Chapter 3: Silverman Bites the Bullet

David Silverman’s guts, lines of small black glyphs on brittle yellowing paper, were spread out on the desk in front of him. The hand written words so familiar to his eyes, emerging deep from the back of the bedroom closet and a long gone era, rolled past his conscious awareness competing for attention with the ever present knowledge of his headlong rush towards the opposing realities of his wants and his needs.

He glanced at an entry from the first page of a 1968 journal open on the desk.

I am 28 years old, white, male, American, agnostic, married, the father of a one-month old son. I own a home in Dutchess County, New York, and am earning $14,100 per year.

Different, same, same, same, different, same, different, different, different, he thought. Adam was now twenty-nine and Alison, who hadn’t even been a glimmer when those lines had been written, was twenty-six and about to be married. And of course, he now rented a flat in San Francisco and wasn’t earning squat. $14,100 had been decent money then.

It was uncanny how he could remember writing those words, neatly printing them in pen on the blank lined paper, consciously creating a time machine to be sent out into the future. What had he been thinking? Why in hell had he thought it necessary to snapshot a point in space so he could go back and replay it somewhere down the road? Where did he think he’d be when he read them? Had he anticipated patting himself on the back, “Way to go, David. What a trip it’s been, baby.” Older... Wiser...? Yeah, right!

Had he ever earned more than $14,000 a year since 1968, he asked himself? He knew the answer and cringed. The time machine had worked even if he hadn’t... and didn’t... and wasn’t.

He hit save and headed to the kitchen for some more coffee.

Back at the computer another realization hit home. If Shelly were really going to throw him out of the house as she threatened then he would need a job not for Shelly, not for the kids, not to buy cat food for Issac, but for himself. She could do it too, he realized, she was that pissed. And he wouldn’t fight her. It wouldn’t be fair.

The realization was intense and mind altering. All the times she had said “stop trying to get a job for me, get a job for yourself”, he had missed the point. Now, for the first time he could feel a change in intensity. It is a hell of a lot different feeling to want a job in order to keep someone you love happy than to want a job to keep your ass off the streets.

The Sunday paper lay on the coffee table. He picked it up and leafed through the want ads... a large display ad several pages in caught his eye…

Need Extra Holiday Cash?
We have: seasonal employment taking customer orders on incoming lines.
We offer: paid training , flexible hours, shift bonuses, merchandise discount.
If you like people and have a pleasant telephone manner...
Call for an appointment.

... and brought him back again as he started to turn the page. Why go further. What the hell was he looking for if not this? He wasn’t seeking a career out there in the Sunday want-ads any more. It was too late for that. You don’t start a career at fifty-five. He was simply looking for money... pure money... money to pay the bills... money to get his wife off his back... money to save his marriage... money to save his ass.

If you like people and have a pleasant telephone manner...

Yeah, he could do that.

And he would, too! He had to do something, that was certain. He owed it to Shelly and it beat pumping gas. Tomorrow, he would get up early, call, and go downtown to fill out an application. He would make it happen... he would make it manifest. It was starting to happen. He could feel the polarity shift within him and he decided to write about it. That part of his life could happen, too. No need to make the shift too fast.

He continued to leaf through his pile of old writings and found an article called Doing Your Thing Over Thirty, which he had written in 1973. Thirty had seemed so old back then.

Everybody wants to enjoy life as much as possible and does what they can to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. Only each person's values are different and that is why two people in the same situation may choose to do two different things.

The world is full of great people, brave people, martyrs, who have elected physical and mental pain and suffering rather than taking the easy way out. But when you really stop to think about it, each one consciously made the decision that the physical pain which would be inflicted was less than the spiritual pain that would result from denying their heritage, birthright, or code of ethics.

Even the sado-masochist whose body is covered with whip marks, rope burns, and bites isn't choosing pain over pleasure. For to this person, caught in a web which most of us cannot understand, the sensual pleasure of sexual torture is far greater than the accompanying physical pain.

No one, I repeat, NO ONE ever chooses pain over pleasure!

David smiled at the all caps and exclamation point of his earlier writing, as well as the reference to S & M... but style and content aside, he still felt the same about pleasure and pain. The issue at hand, however, was earning a living within that framework and he picked up another article he had written in 1975 called The First Step to Inner Peace.

Inner peace. That elusive feeling that spells the difference between a happy life and mere existence. Why is it so hard to come by?

Five years ago as I sat behind my desk in the plush offices of a major computer manufacturer, I felt my world about to go splat! Sure, I was earning over $14,000 a year with job security, medical payment plan, stock options, and a prestige position where people said "Good morning" to me before I said it to them. For some reason, however, things weren't as smooth as they should have been...

For years parents, teachers, friends, employers had tried to mold me to their ideas as to how a young man coming of age should behave. For years I had tried to fit in, to play the corporate game, to earn the biggest salary, to owe the largest mortgage. But it never quite worked, because it wasn't me. Their thing wasn't my thing. And so I never really found happiness, true happiness based on inner peace, until I took the giant step and followed my own leanings and desires.

