VI
THE RECEIVING STATION

 

THE evidential character of the F. W. communications was, as F. W. has said, impressive. But I think Joan and I were even more impressed by the discovery that, while she and I could operate the ouija-board and likewise she and F. W., F. W. and I could not. This seemed to mean that Joan, not I, was the psychic.

 

We recalled what Stephen had said: "There is a psychic, a receiving station, here. She will remember having had the experience of feeling that some one was standing behind her and of turning to find nothing."

 

"Is that true, Joan?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't think so," she replied. That's an experience every one has."

"Perhaps we are all of us psychic in some measure." "Very kind of you to say so, Darby," she answered.

 

The truth is Joan was loath to acknowledge her psychic gift, especially loath to recognize that the communications came solely through her. Yet events subsequent to the F. W. messages have left her no escape from this conclusion. Even so, she has remained diffident. With the entire subject of psychic phenomena shrouded in uncertainty, her attitude is not to be wondered at.

 

Whether to avoid whatever of misunderstanding has attached itself to the words "psychic" and "medium," or whether simply to hold the fact in the case close to the ground, Stephen seldom uses the word "Psychic," and never uses the word "medium." His term for one gifted as is Joan is "receiving station."

 

"What actually happens during the process of communication," says Stephen, "is more like the transmission of a wireless message than anything else in your experience. Our term receiving station is very good, not because it is metaphorical, but because it is the exact opposite of metaphorical."

 

Anticipating much of the experience this narrative relates, I digress here to trace the development of the receiving station that is Joan.

 

Stephen had been at work on the philosophy only a few weeks when I noted an odd thing.

 

Our method of taking down the ouija-board's words was this: As the pointer moved over the alphabet Joan would call out the letters, and we would both carry them in mind until a complete word was formed; at the end of a sentence I would remove my hands from the tripod and write it down.

 

After a while I noticed a tendency on Joan's part to call the letters before the tripod actually had picked them out.

 

"How do you do it, Joan?" I said. "You're ahead of the pointer."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

When I explained, she said: "I hadn't noticed it. Now that you speak of it, it's so. I do know sometimes what letter is coming next. But don't ask me bow I know. I just do. The letters seem to pop into my thought."

Addressing Stephen, I said, "What is your method of communication?"

 

The conversation that followed is here reproduced practically in full, though at one turn it went somewhat afield. In answer to my question, Stephen spelled:

 

"I communicate by means of a medium quite material. I utilize a force which man does not now understand, but which in time he will. A few years ago men marveled at the ordinary telegraph; now they are reconciled to wireless."

 

"Do you mean," I asked, "that electricity operates this ouija­board?"

 

"But surely," Stephen replied, "though not electricity as you now understand it. The atomic force of which I speak might be called magnetic consciousness."

"Is there any other way besides this tiresome ouija-board

method by which you could speak with us?" Joan asked.

"If you sat in a desert and looked toward the north," Stephen

answered. "If you could make your minds clear." "Explain," said I.

"Nirvana," said the ouija-board.

 

It was evident Stephen referred to the old Buddhistic practice whereby the worshiper seeks to free himself of all thought and desire, hoping thus to be absorbed into the ultimate.

 

"Is Nirvana, then, the goal toward which we're headed?" I asked.

"It is so called by some," Stephen answered. "The great fallacy of this religion, especially as interpreted by the Western World, is its doctrine of oblivion; yet it is among the wisest. True Nirvana is consciousness at its height."

Practicality is an outstanding feature of Joan's character. "I take no stock in Nirvana," she protested. "If you communicate with us through the medium of physical force, what I want to know is, why can't I see you?"

"Because your sense of color is not yet highly enough developed," the tripod spelled.

 

"Then, you seriously mean to say that you have a material body?" insisted Joan.

"But surely," said Stephen. "My present body has properties beyond your comprehension, such as color beyond the humanly visible spectrum."

"Have you sight, hearing, and the other human senses?" Joan asked.

"Consciousness on my plane has all of these, but not as you now know them," Stephen replied. "Do not misunderstand; consider my words—not as you now know them. I see as you see, and then some. For instance, I see matter in its component parts."

One night, a week or so after this conversation, Joan suddenly halted the tripod, sat silent a moment, then said: "Why, of all things! The idea of the letters is not only popping into my mind, but actually, Darby, I am beginning to see them, sometimes."

"See them? How do you mean you see them?"

"Just what I said," she answered. "I mean that every now and then I see a letter. Just before the tripod points it out I see it, sort of, in my mind. Understand?"

