hears the statement "Serve
God," he begins to analyze the correctness of the statement. And he
discovers it to be a meaningless platitude in its current sense. For
he knows that you can perform your charities, your prayers, and your
abnegations until doomsday without ever becoming aware of God's
presence. But if you really love God, and really serve because you
love to serve, and you really pray because you love to pray, then
the statement, "Serve God," is not a platitude. It has meaning and
salvation in it. And it is rewarded with the gift of God's grace.
The statements of Jesus have never degenerated into the category of
moral platitudes, because they are firmly rooted in the doctrine of
love.
Now this being a very important point, as my book will
increasingly endeavor to show, let us dwell just a little longer on
the subject. In God service and love are one and the same thing. If
we learn to love in the true sense we cannot help serving God. But
if, by our wills and misconceptions, we force ourselves to serve
with the mistaken notion we are serving God, or if in our service
the motivating quality of love is absent, then service and love are
separated, and our service is questionable; indeed, it is false and
spurious. We must, therefore, learn to love first, and having
learned to love, all else is added as a natural consequence.
We begin with the tremendous truth that the only world duty
and spiritual obligation we have is to become love, that is, to
learn to love and mean it.
Hence if this is our only obligation we begin by learning
to love. We learn to love by first practicing love. The more we
practice the more we become conditioned to the vibration of love.
And in time, if we persist, we actually become a true lover of God
and the creatures and creations of God. When this time comes we can
serve God, and inevitably will serve Him, and our service will be
genuine.
To illustrate this point an example may be employed.
Suppose you have a very dear friend. You do something to hurt or
offend him. Thereafter something stands between you and your friend.
It is an invisible and nameless barrier, which you want to remove.
In seeking to remove it you try various ways to serve him. You bring
him gifts, or you seek to make influential contacts advantageous to
him. In other words, you seek to heal the world in his heart by
means of compromise and placation. But the barrier remains. All you
do does not wipe away the disappointment in his eyes.
So long as this disappointment is allowed to remain you are
separated from your friend, although you associate with him daily.
While it remains you cannot serve him effectively, because the
server and the object of service are separated. So long as this is
so you cannot know how to serve him.
Finally you weary of your thankless efforts, and you go to
your friend in a spirit of humility and contrition, and you
apologize for your wrong, and you ask him to forgive and forget. The
spirit within him meets the spirit within you. All hurt vanishes
from his face, to be replaced by a smile of genuine joy. Your old
relationship is instantly re-established. And now you can serve him.
You bring him a gift that is a gift of real love and affection. You
do things for him because you love to do it, and not because in
doing it you desire to win back his friendship.
And so it is with God. When His Spirit has become your
spirit, when you have actually known Him by a deep inner experience
of knowingness, you are capable of serving Him in works, faith, and
prayer. But to pray to God without loving God, or without the
capacity to love Him, is to render lip service to an unknown God,
and the only possible value in such a prayer must be psychological
and not spiritual.
Finally when we have suffered and been defeated enough we
shall turn to the last experiment, we shall turn to love and begin
to learn to love by practicing love. As we become love we draw God
to us; when we know God we cease all straining and quietly lay our
burdens in His lap, knowing that He knows best how to dispose of
them. But how do we begin the practice of love. Love is charity in
the true sense of that misused word, and charity begins at home.
Hence we start the practice of love first in our own homes. It is
when we learn to love those nearest to us that we are then able to
love our neighbors, the citizens of our community, and finally of
the state and nation and the world. And then our love reaches out to
embrace all nature. With this accomplishment the Grand Passion is
born full-blown in our hearts and we love God with an affection that
is holy. To love Him is not to seek Him longer; but to accept Him
who has long been seeking us.
Since writing this simple chronicle of love in action
behind the bars of a modern penitentiary, I have received several
hundred letters from all parts of the world. Some have been inspired
by reading the book; a few have been repulsed. Many have had their
curiosity aroused. Others have found in it the information necessary
to effect salutary changes in their lives: they have regained lost
health; have solved their environmental and economic problems. All
have asked questions concerning statements which were either implied
or lightly touched upon in the context. And these questions are the
most important features contained in the letters received.
To ask has value. To decide upon the answer has greater
value. To act upon the decision is of supreme importance, whether
the decision acted upon be good, bad, or indifferent. It is better
to keep busy with blunders and mistakes, trials and errors than it
is to sit with folded hands and a heart filled with unexpressed and
frustrated wishes.
The questions have called forth this introduction. Almost
entirely these pages are concerned with the deliberate and conscious
application of the Law of Love to the practical everyday problems of
life. My readers have unerringly sensed the power of love as
being a power within their capacity to recognize and to use. But
they have wanted to know more about what love is, as well as how to
use it and what it does when used.
I make no claims of a last-word nature. Love can be defined
on familiar levels of consciousness. Beyond that it enters mystery
and awaits our arrival in another dimension.
The following statements we can comprehend:
We cannot escape love. If in the physical body we ceased to
love for an instant we should die. Hate is nothing more than an
intense form of self love. It is a twisting of God's love,
causing it to operate negatively rather than positively,
destructively rather than constructively in the direction of our own
best interests. Because God loves, we love. Our love does not
create that which was before. Before our love, was God's love. It is
His love which created our love, and which supports, sustains, and
expands it. We are partakers of God's love. We act in the direction
of those qualities of being which we conceive to be of God. God's
love is always creative. We are creative when we express His love in
action. As to what His love creates, through us, is a matter of our
own choice. To act in the direction of kindness, faith,
discrimination, gratitude, reverence, forgiveness, is to build the
qualities of constructive love into our personalities. To act in the
direction of hate, doubt, in discrimination, ingratitude,
unforgivableness, is to build into our personalities the destructive
qualities of misused love.
As Robert E. Speer has pointed out in his work, Seeking
the Mind of Christ: "His love is the power of our loving.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. If God so loved us
we also ought to love one another. We love because He first loved
us. God's love did not begin when we began to love God. We never
would have loved either God or our brother had it not been for the
love of God. His love, whether we knew it or not, begat all our
love. Our love of God . . . is but letting Him love us. Our love is
but a faint shadow of His, a shadow that advances and retreats and
quivers uncertainly. The great and steadfast love of God is not the
child of the shadow. Unchanging, measureless, utterly forgiving,
rich with the wealth of His infinite nature, the love of God is
beneath and above and about our weak human love, and we can rest
upon His love as the great certainty beyond all our impulses.''
We swim in an infinite ocean of love. To
become increasingly conscious of our oneness with love, is the mark
of exercising intelligent self interest. To this end, we do not
labor and strain in our search for love. It is above, beneath, and
about us. It is seeking us.
