It is now over a year since the operation for arthritis on my right hip, yet the recollection of the disappointment, even chagrin, with which I returned to consciousness after the anaesthetic, is still poignant enough sometimes to overwhelm me.  For I had hoped quite sincerely, before the operation, to be finished with my work on earth.  I had even envisaged a quiet slipping out from this earthly sheath into the new experiences of the next life; and with this hope in view I had obeyed all the attendant nurse's instructions and had dutifully swallowed the tablets she had handed to me in preparation for the anaesthetization of my senses.  After that I knew no more; there were no mystical experiences, no watching (from some outside vantage point) of the surgery on my body, no 'meeting' with spirit friends, as some people have claimed during such experiences; there was just a blank interval — and that was all, until I awoke after some hours of unconsciousness, and the same nurse was standing beside me.  Even then I can recall little or no sensation, for all my senses seemed dulled until the next morning, when, thankfully, I drank an early cup of tea.  At the same time as I registered the savour of the tea, a thought hit me with startling reality.  "I have come back!  I am still on earth!  I am in the Nursing Home!  I am still here!  Why?  Why?  Oh, why?"

Human personality is a strange conglomeration of habits, desires, hopes, fears, and a casual acceptance of events as they happen.  At least that is how I sum up my own 'mask' with which I face the world and its demands.  After the first shock of continuing earthly awareness, I settled down to think myself into some conclusions; there was no question of acceptance of course.  I had inevitably come back to living, to eating, to talking, to thinking, reading, sleeping and waking as before.  As I lay in the high orthopaedic bed in my pleasant room, I began to experience returning bodily strength; I was thankful for the absence of the pain which had plagued me for so long, and gradually the disappointment of returning to human existence became dimmed.

By the fourth day after the operation I was feeling very well indeed; it wasn't until the seventh day that I had a slight setback which I was told later, was caused by an anaemic condition, and was remedied by some 'iron railings' as my surgeon referred to a large bottle of iron pills, which he prescribed.

But between those days, something had happened; and it is that happening which has changed my life pattern, opened in me a new state of consciousness bringing a vivid and reverent awareness of a purpose and a plan; revealing not only that the Spirit bloweth where it listeth, even into an ordinary person like myself, but that the Spirit must be listened to, and its message accepted and obeyed.  Into my rebellious consciousness came the conviction of the Divine Will for me, and however I struggled against it, the Plan would be carried through to the last point, the work would be done, and my small self-will would accept what dear Frances Banks used to term 'being about my Father's business.'

For on that fifth night I had a dream; such a dream as I shall never in this life forget; a dream from which this book starts and finishes; a prophetic, philosophic dream out of which I awoke speaking aloud, "This is the new book I have to write; and its title is Living Waters."

I had been watching television on a screen which stood against the window wall of my Nursing Home bedroom.  The televised story had been stupid, futile and boring, and when the nurse brought my my night-time drink of warm milk, I asked her to switch off reception.

"Why, it's quite early," she said.  "If you sleep now you'll probably wake up at dawn."

"Yes, I may," I agreed, though I had scarcely understood her remark.  I was so tired, even though I was not taking any drugs or tranquilizers; and it seemed to me afterwards that I was asleep almost before she had finished her duties, turned out the light, and left the room.  I seemed to lie, perfectly relaxed, for a short space of conscious time, without thought of prayer or meditative silence, and then sleep must have overcome me.  For how long I slept I am not aware; only was I myself again when the dream became pictured in my consciousness, and I found myself taking part in an impressive tableau.

I was sitting in an old-fashioned open barouche [carriage], which was being drawn in leisurely fashion along a country road.  If I relax and close my eyes I can see again the coachman in his driver's seat, his drab brown suit, and brown hat with the small feathered cockade, his long thin whip beside him, and I can hear the horse plodding solemnly along a dusty road bordered by overhanging trees.  Sometimes our equipage passed an ancient spired church, sometimes a quaint village, where children played on the green before the public house; at times a turreted house would come into view, surrounded by its weed-filled moat, and I can even recall with what wave of excitement I leaned forward to take longer optical enjoyment of garden beds of flowers, hedgerows white with hawthorn, and some brilliant burst of purple where a lilac bush had topped an old stone wall.

