the finite world which most people recognize as reality. It is an interesting commentary that while past observers felt that the facing of reality was an absolute necessity if the aberrated individual wished to be sane, no definition of how this was to be done was set forth. To face reality in the present one would certainly have to be able to sense it along those channels of communication most commonly used by man in his affairs.
Any one of Man’s perceptions can be aberrated by psychic derangements which refuse to permit the received sensations to be realized by the analytical portion of the individual’s mind. In other words, while there may be nothing wrong with the mechanisms of color reception, circuits can exist in the mind which delete color before the consciousness is permitted to see the object. Color blindness can be discovered to be relative or in degrees in such a way that colors appear to be less brilliant, dull or, at the maximum, entirely absent.
Anyone is acquainted with persons to whom “loud” colors are detestable and with persons who find them insufficiently “loud” to notice. This varying degree of color blindness has not been recognized as a psychic factor but has been nebulously assumed to be some sort of a condition of mind when it was noticed at all.
There are those persons to whom noises are quite disturbing, to whom, for instance, the insistent whine of a violin is very like having a brace and bit applied to the eardrum; and there are those to whom fifty violins, played loudly, would be soothing; and there are those who, in the presence of a violin, express disinterest and boredom; and, again, there are persons to whom the sound of a violin, no matter if it be playing the most intricate melody, is a monotone. These differences of sonic (hearing) perception have, like color and other visual errors, been attributed to inherent nature or organic deficiency or assigned no place at all.
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In a like manner, from person to person, smells, tactile sensations, organic perceptions, pain and gravity, vary widely and wildly. A cursory check around amongst his friends will demonstrate to a man that there exist enormous differences of perception of identical stimuli.
One smells a turkey in the oven as wonderful, one smells it with indifference, another may not smell it at all. And somebody else may maintain that roasting turkey smells exactly like hair oil
-- to be extreme.
Until we obtain clears it remains obscure why such differences should exist. For in the largest measure, such wild quality and quantity of perception is due to aberration. Because of pleasurable experiences in the past and inherent sensitivity, there will be some difference amongst clears, and a clear response should not be assumed automatically to be a standardized, adjusted middle ground, that pallid and obnoxious goal of past doctrines. The clear gets a maximum response compatible with his own desire for the response. Burning cordite still smells dangerous to him, but it does not make him ill. Roasting turkey smells good to him if he is hungry and likes turkey, at which time it smells very, very good. Violins play melodies, not monotones, bring no pain and are enjoyed to a fine full limit if the clear likes violins as a matter of taste -- if he doesn’t, he likes kettledrums, saxophones or, indeed, suiting his mood, no music at all.
In other words, there are two variables at work. One, the wildest, is the variable caused by aberrations. The other, and quite rational and understandable, is caused by the personality.
Thus the perceptions of an aberree* (non-cleared individual) * Aberree is a neologism meaning an aberrated person vary greatly from those of the cleared (unaberrated) individual.
Now there are the differences of the actual organs of perception and the errors occasioned by these. Some of these errors, a minimum, are organic: punctured eardrums are not competent sound-recording mechanisms. The majority of