Long before that day when I said, "I quit", turned on my heel and walked out of the boss' office, I knew it had to happen. But, like all good integrated members of society I couldn't help feeling guilty. Was I the only one who wasn't ecstatic over my nice safe corporate job? I began asking around, my friends, my co-workers, and even chance acquaintances, I simply had to know.

"What would you do with your time if you were independently wealthy", I asked, hoping by that phrasing to free the responder from worrying about whether what he wanted to do was economically practical. The responses were amazing!

"I'd like to crossbreed cucumbers and develop the perfect pickle", said a computer programmer.

A neighbor of mine, an accountant, answered, "I'd be a bird watcher in the summer and a ski patrolman in the winter".

"An actress", mused the head of the secretarial pool.

Out of several hundred people questioned only two said they would do the exact same thing they were doing at the time. Both were college professors doing independent research. While other people worked at something they didn't like in order to earn money so they could play on weekends, these two were playing all along.

As he entered material from his old article into the computer, David shuddered, remembering an interview he had seen on TV several weeks before. It was Take Your Daughter To Work Day and the morning newsman was interviewing a young girl on the way to her mother's office.

"And what do you want to do when you grow up", he had asked.

"I want to be a secretary during the week so I can do what I want on weekends", she had answered, and David had gotten sick. Thirteen years old and already buying into the system. Some things never change, he thought, people's gullibility and his views. What a schmuk he was thinking that his views were somehow better. Maybe he was simply lazy. It’s not like he hadn’t heard that thrown at him over the years. He went back to inputting his article.

"Rangers in our national parks earn a living", I told the bird watcher, "their children are raised in the midst of natural beauty, and in the right parks you can do a lot of skiing in the wintertime."

"Sell that $80,000 house of yours and buy a small farm", I suggested to the pickle man.

"Take a three month leave of absence", I advised the actress, "and try your hand at summer stock."

"What about you?" they asked me in return. "What would you do if you were independently wealthy?"

"I'd be a renaissance man", I replied. "I'd experience and learn about as many things as I could and then write about them."

"Okay", they responded, going back to work, "You go first".

And so he had.

Silverman sat back and looked at what he had just transferred from paper to hard drive. It still amazed him every time he thought about it. What cheek he had back then to think he knew what it was all about. What gall, what ego, and yet...

Everything he had done in those days, his beliefs, his drives, all the roads he had followed, all the passions that had driven him, all had taken place without any overt knowledge. The defining actions in his life that had led him to where he was now, for good or for bad, for poor or for poorer, had come about long before that life altering day, before he understood how the process actually worked. That had still been light years away, so to speak.

He dived down into the box of old writings again looking for one special creation. It had been over twenty-five years since he had designed the Job Satisfaction Flow Chart- [D&G10-9] for his novel, David and Goliath, Round Two, the story of a young man’s escape, his escape, from corporate America. Ah, he thought, if he’d only known then what he knew now... he still would have made the break.

[He also made a note to scan the Flow Chart into his computer so he could insert it here into the blog.]

The chart seemed dated, designed for an era when you stayed with a company from your first day out of school to your first day of retirement. Growth was still the order of that day and corporate loyalty still the norm. Now neither held true. Downsizing was the norm and numerous listings on a resume indicated rounded experience rather than the inability to hold a job.

It was not as easy to find a job as it had been back in the seventies, but that only magnified the importance of finding what you wanted to do. Helping that to happen were the numerous authors and job counselors who were now echoing David’s earlier words, preaching to the masses what he had shouted into a vaccuum. How many times he had been too far on the leading edge.

Emitting a long loud sigh, the result of too many hours in front of the computer, he saved what he had written and called Shelly at work to ask when she’d be home. He was planning to make eggplant parmegana and if she were really hungry and needed to eat right away he wanted to have time to prepare. She was cool but civil.

He said, "this is not the night for miscommunication. Dinner at 6:30, right?" She said right and he said "Bye, Moo" and she said "Bye". He was aware that she had omitted "Moo," the first word they had ever said to each other and still their code word for "I love you," and he was aware that she was aware. There still was a lot of tension between them.

* * *

Dear Shelly,

I was centering myself earlier today and trying to feel exactly where the two parts of my world can best come together. I know they do... they have to... they were designed that way. It’s just that I am responsable for making the connection and it is a long slow docking procedure that is not yet over... especially when viewed from the vantage of day to day problems and day to day needs.

Well maybe this will help speed up the process. I have just taken a job answering telephones and taking catalog orders for Pottery Barn during the Christmas rush. They’ve got a place across town over by Pier 39. I’ve been there twice, filling out an application and taking a test, and I actually passed. In fact, I got the call today, they want me, and tomorrow is the first day of class.

I know it’s only temporary and only pays $7.25 an hour. But it’s a start. At least something will be coming in and if I can earn even $3000 this holiday season it will be more than I’ve earned over the past five years combined.

I love you very much. Think of it as pumping gas.

...Moo

She pinioned him with her eyes, “Is this your way of telling me you’ve got a job or is it some vision you got while you were out centering yourself full of pot? Don’t play games with me. Just go out and bring in the money. And I don’t appreciate the smell of smoke.” She turned on her heel and marched out of the room.