Suddenly, as one becomes aware in dreams, I realized that, as I sat in the slow moving carriage, my hands were occupied in weaving a kind of tapestry picture of the scenes through which we were passing.  The canvas (or I concluded it was a canvas), formed a long roll which rested on the carriage floor at my feet, and the pictures that were appearing on this scroll seemed to evolve out from my fingers with a promptness that had little connection with any activity of mine.  I remember vividly as my consciousness became aware of what was happening, that I began to regard the different scenes before me on the tapestry with a feeling not only of realised failure but also of deep sadness.  For now I saw that the record made of these pleasant places although exact in its representation, lacked the brilliance of the flowers, the warmth of mellowed stone walls, the colour and beauty of blossom-starred hedgerows, the golden sheen of buttercup fields, and the gay pinafores of the children at play.

As my attention concentrated, a feeling of despair filled me.  I stared down at what purported to be my work, a facsimile of the green and pleasant country through which we must have ridden — for days, for years, for centuries? — I could not know.  But what I did know immediately, and with the sharp pain of a sword — thrust on my consciousness, was that I had missed the true beauty of life; I had failed dismally.  The pictures had no life, no glow, no glory.  They were careful recordings, flat and dull; indeed they were dead!

This thought, sinking deeper and deeper into my consciousness held me in a grip of such grief that I felt within me a sorrow, not only for myself and my dismal failure, but for the whole world.  Even now I can recall the slow clip-clop of the horse's feet, and the sway of the barouche as a backdrop to the terrible realization about these records made of 'dead-life,' which still moved before me in their automatic sweep of drab existence.

"The whole world," I told myself, "is only half-seeing; only half-living.  Like me, they miss the Reality, the glory and the perfect Light."

And in my dream I wept.

I wept now not only for my own paltry failure, but for the continued lack of all people of all races, of all places.  They too, were missing what I now know to be 'the many splendoured thing.'  Their awareness, their records, their lives were but shadows of possibilities; dead existences in a world of glowing beauty, of rich splendour of attainment, of untapped joy and fulfilment.  Humanity now living on this earth were enacting, as recorded on the tapestries, the drab letters of life without the Spirit.  What was the use of it all, I asked myself?  What have we missed, I demanded of the coachman?  But he only shook his head, not understanding; the dreadful journey continued, and the tapestries wove their dark colourless web.

For how long I wept for the very pity of our ignorance, I do not know.  How many scenes we passed, and which were duly recorded, I cannot tell.  For it seemed that I no longer wished to look or to record.  I covered my eyes; I felt myself asking what we could do to remedy such tragedy.  I had the terrible feeling that I, and all others, were going on — on, plodding with dull lifeless records into eternity.  And nothing could stop it.

The realization appalled me.  Was life always to be a period of sadness, drabness, lost opportunities, fears and worries that robbed it of its true meaning?  Would humanity ever by-pass the glory of true living?  Would mankind ever war against each other; ever seek the temporal and ephemeral prizes of earth; never realize and make real the fact that the life of the Spirit was eternally seeking to bring beauty, harmony, peace, health and prosperity to the dwellers on the earth-plane?

In our Bible, the shortest paragraph often quoted consists of two words pregnant with deep meaning: "Jesus wept."  At that moment of consciousness in a dream which had shocked my very soul (or so it seemed) with a truth which man tries studiously to avoid hearing, those two poignant words became alive to me, taking on not only a meaning of spiritual compassion, but a knowledge of their prophetic reality.

For how long I sat, swaying in gently rhythm with the slow forward drive of the barouche, I have no clear recollection.  I only recall that if a soul can weep, mine shed true tears then . . .

But, again, as ever in dreams, came that sudden change for which our limited minds have no answers.  I grew aware of a domestic vessel standing on the carriage floor at my feet.  There was something different and compelling about it.  I leaned forward to look more closely, for even if it had been there all the time, its presence had passed my notice.

The object was a grey earthenware vase, in quite common usage; and it was filled with water.

A Pitcher of Water!

As though I was being instructed (and I probably my consciousness was!), I reached down my hand and dabbled in the water.  Immediately the depression left me.  I felt alive, confident, even excited.  "Water," I recall, and I seemed at last to hear my Inner Self speak.  "Why, this is what is needed."  And without further ado, I lifted the pitcher and sprinkled the water on the tapestried web of dull pictures.

The effect was startling!  The scenes were transformed immediately.  They came to life!  The pictures sparkled, colours glowed with rich brilliance, greens were lush, and gleams of golden Light changed drabness to beauty, deadness to life, emptiness to the wonder of fulfilled glory.

"Water!" I recall murmuring, as if I was being instructed by an unseen Being, "The Water of Life!  Waters of the Spirit!"

As the scene snapped suddenly and inexplicably, I found the consciousness of earthly life returning to me.  My eyes blinked open, my body stirred against the pillows; and I was awakening to another day.