To respond is the secret. To exercise the capacities
we have for love is to expand our capacities for receiving and
expressing love. Seeking love is to attempt to define a love which
we have not yet developed the capacity to express. How can we
understand the love of the Supreme Lover, except we approach His
love through the process of practice or of daily becoming? With only
a modicum of His capacity for love, how can we understand the things
He did not do:
"He might have built a palace at a word,
Who sometimes had not where to lay His head;
Time was, and He who nourished crowds with bread
Would not one meal unto Himself afford;
Twelve legions girded with angelic sword
Were at His beck, the scorned and buffeted;
He healed another's scratch, His own side bled,
Side, feet and hands with cruel piercings gored,
Oh, wonderful the wonders left undone!
And scarce less wonderful than those He wrought;
Oh, self restraint, passing all human thought,
To have all power, and be as having none;
Oh, self-denying love, which felt alone
For needs of others, never for its own."
This is the great love. We move toward it. In
this high sense, love is all a bestowal, a giving of ourselves with
a discriminatory purpose-- that of moving in the right direction.
The very air we breathe is a bestowal of God's love to us. To become
aware of this fact is to be grateful for the grace which makes
breathing possible, and to become aware of love in the smallest
degree is to partake of more of love's inexhaustible supply. Our
out-breath is a bestowal of love whose chemical qualities support
and sustain the lower forms in nature. To become consciously
aware of this unselfish process is the important thing for us, for
increasing awareness is the measure of expanding consciousness, and
expanding consciousness is the increasing capacity for receiving,
containing, and expressing the love which God has bestowed upon us.
This book, therefore, is an indication of a way. It
points out the modus operandi of one man who caught a glimpse of the
love theme in the stillness of a dungeon cell. Its keynote is
response; its purpose is not definition, but inspiration. To be
inspired is to want to act. The book being true, it must inspire, to
cause the reader to want to act. How to begin to act and how to
continue to act; in a word, how consciously to apply the dynamic
power of love to the every day problems confronting the personality
life-- this is or should be the aim of any book dealing with
personal experience of this kind.
One thing is certain, no man or woman can act in the
direction of bestowal unseen or unrewarded. Man acts and the Spirit
observes.
"LOVE VERSUS DUNGEON DOORS"
top of
page
CHAPTER II Two
from the book titled Love Can Open Prison Doors
by Starr Daily
When I say that love
can open prison doors I mean that literally. When I say there are
doors n much stronger than the doors of a punitive prison, I mean
that literally also. But when I speak of this love I'm not referring
to it in the usual Pollyanna sense, as something to be hazily
realized and half heartedly applied.
Love is a dynamic force in the
world. It is the most powerful creative force in existence,
and it is responsible for nearly everything created by and through
man. Love for God, for charity, for service; love for money, for
power, for fame-- all or any one of these urges will drive men and
women to use the creative principle that sends them to the top of
their respective desires. But since all human desire is insatiable
it is never fully gratified. Creative progress is made in proportion
as the driving love medium behind ambition goads the goal-climber
into action.
Love for debauchery, for crime, for the gratification of
pigsty appetites send men and women toward the bottom that
represents the goal of their respective desires. But again since
human desire is insatiable, the gratification sought is never found.
Creative degradation is advanced in proportion as the love driving
media for degradation is used toward its end.
Behind the creation of an infant lies the contacting medium
of love. And since that love is human it produces a human being, and
thus perpetuates the human race with all its human desires and
aspirations, its human follies and mistakes, its trials and errors,
its tragedies and humors, its enormous conceits and egotism that
cause it to survive through all the elemental cataclysms and plagues
to which the earth is heir.
Love for opinion makes saints and scoundrels, martyrs and
tyrants out of men. Love for publicity and notoriety makes heroes
and dare-devils. Love for self creates bigotry; for others,
tolerance.
Always love is a medium through which man contacts and
applies the creative principle of the universe. And what love is
allowed to create through man is up to man himself. His love
attitude determines the course taken by creative principle.
Inevitably, the creative principle operating on and through man,
creates something; something noble or ignoble, constructive or
destructive.
The principle in itself is ultimate unity, and is
therefore not subject to finite discriminatory limitations. It is
beyond time, space, duality, judgment, because in it all things are
dissolved into the changeless whole. It has but one purpose, one
nature, one reason for being, and that is to create. And create is
what it does. There is neither good nor bad connected with its
creative purpose. These are human discernments recognized by man and
obeyed by creative principle. The principle being infinite and
discernment finite on the plane of duality, it follows that man can
use creative law only in the ratio of his capacity to receive it,
and no more. One may sink as low as his faculties of invention are
capable of carrying him; one, may rise as high as his understanding
and application will reach.
The foregoing is no attempt to define love, because that
cannot be done. All definitions limit and the limitless cannot be
limited, pigeon-holed, or labeled. He who would seek to define the
indefinable would only curb his capacity for using it. Consequently,
what I have said should be taken for what I have intended it to be,
a description rather than an exposition.
Also, when you read this, please understand clearly that I
am not a reformed convict, because the term reform has lost the
whole of its pristine meaning. Its purity has been defiled by many
unwholesome connotations; too much Comstockism, commercialism and
hypocrisy have been attached to it in recent years, especially, to
warrant my associating myself with it in these pages. The term has
become the living symbol of suppression and all that is mean and
narrow in human conduct and behavior. Rather, I wish to be looked
upon here, not as a reformed criminal, but as a fool who has been
privileged to shake of a little of his foolishness; at least to the
extent of realizing that a fool's paradise isn't all it's cracked up
to be.
In every prison they have many unjust rules, the same as
every nation has many unjust laws. One of these rules in the prison
where I was last confined had to do with what is called, for some
strange reason, "the right to trial."
This right was vouchsafed the prisoner charged with
violating prison law in what was known as "High Court." This court
was in session twice weekly. It consisted of the deputy warden, who
was its prosecutor, judge and jury. When you entered in to answer
the complaint placed against you by your warder, the deputy would
read the charge and then command you to admit your guilt to it. Why
all this mockery and waste of time that could have been better
employed was, of course, a mystery. Certainly the court was
unnecessary since your accuser's word was infallible. If you denied
your guilt and thus dared to infer your innocence, your action was
equivalent to calling your warder a liar, and this implication was
certain to increase the amount of punishment meted out, unless, like
Galileo, you were diplomatic enough to change your mind and recant.
The theory seemed to be that the aspersion "liar" was a natural
characteristic of the prisoner, but that all prison warders were
George Washington who couldn't possibly tell a lie.
Naturally, nearly every one recanted sooner or later. Some
had to be persuaded by a few weeks in the dungeon on bread and
water, it is true. But so far as I know I was the only man haled
before the prison court who preferred slow death by starvation
rather than life by an admission of guilt. There was no principle
involved in my stand. None at all, other than just plain
hard-headedness. I was not rebelling against an act of injustice,
because I was sufficiently honest to admit that my whole life had
been built upon injustice toward others, and that all things being
equal I had injustice coming to me. No, I was simply exercising a
foolish prerogative to remain obstinate regardless of the pain and
physical consequences.
It was in the middle of an exceptionally bitter winter. The
torture chamber was damp, foul, and dark. The stone were full of
frost; the concrete floors were wet and icy. You were put into a
cell with nothing but a thin, much-washed shirt and overalls. Your
shoes were taken away, but you were allowed to retain your socks.
