The Unobstructed Universe - A Paranormal Case Study Book

The Unobstructed Universe paperback edition cover art 1970

After Stewart Edward White witnessed his wife Elizabeth's physical demise and transition to the afterlife following 35 years of marriage, at first he expected that "my part in our greatest adventuring—that in the Unknown—had calamitously ended"; however, the paranormal case chronology involving himself and 'Betty' was only about to take another new twist.  Stewart's nonfiction book The Unobstructed Universe (1940) is a case study preceded by four books documenting what became a succession of different forms of transcendental communication through his wife.  Stewart offered an overview statement of the third among these books:

The Betty Book, 1937, in which I threw my hat over the modern public's materialistic windmill and wrote frankly of "the excursions of 'Betty,' a psychic intimately known to me and of absolute integrity, into the world of 'other consciousness,' and of the communications received by her . . . in a condition of trance or otherwise . . . from forces which I have ventured to call 'the Invisibles.'"

Stewart's paranormal case study books are representative of numerous books documenting the Spiritualist Movement of the 19th and 20th Centuries.  It becomes apparent that concerning authors' efforts to chronicle their experiences, each at times is limited in the ability to interpret and develop a perspective concerning the messages due to limiting conceptions and orientations in relation to human existence and their personal interaction with "the other side."  The author mentioned a "flood of enthusiastic and demanding letters that increased rather than diminished month after month following publication of The Betty Book." 

At the onset of the course of events chronicled in The Unobstructed Universe, Edward describes his perception of the communicating intelligences as "discarnate earth-entities" while explaining that he had recorded via shorthand and then typed "several thousand single-spaced pages of teachings" that were the basis for four preceding autobiographical books.
 
Stewart on several occasions over the years had been acquainted with the 'psychic' known as 'Joan' and her husband 'Darby.'  The couple's actual names were Ruth and Emmet Finley.  It is reported in a 2012 Beacon Journal article: "Ruth Finley, a former society writer for the Beacon Journal, went on to become a book author and an editor at several national publications, including McClure’s magazine."  The Unobstructed Universe presents the communication from 'Betty' (representing the "We" of human personalities living in the ascended state of existence) during Stewart's 40 sessions with the couple.  He explained the individual 'method' for Joan:

Joan works blindfolded from a state of trance, into which she enters instantly and completely at the signal of Darby's touch on her wrist . . . Invisible entities talk through her, and then her own personality is completely absent; but on occasion she also reports in her own right what is shown her or told her, in which case, of course, apparently she participates.  Nevertheless, on returning to her normal state she never has the slightest recollection of anything that has been done or said, and she has no sense whatever of the passage of time.

One message from initial sessions will be of interest to consistent readers of this blog: "Boots he has with his trousers tucked in."  There is also an episode of some intrigue regarding a statement mentioning "the blue slippers."  So too when the communicating intelligences accepted as 'Betty' offers the statement "There is only one universe."  The following is the response when Darby asked about there being 'possibly two viewpoints of it.'

"Only one universe: two viewpoints is just your perception.  I want to make you understand, first, the reality of my existing in the universe of which you are not wholly conscious.  I want you to understand, secondly, the possibility of my existing in a universe of which you are fully conscious.  And the third job is the actuality."

Here are some other transcript excerpts from The Unobstructed Universe.

"Photography.  You ought to understand the oneness of your universe and mine through photography . . ."


"So analyze them as you will.  They are only two appearances or aspects of the same thing.  There is only one universe."


"Now, Stewt, you remember when my consciousness was voluntarily projected into this unobstructed universe.*  (* She means her work as explained in The Betty Book and Across the Unknown.)  I brought back to you examples and imagery to explain phases of living.  I was given here a pattern for earth-life development.  Now my job is to bring back to you—and I mean bring—a picture of the existence in which I now have my being."


"The next step is your recognition of the shifting, even in your consciousness, of the dividing line between the obstructed and the unobstructed universes.  Next is your realization, of what your scientists ave admitted, that there exists—in the only-one-universe of which you are part—much that your senses cannot detect, but which you have proved to exist by means of instruments invented by man.  This unobstructed universe of mine is part of your universe, just as your obstructed universe is part of mine."


I have used the term "what Betty had to say," merely because it was she who actually said it.  She did not pretend—indeed she specifically disclaimed—that this was all her own effort.  She was always referring to others with her, who were directing and advising as to the course of the discussions.

"I don't know; I'll ask," she would say when we asked something outside her own knowledge.  "Those I am working with suggest —" she would preface some advice.  And occasionally, when she got into difficulties, or perhaps by way of epitome, one or another of these collaborators—or directors—would speak in his own person.  But briefly.  There was "Anne," for example.  Anne is a personality who, along with Stephen, immediately began communicating through Joan once the latter had discovered her psychic powers.  She was a Scotswoman of, probably, about the sixteenth century.  Her broad dialect is archaic, interspersed upon occasion with pure Gaelic, and, until one's ear becomes accustomed to it, far from easy to follow or understand.


"We have voices.  We can communicate with each other mentally, but we use words over here simply because it's easier.  There is a little more technique to getting it out of the mind.  Just as there is to getting it out of your mind, to carrying on a mental talk with you.  And of course my awareness-mechanism has to be more acute in getting what you think than when I converse with another individual in my state."


"One of the difficulties on earth is that you have idealized truth out of your social set-up.  Yet you have your prisons.  The reason you have so many of them is because you have permitted the lower degrees to run amok," she replied.

"How do you keep them from running amok over there?" asked Darby.