He sighed and went back to writing about the incident for his book. Another good idea up in smoke.

* * *

The Silver Rule

Many years ago, more than I actually care to count, I was blessed with the perfect tenth-grade geometry teacher. I don’t think I realized it at the time but looking back from here she was the quintessential model of what God would want a geometry teacher to be.

For starters she looked the part, a strong angular woman in her fifties with silver hair and steel rimmed glasses. She stood straight and tall, always perfectly groomed in tweed skirts and starched high collar blouses. And even her name was perfect. Miss Rule. Miss Mary Rule.

In class she was stern and precise, just what you’d expect. But after school when she was alone correcting papers and I’d come in to ask her about something she’d taught that day, we’d sit facing each other across the corner of her desk and she would smile.

We talked about theorems and proofs and what I wanted to do with my life, and oh, the places she took my active and curious mind were wondrous. She opened me up to whole new ways of thinking and being. I loved her class and am grateful to this day to have been her student.

Like the day in class when she presented a proof contradicting the Pythagorean Theorem. You know the one, that the squares of the two sides of a right triangle are equal to the square of the hypotenuse, a2 + b2 = c2, probably the best known theorem in all geometry.

“I’m going to show you how Pythagoras was wrong," she said in a very stern voice. Rising from her desk she walked to the blackboard and picked up the chalk. “Pay attention.”

First she drew a right triangle on the board, labeling the corners A, B, and C, the sides a and b, and the hypotenuse c. Then she marked the midpoints of the sides, D and E, and drew perpendiculars from those points to where they met on the hypotenuse, a point she labeled F. She spoke and wrote on the board at the same time.

There was now a square, B,D,F,E, inscribed within the original triangle, flanked by two smaller triangles, ADF and FEC. “AB equals AD plus FE. BC equals DF plus EC. So AB plus BC equals AD plus DF plus FE plus EC," she said. "Are you with me?”

She paused, turned towards us and looked around the room. The room was silent and I leaned forward just a bit from my third row seat to be a little closer to the action.

She then bisected lines AD, DF, FE, and EC, and drew new perpendiculars to the hypotenuse within the smaller triangles ADF and FEC similar to the ones she had previously done. "This distance, too," she said, following the step pattern that had been created on the blackboard, "is also equal to AB plus BC. Are you still with me?” I sat there mesmerized. Something was happening here that didn’t feel right. I just didn’t know what it was.

Again she inscribed a square within each of the newly formed small triangles, dividing every line in two. She was facing the board as she spoke, drawing more and more triangles on the black surface, triangles that obviously kept getting ever smaller.

"We can keep doing this,” she said, pausing between phrases to give her time to draw a new set of bisected lines and ever smaller triangles on the board, “the lines getting ever smaller... ever closer together... narrower than the width of the chalk… eventually… becoming impossible to draw...”.

She turned and rubbed the chalk dust off her hands. "Finally, they become infinitely small, becoming at that point, for all practical purposes, equal to c, the hypotenuse.” She looked around the room for an objection, but there was none. “Therefore, a + b = c, not a2 + b2 = c2. So Pythagoras was obviously wrong," She stated this last with a triumphant smile at our dumbfounded expressions and put down the chalk with a flourish.

My mind was racing. No! This couldn’t be! Logic had become an enemy. Something was wrong. Something had to be wrong. She had spent all semester beating Pythagoras into our heads. She couldn’t be refuting all of that now, just like that! Could she?

It looked like the lines were equal but just because you couldn’t see something didn’t mean it wasn’t there! Right? All those little bisected lines couldn’t just have disappeared? Could they? No. No.

Yes!!! Suddenly there it was, in my mind, clear as could be.

"Miss Rule, Miss Rule," my hand was waving wildly even though I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. “Maybe you can't draw all those little steps because the chalk is too thick. But they’re still there. You just can’t see them.” My mind was spinning. “And, and… there are so many of them, even if they are so small, they’d still add up to the length of the sides, AB + BC. They’re always there. So a2 + b2 = c2 still works. You see?” My chest was pounding. I’d contradicted my favorite teacher in front of the whole class. I was going to get it now for sure.

Her stern face melted into a smile, "Of course. Very good. That's the whole point. As you approach infinity, the laws of logic go out the window. Don’t be fooled by trusting only what you can see and measure. Anyway, this was just for fun. Let’s get back to some real work.”

That afternoon, on the way home from school, I zig-zagged across the empty lot at the corner.

Somehow, as a youth I knew it intuitively. There are limits to what we can see with the external eye. And not seeing something does not mean it isn’t there. Within ourselves, as within the depths of a geometry class blackboard, infinitesimal steps reach out in a meaningful, non-measurable direction towards an intuitive reality we know to be true, but cannot measure in material terms.

* * *

Games of Consciousness - The Light In The Astrodome

You are a highly trained, technically aware, international operative representing government and commercial interests on the leading edge of the study of consciousness and the human mind. Your assignment: find out how consciousness works. Tracking down a hot lead late one night in the laboratory of a competitor, you are attacked from behind, knocked unconscious…

POW!