At night the keeper of the dungeon brought you a thin and filthy
cotton blanket.
Such is a brief picture of the place I entered to carry
out my own self-inflicted verdict of death. When he put me into the
cell the deputy warden said: "When 1 let you out you'll crawl to me
on your knees and whine and beg like a dog. And while you're in here
eating bread and water, I'll be living on ham and eggs and sleeping
in a good warm bed."
Knowing the man as I did, I had no reason on earth to
believe he might suddenly become chicken-hearted and relent. On the
other hand, I told him in reply, and I knew I meant it, that his
rats would carry me out a chuck at a time before I'd ever whine to
him. Obviously, therefore, my fate was sealed as tightly as it could
be sealed by two human wills in conflict.
And yet I was finally released from the dungeon weak but
alive and an infinitely wiser person. I had done no whining or
begging of any kind. In fact, from the day I entered until the day I
was released no word passed between the deputy warden and me. He
came each day and opened the solid door of my cell, stood there a
moment in silence to give me a chance to speak, then he would close
the door and pass on to his next victim.
Although I am engaged here with a few chosen
events in my life, and in nowise with an autobiography, it is
necessary for me to digress at this point if the reader would be
spared the annoyance of numerous digressions later on. Certain
things in my life prior to the dungeon experience touched upon,
which have a relative importance as bearing upon that experience,
must be traced out for a clearer understanding of what might
otherwise appear to border on the miraculous or the impossible.
It is the usual thing to suppose that one's dream life is
closely associated with and to a great extent influenced by one's
conscious life. And this is true to a great extent. No doubt the
dream which I shall later describe would seem too far-fetched and
contrary were it to stand alone unsupported by conditioning causes.
Since I was a person who for many years followed a criminal
career, whose every thought and action during those years had been
in violent contrast to all precepts of common decency, it is only
reasonable to conclude that my dream life would have revolved pretty
much around a similar pattern. Or at least that my dream life could
hardly have been expected to revolve around holy and superior
things.
But even though the years have a way of blurring the most
vivid experiences of childhood, the historic cycle has a peculiar
penchant for resurrecting those experiences, both in the conscious
and subconscious realms of activity; of duplicating events; of
repeating incidents, which in their day were passed over as having
no apparent significance.
I wish to say now that as a small child my dreams were
frequently woven around the personality of Jesus, although in my
home there was no particular stress laid upon religious things, or
upon the Saviour's ministry as it was recorded in the Bible. I had
no leaning toward church service, and I was not compelled to attend
Sunday school. Despite these omissions, nevertheless, my early dream
life invariably had to do with things of a holy nature.
Then at twelve years of age I began a series of minor
crimes, which soon developed into major ones. At fourteen I was a
confirmed criminal with all the bitter, negative philosophy
possessed by the toughest of the men who prey. This transition did
not affect the intensity of my dream life, but it did greatly affect
the quality of my dreams.
My early dreams of Jesus had always been laid in a strange
beautiful garden, different from any garden I had ever seen, heard
of, or read about. It was a shoe-shaped valley plot surrounded by
gently sloping tree and shrub-dotted hills. There were many
varieties of flowers growing wild. At one end of the garden a great
white grey rock jutted out and from behind it or through it, I could
never quite tell which, the Master would emerge and walk toward me,
carefully avoiding the flowers as He moved slowly along.
The pattern of these dreams changed promptly with the
pattern of my life. The peaceful garden through which the Master
strolled under Judean stars and dew-freshened dawns, became a
merciless jungle filled with gun-toting enemies, emissaries of the
law, all bent upon my capture.
In rapid succession of events, I would envision myself
under arrest, of being tried in court and convicted. I would hear
the grim verdict read and listen to the terrifying pronouncement of
sentence. I could experience all the agony of suspense that
stretched between the day of sentence pronouncement and the day of
its execution. Sometimes 1 would see myself being escorted to the
scaffold or the electric chair behind a dour-faced individual
mumbling gloomy prayers for the safe journey of my sin-tainted soul.
Very often I would reach the lethal monster and feel the black cap
being drawn over my face, like a fiendish bandage, or the straps
being adjusted to my legs. But invariably I would wake in the nick
of time, trembling, sweating, exhausted.
I've passed through the hot pits of many tortures, but none
to compare to these subconscious hours where deferred judgment
assumed all the hideous aspects of actuality.
That they were prophetic dreams I have no doubt. Criminal
activities always lead toward the commission of murder and murder
toward the executioner. And yet the fear of these sinister prospects
was not sufficient to alter the course of my criminal tendencies. In
fact, neither fear of punishment nor persuasion, kind treatment or
brutal, had any effect on the type of life I preferred to live.
During my many years in prison I was the object of a great
deal of well-intentioned kindness, as well as harshness. Different
social workers tried to influence my attitude. These good people
were called sobsters in the prison vernacular. We used to vie with
each other for their gifts and favors, and whatever influence,
political, they might bring to bear upon parole-boards in our
behalf. But always their advice was an extremely obnoxious service
which we assumed to relish, lest we forfeit the opportunity of using
our advisers toward other ends.
Sometimes they would come to the prison chapel and make
sentimental speeches, exhorting us to put on the raiment of
reformation. And we would appear to be moved by their soul-stirring
appeals, even to the shedding of realistic tears. Then when the
ringing call would come for us to resolve to lead new lives, our
hands would go up in eager unison, a gesture that was supposed to
pledge our souls and minds to the straight and narrow path ever
after.
They would leave the prison burning with the enthusiasm
mighty things accomplished for the Cause. But if the could have
heard our remarks following their departure I'm afraid they never
again would have had the courage to face a prison audience.
These good but misinformed souls would spend much time and
money in the prison crusades, and I suppose the still do so, but so
far as my own experience can reach, I've never known a man who was
reformed because of their well-intentioned efforts. Personally I
am convinced that a man changes his life pattern only when he
himself is definitely ready for such a change. And that until he is
ready, no pressure, reason or persuasion on earth can influence him
one iota. I am convinced, also, that reform is wholly a matter of
transcending old desires and habits of life, and not the suppression
of them through fears and other forces of the will. No man can claim
to be reformed who is still in conflict with the old habits of his
life. So long as such habits are not risen above a relapse into them
is constantly an imminent possibility.
But in spite of what I've found to be true in my own
experience, I would not presume to set my findings up as a
criterion. I have no desire to discredit or discourage the
activities of prison social workers. Nor would I wish to discredit
or discourage those engaged in the field of juvenile delinquency
because of what I have experienced as a juvenile delinquent myself.
It is important nevertheless, that I be honest in presenting my
early attitude and conclusions as a youthful outlaw.
Naturally I came in contact with all the reform movements
that were active at that time. If they taught me anything it was
sharpness of wit. I soon learned that through these movements I
could escape the consequences of much of my wrongdoing. I became an
artful maker of promises and a skillful creator of lies. These I
would trade for immunity whenever it could be done.
