Receiving and Interpreting Impressions

A Common Question

How can I tell the difference between what I actually experienced and what I interpreted it to mean?

Answer

Begin by returning to the simplest description of what occurred.

If you saw an image, what exactly was visible?

If you experienced a physical sensation, where was it and what was its quality?

If a word appeared, what was the word before you decided what it referred to?

Then notice what happened next.

Perhaps you categorized the image.

Connected it with a memory.

Assigned it to the communicator.

Decided what it represented.

Or placed it within a particular event.

Those later steps may prove accurate.

But they are not identical to the original experience.

The goal is not to stop interpreting.

It is to remain able to distinguish experience from conclusion while meaning develops.

Introduction

Mediumistic experience can occur very quickly.

An image becomes apparent.

A thought follows.

An association forms.

Language begins organizing what happened.

By the time the medium speaks, several stages may already have occurred.

Because this movement can happen almost instantly, it is easy to remember the final interpretation as though it had been present from the beginning.

That matters in evidential work.

Consider the difference between:

“I saw something that looked like a uniform.”

and:

“He was in the military.”

Those statements may eventually point to the same fact.

But they do not begin in the same place.

The first describes an experience.

The second presents a conclusion.

The conclusion may be correct.

The uniform may instead belong to a school, occupation, ceremony, photograph, club, or another person connected with the communicator.

Nothing is gained by pretending the conclusion arrived before it actually did.

The human participant does not need to become free of interpretation.

That would be impossible.

Language itself already requires categorization.

Description requires choices.

Association draws upon memory.

Context changes understanding.

The work is therefore not to remove the human element.

It is to become increasingly precise about where it enters.

That precision allows the medium to preserve what actually occurred while remaining open to what it may eventually mean.