Hey there consciousness fans...

Check out http://TheHigherConsciousness.com . Some awesome mind-provoking stuff.

peace..............ag

Chapter 8: Silverman Finds A Groove

Silverman was back at the computer and it felt strange. Not the sitting in front of a terminal and pounding on the keys part. That he was doing that every day at his new job downtown. What felt strange was trying to get back into the writing mood, it had been so long since he'd been there.

He glanced out the window and saw the sky beautifully overcast, one of those thin layers of marine air that allowed just enough sunlight to force its way through, creating a silver aura that lit up The Convent's courtyard and the facades of the Victorians across the street. It was a delicate balance, a little more sunlight and the atmosphere brightens, a little less and the mood turns grey and gloomy. There was only a narrow band on the spectrum that produced this fairy tale effect and even as he watched the moment passed and normalcy returned. He, in turn, returned to his keyboard and the ideas churning through his brain.

Life had been coming together nicely since the last time he had put finger to keyboard, (nobody put pen to paper anymore), and he wondered how much of what had occurred in his life was worth someone else's time to read and how much was merely his own ego seeking immortality. He shrugged. If that were all it were he wouldn't be the first author to be found guilty, not by a long shot.

Where to begin the current reality check? His selves were beginning to merge so deeply and so completely one into the other that at times it was hard to keep them apart, hard to know which was manifesting at any given time.

"You're weird," Shelly had told him when he first described the feeling to her.

"I know," he had answered, "but it's a gentle weird. That's why you love me." They had been getting along wonderfully for the past six months ever since starting his current job. Amazing, he thought, what a regular income, even the wildly uncertain one of a commission only salesman can do for a relationship.

The Pottery Barn gig had long since passed into history, followed by stints on the phone setting sales appointments for a building maintenance firm, and then, when he realized how much more the salesman earned than the appointment setter, selling printer cartridges, foreign language tapes, and management consultants’ services. He had always owned the gift of gab and buoyed by an ever growing friendship with his new friend and alter ego, ag, he was discovering that when properly focused with a given end in sight, that gift could be used to generate a decent income indeed. In fact, for the first time in his entire life, he was finding his services in demand. It felt good.

The current client had him talking on the phone to attorneys throughout the country, helping them achieve their professional goals (read income) by hooking them up with clients who needed their services. He was the oldest one in the office and by choice worked only four days a week, making less calls, acting less frantic, yet closing with the best of them. In fact, he was one of the best of them. And unlike the rest of the sales force, he was getting Social Security. Shelly sent it to their investment counselor as soon as it came in.

Shelly had even smoked with him a few times in the past several months. "I've always enjoyed getting high with you," she said as they sat on the couch in their sweats sharing a bowl, "I like the unique way we relate, not to mention the sex," and her voice trailed off. "I just didn't want to support an addict in his addiction. Now that you have it under control, an occasional night of alternative reality isn't all bad. I just wish there were some other way to ingest this stuff. My lungs are getting too old for this."

He smiled through clenched throat, nodded in agreement, and blew a lungfull of yutz out into the room. The contrast between the good and bad pot produced made him chuckle. Everything in balance, he thought, and he was drawn back to his visit to the dentist earlier that week.

Dr. Harry had found a deep pocket on the inside flesh next to one of his molars the prior time he had gone for a cleaning and on closer inspection had discovered calcium deposits forming on the tooth that were pushing the gum away. He had described a new technique of going under the gum line, scraping off the buildup, polishing the tooth smooth, and then squirting an antibacterial glue into the pocket. "We really should set an appointment and hope it works" he had told Silverman. "If it doesn't, the periodontist is next and that's no fun at all." Silverman was weighing his options two weeks later when the pocket became infected and it was no longer an option.

As usual he had taken gas instead of a shot. Not that he was afraid of needles, but why go numb and feel nothing when he could get a good high and a legal one at that. Dr. Harry had positioned the nosepiece and started the flow and Silverman had inhaled deeply and fully, anxious for the gas to take effect, for the tingling sensation to get to his brain and take him to that place he was, sadly, still unable to reach completely on his own.

"Feel anything yet?" asked Dr. Harry.

"Nope," said Silverman, who was definitely getting a buzz. Dr. Harry turned the gas up slightly. "I've got to remember not to talk," thought Silverman. Last time, during an extraction, he had mumbled something incoherent about the 49ers and Dr. Harry had lowered the gas. He wouldn't make the same mistake again.

He went over. Instantaneously. Into that indescribable feeling where nothing changes yet everything changes. Escape from Flatland, new dimensions of Being, it's not what I know, it's what I know I don't know, yes, that's it, the human condition, what separates us from the beasts, not knowing and knowing that we don't know, to balance in the middle of polar complementaries, to experience both sides at once, the farther apart the better, up/down, in/out, yin/yang, yes!!! This is it. Nirvana. This is what I wanted to experience. Heaven. Bliss. Bli…

And that's when he realized he was experiencing bliss in a dentist's chair with a tube sucking blood from his mouth as a sharp metal tool six millimeters under his gumline scraped away parts of his body.

Yeah, he really was weird. Even he had recognized it then.

But, dammit, wasn't that the very thing he was calling the ultimate human experience? The ability to look at complementaries not just from the outside, imune from both, but to experience them from within, the place in between? He shook his head to clear the brain and went into the kitchen to find somnething to eat.

Back at mission control with a plate of cottage cheese and raw veggies, Silverman widened the lens of his reality check. He had let Shelly make a series of medical appointments for him and had come out with flying colors. They had joined a gym and three times a week after work he cycled and ran and rowed and stretched and swam and lifted weights. And that was on top of the twice a week yoga classes and the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises he did every day on arising.

Then there was the food. He was paying attention to what he took into his body based on other factors than flavor, monitoring proteins and carbs, controlling sugars, and surprise of surprises, actually losing weight. Plus, he'd given up coffee and was drinking green tea in the morning and hot water at work during the day. And, oh yes, no hard liquor! Almost five years now. That transition had surprised ever him.

He had been pouring a vodka and tonic and describing to Adam how vodka was virtually tasteless. "So you only use it to get drunk", his son had asked?

Silverman stopped, thought, poured out the drink and hadn't had any hard liquor since, no alchohol other than wine and beer. This was definitely not the Silverman he'd been living with for so long.

"Don't you have any vices left?", Dr. Smoltz had asked during the physical exam?

"Plenty," Silverman had assured him. But, aside from the pot and some of the websites he surfed with the shades down when Shelly wasn’t around he was really beginning to wonder. Was his lifelong goal of being the best Silverman he could be actually possible? And if it were, how old would he have to be to for it to manifest?