Quite often I was made the object for scientific study and
treatment. These laboratory adventures, instead of helping me,
served only to furnish another excuse for carrying on against
whatever restrictive conscience I had left. They made me conscious
of my difference from other kids. I was what I was because it had to
be that way. I was born with a quirk in my brain. I wasn't my fault
at all. Crime was just something that belonged to me; and any act I
performed no matter how vicious was merely an expression of my
natural self.
And later when the power of reason began to assert itself,
I developed a cynical attitude toward all reform movements, I became
skeptical of their motives, and even while I took every advantage of
their influence, I resented their patronizing sentimentalism; their
self righteousness; and particularly was I embittered by all
psychiatrical attempts to dissect, analyze and label me in the
manner of some queer zoological specimen.
Out of this resentment and bitterness grew the most
deadly philosophy in the world. I call it convict philosophy. It
contains the whitest logic ever conceived in the brains of men. It
batters down every sham behind which people hide their weaknesses.
It tears at all personal inconsistencies with tiger-like fangs. It
makes all men, women and children criminals at heart; gives every
one the impulse to kill, steal and ravage. To the criminal in prison
it distinguishes but one difference between him and the person
outside of prison, and that difference is enunciated with a sardonic
sneer. The one is in, the other is out. That is all. A stone wall
makes the only difference.
The danger of this philosophy lies in its very truth,
for potentially and actually all men and women have come short of
the law.
The philosophy, also, has it self-condemnatory side. The
criminal on the inside arraigns himself brutally for being fool
enough to get caught in a trap others skillfully evade. After he is
in for awhile he begins to see a hundred ways by which he might have
escaped punishment. And he resolves thereupon never to make the same
mistake again. And in this respect, at least, he leaves prison with
good intentions, according to his own code.
All in all, the only positive thing that can be said about
convict philosophy is that it is positively deadly to the man who
entertains it. One who is inoculated with it is dogmatic to the
point of fanaticism. He cannot be reached by either reason,
punishment or persuasion, because his mind is set as hard as
concrete against every attempt made to change him by those whose
motives he questions. A prison sentence only adds fuel to the fires
of his world-girdling disillusionment. He is a confirmed
fault-finder, an absolute destructionist, and he seldom wakes up
before it is too late to prevent his own physical, mental and moral
decay.
During the time I was engaged in the
following experiences-- a period of three years, perhaps, in all-- I
made and preserved certain notes, a few of which I later published
in a short series of brief articles. These together with the
remainder lay fallow in my trunk for many months. Then they were
shown to a friend, a man who had done something along the same line
himself with, as he said, more or less nebulous results. He became
quite interested and urged me to work my notes up in a book form. At
the time I was unable to respond to his suggestions.
He thought that I was obligated to such a task; that I had
no personal right to hide experiences of the kind. I, of course, was
interested in his reason.
"Why haven't I a right to keep them?" I prompted him.
He thought such a book might be helpful to others. Frankly
my conceit was neither large enough nor my knowledge broad enough to
include this reason. The knowledge I had gained, extremely meager
though it was when compared to what I had failed to gain, had been
sufficient to convince me that one man's experiences could do little
more than stimulate interest in another; that they could not
convince another of the efficacy in applying abstract principle to
practical problems by merely reading about such experiences.
"That is a great service in itself," he said, "to
stimulate, to encourage others to think for themselves and then
apply their thinking to their own problems."
In his inimitably enthusiastic manner, he referred to me as
one who had conquered an inferno. He said my methods had been
practical and my accomplishments so obvious that merely to read of
them would prove an inspiration to many with similarly difficult
problems.
"In other words," I smiled at his fervour, "the world is in
need of a brand new Messiah and you've picked on me for the job."
To my surprise and amazement he nodded his head. My smile
became a hearty laugh. I the new Messiah! I whose numerous names
adorned every police blotter in the country ! I whose picture could
be found in all the rogues' galleries, and whose measurements were
tucked away in every bureau of criminal identification! I who had
just recently emerged from a prison cell to point the way for honest
folks to follow! I a burned-out burglar taking up the exemplary task
of teaching ethics!
"It isn't so absurd," he said dryly. "There's been some
pretty good men in prison cells, and there's been some pretty good
things come out of prison. As I see it, it isn't that you were in
prison that counts at all: it's what you did there that might be of
help to some one else that really matters."
The upshot of it was that this friend convinced me finally
that such a book might truly have some value as a contribution to
human encouragement, if nothing else.
Certainly I approach the task humbly. My hope is that some
of those in whose hands the book might fall will be moved to try the
simple principles in their problems as I have been privileged to try
them with highly beneficial results.
Throughout these pages I offer no false claims. There isn't
a thing new or original between these book ends. In presenting what
is as old as the universe itself, I haven't even the claim of an
original literary style, whatever such a thing might be. I deal
wholly in the obvious; but it is an obvious that for many years I
refused to see, even to deny, and to continue to deny its presence
until the scorching fires of prison hell had welded it into my soul.
I am not an author by any means. I am not even a very well
educated person, having had practically no formal schooling. I am
just a common ordinary human being who had to be taught horse-sense
the hard way: by strong-arm methods.
The simple methods I have used were here with Adam. Many
have used them before me. Many will use them after I've shuffled
through the last dark door. All knowledge is a common property that
may be appropriated, thank God, by those who need it and wish it.
Knowledge is the one thing in existence selfish greed has failed to
put a fence around and post with No Trespassing signs. Too, any
intelligent person can do far more with a little knowledge than I
have been able to do, for I am neither intelligent nor keenly
receptive to the finer shades of wisdom and understanding.
As a plain matter of fact, I am handicapped with an
overabundance of that sort of peace and contentment not attracted
toward the ends of vigorous ambition. I am what some call a
confirmed homebody. I'm satisfied with simple things: my books, my
meditations, my thoroughly harmonious home, my club, my friends.
I've entered the calm after the storm and I find it pleasant.
So far I've tried to use the creative principle with great
determination only in the hard pinches; and if by recounting a few
of these some of you are enabled to take another reef in your own
flagging determinations, I'll consider my feeble effort repaid with
multiple compound interest.
For about twenty years I used to engage in a
most idiotic pastime. Like most criminals I had not yet discovered
humour, so I took this pastime very seriously. I claimed as my pet
aversion ignorance in everybody else, except of course, in myself.
And since I had not discovered humour, my voice was raised in
bellowing proportion against one particular form of ignorance. It
goes without saying, I made a fool and a nuisance of myself. One of
my most imposing defiance against this particular shade of
ignorance, was a declaration of denial.
"If there's a God," I would roar heroically in the presence
of some one whom I knew to entertain religious beliefs, "then let
Him prove Himself by striking me dead."
Once I made the silly remark in the company of a sardonic:
old safe-blower, who replied laconically: "God don't strike fools
dead. He throws 'em a rope."
The droll remark came back to me when I had just about let
out enough rope with which to hang myself.