 

I was forced to admit I didn't.

 

A few more evenings and Joan's new experience had become clear-cut. Somehow, she said, she mentally visualized every letter, just prior to its being pointed out by the tripod. It would be well for Joan to describe the phenomenon in her own words. She says:

 

"The letters as they appeared in my mind were peculiarly characteristic. First, they were of distinct definition, just as the memory of a familiar object is distinctly defined in the mind's eye. In the second place, they were constituted of light, largely pink light, a sort of glow. The pink of the letters was surrounded by a fringe that began as a yellow, like the yellow of a coal flame, and shaded into a brilliant blue. The color­effect of the whole was not unlike that of a glowing bed of coals with flames spurting from the unburnt fuel around it.

 

"And the letters were of enormous size, much bigger than the immense type on a billboard. Toward the latter part of the experience they grew considerably smaller, though to the end they were very, very big.

 

"Each letter was visualized, not externally, but internally. The same effect of light visualized internally can be produced, I find, by pressing one's fingers strongly on the balls of the closed eyes. There will appear on the retina—at least so it was in my case—a rosy suffusion barred and crisscrossed by lines of yellow light, which, however, take no definite form.

 

"As to the manner in which the letters appeared: they sprang into being singly, at first with quite a space of time between; then they came closer together, but still singly. It was as though they were being shoved along a wire on which they had been strung, my line of vision being comprehensive of one letter only. Finally they began coming so fast that it was impossible for the ouija­board's tripod to keep pace with them.

 

"It was not necessary for me to close my eyes to see the letters; nor did their coming depend upon my concentrating my attention. I could think of other things, listen to Darby's questions, and when I wished ask a question myself.

 

"I have run the ouija-board only at infrequent intervals in the past year. As I dictate this statement to Darby, May 2, 1919, I pause to attempt repetition of the experience of seeing the letters. The ouija-board runs, but as it did when the idea of the letters was just popping into my mind. I do not see the letters now."

 

The next step in Joan's psychic development caused our ouija-board to be temporarily abandoned. At best its operation was a physically tedious affair. And, too, as Joan has stated, the letters began to appear before her mental vision in such rapid succession that the tripod would sometimes be a whole word behind the letter Joan was announcing.

 

Stephen," I said, finally, "if Joan sees these letters while sitting at the ouija-board, why couldn't she see them if she sat at a typewriter?"

 

"Let us make the experiment," replied Stephen, ever ready to try a new thing. "I do not know whether it will succeed. Joan, you sit at the typewriter, and, Darby, you stand behind her and place your hands on her temples."

 

We did as we were instructed, and after a wait of a minute or two Joan began to strike the keys of the typewriter, very deliberately. When a pause came, I pulled the paper out of the machine and asked Joan if she knew what had been written. She replied that she had only the haziest idea, that the letters came before her vision, as usual, but that, because she was typing them down, she had made no effort to remember them. Here is what I found written on the paper:

 

this is slow kep at it we are al watching you this is fine i should have answered your leter earlier the trouble here is that Joan insists on puting the machine to its ordinary purposes the profesor is here and very much interested if this works out it means a wonderful method of comunication Joan is doing fine she is making her mind frer than ever before undoubtedly this wil prove a great advance over the ouija board method

 

I have quoted the above just as it came—without capitals or punctuation and with only one letter employed in cases of double letters. The absence of any distinction between capitals and small letters had, of course, been characteristic of the ouija-board messages; the board carries only capital letters. I have already referred to the fact that it carries no punctuation marks, though by a system of pauses, which we soon learned, Stephen from the first did in a way indicate the punctuation. Again, as in the case of the typewriter, the ouija-board never troubled to double a letter.

 

Other than as the product of an engaging experiment the words written by the typewriter seemed of no importance. It proved later, however, that the part reading, "I should have answered your letter earlier; the trouble here is that Joan insists on putting the machine to its ordinary purposes," was most important.

 

We turned from the typewriter to the ouija-board, and I asked Stephen if it would be possible for him to punctuate on the typewriter and use, where required, capitals and double letters. He said he could and would punctuate and capitalize, but that he simply wouldn't be bothered with double letters. Then we went to the typewriter again, and I started the thing off by asking, "Stephen, are you here?" The answer follows, written more rapidly than were the words of the first trial:

 

"I am here all right." (Supplying the double letters, I make good Stephen's abbreviated spelling.) "You need never be afraid of that when an experiment like this is going on. There are many others here too, many of very high degree."

