Sense from Thought Divide | Page 6

before.
My desk had been moved out of the way, over into one corner of the
large room. A round table was brought over from the salesmen's report
writing room (used there more for surreptitious poker playing than for
writing reports) and placed in the middle of my office--on the grounds
that it had no sharp corners to gouge people in their middles if it got to
cavorting about recklessly. In an industrial plant one always has to
consider the matter of safety rules and accident insurance rates.
In the middle of the table there rested, with dark fluid gleaming through
clear plastic cases, six fresh cylinders which Auerbach had prepared in
his laboratory over in the plant.
Auerbach had shown considerable unwillingness to attend the seance;
he pleaded being extra busy with experiments just now, but I gave him
that look which told him I knew he had just been stalling around the
last few months, the same as I had.
If the psi effect had never come out in the first place, there wouldn't
have been any mental conflict. He could have gone on with his
processes of refining, simplifying and increasing the efficiency ratings

of his goop. But this unexpected side effect, the cylinders learning and
demonstrating something he considered basically untrue, had tied his
hands with a hopeless sort of frustration. He would have settled gladly
for a chemical compound which could have added two and two upon
request; but when that compound can learn and demonstrate that there's
no such thing as gravity, teaching it simple arithmetic is like ashes in
the mouth.
I said as much to him. I stood there in his laboratory, leaned up against
a work bench, and risked burning an acid hole in the sleeve of my
jacket just to put over an air of unconcern. He was perched on the edge
of an opposite work bench, swinging his feet, and hiding the expression
in his eyes behind the window's reflection upon his polished glasses. I
said even more.
"You know," I said reflectively, "I'm completely unable to understand
the attitude of supposedly unbiased men of science. Now you take all
that mass of data about psi effects, the odd and unexplainable
happenings, the premonitions, the specific predictions, the accurate
descriptions of far away simultaneously happening events. You take
that whole mountainous mass of data, evidence, phenomena--"
* * * * *
A slight turn of his head gave me a glimpse of his eyes behind the
glasses. He looked as if he wished I'd change the subject. In his dry,
undemonstrative way, I think he liked me. Or at least he liked me when
I wasn't trying to make him think about things outside his safe and
secure little framework. But I didn't give in. If men of science are not
going to take up the evidence and work it over, then where are we? And
are they men of science?
"Before Rhine came along, and brought all this down to the level of
laboratory experimentation," I pursued, "how were those things to be
explained? Say a fellow had some unusual powers, things that
happened around him, things he knew without any explanation for
knowing them. I'll tell you. There were two courses open to him. He
could express it in the semantics of spiritism, or he could admit to

witchcraft and sorcery. Take your pick; those were the only two
systems of semantics which had been built up through the ages.
"We've got a third one now--parapsychology. If I had asked you to
attend an experiment in parapsychology, you'd have agreed at once. But
when I ask you to attend a seance, you balk! Man, what difference does
it make what we call it? Isn't it up to us to investigate the evidence
wherever we find it? No matter what kind of semantic debris it's hiding
in?"
Auerbach shoved himself down off the bench, and pulled out a beat-up
package of cigarettes.
"All right, Kennedy," he had said resignedly, "I'll attend your seance."
* * * * *
The other invited guests were Sara, Lieutenant Murphy, Old Stone Face,
myself, and, of course, the Swami. This was probably not typical of the
Swami's usual audience composition.
Six chairs were placed at even intervals around the table. I had found
soft white lights overhead to be most suitable for my occasional night
work, but the Swami insisted that a blue light, a dim one, was most
suitable for his night work.
I made no objection to that condition. One of the elementary basics of
science is that laboratory conditions may be varied to meet the
necessities of the experiment. If a red-lighted darkness is necessary to
an operator's successful development of photographic film, then I could
hardly object to a blue-lighted