...and come to lying on your back in complete darkness, unable to see anything, with no idea of where you are and no memory of how you got there. You shake out the cobwebs and with the determination of a true scientist, set out to discover the nature of your environment.

Using the senses that work, feeling the ground, calling out and listening for echoes, sniffing the air for telltale odors, and so on, you come to the conclusion that you are inside a very large building that arches high above your head. Images of the Astrodome come to your mind and you stare straight upward with dilated pupils in an attempt to catch any glimmer of light as you process the information you have and wonder what to do next.

Suddenly a powerful and brilliant light floods the darkness from above and you are momentarily blinded by the contrast from the absolute blackness you have been experiencing.

You reflexively close your eyes and turn away. But the light has made it possible for you to see and as your eyes adjust you note that the assessment of your surroundings is confirmed. You are, indeed, inside a large, completely enclosed, dome shaped building which is now illuminated by a single source of light, too strong to look at directly, located at the apex of the building far above your head.

Looking up to the top of the dome, to the source of the light, all you see are rays and light and energy so bright and brilliant that you have to avert your eyes just to keep from being blinded. Fascinating how the light is illuminating everything in the building but itself.

Lying there on the ground, unable to look directly at the light, there is no way you can answer any questions about it with any degree of certainty; how it works, where its source of energy comes from, who if anyone is in charge. Without further facts, whatever you come up with is merely speculation and your academic training and scientific rigor will not permit you to make unsupported claims.

In fact, there is nothing about the light you know for sure, except, of course, the one thing you experienced personally and first hand. It had been dark. Now it is light. The light had been off. Now it is on. Whatever else you may not know, THAT MUCH YOU KNOW! Right?
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(answer before reading further)
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Well, not quite...

You can certainly say as a result of your direct experience that you had experienced darkness and now you are experiencing light. And with the English penchant for nominalizing process, you could even say 'it' had been dark and now 'it' is light, whatever ‘it’ is.

However you cannot say with absolute confidence that a light which had been off is now on. Although a reasonable explanation, it is only supposition since there is at least one other scenario that could have occurred and produced the same existential results.

What if a lens shaped aperture had suddenly opened up in the ceiling above your head revealing a brilliant and powerful light source, already on, located just above the roof? The opening of the lens would have flooded the building with light from this already illuminated source and if the light were larger than the opening and positioned close enough to the roof, the pattern of diffusion of light rays within the building would be the same as that produced by a light the size of the lens positioned just below a roof without an opening.

Lying there on the floor below, wouldn't your experience be the same in either case, a sudden change from darkness to light? And since you are unable to look directly at the light would there be any possible way for you to tell which of the two processes had actually taken place and changed your world?

What matters here is not even which process is the 'real' one, the one lighting up your otherwise dark surroundings. What does matter is the realization that once it is clear that there are two equally valid and equally logical possibilities that yield the exact same sensory experience, it becomes impossible for the rational and logical mind, (i.e. the scientific mind, your mind) to hold onto any one explanation as being the only possible one.

Let us apply this logic to the issue of consciousness. Science has clearly established the relationship between mind and brain. The more evolved the brain, the more evolved the mind. Human brains are developed beyond those of dogs which in turn are developed beyond those of frogs which are developed beyond those of slugs and so on down the line, with the perceptual and cognitive capacities and capabilities of each level mapping a clear direct relationship with the development of the brain. This is observable fact.

However, what has been presumed to be a logical conclusion within the scientific community, that as the brain evolves and develops it creates the attributes of consciousness we call mind, turns out to be pure supposition. There is another explanation of the brain/mind relationship that is just as valid and just as possible as the causal explanation of modern science. And this explanation leads to completely different conclusions about the nature of consciousness.

What if the brain, through its measurable development and evolution, rather than creating an internal light of consciousness out of dark nothingness, was opening us up to an awareness of a light of consciousness that already exists external to us?

What if the evolution and development of the brain did not turn on an ever increasing internal light of cognition and perception within but rather operated as a lens which opened us up ever wider and ever more clearly to an external consciousness that already exists in totality? Is it possible? Why not?

Why not, indeed! Back when we were inside the building, looking up at the light, we could not tell whether it was coming from a source under the roof or whether it was coming through a hole from a source above the roof. In an exact parallel, inside our body looking at the source of our own consciousness, there is absolutely no way of knowing whether it is self-contained within us or flooding us through an aperture from an external source. Think about it. From within, there is no possible way we can tell the difference. And if we cannot tell for sure about our own consciousness, there is certainly no way we can claim to know about anyone else's.

All the scientific studies ever done that demonstrate the relationship between brain and mind are still valid. The observable features still hold, the more evolved the brain, the greater the capacity of the mind. Only now the brain is viewed not as a mechanism whose development, like the operating of a rheostat, turns on a light and makes it ever brighter; it becomes a mechanism whose development, like the operating of a camera lens, widens and allows ever greater access to an already existing brightness.