I started out by hating God and wound up by hating
everything, including my own infallible wisdom. I was a little
too wise in those days to know anything about the psychology of hate
and all other forms of negation. For example, I didn't know that
hate could disturb the digestive and assimilative system to the
extent of bringing on attacks of indigestion and constipation,
sluggish blood circulation, and many other conditioning reflexes of
the mind and body. I went right on suffering them all and hating.
Besides it was popular in the circle in which I moved to evince the
rebel spirit by hating all things sacred and decent.
I took great pride criticizing everything that did not
conform to an attitude of destruction. As for human life, I held it
in contempt. Nothing was cheaper, and nothing was so worthy to be
preyed upon.
Consequently, being a criminal, and being so poor a
criminal as to carry around with me a whole pack of defeatist's
philosophy, I spent the greater portion of my time behind iron bars.
Now short terms in prison are not such terrifying
experiences as most people imagine them to be. They terrify the
beginner for awhile, but he soon becomes adjusted and settles down
to make the best of things. It is the long prison terms that make of
prisons a living death-house. When it's all said and done, there is
just one punishment inflicted by prison incarceration, and that
falls upon the long-termers. But this one punishment is sufficient
to defeat any purpose the prison system might hold in the way of
correcting criminal tendencies or eradicating a criminal causes.
There is no normal outlet, physically, for the most purely
animal dynamic force in existence; no normal way to gratify re most
maddening hunger that ever gripped the human side of man ; no way to
turn the procreative impulse into normal human channels of
expression. No way, that is, that prisoners have discovered, save a
remarkably few. Only a very few have been able to sublimate this
energy and turn it into useful purposes.
The usual attempted way, the vicarious way, and it
represents all the ways possible to imagine, instead of gratifying
the hunger only adds to it. Men and women in prison sacrifice
themselves mentally, morally and physically to this relentless
appetite without avail. Their sacrifices lead only to disgust with
themselves; and occasionally it carries them on to a padded cell.
Otherwise, they are eventually released with the hope they
are now purged of their pernicious tendencies. Such a hope is tragic
in its pathetic disappointment. Wardens know it. All prison
officials know it. But society doesn't know, because society would
rather pay the bill, perhaps, than take an interest in such sordid
facts. Such conditions do not and cannot prove beneficial to the
social system. At any rate, such is my opinion. I'm willing to leave
the matter in the hands of sociological students. So I'll go no
farther into it here. I may even be wrong. It may be that these poor
demoralized objects of an experimental penal age, are an asset to
society. I prefer to think otherwise.
As I said before, the deputy warden came every morning to
the door of my dungeon cell, tempting me to confess and go free. I
held out doggedly for weeks. Emaciated and filthy, I was many times
tempted to crawl to the door and accede to his wishes, but I always
managed to steel my will against the course. As time went on the
torture of starvation became less noticeable and less painful. Too,
I felt myself gradually becoming inured to the cold. It seemed that
my life was running out into a sort of dull, insensate chaos. Mine
was a case of stubborn will versus the law of self preservation,
with the former showing every indication of complete victory.
Why such a thought flashed across my mind I don't know-- it
had been years since I'd had a constructive thought-- but there came
to my soggy brain about this time a thought of wonderment. I
wondered where such determination of will would end if it was
directed differently, if it was turned toward a purpose of
intelligent self interest.
There followed a period of mild, dreamy delirium in which I
seemed to exist half awake and half asleep. For awhile the content
of these dreams was like a confused and pointless riddle. They had
no beginning and no end; but drifted and drifted and drifted through
my head without continuity or consistency. As I grew weaker,
however, they appeared to take on more definite outlines, to become
more rational, more vivid and meaningful.
And then one day there occurred in my dream the man whom
I'd been trying to hate for years, Jesus the Christ.
He appeared in a garden in every way similar to the one I
had seen Him in as a child. His physical appearance was also
similar. The whole picture had that quiet clarity about it that
draws out thematic details of expression, of feeling, of thought, of
purpose. He came towards me, His lips moving as though in prayer. He
stopped near me eventually and stood looking down. I had never seen
such love in human eye; I had never felt so utterly enveloped in
love. I seemed to know consciously that I had seen and felt
something that would influence my life throughout all eternity.
Presently, He began slowly to fade in the manner of some
casual process of dematerialization. Out of what had been a vision
of Him there emerged a vision of the word Love in large gossamer
irregular letters, which remained a moment, and then as He had done,
slowly vanished.
Following this particular dream I lay for a long time
enveloped in a keen sense of awareness. Even though the visual
aspects of the dream had disappeared, its quality lingered. It
seemed to have become a part of me. Where I had been the recipient
of the Master's love, I now felt myself exuding love. It seemed to
pour from me in the form of some mighty sense of blissful gratitude,
not for any one thing or things, but for all things, for life. I had
no discernment or consciousness apart from this enchantment of
universal love. I seemed to have escaped from all the personal
bodily and environmental limitations that had hitherto tortured me.
I was not aware of dungeon walls, but my thoughts seemed to roam
afar both in space and time. (In fact, neither time nor space
appeared to have definition or the modification of boundary lines).
And later I became aware of still another sense of
freedom. What I had always thought to be imagination, occurred to me
as reality. While I visited places undoubtedly historical but
ancient, I experienced no difficulty in adjusting myself to the
modes and customs of these places. I seemed to possess infinite
versatility, readily speaking the language or dialect of the various
peoples of these places, and to be perfectly familiar with their
laws, their religious beliefs, their government policies, their art
and literature. In the reading of the latter, I seemed to possess an
amazing proficiency. I read manuscripts and books by pages at a
glance with an accuracy that was unerring.
By and by I became aware of my actual whereabouts, but not
in the same sense I had been aware of it before. There was no
sensibility of discomfort attached to the dungeon now, no feeling of
bitterness or stubbornness. The place seemed to radiate with a
wholly congenial and alluring atmosphere. My imagination appeared to
function in an acute and consistently pleasurable manner.
I would experiment with the barren cell, reappointing it to
fit the convenience of special guests, which I would later invite.
Always these were men of wisdom, and always the dominating subjects
discussed by them were subjects of life, and truth.
It was at these imaginary symposiums that I first heard of
the creative principle, of the media of love, discussed in an
analytical manner, which later, applied, not only opened my dungeon
door without an overture on my part, but opened In trying to
describe this state of temporary being, I'm not I desirous of being
drawn into controversy about its causes or its scientific qualities
or its lack of them. I am merely describing what occurred, its
effect upon my future conduct and behavior, and what I was enabled
to do with the knowledge I had gained in this manner. Nor do I wish
to leave any egotistical impressions on the minds of my readers. I
was lifted into this state through no conscious efforts of my own.
It came to me unbidden, unsought. It was a gift to a man who, from
the human standpoint, had rendered himself unworthy of human
consideration. That it was an act of Providence I've never doubted.
Why or for what purpose, I've been able only to guess. Left to my
own devices my body soon would have been destroyed. I was doing all
in my power to bring about that finale, and certainly the time for
it was dangerously close at hand.