And as I awakened, I heard myself speaking.

"Living Waters!"  I was saying in true exultatation.  "Living Waters in the New Age!  Living Water!"

Then I knew that this was to be the title of the new book, which the Spirit would inspire me to write.

Living Waters.

It took some time for any explanation of this compelling visionary experience to percolate through my usual everyday consciousness.   And when interpretation did come, it would flash into my mind in (as it were) jagged wisps of meaning; most often at odd minutes when there was no time or opportunity of noting it down.

John 4:10

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

John 7:37-39

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.

He that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

(But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

Let us essay to live closer to the Life Triumphant, following Divine Laws; giving to the world in love, harmony, creativity, and spiritual awareness more than we take from it.  Surely we partake of Living Water when we open ourselves, our minds, our aspirations, to participation in those higher faculties, 'the gifts of the Spirit,' which are the birthright of the sons of God, the Spirit.

The Christ of the Heart comes to fulfil the task he began two thousand years ago; the establishment of that Holy Spirit which he promised his disciples; the Kingdom of Heaven on earth . . . 

But at least this present time with all its tragedies, its millions of homeless refugees, with its killing impulsion towards greed, selfishness, and envy; this present trauma is the beginning, the breaking-up of old shibboleths, old criterions, old errors, in preparation for the new start.  The Age of the Spirit.

His mind stretched out to touch mine.  He had something to communicate.  I reached for pen and notebook and wrote, and set down all that was imparted, never stopping to reason out, or to wonder, or to search for words.  I was overshadowed.

  

Louis communicated several times, as I sat alone beside the ingle-nook fire in my cottage.  He was direct, very much to the point, and if he thought in French, his former language, then I 'received' in perfect English, and the flow was never interrupted.

"I have been drawn into the thought of the work you are doing on the plane of earth by my contact here with the soul that functioned as Emile Coué when in bodily incarnation.  He and I are both members, (and honoured to be so) in association with a group of medical men, great souls, fine souls with whom we learn to synthesize our struggles, our work, our small triumphs, even our failures on earth with the plan in which we were, and still are, atoms of consciousness.  Slowly it is becoming apparent to both of us that here in the Thought-Mind of Infinity, we are being initiated into a wider consciousness.  After much debate, contemplation, and applied synthesis, we realize that when we functioned on earth we had touched, if only the fringe, the wonder, power and beauty of truth itself.  Yet how small a speck of truth was!  Indeed, cognizant only in microscopic examination.  This tiny grain of truth appears to my extended thinking as no larger than a germ, a microbe.  Yet like a germ it held for me, then as now, the Alpha and Omega of beginning and end.

  

"Study of micro-organisms and bacteria was my dedication and my joy during that sojourn; and with no conceit (for here one understands the uselessness of such glamours) I accept that I achieved a certain measure of success; at least the rampant nature of disease-spreading bacteria was arrested; and that was good.

  

"But of this I do not wish to consider now.

  

"I venture to claim the advantage if an active penetrating mind, and thank God, it was then employed to the fullest.  But of far greater importance, I realize that I was aware of and worked through the glimmer of the eternal Truth of all creative activity.  I knew then, and often stated to friends, that such accomplishments as followed my researches were due to the Will — that inner Will which instinctively I obeyed.

  

"'You need the will,' I would inform them, 'then work, and finally success will come.'  This was my Law of Life.

  

"But when my work in the material world ceased, and I found myself on a new Plane of being, required to judge and assess that which I had achieved or failed to achieve, I was thrilled by the awe-inspiring realization that the underlying power of the Spirit within had led my mind into the right paths and had guided my very researches by intuition and inspiration.  The self in Louis Pasteur the chemist, had known that which to the personality was partly veiled.  Thus, such research and discovery being its accepted task, it could not fail as long as it obeyed the Will — that Will of the Creative Force which had united with it in incarnation into dense matter.

"I could recall moments, during my lifetime, when without any shadow of doubt, I was aware that a mysterious and all-embracing power urged my will on to ever deeper probing into the secrets of life, even the life of germs and microbes.  That power of the Infinite determined my will to work, my patience to check and re-check until such theories as I had formed had proved their plausibility.  Was it coincidental that always my mind held to the obeying of that Will as my Law of Life?

  

"Yet it was only after I was enabled to review together my life and my work in this thought-world that consciously I correlated that power of good which had urged me on to fulfilment, with the purpose with which I ventured into incarnation.