* * *

ag's Story

I been selling all my life. Started back in junior high when I worked for a florist during school vacations and sold Easter lilies or Christmas trees depending on the holiday. When I got out of school I started doing it for real and I been a salesman ever since. Big companies, small companies, water filters, nutritional supplements, solar heating panels, industrial printing, collection services, home study courses, custom T-shirts, airplanes. I done it all.

Meanwhile, I been screwed all along the way. Like I can’t even tell you how many times a manager fucks up and the only way he can keep his job is by getting rid of mine. Or I get stock options in a company where the president embezzles from his own firm, or I build up someone else’s business from scratch and get canned when things get rolling because the guy’s wife has a cousin who needs a job. I’m tired of being fired, I’m tired of being downsized, I’m tired of being over promised and under delivered, I’m tired of being screwed. I’m just plain tired. But I still like to sell and I need the money cause I know how to spend it just as good as I can make it.

So a couple years ago I land this job with a company selling aluminum replacement windows. It’s not the best job I ever had and it’s not the best company I ever worked for and the rest of the salesmen are butt heads, but the potential is there to make some big bucks and a good salesman is never out of work so I say what the hell.

It’s 100% commission, no draw, no advance, no expenses, no nothin’. Just sell and get your money. Real simple. Leads are scarce and I’m the new kid on the block so what can you expect, they give me crap. One night I get an old immigrant couple from somewhere in Slobovia living in a four-room one-story bungalow on the other side of the river. I give up dinner and drive thirty-five miles through a cold driving rain to get there.

Now not to toot my own horn, but I’m a pro and the scene is classic textbook. They are on the couch in the living room and I’ve pulled over a straight backed chair and am facing them from three feet away. My miniature sample window and looseleaf binder with pictures of the home office, Better Business Bureau certificate, and reference letters are on the coffee table facing them, just like they are supposed to be. I give the canned pitch perfectly.

"Ooh, dat's a lot of money", says the old guy when the numbers come up at the end and the room is filled with a loud deafening silence. Mama and papa are holding hands would you believe, staring at me with great big eyes like deer caught in the headlights. I have done my job good, they want the windows, they just can’t afford them. No shit. Who can?

I play the scene just right, savor the moment, furrow my brow and purse my lips. I am searching deeply for a solution to the problem this sweet old couple is experiencing.

"Now just to clarify my thinking", I speak slowly and rub my fingers across my chin as if I have never run into this situation before, "if I can figure out a way to put these windows in your home this week without your having to pay anything at all then we got a deal, right?"

"Sure", says papa and I reach into my case, withdraw the order pad and fill in the pertinent information while I go through the no money down extended payment plan according to the book, according to the law. I turn the pad one hundred and eighty degrees and place it on papa's lap. “So that takes care of the problem, right?” I say, nodding my head up and down as I speak and extending the pen. "Put your name, here"

"Dat's still a lot", says mama squeezing papa's hand and I switch into high gear. This is a closer, a perfect sale. I can even justify it, legit. I mean there’s a miniature windstorm blowing right through their house in the middle of a cold wet upstate New York winter. Why the hell do you think I suggested they sit on the couch instead of at the kitchen table. Because that's where I feel it coming in the most when I did the walk-around. They need these windows and I need their signature. "I don't know", says papa, the pen poised in place. "Fourteen years payments, dat's a long time."

I am not going to lose it. I redo the savings on fuel, the low-low financing, the optional insurance, the comfort, the peace at night and safety from intruders. I lean forward, make eye contact, modulate my voice. I am perfect. By the book. The old man’s hand comes down to the surface of the paper. It is a done deal and I am three seconds away from a $1500 commission.

He makes a single vertical stroke on the page and then stops. "But dat's still so much every month", he says. They are screaming their poverty through every pore of their body. "We are poor and old. What good are fuel savings over the next fourteen years if we have trouble putting food on the table now? We won't live long enough for your windows to make a difference." I can hear them even though they are only shouting it through their eyes.

I breath deeply, reach for a second wind. I have been perfect, absolutely perfect and I AM going to sign them. I am not going to lose this sale, by God, I am NOT going to lose it. "What are you talking about?" I say with an edge to my voice I never heard before. "You don't want your wife to get sick from cold coming in while you're sleeping? Do you? You know it’s cold. She could die. You know what you need. You started to sign, just finish what you started so we can do this for you and make her safe."

I know what happens next, the one who talks first loses and I... will... not... lose. They sit there trembling. The old man looks at me and turns away, stares down at his lap and up again into my face. Our eyes touch and I look down at the pen then back up at his eyes. My eyes say “take it and sign”. “I can't," says papa's eyes, "I can't."

And that’s when I see what I've done. I see their fear of this smooth talking, neatly dressed, well fed representative of the system, with the official looking papers, who walked into their home an hour ago and is trying to walk out taking what little savings, what little income they have, and all for their own good. Yes, their windows are leaking, but they can stuff a towel around the edges and wear sweaters. Who am I kidding? I saw the remnants of their can of dinner when I came in. I know they can’t afford the prime product I am offering. But I want the sale and in order to get it I am scaring them to death.

I am peddling fear. I can keep up the pressure and close them, I know I can, but only by using fear. And then I hear my voice ring in my head, “You vill sign these papers! Und you vill sign them now!! Sig heil!!”

Something goes limp inside me, something I never felt before. Sure, I missed sales, but never when I knew so clearly I could win, and never never because I felt pity. My head is spinning and I mumble something about being sorry it didn't work out and I close up my kit and walk out into the night. I even think I said "God bless you" as I left. On the ride home I wonder where my weekly check will come from. I don't know. I only know it will not be coming from the old couple I just left who needs it more than I do.

The next day I turn in my kit and quit and I haven’t sold anything for years. That’s why I took this job. It’s not selling. It’s taking orders. I figure I’ll get back into it slowly.

* * *

Games of Consciousness - How Do We Know That We Know That We Know

How do we know that we know that we know? Before heading into inner space to look for consciousness we must become fully aware and comfortable with the feeling of ‘knowing’, itself. We’ll need to have that answer so we can recognize when we have found what we're looking for.

At issue is not what parts of the brain perform the functions of knowing. That answers the question of how we know in a technical way that can be left to the cognitive scientists to map out. Of interest to us here is the question of how we, as functioning human beings, are aware that we know in an experiential way. What does ‘knowing’ actually feel like.

One way to go about looking for the feeling of knowing is to compare it to the feeling of not knowing. Asking questions is a good place to start. When there is something we do not know we ask questions about it. Lack of questions, of course, does not mean we actually know. We may think we know or we might not care to know about a particular subject, but that’s another story. However we can be pretty sure that when we hear ourselves asking questions it’s a clue that there is something we do not know.