What matters here is not even which process is the 'real' one, the one lighting up your otherwise dark surroundings. What does matter is the realization that once it is clear that there are two equally valid and equally logical possibilities that yield the exact same sensory experience, it becomes impossible for the rational and logical mind, (i.e. the scientific mind, your mind) to hold onto any one explanation as being the only possible one.

Yet surprisingly, only one of these two equally possible explanations of what we actually experience has dominated western scientific thinking for the past several hundred years. This shortsighted supposition has led us to view humans as having the right to rape nature and dominate other species because 'we have consciousness and you don't!'. It sounds silly when it is said that way, but that is exactly what has happened.

Yet aren't we missing something here? Something so obvious that we keep overlooking it? After all, this suggests a major paradigm shift that would reshape all of western thought if it were discovered to be so. Isn't that a pretty big step?

Well, yes it is, but it's not as if such a shift has never happened before. There was a time when everyone was sure Earth was flat and then suddenly people started sailing home from places where they should have fallen off.

And we were sure the sun circled Earth, that we were in the center of things. We just had to look up, for goodness sake, and we could see it was true with our own eyes! But one small change in consciousness such that our mind sees the sun holding steady while Earth rotates, and though everything still looks the same, our understanding shifts making possible the comprehension of an even greater reality.

We have made quantum leaps of awareness before that moved humanity out of the physical center of what was happening to a place on the periphery. Back then the church was in the power position, claiming the ability to verify for everyone what was true or not. Church fathers kept a lid on new ideas that went against what they held as sacred because they had a vested interest in preserving the status quo. From today's scientific perspective, we can look back and know that reality seen through a lens of theology clearly biases how we perceive what we see.

However the eye of science, while freeing us from the distorting lens of theology, has nontheless colored our subconscious reality in the exact same way with a distorting lens of its own. Everything must be measurable. And just as those trapped in a theological mind set couldn't conceive of there being another way of viewing reality than theirs, so it is with us of the scientific mind. We don't even recognize that our view is skewed.

Remember what you just experienced. Like the light in the Astrodome, there is no way to tell for certain whether our own consciousness is being generated from within our brains or coming in through an 'opening' from outside. Once it is in our heads, it is too late to find out where it came from.

Thus, it behooves us humans to focus, for a while at least, on the other equally valid alternative to the nature of consciousness just to see if it would make any difference in our understanding of who we are and the way we interact with life, each other, and the world around us. After all, anything less would be unscientific.

* * *

Chapter 2: Silverman Hits The Wall

The afternoon breeze coming in off the ocean swirled gently through The Convent’s lush courtyard, careening off white cala lily, yellow iris, pink azalea, purple bougenvilla, and foot long black blooms of a thirty foot Bird of Paradise that hugged one white stucco wall. Then, having added a mixture of soft floral aromas to it’s salt sea base, it shinnied over the red tile roof to continue its trip downtown. David Silverman, seated in a third floor window overlooking the gardens, fountain, walkways, and graceful iron gate that often framed the faces of wandering tourists, saw none of its gentle and welcoming aura. Staring straight ahead at the blank screen before him, all he could hear were spasms of uncontrolled laughter coming from inside his head...

“Ha... Ha... Hoo... Hoo... Hee... Hee... Check out Silverman and what he’s going through this time. Ho... Ho... Ho... Hoo... Hoo... What a panic. And if you think it’s fun from out there, you should see it from in here. Talk about convoluted. Yuk. Yuk.”

An unbroken string of economic failures projected themselves on the blank screen behind his eyes and they all led to blanker walls where the future was supposed to be. Automaton-like, his fingers moved and confessed his sins and weaknesses to the rest of the world.

He had been a good writer once, had sold short stories and poetry and how-to’s and all the rest of the freelance repertoire to some of the best magazines in the country. But Collier’s and Life and Look weren’t around anymore. And humor. He used to be good at humor. It’s just that nothing was funny anymore. At least not to Silverman.

Author? Right there in front of him, hiding in the bowels of his computer were at least half a dozen books lined up just waiting to be placed on the front rack of bookstores, right next to the check out counter. But the agents didn’t see it that way. Was it all the publisher’s fault in not being willing to take a chance, as he wanted to believe, or was it because he just wasn’t in tune with what people were interested in reading about?

He remembered having this same thought a number of years earlier, reading about the book at the top of the New York Times’ best seller list. It was an exposé by a couple of baseball wives on what life married to a sports’ star is “really” like. He had cringed at the time, both from what he viewed as the banal level of median human intelligence on one hand and how much of a snob he was for thinking so on the other. He cringed again at that memory and the realization that nothing had changed. He still wanted to write about what he wanted to write about and nobody else seemed to care.

Book editor? Why not? Hadn’t one of the books he’d edited been nominated for a Pulitzer? Sure, and he’d gladly do it again if someone would hire him out of the blue, but that had already happened once this life and you never step in the same pile of shit twice.