"Could Joan and I communicate with those higher degrees?" I asked.

"You can communicate with any individual of degree higher than yourself, who is willing to make the effort to communicate with you. It is only individuals of a degree lower than your own that cannot communicate with you. But for the time stick with me."

"We shall, Stephen," I said. "But at least tell us about those high-degreed individuals who are so interested in this experiment."

And the answer was: "The whole kit and caboodle are here, greatly excited, and raising a very devil of a confusion. To tell you the truth, they all want to talk—and at once, as if they were only human. We carry our childhood with us, it seems. If Joan could speak German, French, and all the rest of the nonsensical human lingo—there should really be only one language she would have to have ten dozen pairs of hands."

I asked Stephen why he didn't "bounce the kit and caboodle."

"Did you ever try to drive a pig through a hole in a fence?" was the answer.

 

Stephen then turned serious and requested that he might be allowed to continue his revelation, saying that the new method of communication would permit a much wider scope of discussion.

 

"But before we go on," he said, "there is something I would like to warn you about, especially Joan. Joan, you are the receiving station. As such you are of absolute importance to the delivery of the revelation I bring you two. But you are also a person of strong opinions. I ask you not to let your preconceived ideas and prejudices color my message. Keep your mind free, especially when I say something with which you do not altogether agree. Darby, you are the conceiving station. Remember that Joan could not communicate alone wholly successfully, nor could, I think, any one else. You can differ from me as much as you will; in fact, I rely on your questions to clarify the communication. But above all you must alleviate Joan's prejudices. You must prevent her own opinions coloring my words. And you must also be on the watch for a form of color that is likely to result, not simply from Joan's opinions, but from all that mass of thought and memory, her own experience, that lies dormant in her subconsciousness."

 

May I ask the reader to carry this speech in mind, along with those words: "I should have answered your letter earlier; the trouble here is that Joan insists on putting the machine to its ordinary uses"?

 

Many possibilities seemed to be opened up by the typewriter experiment. For one thing, it occurred to Joan and me that, if we were in receipt of genuine messages "from afar," they need not all be verbal. Why, for instance, could not musical ideas be communicated?

 

This thought interested us greatly, because, owing to the fact that Joan is not musical, a test was involved. I say Joan is not musical, even though as a child she received the sketchy sort of piano instruction that leaves a few bars of simple melody memorized and an ability mechanically to read a not too complicated score with something less than fifty per cent accuracy. I am certain that Joan never has initiated a single musical idea.

 

I said to Stephen of the typewriter: "It has seemed to Joan and me that by use of the present method of communication Joan could sit at the piano, as she now sits at the typewriter, and produce music otherwise beyond her."

 

"I do not think so," Stephen wrote in reply. "Were Joan a musician, that would be possible. But she lacks both technic and tone-sense. You must understand that we can impress on the subconsciousness of a receiving station only those ideas that the station itself is capable of understanding. But let us make the effort. Joan, you sit at the piano. Darby, stand behind her and keep your hands on her temples. We shall see what happens."

 

The real value of this experiment, it proved, lay in making clear to Joan and me that, granted we were en rapport with a discarnate intelligence, there were limitations to the communication. Joan, herself incapable of originating Stephen's philosophy, could nonetheless grasp its conceptions. But to Joan a musical thought had no meaning, and therefore she could not successfully act as the medium of musical communication.

 

What happened, however, was interesting. Joan sat down at the piano. Suddenly her fingers began racing over the keyboard with a deftness unknown to them, and a series of great, crashing chords burst forth, harmonies suggestive of power, big organ-like effects that filled the room. But the chords were individual affairs, lacking continuity as a whole. Afterward Joan attempted to strike chords of equal complexity, but failed. It seemed that the harmonies she had produced as I stood with my hands on her temples were not in any ordinary sense of her own making. Stephen, too, disclaimed them, saying another than he had assisted from his side.

We employed the typewriter method for only a few evenings after the piano experiment. From the beginning Joan had complained that my pressing her temples resulted in headache. Finally the headaches became pronounced. We returned then to the ouija-board, but, as things turned out, not for long. It was Joan herself who suggested the likelihood of her being able simply to speak the letters, without their being either written on the typewriter or pointed out on the ouija-board.

 

"That would not have been possible a short time ago," spelled the tripod. "Let us try. I suggest, Darby, that during the experiment you hold Joan's wrists."