Sometimes questions are directed externally toward others as we look outside ourselves for the answer. “Do you know where the library is?” Sometimes they are inner directed as we seek the answer within for something we know we knew but just cannot seem to remember. “What was the name of that movie?” The feeling is the same.

Thinking and knowing should not be confused, for they are two separate and distinct experiences. Thinking, like asking a question, may lead to the point of knowing, but it is not the experience of knowing, itself. Thinking is a sequential process that focuses on the particular subject in question and feels as if it is taking place inside our heads.

Knowing on the other hand is sudden, a...

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...feeling that seems to be located in our solar plexus and is the same no matter what the question.

We know that thinking and knowing are different because when we get the answer we are looking for, i.e. when we experience knowing, we stop thinking about the particular subject we had been focusing on. And we stop asking questions about it, too.

There is also a different kind of thinking that we do just for the pleasure it gives us, evoking an image of a person or place we like, or the inner sound of some music we enjoy. But this is more of a memory of prior experience rather than a questioning process working through to an answer. It does not turn to questioning until we come to a part of the memory that is a blank, that we do not remember. "Where did that happen?" "Who said what?" In that case we have to think in a questioning sense, to bring back to mind what we want to remember that we know we previously knew.

And this brings up the question of how we know what we already know. How did we get the information we have placed on the blank mental screen with which we started life. Clearly, there must have been many moments in space, points in time, when we did not know something and then we found the answer and suddenly...

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...we knew.

Each of us has memory experiences we can tap into where we remember the feeling of not knowing someone's name, directions to a particular location, or some bit of academic information and then getting the information and knowing it. The content of that experience is different for each of us, but the container of the experience, the feeling of completion that accompanies that knowing, is the same.

Memory and knowing converge. Since there was a point in time when we did not know what we now know, without the memory that we once knew a particular bit of information, there would be no reason to presume that we know it now. Let’s face it, there was a first time you learned that 1 + 1 = 2. Before that, you didn’t know it.

We can also pretend we know something, like when the professor starts talking about an assignment we were supposed to have read and we nod our head in agreement. Even though he does not know that we did not read it and do not know what’s in it, we know... we know that we do not know... and that is what matters as far as self-awareness goes.

Interesting, is it not, that it is possible to know that we do not know. In fact our knowing that we do not know produces a definite feeling of not knowing. This feeling, however, is something we know. As a result, the phenomenon of knowing we do not know feels the same as that of knowing we know. Fascinating.

When it comes to the experience of knowing, what we think about does not matter. That is just content. And as we’ve discussed, to know content, we simply think... that is, we focus on the subject and ask questions until finally something clicks and...

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...we know it. Or not. Sometimes, we give up from mental fatigue, from chasing some elusive answer that just does not want to reveal itself. That is when we know that we do not know, just as assuredly as we would know that we know, if we knew. Confused?

Luckily, knowing about knowing is not nearly as hard as talking about knowing. And so we will stop talking long enough to experience it via an experiential game, called ...
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* * *

THE KNOWING EXPERIENCE

Rules of Play:

Answer the following questions one at a time. Proceed as rapidly as you can, however no guessing. Knowing is important... knowing that you know... or not.

Option 1: If you know you know the answer to a given question, say "I know the answer," out loud, with conviction... but only if you know you know. Note what it feels like to know you know and where that feeling is located. Then go on to the next question.

Option 2: If you know you do not know the answer to a given question, say "I do not know the answer," out loud, with the same level of conviction... but only if you know you do not know. Note what it feels like to know you do not know and where that feeling is located. Then go on to the next question.

Option 3: If you are unsure about whether or not you know the answer to a question, take a few minutes to try discover it by whatever means you wish. As you do, note what it feels like to search for an answer and where that feeling is located. After finding the answer, or deciding you do not wish to spend any more time searching for it, with conviction say, "I know the answer," or "I do not know the answer," whichever is the case. Then go on to the next question.

Note: Take time to play the game, otherwise you will only be able to talk ‘about’ knowing without really ‘knowing’ it.

Here are the questions:

. How much is two plus two?

. What are the colors of the American flag?

. Who was the first human in space?

. What is my wife’s middle name?

. How many squares are there on a chess board?

. What did you have for dinner two nights ago?

. What does a zymometer measure?

* * *

If you played the game and were paying attention to what you were experiencing as it was happening you should now be able to talk about knowing from within an immanent, shared, human experience.

For those questions you knew you know, you probably just said "I know the answer," with conviction without thinking. Similarly, where you knew you did not know an answer, it was just as easy to say "I do not know the answer," with the same conviction. In either case, there was no questioning and no thinking about the response. The feelings were gut reactions and should have felt just as certain even though one answer had content and was a knowing, while the other was blank and a not knowing.

However, the feeling when you knew for certain one way or the other was probably different than the feeling when you were unsure and had to go searching. That is when the mind came into play as you thought about what you know to see if it matches up with what you were looking for.

The chances of finding all the answers in one reference source were slim, not even counting the question about your eating habits. If you reached up on the shelf for an encyclopedia, you still had to look in different volumes, or at least different pages. More likely you undertook several different Google searches. In other words, the focus of your attention varied based on the content of what you wanted to know, even though the process of looking was the same.

Upon finding an individual answer to a question you had not known before, you no doubt acted the same in each case, regardless of which question you were working on. You lost interest in what had captured your attention to that point and moved on to the next question. Why shouldn’t you? You knew the answer.

When you tried to find answers by looking them up internally in your brain/mind instead of externally in books or on-line, your intentionality still had to focus in different directions even though the looking process was the same for each question. And the moment the answers came there was that immediate and comfortable gut feeling of completion, of knowing. Then you let go of that question and went on to the next one. And that feeling was the same no matter which question you had just answered.

* * *

Therefore, having played the game, you should now be able to say with complete conviction that you know several facts about knowing that you may not have known before, not because you read it somewhere but because you experienced it personally. You...

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...that...

1) Knowing is different from the content of knowing;
2) The feeling of knowing is the same regardless of the content of knowing;
3) Knowing we do not know is an experience of knowing.

* * *

[Just in case you had not experienced the flush of knowing to the above questions, aside from the one about your dinner which only the ’I’ reading these words can know, or not, the answers are: four, red white-and-blue, Yuri Gagarin, Mae, 64, and degree of fermentation.]
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[[There, now you know.]]