As for commercial editing gigs on magazines, he’d done that, too, for a fancy New York slick. But it wasn’t enough just to be a good editor anymore, to help a writer organize ideas into a coherent, cogent work. These days it required specialized computer knowledge of systems and graphics and web pages and internets and a whole bunch of technology that kept changing so fast that it wasn’t enough to be an expert in writing, you needed to be an expert in computers. Staying on the leading edge even of editing was something for the kids, the young ‘uns, not for him.

“Go back to teaching economics. You did that before, you can do it again. You enjoyed that.”

Shelly’s encouragement was well meaning but equally unattainable. It had been ten years since he had taught economics and the flyers on the bulletin boards were not looking to hire instructors rapidly approaching retirement age. A fresh out of Ivy league youngster just itching to read freshman papers in an introductory course on the history of Western thought was the more likely scenario and he didn’t fit the bill. By following his inner visions and interests, he had studied himself into a corner and, for all intents and purposes, was valueless to the academic world.

“Ah yes, Silverman. And what have you been doing over the past few years?”

“Well sir, I’ve been studying philosophy, spirituality, and Eastern mysticism, since I truly believe it has much more connection to the root of reality and happiness than economics and business. However, I do need a job.”

With so many teachers out of work he would simply get passed over by candidates with more current curriculum vitae and more of an interest in the subject. Scratch that off the list.

So what else had he done in the past that he couldn’t fall back on?

City planner? Zoning officer? That was a lifetime ago, fresh out of college with his degree in economics and looking to avoid a job in sales. While other graduates in his department had received multiple job offers from big companies, he had scrambled around in the public sector, knocking on doors, sending out resumes. He had finally landed a position with a small town planning office, then joined the state department of development, and a private land use consultant after that. But what did it matter anyway. It was just an additional skill so old on the resume as to be meaningless.

A great sigh escaped his chest and filled the room with frustration and shaking his head to clear it, he reached for the coffee and took a gulp... the warmth of the outside of the cup entering his fingers as he drank of the warmth within. A rush come over him as he realized he was experiencing the writing urge again, the creative urge, and it felt so good. It didn’t bring in the income dammit. Not yet. Bt this in truth, was what he loved doing, what he had always loved doing, the yellowed manuscripts surrounding him attested to that.

Depressing as his thoughts were, he could sit like this for hours, letting those thoughts inside his head well up and come out through his fingers onto the screen in front of him. The only question was, did he have something to say, something worth while that others were interested in reading. He sighed a deep resigned sigh. Wasn’t there someone, anyone, who was also experiencing what it was that he was experiencing?

The ‘here and now’ closed in on him again. How useless he was. He couldn’t even go out and resume the well meaning career that he loved as a home health aide, even though he was state certified to do so. That was a more recent useless skill he had gotten into because of his blind friend Don, suffering from diabetic kidney failure and only sixty years old when he died. Once a week he’d go over to Don’s, taking him to dialysis, reading to him from the Bible, as well as from his own manuscripts. Don had put things into perspective...

“Ya know, David... if ya wanna write somethin’ that’s gonna take care of people’s souls, then ya really oughta learn somethin’ about takin’ care of people’s bodies.”

...and he had enrolled in a home health care course, earning minimum wage, class time included. He had been the only man and the only white skin in a group of sixteen. After certification he had worked as an aide for almost two years with stroke victims, alzheimer’s, parkinson’s, cancer, quadreplegics, feeding, bathing, changing diapers for $5.25 an hour. People will pay a mechanic $75 an hour to take care of their car, he often thought, but how little they are willing to pay someone to take care of mom or dad. But even that needed skill was beyond him now.

His back had gone out while lifting a quad and putting him onto the toilet. David had felt the twinge as soon as it happened but he couldn’t let go of his charge. Then, fifteen minutes later he had to take him off the toilet and put him back in the motorized chair. One hundred eighty pounds of dead weight. Living person, dead weight. There was no choice.

That was on Thursday. On Saturday David had fallen flat on his face in the garden with the lightening bolt pain in his back, unable to move his legs. His fifth lumbar had gone out in the line of duty said the doctors and after scores of tests and retests and forms and more forms he was getting lifetime chiropractic care from the State in exchange. Big deal. But he couldn’t lift stuff any more and that’s why he couldn’t do home care much as he loved it.

The string of blemished pearls went on and on, doubling back on itself mobius fashion, removing every possibility of meaningful desirable work from consideration. A voice rang out in his head. It was his own and he screamed at what he heard.

“I can always pump gas.”

It was the line he used with Shelly to claim that he wasn’t completely useless, that when push came to shove he really could bring in an income. Had it really come down to this? Was that all that was left?

What a fakeout. Looking in from the outside his reality really didn’t look so bad. It was spent at his computer in a San Francisco penthouse, overlooking a lush courtyard, a pot of freshly brewed coffee within easy reach, living the scene he had seen in his vision when he quit the corporate world twenty-two years ago to "become a writer".

And it’s not as if they were living hand to mouth, at least not at the moment. When they had sold the house in upstate New York to come here so he could go back to school they had paid off all their debts, zeroed out the credit cards, erased all the minuses, eliminated the red from the balance sheet. They had a little money in the bank, some small investments, a financial cushion. Was it forever type security? No. Is there ever any forever security? No, not at all, at least not in the material world.

