“
It is raining. The clock ticks. I am leaning on my elbow. The wind
blows through the cracks. The door rattles in its frame. My arm is
tired of staying in one position. There is a pressure on the wrist. My
temple burns on one side. I wonder what will happen next. Someone
laughs. If he had heard the rain, the clock, and the door, he would
have kept silent. Had I been laughing, I would not have heard these
things.
Gaze into a cat's eye or a gorilla's. You will notice a peculiar thing that
will make you shudder. sometimes cats claw at human eyes. Some-
times gorillas enrage.
Telepathy and death are wound inextricably together. To see why this
is so, you must understand consciousness. When, late at night in
your bed, you hear a distant automobile, you and the driver are parts
of yourself. When you speak, you are alone and the listener is both
you and himself. Two men, one on the mountain and the other in the
village, cannot communicate. Each is looking into a mirror. Wave,
and *he* waves - shout, and *he* replies. All of us see the same
moon and feel the same heartbeat, but we can never admit it. One
says the moon is a pale disc, another that it is a satellite of the Earth,
a third that it is a silver world. My heart thumps, yours clatters, and his
booms. Consciousness is distortion.
But much telepathy passes unnoticed. Dogs in the night, a dream of
Mabel, Dr. Rhines' dice games - these are self-conscious tricks that
mean nothing. What of the more obvious examples? You know when
another is lying. You know who is going down the stair. You know
emotion without seeing it. You know the intelligence of others. Some
sign gives them away. It is coincidence? Guessing games again?
Then think of what you could not possibly know, what no one could tell
you. Is there any doubt you do not know that fellow on the gibbet or
the thought of that girl on the stake? Watch someone die and you
may read his mind at ease.
You need not got so far. We human beings understand one another
better than we think. Argue, deny, shout, denounce, destroy. Nothing
alters truth. You, reader, see my flaws and concentrate on them. You
wonder why I choose this word and not that.
My arguments are weak and you can drum up stronger ones against
them. But we are eye to eye for all of that.
”
”
E.E. Rehmus