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[[[provided these are the correct answers]]]

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They don’t have to be, you know. It is my author's privilege to give any answer I want. The only way you can know for certain whether they are right is if you already know them on your own, or if you go look them up somewhere else where they do not play mind games like this.

Yet there is a method to this madness. You do know that if I had not just warned you that I might have given false answers, chances are such a thought would have never crossed your mind. You would now think you knew somethings and conceivably would have told them to a friend as truth adding, "Oh, I read it in a book somewhere," the very kind of knowing Descartes' rules of reason bracket out.

Liars can write and liars can preach. This is why you should no longer feel you know something just because you read it in a book or someone else told you so. Absolute knowing remains an individual experience. We must experience it for ourselves, from the inside out, at least everything we really want to say we know for certain.

* * *

Chapter 5: Silverman Takes A Break

Silverman rubbed his eyes and let his mind wander away from the words on the screen in front of him to the current status of his life’s vital signs.

The book was coming along nicely, he was just finishing up the fifth chapter, he and Shelly hadn’t had any major blowouts recently, possibly because they were spending less time together, work was going well and he was even getting in some serious reading, Vonnegut and Calvino mainly, on the job between phone calls. Short chapters were best, it was hard to keep any intellectual or emotional momentum really going with the headset randomly bbbrrriiiiiinnnggging in his ears...

“Pottery Barn, this is David. How can I help you?”

“Good God”, he thought as he read what he had just written. “It’s becoming reflexive!”

A friendship had also begun to spring up at work between him and ag, another late night Pottery Barn denizen. Not only was he enjoying ag’s company during the breaks, he was actually learning something about himself from this edgy little man at the other end of the motivational spectrum.

Silverman looked at the clock and grimaced. It was 7pm and he had to be at work in 3 1/2 hours. The nightshift meant a whole new way of living. He shut down the computer and headed into the bedroom to take a nap.

* * *

Scene: the typical bland break room of a typical bland business office in several shades of grey. On the right of the entrance is a copy machine. In front is a table and a refrigerator. A first aid kit hangs on the wall. To the left is a set of cabinets topped by a formica counter top, a stainless steel sink, and an automatic three pot drip coffee maker. On the back wall is a glass enclosed bulletin board holding forms required to be displayed by the state, a listing of current job openings in the company, and a notice that sacharine and other artificial sweeterners have been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals and are not recommended for use by pregnant women. On the table is a tray filled with bags of coffee, tea, chocolate, and sweeteners (including sacharine), along with paper cups, lids, and stirrers. No laboratory animals or pregnant women are present.

Time: 1:15am on a typical weekday morning.

David Silverman is standing in front of the sink trying to remove a three year old dark brown stain from the inside of a coffee pot. ag, a small wiry man with an almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth, is sitting on the edge of the table dangling his feet and listening to Silverman rant.

“Now here’s the question de jour. Am I a writer who is taking phone orders for a catalog company in order to earn extra money for the holidays, or am I a telephone order taker who thinks he’s a writer?”

“Is there an absolute here or do I get to choose?”

“That’s the point. Am I both, am I neither, and if so, who gets to make that decision, me or the person looking at me? And whatever the answer turns out to be, why does it sound so much lamer than when the Taoist, Chuang Tzu, asked whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man?”

“What?”

“It’s really very simple. Am I what I think I am or what other people think I am? You listening to me rant and rave, the company bookkeeper checking my timecard, the reader processing the marks on this page, or my wife pissing and moaning about the money we don’t have.”

“Ya know David, you think too damn much. Why does there have to be an absolute? Why is it so important that you make a name for yourself?”

“It’s not about making a name for myself. That’s not the point. I’m not even using my real name, if you haven’t noticed. It’s about using all my skills to their fullest, about making the biggest impact on the world.”

“Why don’t you jump from a real high place?”

“That’s not what I mean by making a big impact.”

“That’s what you said. You’re the writer who’s big on words.”

“So, you think of me as a writer?”

“I don’t know. You tell me you are. So I’m giving you strokes. To me you’re an order taker like I am. I just said you were a writer because you want to hear it. I’ve never read your stuff. How the hell do I know whether you’re a writer or not? Why is it so important?”

“I don’t know. When I’m home and thinking about what I do for eight hours a night it all seems so stupid, selling useless trinkets over the phone. It’s as if I’m serving time and I just want to get it over with. Like before I left for work tonight I told Shelly that I’d already completed 20% of my time here. Boy, was she thrilled to hear I was counting the hours and I knew I’d screwed up as soon as I’d said it. I tried to salvage what I could by telling her my goal was to get something more lucrative and regular before this job ended, but I don’t think it worked.”

“Way to go silver tongue. Allow me to present you with the 1995 Sandpaper Award for Smoothness.”

“But that’s the thing. Once I’m here it feels different. It’s what I do for eight hours a night, taking orders over the phone. It becomes more important. I just sent a birthday present from a guy in New York to his girl friend in California, got it gift wrapped, helped him write a card, made sure it would get there on time. I’m making people happy. That’s what I’ve got to remember.”

“Right. And you’re earning money which makes your wife happy which keeps her from kicking you out of the house which makes you happy. Right? Sounds like a win-win-win to me. That’s what you’ve got to remember. Don’t make it more complicated than it is.”

* * *

Scene: the same
Time: 3am

“That’s it. You’re right. It is all about money. In fact all I do is work with money. People call and give me money and I give them goodies in exchange. Fifteen years ago when things were so bad the kids were getting free lunch at school, I remember sitting at the dining room table crying my eyes out and bawling “I can do everything but make money”. Hell, it’s a piece of cake, if I only knew then what I know now. Just send people goodies and they call from around the world and send me money. Well not me exactly, I just get $8.33/hr of it. That and all the fresh brewed coffee I can drink. That is what this is all about isn’t it? Money and brown stuff masquerading as coffee?”

“I won’t vouch for the brown stuff but you’re right about the money. Maximize the bucks, that’s what it’s all about. And you’re no different than anybody else even though you’d like to think you’re above it all. So now that you admit you’re down here in the mud with the rest of us, how would you like to get a raise?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean? How would you like to get more money for doing what you’re doing? What’s so hard to understand word man? Would that give your life more meaning?”

“Well more money would give me less grief and that’s means something. Are you suggesting I hit them up for a raise? I just started. Lots of luck.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. God, for somebody as smart as you are you are really dumb. Just take advantage of what’s available. How many specials did you sell last week?”

“Specials?”

“Yes, specials, upsells, those weekly items the company over-ordered and then cut in price to push out the door, Christmas tree angels, N O E L stocking holders, wine rings, photo cubes. You know you get $1.00 for each one you sell, don’t you?”