 

Just how my holding Joan's wrists might facilitate results I did not know. Nonetheless I did as Stephen advised. Instantly the experiment was a great success. With no mechanical handicap—tripod to follow or typewriter keys to strike—Joan was able to announce the letters with a fluency unmarred by confusion. The method seemed perfect, though its later development caused the early trials to appear tentative. There was but one difficulty; as both my hands were occupied, I could make no record. Yet Stephen asked that the experiment be continued over a period of two or three evenings.

 

On the third evening he said: "It is not necessary now for you to hold both wrists. Hold only one."

 

Two evenings later he said, "You need not hold her wrists at all."

 

I withdrew my hand, and the communication proceeded without interruption. At its close Stephen said: "Now touch her wrist. This will be your signal to Joan that the communication is over. Likewise, when the two of you seek communication, touch her wrist."

 

And so the ouija-board went behind the trunk in the closet— permanently. With much labor on Joan's part and mine, and, Stephen assured us, on his part also, the ouija-board, a toy accidentally thrown in our way, had laid the foundations of the Stephen philosophy. That a system of thought so suggestive should have come from two mere bits of wood seems to be a marvel exceeded only by the uniqueness of the philosophy itself.

 

Direct mental communication, which is Stephen's term, produced at first just letters, as had the ouija-board. Then one night Joan began to vary the letters by pronouncing now and then a word, and in the end the letters were discarded. For a while the words were pronounced slowly, with pauses between, and without variety of intonation. But soon they took on a fluency quite uncharacteristic of Joan's ordinary speech.

I do not mean to say that all communications received by the direct mental method have been equally fluent. When Joan is physically or mentally tired, the speech is slower and less certain. When a new personality—that is to say, purported personality—comes, one who has not spoken before through Joan, the speech is halting. When, of late, evidential matter has been sought, involving names of persons or places or other identifying items of definiteness, there has been the appearance of great difficulty; the words come very slowly, with occasional corrections, and sometimes even the old spellings are reverted to. But in all other instances the communication possesses the ease of conversation, now and then assuming, as the communicator becomes animated, the flow of practised oratory.

 

I do not say that the voice that speaks is other than Joan's. I do say that the tone values are not hers. It is as though Joan were an accomplished mimic, imitating now Stephen, now the professor, or again one of the many other personalities that have come to us.

 

During the early attempts at mental communication Joan would sit absolutely immobile, other than for facial movements. In the course of half an hour an arm might cramp from being held too long in the same position. Stephen, not Joan, would ask me to move it.

 

But gradually gestures came, gestures uncharacteristic of Joan, and so to the easy speech of accomplished acting there was added finally an equally mimic freedom of gesticulation.

 

But why marvel at the fluency of Joan's speech during the periods of communication or the freedom of her gestures? After all, it is only Joan that speaks. True and untrue. Assuredly it is none other than Joan who utters this word or that, whatever may be the source of the thought the word expresses. But the facility of expression is not the every-day Joan's. And there are other differences.

 

For one thing, during the periods of mental communication Joan speaks only occasionally in her own character. When she does it is to the personality whose thought she seems to be conveying. At Stephen's request she might in her own character describe a person or an object or a place, here or beyond. But never has she herself answered any question I have addressed to her personally. Always the answer comes from Stephen.

 

Again, after my touch has signaled the close of the communication, Joan has no memory of the communication itself or of any extraneous occurrence, such as the ringing of the telephone and my answering the call. And yet, despite this lack of memory, there is, during communication, no suggestion of unconsciousness

 

Joan is fully aware of all that happens, just as she was at the ouija-board. It seems simply that she holds herself aloof, permitting all outside of herself, whether on Stephen's side or her own and mine, to make as slight an impression on her every-day conscious mind as possible. She says:

 

"This holding of my thought vacant is a trick of the mind that I can scarcely explain. Stephen had said that mental communication would be possible if one could make his mind clear. At first this meant nothing to me. But during the typewriter experiments, when it was necessary no longer for me to announce the letters and help Darby piece them into words, I began to gain appreciation of what Stephen's 'clear mind' phrase meant. Then suddenly there came to me the knack of achieving the mental condition referred to. I rather think any one by practice could do the same; whether communication would necessarily result. I, of course, do not know.

 

"Just what part Darby's touching of my wrist plays in the matter I have been unable to tell him. I know only that when he touches my wrist my mind clears—with some slight effort of my will—of thought and sense perception. When Darby again touches my wrist, thought and sense perception rush back.

 

"I have no memory of what happens in the interim, except that when Darby reads me his notes they sometimes sound familiar, like a thing I might have heard or read before."