Last night a poor loon was brought in. She was frightened. Doctor Hebert asked me to sit with her. So I did. She is schizophrenic. Well that goes without saying I suppose. She loved a friend and they were going to marry this week. He broke it off. She was upset. She didn't eat. She didn't sleep. She cried a lot. Yesterday she was walking across Waterloo Bridge and then suddenly she was about twenty feet up looking down at herself walking across the bridge. It happens to me quite often. What it means is this. We are several people fitted inside each other. Chinese boxes. Our bodies are the outside box. Or the inside one if you like. If you get a shock, like your best friend saying no I won't marry you I am going to marry your friend Arabella instead then anything can happen. I like watching myself from outside. It makes this living on and on and on and on seem not important. I look at me, poor old bag, which is what I am (Doctor Hebert says I must put on my nice dresses and make my face up.) But little does he realise, little do you realise Doctor Hebert that the Chinese box that stands outside and looks at poor bag Lynda doesn't care. What I really am is not poor bag Lynda all bones and the shakes and the shivers. I stand outside her and look at her and think, Well cry if you like, why not? I don't care. But this poor loon yesterday night. Her name is Anne. I suppose Doctor Hebert you think she would feel better if I said to her, You are a set of Chinese boxes, and when you walked across Waterloo Bridge all miserable and ill, they got separated for a bit, and so one of them looked down at the others, or other. Because Doctor Hebert it takes a lot of getting used to. You can't just say it, announcing good news. If she is religious yes perhaps. The soul. But this Anne is not religious, I asked her. She might be frightened if religious but it would be an idea she had heard of. I'd say soul and not Chinese box. But most religious people anyway think about the most unimportant Chinese box and about burying it or laying it out and how it will be in the grave or cremating it or something. So if they are like this then even soul would not be much good, let alone Chinese box. Words. Chinese box bad. Soul good. If Christian. Sometimes some poor loon comes in and I can talk to him. Her. A child is best. I mean, they are often not frightened when they see themselves walking away in front or something like that. It's second nature to some. It is a game. But they must keep quiet. I did it when I was a child. My parents quarrelled. When they started I used to take myself off outside the room. Of course they thought I was there with them but I wasn't. I sat there with a silly grin on my face but I was away outside, thinking other thoughts. I shall stop now.
Anne is very bad. I have been sitting with her. She is frightened more than anything. She hears the usual voices saying she is bad and wicked and all that. Also she keeps seeing her friend who is marrying Arabella. She sees them talking. Also making love. She told me this. She is frightened to tell Doctor Hebert. I told her not to tell Doctor Hebert. I am telling Doctor Hebert now. Doctor Hebert is one thing but there are other doctors here. This way Doctor Hebert will know but the other doctors won't. I told her that all she was doing was using "second sight" and she must have heard of that. I said a lot of people have it. I asked her if she saw things when she was a child. She said she did. I said it is like playing the piano or riding a bicycle. Practice makes perfect. I said all that kind of thing. Sensible. Second sight that's all it is! Looking down at yourself from twenty feet up, think nothing of it! Well it didn't make her feel better at all. Because when these things happen strongly enough to make people ill it is because the 6 percent of whatever is a wavelength. It is a voltage. It is a thousand volts instead of one. It is not just that you are the same as normal and then suddenly looking at yourself from outside or hearing voices, which can happen like a sort of glide sideways or up from where you were, and not an increase in voltage, but then at other times or with other people the voltage goes up suddenly and you feel you will shake to pieces. The 5 percent of sight hearing etc is energies. That is the whole point. So much voltage of sight, hearing. And if it is a bit more the machine shakes to pieces. That is the point. This is the point Doctor Hebert. Anne wants it to stop. She can't bear it.
Last night Doctor Hebert and I had one of our sessions. After lights out. In his office. He was on night. He had read all this. He had a sensible thought. It is this. When some person, let us say a Scottish lady in the Highlands like an old nurse I had once has second sight, and she says: A tall dark stranger will cross your path, and he does, or Someone will die this week and he does, then this person isn't shaking to pieces because the voltage is too high. Or children looking down from the branch of a tree at themselves sitting on the ground playing in the dust. They aren't shaking to pieces. They aren't shaking and crying and screaming and wishing it would stop on the contrary it all seems the most normal thing in the world.
The answer is some people are born to receive not 5 percent but perhaps 6 percent. Or 7 percent. Or even more. But if you are a 5 percent person and suddenly a shock opens you to 6 then you are "mad." I am sure I was born a 6 percent person, not mad at all. But they made me mad because I told what I knew. If I had kept my mouth shut I would have lived a peaceful life. With Mark. Poor Mark. Oh poor Mark. He is in North Africa with Rita. He writes to me. He loves me. He loves Rita. He loves Martha. Love love love love love. If I had liked it when he slobbered all over me and stuck his hands and things into me then that would have meant I loved him I suppose. That is how he looked at it.