Our Unseen Guest

IF Stephen is real, if he is what he purports to be, then the probability is that the things he has told Joan and me are, in the main, true.

"In the main," I say; because, however truthful the general outline of Stephen's philosophy, the chance of error in detail must not be overlooked. Coloring, to use Stephen's own term, must be reckoned with.

By coloring we have thus far meant the unconscious distortion of a message by the receiving station. Are there other circumstances that make for inaccuracy of communication? There are, just as surely as a communicated thought requires a material medium of transmission.

Convinced, in the days of the Ouija-board, that neither Joan nor I guided the tripod, our hands seeming rather to follow it, I asked Stephen for an explanation. He said: "I confess my inability to make clear to you how this Ouija board is operated. Here, as elsewhere, your limited understanding sets bounds to the knowledge I can bring you. There is involved in communication a psychology and physics new to you concerning which I can tell you little, because of lack of earth terms."

Yet repeatedly I raised the question. At the risk of being none too coherent, I submit the following, which summarizes various remarks Stephen has made relative to the material medium employed in transmission of a message:

There is a refined form of energy, called by Stephen magnetic consciousness, through the medium of which he is able to impress his thought on Joan's subconscious mind, in some such fashion as I am able to impress my thought on her conscious mind through the medium of atmospheric vibration. But this, we have seen, is not enough; communication results only on release of Stephen's message from Joan's subliminal. The force used in the case of the Ouija-board to release the message from the subconscious is the same force originally used to convey the message, though a transformed variety. And the transformation, Stephen has led us to believe, is accomplished by Joan's own subconsciousness.

Manifestly such a statement means little until such time as the scientist's physical experimentation discovers and defines the energy Stephen merely predicates. The statement is made here only for the purpose of suggesting the delicate physical adjustments that go to make the mechanism of communication-a mechanism beside which the fine adjustments of a telephone or wireless appear but gross affairs.

The success of telephone communication depends on the perfection of the telephonic mechanism. If the connection is imperfect, the message is confused. And so it is, Stephen says, with communication between persons on his plane and persons here on earth; the connection, so to speak, may be good, bad, or indifferent.

Therefore, the version of Stephen's philosophy that I have been able to record may contain inaccuracies not only because of mental coloring attributable to the receiving station, but also because of physical defects in what might be called the line of magnetic consciousness, over which Stephen, handicapped by "trouble," could but do his best to make himself understood.