deletion of broadening response. Maximum limitation in exchange for maximum direction and power. In a word - focus. The state we're pretty much existing in at the moment. We're absolute masters of technique and, conversely, absolute fumblers at self-knowledge.
"The final step, the step yet to come or, perhaps, already in the making, is this: To retain the values of rationality, of objectivity; yet-at the same time-to re-plunge back into the formless irrational again. What will appear to be a step backward will actually be a step forward into subjective speculation. The step toward self-direction. Toward, in short, awareness."
He smiled.
"Such a mouthful," he said. "You get the drift, though."
"Sort of," I said. "Are you-leading up to saying that... what happened to me was a sort of mechanical speed-up of this evolutionary trend?"
"Not exactly," he said, "although I think the hypnosis-or, more accurately, the faulty extraction of your mind from hypnosis-did tap your latent powers of dissociation. Or, putting it in another way, unlocked your psychical double jointedness. Your psi."
I must have looked confused for he said, "I've used that word twice now. Probably it throws you. What it's accepted as meaning is simply this: the mental function by which paranormal cognition takes place."
"I say 'oh,' " I said.
He grinned briefly.
"Which brings us to a particular," he said. "A tangential point accepted by only a few; among them, me."
He shifted in his chair and looked fixedly at me.
"You recall," he said, "that, a moment ago, when you asked why you? I said, you or anyone. This is a prime point. I believe that every single human being is, from birth, endowed with varying degrees of psychic perceptivity-and needs only a touch to its mechanism to use this perceptivity in responding to experience.
"Naturally," he went on, "this power is little suspected. The entire concept, for that matter, is pretty disreputable at the moment. And, because it is, not very much in evidence. Like many a human response, it needs loving attention to bring it out. The negative approach hurts it. It's not a measurable factor which can be examined whether one believes in it or not that's the tricky part of it. The part which makes it, scientifically, suspect. I do believe, however, that in time men will realize the existence of their psi, and in so realizing be able to reactivate their too-long unrealized potentialities."
"You know," I said, "that's odd. Because there've been times when I could have sworn that Richard knew' what I was thinking-and knew that I knew what he was thinking."
"More than possible," Alan said. "Until children acquire the power of verbal communication, they very likely make a more or less undirected use of their natural telepathic powers.
"Which," he went on, "also applies historically. I believe that, in primitive times, before verbal communication became established, these paranormal talents were commonplace. It stands to reason. Could all the human needs be conveyed by grunts and shoves?"
"Then, when people began speaking to each other," I said, "these abilities were lost?"
"Not so much lost, I think," he said, "as repressed. I believe they still exist in us, faint echoes of their former vitality."
He paused and looked at me in silence for a moment.
"As to your particular case," he said, "I think that the perceptivity released in you is more akin to that of the primitives than it is to that of the, shall we say, man of tomorrow. But don't feel too badly about that. Ninety-five per cent of the so-called mediums are in the same boat though they'd be double-damned before they'd admit it. Their actions prove it, however; the disorderly, directionless, pointless ramblings of their seances; the absurd contradictory results they so often get.
"Which is why," he continued, "these things which have been happening to you have come unexpectedly, without warning except for that occasional physical heightening-which heightening is also proof of its imperfection. The fully developed mediums don't have this depleting physical after effect you've been having. Their perceptivity is strictly mental. It comes, if we choose to put it this way, from the brain, not the guts. And in addition, of course, it is at all times under strict control. It doesn't creep up on them. They call all the shots."
"Well, I guess it's a sort of comfort," I said, "to know that there are others who've gone through the same things I have."
"Plenty of them," Alan said, "and, although they would likely call it a 'psychic gift,' I'd call it more an affliction. In its lack of