Volume 4, Issue 2, page 9

Listening to the "Customers"
7Lcrse(U 72ee C
SAID the languorous female voice in my
`phone: "I wish to have you make a sleep
tape for me which will enable me to
achieve a deep degree of hypnosis, increased power of clairyoyance, and also
astral projection. Can you do this for me?
"Concerning self-hypnosis," I replied, "the answer is yes. As to increasing your powers of clairvoyance, we can try. But, about the business of
astral projection..." I paused, for swiftly passing
thru my mind was the thought: "Shades of Hubbard's
'Be three feet back of your head!' Not in my book!"
Aloud. I said to my caller: "Concerning astral projection, I think it would be advisable, first of
all, for you to give me detailed information about
where you wish to project yourself -- and why."
There was a rather long silence. When she spoke
again, there was much less glamor and languor in
her voice; instead, it now carried a distinct note
of glintiness:
"The man -- of course you are aware that this concerns a man -- is in our diplomatic service at Buenos
Aires. When he finishes with me, he shall be beyond
the Styx, blacking the devil's boots..."
At this moment, there began a barrage of clicks,
transoceanic-circuit hums and sworls -- then, finally,
an operator irritatedly inquired: "Can you give me
the name and address of that person who was just
speaking to you from London?"
I assured her I could not.
"The name, number, and address she gave is fictitious -- quite non-existent," the operator said, in
a clipped British accent. "We do not understand how
the call came to be permitted. It's a bit confusing. Are you sure you cawn't help us?"
"I' m sure I cawn't," I returned. Now, I do have
the lady's correct address in London, but there's
something in my own case, perhaps, that causes me
to be resistive about helping the telephone octopus
collect its tolls. It can look after itself. As for
the lady, I expect I shall hear from her, in further detail, by mail.

As to the daily mail, of which there's quite a
lot, here's a recent sample:
..After 25 years of hard-driving practice, I
became an emergency, with a perforation in the
stomach. After the first emergency operation, I
suffered rupture of a blood vessel at the area of
the operation, and the blood pumped into the digestive tract until it gushed out of my mouth and over
the entire bed, leaving me in a state of severe
shock. The doctors consulted, my feet were raised,
and I was told not to move. The doctors could not
find a place to make insertion for blood transfusion, because my veins were collapsed, or thrombosed,
but finally one doctor suggested to cut in at the
ankles, to sew in the needles and then to pour
blood in. Many bottles of blood were thus poured
into my ankles, and later I had a gush of blood from
the mouth that came from the lungs. After the doctors had emptied many bottlesof blood into my body,
they then informed me that this was now the right
time for me to be RE-OPERATED, and a stomach resection was then made... (A full page of similar gruesome adventures in surgery and the like are recounted). A year later, when I try to drive my car, my
vision frequently distorts into Figure 8 objects,
lights, moons, or strange persons. Sometimes I cannot recognize my best friend passing. I know that
with your knowledge, you can evaluate my case. Also
I wish to know how I, too, can again help other
sick people..."
This is the strange drive of the sincere healer:
At death's door himself, he still seeks to succor
the sick. Also, I recall the words of a famous psychiatrist, the author of several books, who said to
" . v Thaw S 1
By VOLNEY G. MATHISON
teve Eelj, OttieAc
me: "Asyour capabilities increase -- and yours will --
you will find the types of situations that come to
your attention will be of increasing gravity and
desperation."
Cases of increasing gravity and desperation!
A fattish middle-aged woman called me into her
downtown apartment. She had become a recluse and
was being considered for commitment to an institution because usually when she ventured out onto the
street, she would at unpredictable times suddenly
see the sidewalk cracking wide open underneath her
feet and she would descend, not fall, with a weird,
inexorable slowness down into a deep black void. She
would be picked up, unconscious, taken to emergency,
recover consciousness, and nothing could be found
wrong with her. It happened again and again.

Electropsychometric assessment disclosed first
of all that she was married to an erratic musician
who tortured her frequently with detailed recitals
of his sexual adventures with professional prostitutes whom he always informed her were far superior
to her in sexual capabilities. When this husband
was induced to submit to one brief electropsychometric assessment, it was brought out in rather
deep regression that as an infant he had been
reared on the wrong side of the tracks; his mother
laundered for girls in red-light houses, put the
clothes into his baby-buggy, and wheeled it to the
district for delivery. Sometimes she left the baby
at the first house she came to while she went on to
some of the others, and the girls played with him
on one or other of their beds.

But this was interrelated only to the "top layer"
of his distraught wife's case. In the course of repeated regressing, we brought up at last the key
recall: She is about three. Her arms are clasped
frantically around the writhing body of a little
two-year-old boy playmate who has drunk a bottle of
strong lye water (she gave it to him) used in washing the milk cans of the dairy in which they were
playing. She is gazing into his agonized eyes and
then down into the white burned lining of his wide
open little mouth -- and she hears his bleating,
whimpering wails "like those of a little kitten" as
he dies. When he is buried, she stands beside the
deep black hole into which she visualizes herself
descending with him, and faints dead away.

Later, at seven, she is knocked flat and halfkilled by lightning. It struck into the Iowa hay
field where she was caught by the sudden thunderstorm, and she sees the forked tongues of lightning
streaking along the barbed fence wires near her.
Then she is violently struck down by it.

In middle age, this disturbed wife of a nymphomaniacal husband is living on a downtown street
where numerous trolley cars endlessly grind past.
Sooner or later, a trolley wheel bounces off a wire
overhead with a flaming, hissing arc. This instantly restimulates the shock of the hay field lightning bolt that hit her when she was seven. And, as
she collapses, she simultaneously visualizes the
black grave hole into which she had descended at
three with her little boy playmate. A complexly interwoven labyrinth of psychical traumas -- engrams.

Not infrequently, of late, one or anotuer tape
of professional specialist appears. One, who came
in by plane from afar, disclosed in some detail his
experiences as a former medical anaesthetist. Many
of these experiences pointed to the obvious conclusion that patients under anaesthesia were subconsciously alert, able to perceive what was going
on, and could receive disastrous oral comments from
surgeons and nurses. This, it appears, was definitely known operating room phenomena more than qO
years ago, when one rather widely self-publicized
"discoverer" thereof was still in diapers. This
knowledge, in fact, goes back at least as far as
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