"In the first place," said Betty, "laws are obeyed here.  The recognition of law is imperative.  Law is a thing here.  It operates.  And here we all understand that if we run up against a law, we bump.  The breaking of a law here has a different reaction on the individual consciousness than does the breaking there.  And it's not done."

"These lower degrees are then unable, by their nature, to invade privacy?" was my question.

"It is the very nature of things that makes them unable."

 

 

['Stephen' is quoted:]  "Your science knows but half of evolution."

 

And in this "someplace," said Stephen, exists a consciousness not observable at any given period on earth, since no particle of consciousness can be lost.

 

 

And in this "someplace," said Stephen, exists a consciousness not observable at any given period on earth, since no particle of consciousness can be lost.

"There are two great glimpses," said Stephen.  "Evolution is one of these. With this truth your world already is familiar."
 

"Frequency is the essential characteristic or property of motion," insisted Betty.  "I am not talking about rate of motion, which is the property or characteristic of motion most familiar to you in the obstructed universe.  What I am talking about is that essence of the orthic trilogia which results in motion.


"And you have an electrical spark, and that is a degree of consciousness, and to it you have a corresponding frequency.  There is an actual difference in vibration. Motion is.  Frequency is an essence of consciousness, an actuality.  What you call motion is really only one aspect of frequency."

 

 

"Our method of contracting time is our individual attitude toward it.  What may be a long time to another in my degree, may be a short time to me, and vice versa.  We, because we want a given period to be long or short, make it so.  Various persons in your degree of consciousness approach this power."

 

 

"You have developed in your world a greater control of space, mechanically, than you have of time.  We have here a control of time comparable to that control you are developing of space.  I realize that your control of space is only a time measure, but it is not the time of which you get final mechanical mastery; its the space.  Our mechanics are yours — frequency.

"The best thing I can do to make you understand our apprehension of time is to liken it to a map.  It is there.  We encompass it."


"Now, in addition to this aspect of time as a measure, you use time as a duration. So do we.  But because we have the psychological control of the map — we can see all over it — we can pick out what we want, just as you can go back over it and pick out what you want.  We can control the duration of it.  Without your knowledge, you do the same, to some extent.  You do it psychologically.  One of the reasons why it is possible for me to be telling you these things today is because in the past couple of decades your man-degrees of consciousness have so much advanced in the control of the relationship between time and space.

"We can go backward or forward in time in the unobstructed universe.  Time is.  That is probably where the Old Testament writers got their idea of a God in the heavens, and the last is first, and rolling out like a scroll, and all the rest."

 

 

"You want to know how I operate in my consciousness, which is just beyond yours.  We have postulated that there is only one universe.  For purposes of evolution this universe has been divided into quantitative and qualitative aspects.

 

"First let me get into your minds firmly the idea that your world is my world, and your matter is my matter.  Now, just as in maturity you handle an automobile differently than does a boy learning to drive, so do we here differ from you in our handling of the same fundamentals handled by you.  I am going to have to eliminate details because I am afraid of confusing you, but I am going to try to tell you as nearly as I can what my world is like.

"In the first place, when you come here, one of the things that astounds you most, as Joan said, is the lack of difference.  Over and over Stephen told Darby that one of his first jobs here was to meet boys who died suddenly in the war, without the little interim between the two consciousnesses, and explain to them what had happened and where they were."

 

 

"In your body you have, through its perceptions the same relationships with your world as we nave with ours.

"But your body is not multicellular, not composed of numerous entities; it is integral, and expresses only your individual entity.

"You are able to see and touch our world.  You experience the same reactions, subjectively, as you would through your physical senses.  However, you add something to what you have perceived in the flesh; you 'see also beyond it.'

"You understand us when we speak aloud to you.  I gather that an unspoken message consciously addressed to you is likewise heard.  I understand that you do not read thoughts not addressed you; but also you could do so if necessary or desirable."


[question for 'Betty'] ". . . could you discuss your form of such things as sleep, food, shelter, communication with each other?  In principle at least."

"Well," said Betty, "what is sleep? Sleep, for the human body, is refreshment, replenishment of frequency.  Not of the beta body—which, for a while, inhabits a so-called natural body—but for replenishment of the material body in order that it, being of a lower degree, may maintain the requisite ratio of frequency for your inhabiting it.  All consciousness has its frequency.  Now, in the intimate contact of the frequency of the beta body with the frequencies of the natural body, the lower frequencies drain on the higher.  They have to maintain a definite ratio."

"Is sleep, then, a stepping up of frequency?" asked Darby.  "If in sleep we are more sensitive to the influence of the unobstructed universe, is that because sleep raises our frequency?  Or are we more sensitive then?"

"No," replied Betty "Your frequency is not raised, but your receptivity is, because the contact between the frequency of your material body and of your spiritual self is lessened during sleep.  That is, your physical body is maintaining itself without your conscious aid.

"You have rest," she continued; "so do we. . . ."

 

 

"We are unconscious while taking that sort of rest: we sleep," said I.  "Are you?"

"Our awareness-mechanism is never dissociated from our form.  One of the characteristics of my rate of frequency is a closer association between the I-Am and the form attribute.  My form attribute is so much a part of me that it came along with me when I died.  You could cut off a leg or arm from the form attribute I left behind, and I could still have inhabited it.  But because my form here is integral, there could be no similar division of it."

 

Stewart Edward White (1873-1946) published four additional books about his experiences with 'Betty' and the instruction he'd compiled during his transcendental communication experiences.  A Publisher's Note for the final book states that the completed manuscript was received from the author only a few days before his own transition to the unobstructed state of human consciousness.  (Also see: Channeling Cases Articles and Videos Links Index.)