“Well, yes...”

“So how many did you sell last week?”

“I don’t know... six, seven. People don’t ask for them. I usually get about one or two a night. How about you?”

"A hundred and forty."

“What?!!!”

“A hundred and forty. Now divided by forty hours that’s an extra $3.50 an hour. Last week you earned $8.33 an hour, I earned $11.83 an hour for doing the same thing. That makes my time here a lot more meaningful than yours the way I see it.”

“But how? How did you get people to buy that crap?”

“That’s the problem. You can’t let them think you think it’s crap. It’s stuff somebody somewhere wants and is willing to pay for. All you gotta do is assume that each person who calls is gonna buy at least one special after they place their order.”

“I get embarrased trying to sell stuff people don’t want just for the money.”

“Wrong thinking, smart guy. You don’t know who wants what. Somebody out there wants the stuff and you just have to find out who it is. Besides, the company wants you to sell it. That’s why they give you the incentive. The money is your reward for doing a good job. Hell, the people on the phone called up to spend money in the first place. Help them spend more. They’re sitting ducks. Especially the insomniacs we get this time of night.”

“You make it sound so calculating.”

“It is calculating. And it’s fun. Try it. Let’s see who can get the most specials before quitting time.”

“Give me a handicap.”

“You’re your own handicap. But I bet I can double whatever you get, okay?”

“You’re on. By the way, if you enjoy sales so much, why are you doing this short term holiday sales instead of the kind of sales where you can make really big money. Isn’t it all the same?”

“That’s a good question. I’ll tell you tomorrow night. Meanwhile, it’s time to get back on the phones and make some money.”

* * *

David glanced at his reflection in the night window, bearded, longhaired, overweight, glassy eyed, lightweight headphones with built in microphone poised one inch from wherever he turned his head. He could be a switchboard operator or a radio DJ or a tank commander or an airplane pilot or a police dispatcher or the wizard of OZ... or a hot shot sales rep for a catalog company.

BBBoooiiiiinnnggg.

“Pottery Barn,this is David. How can I help you?”

On his very first call he sold two specials. By the next break he was up to seven. The money was rolling in.

***

Epiphany

My career path after college was checkered to say the least. But you already know that and how I quit the corporate world in 1970 to be a writer. "You have to be happy with your work", I said by way of explanation, “or else you spend too much of your time looking for other work where you will be happy.” At least I’ve been consistent in my search for the ultimate.

I wrote freelance, articles, poetry, and fiction, selling the occasional piece occasionally enough to keep me motivated, also becoming the editor of a regional magazine which folded after several years because the owner was inept, as did a silk screen printing business which I started. I did substitute teaching in local high schools but that didn’t bring in enough income to keep the family fed and I was forced to take the only jobs I could get to support our growing family, commission sales. I was not happy as a salesman, I knew it was not "why I was here", but no income at all would have been worse. I continued to write at nights. This checkered pattern of semi-survival ebbed and flowed for about six years.

In the mid 1970's my sister, whose husband had died tragically several years previously, began attending meetings of a Hindu spiritual group. She claimed it gave her a certain comfort and peace of mind that she needed in her life.

My mother, the athiest, called me on the phone. "Will you find out what your crazy sister is doing?", she asked, and I immediately called my sister who sent material on meditation and the practice of yoga. It was my first exposure to either of these subjects and though I took it all with a large grain of salt, I could see how practice of what it taught could produce the beneficial effects my sister was experiencing.

In 1977, another death in the family caused me to read Raymond Moody's, Life After Life, a book describing the experiences of over a hundred-fifty people who had been declared clinically dead and then ressuscitated. They brought back with them stories of tunnels, lights, and consciousness outside of the body and the similarity of their reports piqued my intellectual interest. Logically and rationally, if the stories were pure fiction, there was no reason why they should have been so consistent.

"What if the body and mind really are separate?", I asked myself in the only leap of faith I have ever taken.

I began to reread the material from my sister, which seemed to be saying a lot of what was being described by Dr. Moody's patients. The connection was too close to deny. And, although I did not realize it at the time, in the same manner that one can walk up one side of a see-saw and upon reaching the fulcrum tilt the entire apparatus with only the slightest shift of weight, so did my one tiny question lead me into a whole new area of inquiry that was to set a completely new direction for my life.

I began meditating and found that yoga seemed to come easily for me. One evening as I focused on a candle flame with the breath forcefully expelled, I suddenly experienced a beautiful melodic ringing beteen my ears and found myself looking down at the top of my head from just under the ceiling. I was astounded, though completely lucid and unafraid.

My mind was racing. "If I am up here then who is that down there? Or, if that is me down there, who is this up here?" The sensation lasted only a second or two before I gulped in air and reentered the body seated on the floor. But, as with the flashing red and green lights of so many years before, I knew what I had experienced.

Reasoning that the experience had occurred because of oxygen deprivation, I figured that if I could keep air out of my lungs for a longer period, I would experience even more. The following Sunday, April 16th, 1978, I decided to repeat the experiment. It was almost nine months to the day from the time I first questioned the separation of body and mind.

Lying on my stomach on the bed, propped on my elbows, I vowed not to breathe until I separated from my body, knowing that should I become unconscious I would involuntary take in air. I did not do anything stupid, such as taping my mouth or nose.

I took three deep breaths, forcibly exhaled, and waited to see what would happen. The second hand on the clock made a full circuit, then another one. My rib cage began to ache but I refused to breathe. Two minutes and forty-five seconds was the last timing I saw on the clock as the pain became unbearable.

I rolled on my back, shaking uncontrollably, then perspiring, then burning up, the first three sensations in the dying process I was to learn later upon reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Yet even without that knowledge I knew I was dying and a terrible fear gripped me. "NO!", I screamed in my mind, "God will not let me die while I am searching for Him!".

At that moment three things happened at once. I began gulping air, I fell off the bed, and a pinpoint of light appeared at the crown of my head. Anyone looking at me writhing on the floor would have seen what appeared to be an epileptic fit. The fact that my mother and uncle had both experienced their first seizures at age thirty-nine, and I was at the time thirty-seven, would have lent credibility to that assumption.

Though my body was flailing about uncontrollably, inside I was experiencing a state of ecstasy and peace and perfect and absolute lucidity. The pinpoint of light was getting larger and I remember thinking, "This is what the people whom Dr. Moody interviewed must have described as going through a tunnel." Closer and closer it came, larger and larger it grew, finally exploding within my brain as a clear white light, more brilliant and more powerful than anything I could have ever conceived of. I also felt wires in my brain being pulled from their sockets much as telephone operators used to disconnect callers on old manual switchboards.