From the moment I was drawn into the state, unusual things
began to happen. The prison doctor stopped at my door for the
first time to inquire after my health, and to linger at my door and
talk. He came three times in that one day, eager to do something for
me in his professional capacity. Courteous and kind, he pressed me
again and again for a different answer in regard to my health, and
seemed bewildered when I re-affirmed the fact that I had never felt
better than I did at the moment.
The keeper of the dungeon, a man who had taken a violent
dislike for me from the start, came to my door with gracious words
on his lips. I had hated him and now I loved him. He offered to
disobey the rules and smuggle in a sandwich from the officers'
dining-room if I'd only say the word. I thanked him, but explained
that I was not in the least hungry. He went away shaking his head.
But during this period the deputy warden, who had been
making regular daily visits to my door, suddenly stopped coming.
Often I thought of him with an all-consuming compassion. I believe
it was on the third day that he opened my door and said, "Well,
buddy, I think you've had enough. You can go over to the hospital
and clean up and rest for awhile."
A few days later I received a complete new outfit of
clothing and was assigned a new and easier job in the prison shirt
shop.
"LOVE VERSUS PRISON DOOR OF SELF"
top of
page
CHAPTER III
from the book titled Love Can Open Prison
Doors
by Starr Daily
Brave
conquerors! For so you are
Who war against your
own affections
And the huge army of
the world's desires,
-Shakespeare.
We of today recognize the great English
playwright's genius, but what was taken for wisdom in his day we've
found to be false in ours.
We know now that war in any form has never solved a human
problem. We know that to declare a state of war between us and our
desires does not eradicate those desires, but rather intensifies
them in proportion as our war-like wills appear victorious and
strong.
When I came out of the dungeon and had again resumed my
routine duties, I was in possession of an idea that had worked a
seeming miracle in my behalf. But while I had a recognition of this
idea, I did not have the sense of illumination, the feeling of
ecstasy that had been born to me as a result of it there. Too,
although I realized the idea to be a medium through which I could
contact creative power, I didn't know how to go about applying the
medium to my problems now.
These problems were many and life-long duration. They began
immediately to present themselves to me for consideration the same
day I had my release from punishment; for that day there was
established in me an intense desire for a new deal of livingness.
Therefore, I sat down one evening to list my mental, moral
and physical assets and liabilities. I discovered that I had
shelter, food and clothing, such as they were. I was able to read,
write and cipher a little. Against these things the list of my
liabilities ran into interminable lengths.
The problem appeared simple under such circumstances. I
would simply start from scratch, and declare war on my physical ill
health, replace my negative attitude with a positive attitude,
substitute optimism for pessimism, and presto, all would be
hunky-dory.
The thoughtful reader, however, will see that I had set a
mighty big order for myself. In fact, what I desired to accomplish
meant a complete right-about-face from all the destructive habits I
had acquired and nurtured through the years. My intention was to go
to war against them and slay them in one fell blow with the rapier
of my will. My intentions were excellent; however, I hadn't reckoned
on the strength of the enemy. My effort, though heroic, was
short-lived and ended in dismal and mind-tormenting failure.
The more I tried to war against my habits, the more
persistently they pressed their claims upon me. I grew melancholy
under the strain. A sense of weakness and hopelessness took hold of
me, which defied constructive thinking, which defied thinking of any
kind, except thoughts of impotence and misery.
The desire for the things I had lived became more and more
intense, until reason warned me that a compromise would have to be
made, and compromise was the first step to failure. From it the
plunge back down would be swift and certain.
But the worst of all, my health instead of improving under
the ordeal, took an opposite turn. I soon learned that willpower
was one thing, and that to use it constructively against life-long
habits was another.
It seemed that all the legions of hell had turned out to
concentrate their fire upon me alone. If I decided to miss a meal
out of regard for my health, that particular meal would be certain
to contain seldom-served items that I especially liked. Every time I
picked up a magazine or newspaper, I would be sure to find some
brilliant, logical attack up on the virtues I had set before me.
Things occurred that I had never known to occur before to test my
resolve. For instance, I had been an inveterate user of profanity.
And being profane, I had not noticed it being used by others so
much. But no sooner had I resolved to stop its use, I began to
notice that every one seemed to use it. Books that contained it were
thrust in my way. An essay by a popular author on the use of
profanity was given to me. The author argued that those who did not
curse had no strength of character. Men who couldn't say damn once
in a while had lost all claim to masculinity. They were unpardonable
sissies; and he clinched his argument with a long list of leaders in
American history, including the father of his country, who had
cursed their way to fame and victory over insurmountable odds.
Profanity was a vigorous mode of expression that fitted perfectly
into all occasions requiring force and vigor.
I had a habit of chewing tobacco, which, for me in prison,
had been an expensive one to gratify. To obtain chewing tobacco had
been a constant struggle. But now that I had resolved to give the
habit up, the weed was forced upon me from all manner of sources
without one single effort on my part to acquire it.
My strongest mental habit had been intolerance of other
persons' opinions, which had, all my life, kept me in hot water,
fights and squabbles. Of course, this habit headed my list. I
determined I would look at the other fellow's viewpoint and respect
it even if I couldn't agree with it. I would refuse to argue with
anyone, taking the stand that fools argued and wise men discussed.
But again this good intention was easier resolved than carried out.
It seemed that those with whom I came in contact would be pacified
with nothing short of hot words. And the more I tried to force my
resolution by sheer will-power the more easily irritated I seemed to
become.
I had always thought I possessed courage. I had no fear of
physical pain. I had been clubbed by policemen into states of
insensibility. I had faced death many times while pulling off
burglaries; I would fight any man at the drop of a hat. Then one
day, after I had made my resolution to be broad and tolerant, a
fellow told me I was yellow; that I didn't know what courage was. I
was on my feet in an instant. But I steeled myself, gulped down the
old impulse to do battle, and listened while he brutally continued
his accusation.
"I'll tell you what courage is," he said. "You've never
known what the word meant. Everybody in this joint knows you've
always been hard-boiled. You've preached tooth and fang sermons
around here for years. Now you've decided you were all wet and
wrong. You've gone wishy-washy. All right, if you've got courage
you'll go up on the chapel platform the next day we have open forum
and tell all your old friends all about it. Preach us a sermon about
your grand and glorious reformation. That'll take the kind of
courage you ain't got."
Strangely enough I hadn't thought of that particular kind
of courage before. But now I realized that bullets and blackjacks
were easier to face than the ridicule of one's cynical fellows en
masse. As I pondered on such a predicament, I could visualize an
audience of sneering faces; I could hear their cat-calls and boos ;
their hisses, and their innuendoes of turn-tail, yaller-cur,
long-tailed rat, and a hundred other savage aspersions.