Yet there was no escaping the seething discurrent of diametrically opposed energies between him and Shelly. Over and over, year after year, it had raised its ugly head, a cancer that ever threatened to rip them apart - present pleasure vs long term security. The grasshopper and the ant tearing at each other’s throats again. Not that they disagreed on how nice it would be to have both. That part was easy. But stuck in a life that hadn’t dealt them an unlimited supply of readily available resources, they weren't always in agreement on how to allocate the ones they had. That and the fact that his contribution to the family coffers had been next to nil, a fact she never let him forget.

It was so frustrating. Was he to blame that people paid her good money to sit in front of a computer terminal and play with numbers while they paid him bupkus to sit in front of his and play with words? Wasn't that what she wanted to do? No, not at all. He knew the answer even before he formed the question. Shelly wanted to play, too. To feel the freedom he was experiencing at that moment. He couldn't stop till she was where he was, only then could they be themselves.

He continued staring at the computer, suspended somewhere between inside and outside, inside where the thoughts and visions lived in his head and outside, where words representing those thoughts and visions kept appearing on the computer screen in front of him. Trapped between two worlds that were not very well in sync, he was diligently searching for an escape hatch in a life that was tearing him apart and closing in on him at the same time. Uncanny, he thought, how far he was being stretched in opposite directions by two sets of forces, both of which he knew to be real.

Of course he could always make things right in his next life, but that was another story and Silverman was not about to justify his fuck ups in this one by falling back on reincarnation, even if he did believe in it.

“It takes thousands of lives to reach perfection”, ochre robed gurus had told him as he sat on the floor cross legged in front of them. As if that made things easier. As if that were a palliative that could soothe his ego for blowing this life to smithereens.

“It’s all right, David. Everything is as it should be because, by my astrological calculations, you still have seven hundred some odd lives left to go before you reach enlightenment. Everything is just fine whether you screw things up this life or not because you are supposed to come back and do it over and over and over until you get it right. Get it? Got it? Good.”

Bullshit. Silverman wasn’t buying. What if this were the life where it was supposed to happen and this coming back again and again just an excuse for accepting weakness and coddling imperfection? What if?

His inhale was strong and he could feel resolve coming in with the breath. Why not, why not at all? Why shouldn’t he strive to live the perfect life, to be perfect, the perfect Silverman, the perfect reflection of God, the best he could be? He was no raw beginner. He’d been given too many gifts this lifetime, too many talents, too many incredible spiritual experiences, the kind you read about in the lives of saints for this to be his first time out of the chute. He’d been through this before, many many times. Hadn’t he learned anything? Enough already with clinging on just below the summit of the mountain by his fingertips.

Why shouldn’t he visualize himself as an instrument of the Divine, an active center of the dynamic world-spirit, a creative artist, an architect of new, higher values? Hadn’t his life been given him with all its impulses and urges, thoughts and emotions, talents and handicaps as the raw material for him to fashion into a thing of beauty and joy, by whatever means he could? What if this were the life where he was supposed to touch the absolute absolutely? What if it were and what if he blew it? What then, eh?

How cruel was God anyway? If he weren’t supposed to reach it why had he been allowed to see it? And if he could see it why shouldn’t he be able to reach it? And if he could reach it why was he so far away from it with his marriage, his finances, his health, his sanity all going straight to hell in a hand basket and every other stupid metaphor he could think of? Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Huh? Why? Why the fuck why?

The resonance of the front door swinging shut reached David’s awareness. He muttered a quiet heartfelt prayer and paused in his typing.

"You've been smoking again. We've got to talk." Shelly had returned earlier than expected and stood in the doorway, hands on hips. He looked at her and smiled. She had that look on her face that told him he had that look on his face.

"We were supposed to be together today and you're stoned."

"I'm not stoned. I’m high."

"Enough with the clever wordplay. You smoked. Don't deny it."

"I smoked. I won't deny it. But there is a difference between being high and being stoned, you know."

"I couldn’t care less. I just want to know why you smoked when we were supposed to be together today and you know how I hate you when you’re stoned?"

“I’m not stoned.”

“Whatever.” He could hear the level of frustration rising in her voice. “Why did you smoke?”

He took a deep breath and tried to come across as logical and rational sounding as possible. "You said you had things to do till three and we'd be together then. I knew I'd be back down by the time you got back home."

"Is that it? Anytime Rochelle walks out of the house you grab a puff because you can't do it when she's around?" David sighed as Shelly shifted into overdrive.

"You're stoned everyday aren't you? Every morning when I leave for work you smoke and stay high all day, don't you? I can tell when we talk on the phone. Well I've had it. You say you planned on being separate from me till three. Well, fine. I'm making myself something to eat and I'll eat alone.”

She stomped out of the room, pausing in the doorway to hurl the final missile. "You're going to have to choose between me or pot. I'm tired of being married to an unemployed addict. Either stop smoking and get a job or move out." The sound of her voice stayed in the room long after she left.