During the thirty minutes or so that I remained in this state, enveloped by the light, I never lost the sense of my body or awareness of my individuality, never lost the sense of "me", and the feeling that everything that was happening was taking place within my skull, within my brain. Yet I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, for no shadow of any kind could have withstood the brilliance of that light, that what I was experiencing was, indeed, the Absolute.

The Divine was making a house call, so to speak. And with the conviction that can only come from from knowing something directly and personally, I knew that the ultimate question of the existence of God would no longer be a question for me, quite an amazing conclusion considering my history.

The light inside began to dim and I saw myself lifted off the ground and zooming out into space. Back and back Earth receded, a blue-green ball that became a huge yin-yang symbol and just as suddenly became Earth again as I hurtled back towards its surface, the nature of the duality of material existence becoming indelibly impressed upon me in the process. My body functions were returning and I found I could play with them. Lean to the left and I was in my room, lean to the right and I went off into space... left/right, in/out, Earth/space, back/forth. There was zero fear. I was having fun.

Eventually the wires that had been pulled began to be reconnected, but I could tell they were going back into different locations than they had come from, that I was being rewired as a changed person from who I had been.

When all physical functions returned and my mind and body snapped together once more into a functioning unit, I found myself on the floor on my knees hands clasped in prayerful supplication speaking the words, "I am reborn. I am reborn in God." While I knew that what I was saying was true, I still remember a part of me feeling totally embarrased by the words coming out of my mouth.

Since that day I have never doubted the existence of God nor been afraid of what I might meet in inner space.

* * *

Games of Consciousness - Meaning and Measurement

Just over three hundred and fifty years ago René Descartes looked around at his world and realized there was a lot that did not make sense, especially when he applied his method of experience, reason, and logic to the prevailing view of the day. Contrary to that view, which called for blind and unquestioning faith in the dictums of those in authority, truth to him was what his own experiential reasoning and logic told him was true, whether it agreed with what others said or not.

Even today, in the midst of an era of scientific dominance and supposed reliance on "facts", it is not easy to do that. We are not taught to think for ourselves and experience our own reality. From our earliest learning experiences we are told "this is right" and "that is wrong", "this is so" and "that is not", "don't argue" and "do what I say". We lose track of what we are sure we know because we have discovered it for ourselves, and what we think we know because someone else told us it is so. While there certainly is no need for each of us to reinvent the wheel, an awful lot gets accepted as truth only because it was said by someone in power, be it a teacher, preacher, politician, or parent. This also goes, of course, for the words of authors challenging the prevailing paradigm.

It is particularly important that the source of what we accept as real be remembered in dealing with non-material subjects such as consciousness. In the recounting of individual conscious experiences there are no controlled experiments eliminating supposedly extraneous elements, no lists of data that can be examined, no numerical facts to be coldly and statistically replicated. There is only the word of the experiencer. Even the mystic genius Rudolf Steiner noted that the genuine spiritual investigator, (which we can read as "consciousness investigator"), could never expect to have his words met with blind credulity, but could only share his experiences and let others experience them for themselves.

However, this does not make such experiences unverifiable or unreproducable. Steiner considered his teachings scientific because he believed anyone could consciously cultivate the spiritual knowledge he had by practicing his method, in the same way that Descartes believed anyone could discern truth by applying his method. Using the same tools, in other words, produces the same result. Yet, both Descartes and Steiner knew full well that the truth of which they spoke, was theirs alone until verified individually by their readers.

The prevailing scientific paradigm has trained us to believe that our individual internal experiences are subjective and cannot be relied on, merely the result of individual misinterpretation of what is outside and objective. The external, we have been told, is absolute, real, and most importantly true for everyone if we would only get ourselves out of the way.

Why has science placed so high a value on the outer reality rather than the inner one? The answer is simple, the outside reality can be measured, and that is what science does. Without an ability to measure and quantify, science could not even exist. As a result, it is only that the inner reality cannot be measured that makes it "unscientific". If it could be, it would be.

Measurement in the outer world is easy. Take sounds, for example, where microphones can pick up the vibrations caused by speech. We can register the shape and amplitude of the waves being transmitted, and apply electrodes and sensors to ears and brains to measure the extent to which those waves have made it safely across the space between speaker and listener to the other side. All that can be measured scientifically.

There is, unfortunately, no way to measure precisely what meaning that sound is given by the person sending it nor what meaning it is given by the person receiving it... that is, how that sound is interpreted by any particular individual on the screen of inner reality. We just do not know, although we can guess, and often try to, by putting numbers on those guesses and calling them scientific.

We can say, for example, that statistically speaking "most people" interpret particular words in one way or another. Or we can say "most American men" or "most Black women", or "most teenage children in dysfunctional families living in urban settings who have not graduated from elementary school and for whom English is a second language." We can devise any number of qualifiers to try to limit the variety of parameters affecting how the external measurable transmission is going to be interpreted by any given individual. Political spin doctors do it all the time when they are working with aggregates. The fact of the matter is, however, when it comes down to any specific individual... we just do not know.

This concentration of science in the outer world is not a problem, except for a built-in assumption on the part of many practitioners of science that the inner reality does not even exist. Denying non-physical reality is no smarter than the ascetic who swears that only unchanging God is real and the material world is illusion. Each is only looking at half the picture.

The feeling of 'I', the unifying human conscious experience capable of accessing both inner and outer reality exists somewhere in-between the two. We combine the measurable and the meaningful. Therefore. a more comprehensive way of viewing total reality, emerging with the new paradigm, is to say that…

1/…the physical outer world is provable and non-intuitive;

2/…the spiritual inner world is intuitive and non-provable.

We, as humans, experience both and both are real.

This is why as this book proceeds, I will not only share my experiences with you, but present experiential exercises that allow you to have your own experiences. Do not take my word for it. What is said here will be meaningful to you only as you experience and feel it resonate with everything else you accept as real.

* * *

Chapter 4: Silverman Turns the Corner

David Silverman hardly recognized himself. Wearing slacks and button-down in lieu of jeans and T and straight as a rail, (other than any residue they might find in his urine) he had shifted hats and become one of twenty new recruits in the Pottery Barn catalog sales training class. Much to his surprise, his classmates on the whole were an older, well spoken crowd, and at fifty-seven he was neither the oldest nor the greyest. As introductions were going around he found himself becoming duly impressed by the quality of the people in the room.

There was a young woman getting her master’s degree in sociolology and a lawyer who had just taken her bar exam and was going to answer phones while she bit her nails and waited for the results. There was a scuba diver coming up for air and the owner of a bed & breakfast that had fallen on hard times, assorted teachers, students, retirees, and massage therapists, and one psychic who was slowly returning to the phones from a severe bout with burnout...

