IX
"COLORING"

 

STEPHEN grounds the reality of communication in the subconscious mind—that of the receiving station. He states that by means of a physical force, now unknown to men, he is able to transfer his thought to the subconscious Joan. But mere transference of Stephen's thought to Joan's subconsciousness is not sufficient for the purpose of actual communication. The message must be lifted out of Joan's subliminal into her conscious mind, or that of some other person.

 

It will be seen, then, that successful communication depends not wholly on the degree of accuracy with which Joan's subconscious mind registers the thought Stephen seeks to convey. It depends also on the degree of accuracy with which that thought passes out of Joan's subconsciousness into consciousness Joan's own consciousness in the case of automatic writing, mine in the case of direct mental communication, hers and mine jointly in the case of the ouija-board.

 

Says Stephen, speaking particularly of ouija-board communications: "Coloring results when the conscious mind of the receiving station overrules the subconscious. Suppose I started to give you a name. 'M-a-r,' I spell. By the time I get that far Joan's conscious mind may have supplied the letter 'y,' because one who is with her much is named Mary. Now, the name I tried to give might have been Martha, Marion, Marie, Maria, Marietta."

 

There you have what Stephen calls coloring in its simplest form. How complicated its possibilities are can be appreciated when one considers that all of a person's past thoughts and perceptions are stored away in his subconsciousness. Can a receiving station's subconscious thoughts and memories overrule a message?

 

You will remember that embedded in the first message received at the typewriter was this: "I should have answered your letter earlier." These words had no bearing on the rest of the message, except as Stephen added: "The trouble here is that Joan insists on putting the machine to its ordinary purposes." Joan, in fact, had neglected to answer a letter that called for an early reply, and her neglect was on her conscience. She types practically all of her correspondence.

 

Consequently the act of sitting at the typewriter called up unconscious remembrance of the unanswered letter, and that memory, wholly unrelated to Stephen or the thought he was seeking to convey, wrote itself, involuntarily so far as the conscious Joan was concerned, on what I might call Stephen's typewriter.

 

Says Stephen: "It is impossible for me to get a message through Joan or through any other receiving station without combating hundreds of such subconscious memories."

 

You will recollect that the first words Uncle Michael spelled on the ouija-board spoke of a country road, a cold day, of his taking F. W. to meet his mother, and of two teams. F. W. said he remembered no such experience. Moreover, the message was rather incoherent; we thought it strange that two teams were required to carry F. W. And yet it was on a country road that Uncle Michael met his death, and the day was cold. And two teams did figure in Uncle Michael's later message—his own and the drunken driver's.

 

The message concerning the drunken driver might be beyond verification; nonetheless, it was intelligible. The two teams, first appearing in an illogical connection, finally placed themselves in one that was quite coherent.

 

The inaccuracy of Uncle Michael's initial message, it would seem, was the result of coloring. Joan, as a small child, had many a time been driven over a country road on cold days, to a railroad station, there to meet her mother. Uncle Michael, attempting to convey a message relative to his death on a country road, awakened in Joan memory of her own experience, and that memory blended itself with the thought F. W.'s uncle was seeking to communicate; so that all he got through was the suggestion of the country road and the cold day and the anomaly of the two teams. And if the communication had ended there, no message of meaning would have been conveyed to F. W.

 

"Coloring," Stephen elaborates, "occurs not only as the result of the receiving station's conscious mind overruling the subconscious, but also whenever, in the course of communication, the subconscious mind frees itself from our control. Immediately it gives expression to that which is its own thought and experience. In the case of the ouija-board there is the additional possibility of conscious overruling. Of this there is not so much danger in direct mental communication, because the conscious mind is more dormant. There is grave danger, however, of subconscious coloring."

 

It was the professor who said one evening, communicating mentally: "I shall demonstrate to you, my dear sir, the action of the subconscious mind. You recognize, of course, that at this minute Joan is exercising a minimum of control over her mental processes. I shall now lift the control that we here have been exercising. First, you speak a word—any word."

 

I spoke the first word that occurred to me—horse.

 

Immediately Joan began to talk quite in her own character, though disjointedly. She said: "My saddle turned—street-car— in front of the hospital—Hobson—George—picnic."

And so the words kept coming, most of them carrying no meaning to me.

"Come back, professor!" I said. "This is nonsense."

In a minute or two the professor again spoke. He said: "Of course, it's nonsense to you, but not to Joan. She was giving expression to memories of her past, one memory linking itself with another. Now touch her wrist and ask her what she meant."

 

Joan took the paper on which I had written the words, read them, and smiled.

 

"Why," said she, "here I have been telling you about the time my saddle-horse took fright at a street-car—long before I knew you, Darby. The girth slipped. Yes, it was in front of a hospital."

"Did it have anything to do with a picnic?" I asked.

"No, but George did. George took me to the picnic, and Hobson, my dog, insisted on following us, and George had to chase him back."

"Could Hobson be the link between George and the accident?" I asked.

"Why, of course," Joan answered. "Hobson was trailing along the day my saddle turned, and was very much excited over the spill. But what's the point of all this?"

 

After explaining the professor's experiment, I again touched Joan's wrist. The professor reappeared, saying:

 

"I think you now understand what Stephen means when he tells you that in communicating through Joan he must combat the entire of her subconsciousness, even though it is the very instrument of his communication. Let us suppose he wanted to communicate a message concerning a man named Hobson. If he were not in perfect control of Joan's mental processes, it is apparent that that word 'Hobson' might awaken in Joan such a chain of subconscious memories that her subliminal would free itself from Stephen's control and she would start garrulously relating the story of her accident and such other memories as the turned saddle suggested. In such an in stance Stephen's message would be mixed up with the outcroppings of Joan's subliminal; the communication would be inaccurate, or even incoherent, or the message might be completely blocked."

 

Stephen says: "It is very hard to get a name through, that of a person or a place. Dates are very hard, and so are all other concrete items. It is a small matter for me to convey through this station an idea that impinges on no association personal to the station. I can dictate my revelation through Joan, unfamiliar as its terms have been to her, with much greater accuracy than I could state through her my old preference in furniture or flowers. Mention by me of any of the little familiar things of living would stir immediately a host of her own subconscious associations."

 

Thus warned by Stephen and the professor, and by my own observations, I have scanned closely all communications for outcroppings from Joan's subliminal store. Scarcely a trace of such have I found in the philosophical communications; Joan approached the philosophy without metaphysical thought of her own, and in all matters of practical judgment she has sought, during moments of actual communication, to suppress her own opinions, even as Stephen of the typewriter requested. But evidential messages, which in the nature of things are largely personal, have showed at times the mark of Joan's subliminal. Sometimes I note the coloring; quite as frequently Joan, in reading my notes, spots it, she alone being able to detect shades that result from the minutiae of her experience.

 

One more word should be added. I quote Stephen:

 

"Sometimes we utilize a subconscious memory to suggest a word or idea that otherwise we might not be able to get through. The subconscious Joan is very much alive to the danger of coloring. This causes her to resist test messages. We can sometimes break her resistance down by suggesting a memory of her own and, in a roundabout fashion, working from that memory to the idea we are seeking to put through. Thus we take her off her guard."

 

Concluding this outline of Stephen's statement of the purported facts of coloring, may I express my conviction that the true worth of any evidential communication, as, for instance, the message that undertakes to give personal facts concerning the earth-life of one who has gone on, can be estimated not on the basis of whether the entire communication is accurate? If in the midst of a hundred inaccuracies one thing accurate is found, some thing that cannot reasonably be attributed to the receiving station's own knowledge, conscious or subconscious, one has a measure of proof of