  

"With many fine souls in the fields of medicine and research, whose earthly names are still honoured, I have conversed and meditated.  Here are those who formed the vanguard for the next century break-through in hygiene, medicine and surgery.  Owing to such discussions with these advanced souls a veil was lifted, and much revealed to me concerning destiny, and the trial of the soul in fulfilling (or disregarding) its infinitesimal part in the Creative Purpose.  Here began a new apprehension of the meaning of the phrase, 'Not my will but God's Will be done.'  Here were fresh insights into truth.  Here one realized that the creative Will of the Spirit of Truth (God), and the obedient will of mankind in conscious Oneness and unision was infinitely simpler yet vastly superior to anything man's distorted image had ever realized.

  

"You are essaying I believe to try and find a 'modern' interpretation of the symbol 'Water of Life,' and I, as a scientist would wish to add my contribution to your endeavour.

  

"It is a fact that man on earth cannot live without water.  The chemistry of his body needs liquid.  Deprived of adequate liquid his organs become blocked, his blood congeals, disease and wastage of the cell structure of his body will ensue, and he will die.

  

"But what of his spiritual life?  The great Master of the Age spoke clearly of this to the woman of Samaria at the well.  He appears almost to reprimand her.  'Thou should have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water' . . . and he adds, 'the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.'

  

"Naturally the woman did not comprehend!  Perhaps I may venture to add that only such mystics and saints who have lived in the Spirit whilst still entombed in the body have with deliberate intent probed into its connotations.

  

"For 'Living Water' is to the spirit of man in the same relationship as earthly water is to the body of man.  Without it, deprived of its everflowing eternal properties, the soul dwindles, and becomes debilitated because of the distractions of terrestrial interests.

  

"Could it not have been possible, (I have now been asking myself) that my insistence on the Will to work towards fulfilment in my life as Louis Pasteur lay deep within memories in my soul?  That the mandate to obey the Will was the soul's approach to the 'Living Water' of the Spirit which enabled the personality to fulfil its promise and God's Purpose?  Is it not conceivable that the very connoations of this phrase, its essence, and the variety of its scope and purpose are variable in accordance with the diversification of stimuli from separate souls?  Are there not innumerable meanings to illustrate the symbolism of 'Living Water'?  As mine was the urgent union of will and Will, may not there be other interpretations to fit other circumstances?

  

"My contribution therefore to some of the effects of the application of the Water of Life, can by summed up as follows:

  

(1) In primary acceptance of the Divine Plan and Pattern.

(2) In the desire to fulfil that Pattern.

(3) In complete obedience to the Divine Will, and joyous compliance with those intuitions which point the Way.

(4) In sacrifice of such earthly pursuits as would interfere with

  

"For complete growth is stultified without Living Water — the growth and progress of the soul.

  

"'Living Water,' therefore, to me is a symbol of truth in all its facets, of inspiration from the great Source of All Knowledge, and of the Divine Will and Purpose for every created thing and all conscious creatures.  Lacking its regenerating properties, the separate personality becomes too weak to resist the glamours of the world, the flesh and the devil.  For me, during my sojourn on the earth, illumination came through that phrase which states, 'Not my will but Thine be done.'  To me the Divine Will was life; and only by obedience to its dictates and guidance was I able to arrive at the Omega which in cosmic reality was ordained from the beginning."

These words have poured through my pen, and as I wrote I was aware of a strong spirit, a powerful, penetrating mind.  I respect the intellect of Louis Pasteur even though I felt overwhelmed by it; and later, between 'sessions,' my personality shrank from this reporting.  Yet this is my work, the destiny I came to fulfil, even though it has taken all my life before my true acceptance of the Plan.  I, too, learn as I carry out my duties as scribe.  As I look back and recall my dream, it is very apparent that only when I obeyed an inner Will to lift the pitcher of Water and work with it on my dark canvas of life was there the sparkling change from drabness to beauty.  How blessed was Monsieur Pasteur to know that Will and obey it, during the most fruitful years of his earthly life!  How many of us look back and mourn our wasted years, yet maybe, they were necessary to clear defects in the personality.  But the Spirit has infinite mercy in that it is never too late to change ourselves and to follow the Will.  The call will come when it is least expected, sometimes through an inner experience, most often after sorrow, tragedy, disaster.  Then we are given the opportunity not only to widen our limited outlook, but to discover the deep inner self, and to follow our way.  As with the soul that was Louis Pasteur, the chemist and pioneer researcher into bacteriology, we too need not only the Will, but the strength and faith to work.  The Living Water is freely given.  Let us help to inaugurate a New Age by making the Will, as he did, our Law of Life.