“I liked the talking to people on the phone but after a while I couldn’t get into their problems anymore. I began losing interest in the people who were calling in and that’s not good.

“And the business got rough. I was working for several psychic services at once depending on what you want... love life, health tips, pick the daily lottery, whatever. But I couldn’t tell which service it was by the ring.

“So one time this guy calls and I say “What line are you calling for?” and he yells at me, “You’re the psychic, you tell me!,” and hangs up.

No one confessed to wanting to be in catalog sales all their lives. This might be a rocky moment, but it was not a Rocky moment. Several folks did say it was a nice steady job to retire into, and some probably would. What all did agree on was that since they had to do something, this was a positive and gentle something they could live with, at least for the next three months. As he listened to their stories he felt like an intellectual snob. And I thought it was just me. What an ego.

When it was David’s turn he said he was an unemployed philosopher doing this because all the classified ads in the paper under Philosophy were missing. Everybody chuckled, including the instructor, a large man who visually fell somewhere between Santa Claus and Blackbeard.

David had already decided that he was in this to maximize the money, so he signed up for the 10:30pm to 7:00am time slot. That had an additional 15% over base, up to $8.33 an hour. It was a nice incentive, but he would have done it anyway even without the money once he found it was available, fueled by the memory of his long ago summer job running freight elevators on Madison Avenue in New York City.

Third shift was special, quiet, peace, watching, waiting, couples staggering home, drunks staggering somewhere, car sounds careening off concrete towers...

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhh!!!

...tires squealing, whirring steel revved to its limits as the first newspaper truck of the morning flies around the corner on two wheels spewing out tommorow morning’s here and now at his feet. Bags of bagels left by the deli door. Life goes on. Third shift is a nice time to be alive, a nice time to be. For David there was still something romantic about midnight to eight. And yeah, he could do this. He really could.

* * *

Three days later, trained and ready to go, David Silverman was back in front of a computer, only this time in an ergonomically designed chair, at an ergonomically designed work station, his fingers resting on a customized ergonomically designed keyboard. Off to one side at an ergonomically designed reaching distance from what should be proper ergonomic posture sat a telephone keypad with its own LED, and he was connected to the telephone via headset. On his other side vertical slots held copies of the latest catalogues for Pottery Barn and its sister companies as well as blank forms, a list of office telephone numbers, and cheat sheets that explained everything he was supposed to do step by step, just in case he forgot. What else did he need? The clock switched over to 10:30. He signed on and waited.

Over 200 such work stations filled the carpeted, grey walled, second floor open space in a neat and orderly fashion. A few were surrounded by movable partitions. That’s where the supervisors sat. Over 50,000 calls a day were expected during the peak holiday season and the company was gearing up and ready to go. But at the moment only three people animated the surroundings. David, Pamela, a young Philipina who was the overnight supervisor, and ag, a short nervous man whose station was far across the room from David’s. He hadn’t been in David’s training class.

bbbrrriiiiinnnggg…

“Pottery Barn, this is David. How can I help you?”

His very first call, was a man from Juneau, Alaska who purchased gifts to be sent to friends in Texas. His second was a woman in southern California and his third, a lady from Colorado named Silverman. He smiled as he typed her name into the computer. Compared to a lot of the connections that popped up in life between him and the cosmos it wasn’t big time synchronicity, but at least it was fun, what with all the other names out there. I mean what are the odds? It gave him a feeling he was where he was supposed to be.

bbbrrriiiiiinnnggg...

“Pottery Barn, this is David. How can I help you?”

There was a lady from New Hampshire who called at 1:30am his time, 4:30am hers. “You’re up late”, he said by way of small talk and she spilled out her guts about why she had insomnia because she lives in a small town and everyone is shunning her after finding out she is having an affair with a man ten years younger than she is. She wanted to know what he thought about it and placed an order for a bedspread. He told her it was okay with him, he lived in San Francisco where anything goes between concenting adults and she could expect delivery within five to seven working days.

It was nice and quiet, just the way he had hoped it would be on the third shift with the message board registering 000 calls in queue and 0.00 waiting time. During the day, he had been told, there could be as many as 50 to 60 calls lined up waiting for a sales rep to take the order. It was nonstop. And to think they were actually paying him an extra 75¢ and hour, not to mention making it possible for him to find a space in the parking lot.

At 2am additional crew arrived and plugged into the stations around him. The east coast would start calling in soon and the pace would pick up. The idea was never to have a caller hang up because they got tired of waiting.

On break he went into the lunch room, brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and refilled his cup. Free coffee he thought, nice perk. He was forced to take half an hour off for lunch, or rather the company was forced by law to give him a break in the middle of the eight hour shift. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do and he had already told himself that eating a meal at 3:00 in the morning every night for three months would not be a good idea.

He hadn’t brought a book, a situation he planned to correct starting tomorrow night. As a last resort he headed to the product room to look at the items from the catalogue spread around on tables up close and personal, though he felt a slight ambivalence at doing it off the clock.

Sales reps were encouraged to look and to touch, to learn what the company carried so they were better able to answer any questions a customer might ask. “Have fun”, Pamela said when she suggested he do it, so he took the individual letter stocking holders that spell N O E L and moved them around. When he left, P E A C E, J O Y, and L E O N were on display and he wondered if anyone would notice.

There is such a potential for intellectual snobbery within me, he thought as he headed back to his station. Why do I look down on “things” and people who like “things”? Why do I think it is more important to help someone find their way onto the path of conscious awareness than to help someone buy the right gift or set an attractive holiday table? Doesn’t the Dalai Lama say that the purpose of human life is to serve for the benefit of others as much as one can? Why should it matter how it is done?

As usual, the internal dialogue played through. Because it’s an issue of what I can do with all my talents, all my skills, all my gifts, all my abilities, he answered himself. All of me, why not take all of me? I’m not putting down order taking. He could hear himself already excusing the elitist way these thoughts would project onto paper. It takes common sense, concern for others, even disposition, pleasant phone voice, and one week’s training to do this. There are a lot of people out on the street who can’t do this job and I’m sure Pottery Barn turns down the majority of people who apply.

But I know what I’ve been given, I know what I have. It’s not that I’m so special that the world can’t get along without me, it’s just that I’ve heard that what you are born with are God’s gifts to you and what you do with them are your gift to God. I’m just trying to be realistic and use myself to the max. That’s why taking phone orders doesn’t seem so fulfilling, I know I can do more. I know...

bbbrrriiiiiinnnggg...