I didn't have the courage to face a thing of this kind, but
I forced my will to accept the challenge. I made a prepared talk and
committed it to memory. Then I sent my name and desire to the open
forum director. I lived a million years of emotional agony between
that day and the day I was billed to speak. When the day finally
came I was almost a complete invalid. As I sat on the platform
trying to pretend poise as the lines filed into the auditorium, the
pit of my stomach was churning like a ball of red-hot vacuum without
a mooring. As I was being introduced, a wave of nausea swept over me
and I began to tremble from head to feet. As I rose, I was met with
a roar of ridicule; tide after tide of it broke over me as I stood
there waiting for it to subside. I felt as though I was losing
consciousness. Then came a dead hush, in which I imagined one might
hear a feather fall above the mad pumping of my heart. I started out
to speak; my lips quivered open, but not a syllable issued forth. If
ever self styled hero made an inglorious retreat that hero was me. I
slunk from the auditorium amid the wildest surge of abuse I've ever
heard before or since. Right there and then I decided to scuttle all
my fine resolutions. But Providence once more came to my rescue,
this time in a wholly different manner.
I was to occupy that same platform many times after this
frightful fizzle. I was to debate my newfound philosophy of
behavior with some of the most brilliant forum minds. I was to hear
cheers and applause, where I had once heard only sneers and guffaws.
But I didn't achieve these things by the war process against my
habits and weaknesses. I achieved then not by trying new habits
that transcended the old. To war against a thing is to hate that
thing. To sublimate a condition is to employ the medium of love. The
one compresses the condition into a more intensified circumference,
the other expands it until it has no circumference left.
It so happened, and how fortunate it was for me, that just
after I reached this crisis, I was transferred to a different cell!
The man with whom I was to share this latter cell was a life-termer
well along in years.
His name was Dad Trueblood, but he was often referred to as
The Old Stir Bug. Ordinarily this name was applied in an
uncharitable sense to those prisoners who had attracted it through
odd or queer quirks in their mental characters. But in the case of
Dad Trueblood it was untouched by the critical or opprobrious. For
this old fellow was the most beloved man who had ever done time in
this particular prison. He was loved by both prisoners and officials
alike, a combination rarely found behind stone walls.
Dad was one of those exceptional persons the most chary
could trust; one of those singular individuals who, without uttering
a word, broke down the strongest restraint in others and set them to
blabbing their troubles in his ear as naively as a child goes
running with its troubles to its mother. He was one of those
occasional men who could win another's confidence without effort,
and with just as little effort keep that confidence strictly
inviolable.
Had Dad wished to turn informer, he could have sent scores
of his confidants to longer prison terms, and many to the electric
chair. But Dad was not an informer, and although this prison, like
all other prisons, was managed after the stool-pigeon system, no
official ever thought of offending Dad's sensibilities by offering
him special privileges in return for tainted favors.
The odd twist that gave Dad the name Stir Bug occurred
because he had refused a pardon after having served twenty-seven
years. His reason for such an unheard-of act was strange and yet
wholly consistent with his character. When the warden asked him why
he preferred to remain voluntarily in prison, he said that he was
getting old; that he no longer had any friends or relatives on the
outside; and that he thought he could be of more service in prison
than out.
"But don't you want your freedom?" the warden had asked
incredulously.
"I'm always free,'' the old lifer had replied. "It
doesn't make any difference where you are on the face of the earth,
warden. If your thoughts are free you're free. And there's no one
can imprison your thoughts but yourself."
And so Dad Trueblood had been permitted the privilege of
remaining a number instead of going out and once more becoming a
name.
When I moved my belongings into his cell he was lying on
his bunk. He welcomed me casually in a friendly manner. He knew, of
course, of my reputation as a bad actor. There were few words passed
between us until we had been locked in for the evening. Then I asked
him if he dad seen my fade-away in the chapel. Yes, he had been
there that day. He thought most any one else would hade done
likewise under similar circumstances. But he asked no curious
questions about it.
Finally, I related my experience in the dungeon; and of my
desires after coming out; of terrific willpower battle to overcome
my old habits; of my pitiful failure to do anything in that
direction. "But after that chapel deal," I finished, "I got wise to
myself in a jiffy."
"How do you mean?" he asked in an off-hand way.
"I mean this virtue stuff is all the bunk," I said.
"Then what does that make the other stuff? The stuff you've
been living before ?"
"There are some pretty wise men who have taken the gold out
of the Golden Rule, and have made that rule look pretty small, at
least on paper," I replied evasively.
"That doesn't seem important, son, in your case," Dad said.
"You've been following another rule. The important thing is, what
has it got you? Critics and logicians deal with the trees in a
forest, without ever seeing the forest itself. That's what you
should be looking at now -- not the too logical details, not what
the other fellow has done with your old philosophy, but what you
have done with it. If you're satisfied with the results, then your
rule has worked out, if not, then the sensible thing to do is to
stick to your guns and try another way."
But I've tried that and failed," I said hopelessly.
"No, you haven't," he said, "you've just gone at it wrong.
For instance, if you wanted to become a cannibal right quick, where
before you'd only been a moderate eater of meat, why just force
yourself to break off with meat by using your will and nothing else.
No, son, the easiest and safest way to rid yourself of many bad
habits is to recondition yourself to one good habit. Once you have
it established, the others will have disappeared without much
strain."
What he did was to show me how to apply the idea I had
discovered in solitary confinement, or rather the idea that had been
discovered for me, and turned to my account in spite of me.
First I was to forget all about my notion of going to war
with my habits. I was just to assume that nothing had happened to
me; that my attitude was the same as it had always been; that I was
not to make any attempt to force a change in my custom of living;
but that whenever and wherever I could do it without strain or
pressure, to do something constructively creative; a quiet thought,
an encouraging word to some one at the right time, a stimulating
hint to another, a constructive action, either selfish or unselfish.
I was to read, as I had always read, books that appealed to
the negative side of my life. But as I read I was to try to build in
something positive between the lines, whenever I could appear to do
it without too much labor.
"Make it a game, son," he said, "and not a task. Let it
be a challenge but not a command."
Guided safely by the unerring knowledge Dad had of
sublimation, I entered into the spirit of the game and found it not
only profitable but pleasurable. It was accepted as a novelty, a
plaything, something, with which to while away the time; and the joy
of which depended upon the game itself, and not upon the results to
be accomplished.
During the day at my machine I made a game of sewing
garments. Each one I finished had in it an effort to make it better
than its predecessor. This part of the game alone relieved me
entirely of the burden my labor had always had for me before. As a I
continued to play it, I soon found it becoming a fascinating habit.
Time that had always dragged heavily with each begrudging stitch,
now flew by on wings of tirelessness. I won privileges on my
workmanship, and many compliments from the superintendent of the
shop. But the surprising thing about it all was that I not only made
better garments, but I was able to complete my task in much less
time than when I had been fighting the sewing machine every minute
and turning out slipshod material; where I had been constantly
jerking at my cloth and breaking my thread, thus wasting time
rethreading my needle, I now worked more smoothly and
consequently with little lost motion. One of my best games was
to see how many completed garments I could make without an
accidental breaking of my thread. On several occasions I finished
the whole task, twelve garments, without a mishap.
