Harold Sherman to Harry Loose
New York, March 12, 1941
Gradually, you are touching upon elements in me which have risen to the surface of consciousness from deep down within, giving me visions and impressions which I have copied in my “little black book.”

Martha Sherman to Harold Sherman
New York, May 17, 1941
Today came your second letter written en route with the additional inspirational suggestions. . . . I shall place them in our little black book.

Diary, Chicago, October 1, 1942
We devoted the entire a.m., Harold having developed an idea for a new book under the title “The Great Adventure of Your Soul,” to rereading the messages received from Ara while in California. . . .

 In transcribing and compiling The Sherman Diaries, starting in 2000, I encountered the above mysterious references to a “little black book” containing psychic impressions as well as mention of “Ara” messages. These were not to be found among the Harold Sherman papers at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Knowing that the Shermans would not have disposed of this material, I asked their daughter, Marcia, at that time living in her parents’ home still containing many of their books and papers, to try to locate this “little black book.” Marcia had not heard of it before, but turned the house upside down and not long after phoned me, saying, “I found it!”

It was a small, black three-ring binder with Harold’s visions, dream impressions, and other inspirational messages typed up and neatly assembled in chronological order. Mostly it contained messages from Ara, the name of Harold’s “Comforter,” as he called it.

Not all the dreams referred to were found inside the black binder. Over the next few years Marcia would email me from time to time reporting yet another “lost” message or dream impression found between the pages of a book, or mixed in with a different stack of papers. These impressions and the contents of the “little black book” are presented in this volume.

The early dreams and impressions came to Harold in New York, starting in 1937, around the time of his ESP experiments with Sir Hubert Wilkins which resulted in their jointly published book, Thoughts Through Space (1942).

In 1941 the Shermans reconnected with a remarkable man named Harry J. Loose, living in California, who became their spiritual mentor. Through voluminous correspondence Loose taught them much about the universe and its Creator, the Great Intelligence; that a fragment of this God indwells each of us to guide and inspire us. Harold named his voice within “Ara.” In May 1941, still in New York, he began writing down his Ara inspirations, and after meeting Loose in person during a short trip to California later that month, the messages increased. When later that year a screenwriting job called the family to Hollywood where they visited Loose every Sunday, Harold produced the major portion of the Ara messages.

After learning from Loose about the Urantia revelation being received in Chicago, with which Loose had been associated in the early days, the Shermans joined the Forum and moved to Chicago in 1942 to study the material. The later messages and poems are heavily influenced by the Urantia teachings as well as World War II, which was going on during most of that time.

Diary, Chicago, October 1, 1942
Marginal note in Martha’s handwriting: During his reading of the Ara messages, a title for another book came to Harold’s mind, Little Talks with Your Soul. Harold felt that this could be inspirational in nature and partake of some of these rewritten messages.

For the subtitle I have chosen Harold Sherman’s own title idea, as it sums up the substance of this volume.
--Saskia Praamsma