“Pottery Barn, this is David. How can I help you?”

The sound in his ears and the lights on the keypad intruded on his thoughts as they would for the next three months. He took the order, signed off, and keyed in the transaction code, automatically putting him on line again ready for another incoming call.

bbbrrriiiiiinnnggg...

“Pottery Barn, this is David. How can I help you?”

You want this... you want that... you need this... you need that. How many... what color... yes, I think they would look good together though I have no idea why you are asking me... yes, we can get it to you by next Thursday... yes, I’ll have the driver leave it around the back if you’re not there... yes, it’s all taken care of... yes, it is amazing how easy it is. I just need your credit card number please.

bbbrrriiiiiinnnggg...

“Pottery Barn, this is David. How can I help you?”

I am Santa Claus, Santa Claus wearing a headset. What’s wrong with giving people things that they want in exchange for something they obviously value less than what they’re exchanging it for? Money. Nothing, that’s what. Who am I to place value judgements on what is or isn’t important in someone else’s life? No one, that’s who. I’m not always sure what’s the most important thing in mine. The purpose of human life should be to serve for the benefit of others. Well that’s what I’m doing. Exactly what I’m doing. How can I help you? Where do you want it sent? And the expiration date?

At 7am David ran the coded badge he was wearing on a chain around his neck through the time clock and headed home. Too tired to write the weekly Papagram to Adam, he photocopied an old one and sent it instead.

* * *

God and Guinea Pig

There have always been two major forces operating in my life, a desire to be happy and a fierce skepticism of what could not be proved.

Born on the lower west-side of Manhattan in 1940 into a working-class family of atheist Russian Hungarian Jews, I received no religious training, other than mockery of what was considered to be pure superstition. I could not have been more than six when my grandfather, whose lifelong dream was for a world of "universal understanding and perpetual peace", sat me on his knee and told me with the voice of authority:

"God is the sum total of man's ignorance. We used to think the Sun was God. Then we learned how the Sun works. Now the Sun is not God anymore. Someday we will know how everything works. Then there will be no more need for God."

The family moved out of New York City to suburban New Jersey when I was five. My father was a bookbinder who brought home all the damaged and misprinted books he could for my mother who read anything she could lay her hands on except novels. "There is too much to learn to waste time on fiction," she would say.

I was taught to read before entering kindergarten, no mean feat in the days before Sesame Street. In first grade, while the rest of the class was discovering Dick, Jane, and "Run Spot Run", I was sitting in the back of the room, going over the front page of the previous day's New York Times, circling words I did not know. After two months of this, they promoted me to second grade. But that cut no slack at home. "Think," my mother would exhort me if I was slow to understand the meaning of a word she thought I should know. "Think."

You already know what happened at my eight year old birthday party.

When I was in high school my parents joined the Ethical Culture Society whose humanist philosophy was, "Since you cannot prove there is a God and I cannot prove there is not a God, why waste time talking about God when what we should be doing is improving humankind's lot here on Earth." It resonated.

My college career was not particularly distinguished, a budding math major shriveling in calculus and turning to economics to avoid dying completely. I did not take a philosophy course as an undergraduate, but believing that if you argue against a position you should know it at least as well as those who argue for it, I did take an elective in Religious Studies to fortify my stance in the all night bull sessions with my church-going fraternity brothers, "If I flunk this course do I go to hell?," I asked Reverend Abernathy on the first day of class. I was not always the most tactful in those days.

I reveled in my freedom and made it through the days and nights of books and coeds and pizza and beer far less the scholar than a disciple of Jeremy Bentham, the English thinker who stated that people only do what maximizes their pleasure and minimizes their pain. That, too, resonated.

Looking back to that time from the perspective of now, I can see that the single college experience that would most affect my future being was one that stands tangential to what seemed important at the time. It began as I was walking across campus on a lazy Saturday afternoon in 1960. There was this sign:

$5 - GUINEA PIGS NEEDED FOR
PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT - $5

I followed an arrow through the door, signed a release, and entered a maze of desks and dividers leading to stations where I was questioned in turn by a bevy of graduate students with theses that needed statistics. The last station was in a room where four other students were already waiting. "Ah, at last," they chimed together as I walked in, "Okay, here's the one we need.” "Let's go."

"Everyone take a seat," said a voice coming through a speaker, "we have the right number, we can start." I saw five desk-high panels with red and green lights and buttons underneath and chairs in front, one of which was empty, so I sat down. The desks were separated by partitions and faced a corner of the room where there was a glass enclosure. Inside, a professor wearing a lab coat and holding a clip board, was speaking into a microphone.

"This is a test of hand-eye coordination. I will push a button in here which will simultaneously activate either the red or green light. Everyone's will be the same. As soon as you see a light, push the button under the one that flashed. The flashes will come faster and faster and we will continue as long as no one in the group makes an error. Do you understand?" We all nodded.

I riveted my attention on the panel in front of me. There was a red flash...I hit red. A green flash...I hit green. The flashes came quicker and quicker but nothing I could not control... green, red, red, green, red. Then a buzzer sounded, the flashes stopped, and the professor said it was over. Someone had just missed and pushed red when it had been green.

"Who pushed red?" asked the guy on the end.

"I did," I said. "Mine was red."

"It couldn't have been," he came back. "The professor said they would be the same for everyone, and mine was green. Yours must have been green, too."

"Well it wasn't," I told him.

"Mine was green," said the woman on my other side.

"Good for you," I said. "Mine was red."

"Mine was green," said the woman next to her.

"Me, too", added the fourth student.

"Tough," I said. "I saw red."

The first guy stepped toward me with a direct challenge, "Are you telling me your light was red when all the rest of us saw green? That can't be true. You fucked up, admit it."

I exploded. "How dare you tell me what I saw! Who the hell do you think you are?" Once again I was seeing red.

"You wanna make something of it!" he yelled back, and fists clenched, shouting epithets, we took steps toward each other as the student in the seat between us dove for cover. Just before we came to blows I felt a strong pull on my shoulders pinioning my arms from behind. I struggled to escape, turned, and saw it was the professor out of the glass cage.

"There, there, son, it's okay. You were right it was red. Relax. Calm down. This wasn't a test of hand-eye coordination. It was really a test of how well someone stands up to peer pressure. So take it easy. You did real well. Now take this ticket to the desk at the end of the hall and you'll get your $5."

I was enraged at having been duped but left without further comment, pushing the test and the feelings it had evoked out of my awareness for decades. It was only years later, after the first out-of-body experience and my trip into the Light, that I recalled and recognized the ultimate importance of having validated my own experiential reality.

* * *