This game was taken up by those around me, and eventually
spread over the entire shop. The superintendent was amazed at the
results. He made it a competitive game and offered prizes for the
winners. Not only were the garments made better; but there was a
great saving accomplished by eliminating wastage, garments too
hastily thrown together that later had to be discarded and new ones
made to replace them.
And all the while I would be working away at my task, I
also played a game with my thoughts. I would analyze them as they
drifted through my mind. I would label each as it came along. If it
was destructive, I would counter with a constructive one
deliberately created for the purpose, and vice versa. As I continued
to play, I soon became conscious of a subtle, but definite drawing
away of the destructive thoughts. The constructive ones came more
and more unbidden, until finally I was aware that whole sequences of
them would pass through my mind without being broken by one
negation. Too, I found it becoming increasingly repugnant to
deliberately create a destructive thought to carry out my game of
counter-action.
Then when my task had been completed, I hatched up another
game. I called it the game of constructive deeds. Each day I tried
to increase the number of little unobtrusive things I could do for
my fellows. I would hold loving thoughts toward men who had
always been my avowed enemies. Many of them I had bloody encounters
with and hadn't spoken to since. Without fitting any other action to
these thoughts, I watched and waited, and in every case was rewarded
by seeing the iceberg melt that had stood between us, and it wasn't
long until I had no enemies left.
This game by itself did something psychic to me. I didn't
know what it was at the time. But it was an expanding something that
drew men closer to me, even while I drew farther away from the life
or the type of livingness they stood for. I didn't know why men
distrusted the pious and self righteous sort of comradeship and
fellowship; nor exactly what the difference was between that sort
and the sort that I was expressing; but I knew there was a
difference because the results were different. What that difference
was didn't seem to matter. I was becoming more and more
result-conscious, and this in itself was an excellent sign.
And then at night in my cell I would take up a book that I
had always looked upon as my Bible. It was Schopenhauer's Studies in
Pessimism. With this book I now made another fascinating game. I
went through it thought for thought, translating it in long-hand on
pieces of wrapping paper. My translation of the title was Studies In
Positiveness. For each negative thought given by the author, I wrote
down its best positive opposite.
Nor did one of the author's negations defy translation,
indeed I invariably found many positive thoughts in one of his
negative ones, from which I would choose the strongest. Sometimes it
took me an entire evening to get over one page; other times I would
do as many as five pages. Only once did I ask Dad to help me, and
then he shook his wise old head.
"Solitaire is a one man game," he said, "and you're doing
fine. Keep right after it until you win on your own efforts."
That enormous bundle of manuscript was destroyed. I've
often wished I had preserved it. There was a certain sentiment
attached to it, I suppose. It was something tangible that stood for
something much greater, though intangible, the beginning of a slow
but steady bulge upward. But after all, though the manuscript was
destroyed, its effect on me is still alive and will remain so until
the end of my days. The effects of constructive building are
eternal: destructive building leads to limitation and death. But of
all my early games with the implements of life, I believe this one,
in its cumulative results, had the greatest influence for good.
The translating of this book gave me an
intense interest m the positive side of life. It led me smoothly
into an examination of the Old and New Scriptures, and of other
literature that stressed the positive along with the negative in
human behavior.
However, in this prison at that time, true positive
literature was a scarce article. One day I picked up a magazine of
the kind that had been nearly worn out from much reading and had
been discarded by its last reader. With great enthusiasm, I went
through it from cover to cover. When I had finished I decided I
would have a friend subscribe for it in my name and number.
The subscription was entered and I waited eagerly for my
first copy. I waited several weeks. Then I had my friend write the
publisher to find out about the delay. A reply informed me that the
magazine, along with other printed matter from the same publisher,
had been coming to me regularly. A little private investigation
turned up the information that our chaplain, who was also our
literary censor, had disapproved of the reading material presented
through this publishing house.
My first impulse was to fly into a good old-fashioned fit
of rebellion and write the chaplain a vituperative note of
denunciation. In fact I did talk to Dad in no uncertain terms as to
what I thought of a chaplain who would permit every deadening and
salacious book and magazine printed to come in to us, and then set
his objection on a magazine that didn't carry a single article or
item not calculated to lift the consciousness of its readers.
The old man listened patiently until I had spent myself.
Then he said: "All true, and heroically put, son. It's pleasing to
unburden ourselves sometimes of what has all the earmarks of
justifiable indignation. But the trouble with it in this case is
that it only makes bad matters worse. Remember the little game
you're playing ? Well, it's a broad game. Any situation can be
fitted into it. But not with hate and criticism; that is, if you
expect to win."
"But how in this case?" I asked him.
"How did you break down enmity over in the shop?" He said
no more. But his suggestion was enough.
I set about to formulate a new game around the chaplain.
First I studied him and got to the bottom of his reasons for
withholding my literature. I couldn't agree with those reasons. They
seemed narrow and unreasonable to me. But I did grant him the right
to entertain them, even though they had appearance of injury to me.
I told myself that since the material printed in this magazine was
in conflict with the religious creed held by the chaplain he was
actuated by that consideration alone, and that he was honestly
sincere in his belief that such reading matter would do harm to
those who read it.
As I reasoned thus, I could not help but feel sorry for
a man laboring under such rigid limitations. And this emotion,
although it is not true love, is mighty close to compassion. At any
rate, I soon found myself creating genuinely loving thoughts toward
my censor. I began visualizing him as I thought the Master might
visualize him. And the more I played at the game the more I thought
of him as an EXPRESSION OF GOD and the less I thought of him as an
expression of limitation.
Besides, I found a way of doing a few little services for
him without his finding out who did them. For instance, I pointed
out to my warder that three sun-shades would greatly improve the
looks of the administration building. The warder agreed with me and
said he would point the same thing out to the warden. As a result I
was permitted to make the shades as well as the pattern. I made them
as attractive as I possibly could; and they did improve the looks of
that part of the building. But the one most pleased with the
innovation was the chaplin, because it was the windows to his study
they shaded against the afternoon sun.
On another occasion I was able to acquire a red-lettered
student's Bible, a beautiful book, and have it placed on the
chaplin's desk in his absence. On the first flyleaf I had written,
"With the compliments of a friend."
In the meantime I spoke no word to him. I attended his
services and found him saying things that were illuminating and
admirable -- thing that I had formerly closed my mind against with a
door of indifference and prejudice. With this door now opened the
effect was exhilarating. I seemed to lose all interest in his human
faults and shortcoming, particularly as they affected me. I began to
think of him in terms of brotherly love and to feel what I thought
intensely.
Then one noon day he came down the gallery and stopped in
front of our cell. He carried under his arm several magazines and
pamphlets that had been sent to me. He told me that he had seen fit
to censor them because they dealt with pantheism; [the doctrine
identifying God with the various forces and workings of nature] a
dangerous doctrine. Recently, however, he had changed his mind and
decided to allow me to have books, providing I would promise not to
pass them on to others. I made no such promise; nor did he seem
insistent on that point. I thanked him, and we talked for quite some
time in a real get-acquainted fashion, and a friendship was the |