Dammit. He hadn't wanted this. All he had wanted to do was keep working on the book. He didn't get into these writing moods all that often and he felt like taking advantage of it while he had the chance. Well, it looked like he would have the chance.

* * *

Editor’s Prologue – cont’d

Just a few more notes before we really disappear into the void.

The three of us have never met face to face, our partnership being a strange and oft confusing collaboration. It’s a zen sort of thing conducted entirely through The Roving ‘I’ with rules still not quite clear and constantly changing. As a new post is added by one of us, we each take a shot at integrating ourselves into it until there are no more additions, deletions, or modifications. Then the original author either leaves it alone or not, whatever feels right. And, of course, we always reserve the right to add individual comments. Yes, don’t forget to check out the comments that accompany each posting. They are sort of like the John Madden commentary in a football broadcast.

Sometimes, it’s hard to remember who’s added what to whom. And now with your participation in the creation process giving meaning to everything that follows, reality will be even more complex. Synergy run amok so to speak. But that’s the fun of it, eh? It just is what it is and what it grows into. However it is also quite clear that energy is changing mode right before our eyes and under our fingers, that more is being produced than would be the case on our own, and that, obvious cliches aside, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. (I personally, for example, would have never used such a chestnut, but under the groundrules what can I do?)

As the only one in the group with experience as a professional editor, I bear ultimate responsibility for the continuity and coherence, though not the content, of what you are now reading, difficult as that may prove and unenlightened as I may be as to whether I am actually doing anything of value or not. Dr. Andrej says not to worry, one day the light will shine. I trust him. ag says nothing and that’s good because I don’t trust him.

Finally, though it may not be immediately obvious, we actually share a genuine affection and mutual respect for each other’s life experiences, visions, personal baggage, and intelligence, if not the content of that intelligence, doubts concerning moral and ethical standards and the ability to tie one’s own shoes. (This last sentence, by the way, is typical of one that has had many editorial hits from all quarters, though I’m sure it's hardly necessary to tell you that. I won’t warn you again.) Enjoy!

Games Of Consciousness - Introduction

I want to share my experiments with you... my experiments in consciousness. In one sense this should be no more difficult than the task faced by any researcher who has studied a subject and wishes to offer the objective results of that study to those fellow scientists who are interested. All I need do is to explain my methods, allow you to duplicate them in your laboratory, and let you come to your own conclusions.

What makes consciousness studies challenging to replicate, however, is the fact that each individual has a one-of-a-kind laboratory made of specific combinations of flesh and decimals, memories and DNA, images and experiences. Similar to the subtle, accoustic relationship that exists between sound waves and the interior of concert halls, each individual consciousness laboratory produces a slightly different experience for each researcher. Every set of unique combinations of who we are, what we are, and where we are coming from produces a unique framing for experiencing consciousness.

"How can you define consciousness?", asked a noted professor at a recent symposium on the subject. "You cannot", he answered himself, "it is too subjective".

As a result, no matter how hard I try to convey “exactly” and “precisely” what I want to share with you, your experience even if you follow my trail exactly, cannot help but be somewhat different from mine. As long as we look out through different sets of eyes, hear with different sets of ears, and experience reality as seemingly different individuals we can never make our absolute experiences absolutely the same.

Yet as fellow human beings we do share a lot in common and as we enter the subjective experience, past the point where individual social, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual differences matter in the experiment, we will approach a shared common ground. It's like Groucho Marx describing the "secret word" many years ago on his show You Bet Your Life, when he said, "It's something we do every day".

The harder part is that we shall be using an imperfect means in attempting to communicate this experience... words. Words evoke different meanings for each experimenter, affecting how we each think... what we think... and what values we place on the subject we’re thinking about. As Lao Tsu said, “The Tao that can be described is not the Tao.” Even more cogent are the words of Khana, a Buddhist monk who lived between the 6th and 10th centuries CE who noted that, "The path is blocked by vowels and consonants." We will be using vowels and consonents.

As a result, I cannot know for certain that a word means the same for me, the person writing it, as it does for you, the person reading it. In fact, I can be pretty sure it doesn’t. And since the attempt here is to have us share the ‘I’ experience, that poses a problem. We each are our own laboratory and yours and mine cannot resonate exactly the same however much we open them up for inspection through words. If you don’t believe this, try a very simple experiment.

* * *

The Say What You Mean Game

Draw something very simple such as a star, a dog, or a house. Don’t show anyone what you drew but ask several of your friends or coworkers to draw a picture of the same object.

Even after discounting artistic ability, what are the chances that all the drawings will be the same? For ‘star’ someone may draw a pentagram, another an asterisk, another a shooting star, another a sheriff’s badge. There will be big dogs and little dogs of all shapes and breeds, while houses can range from single family homes to apartment buildings, exteriors to floor plans. Someone once even drew a hole in a tree to represent a bird’s house.

It’s not that you communicated what you wanted poorly, or that the people you asked weren’t paying attention. It’s just that words are not the reality, they only represent the reality, and as such they represent different things to different people. So if that’s the result you get dealing with simple things, nouns and objects we all take for granted, what do you think the result will be trying to get agreement on emotionally charged words like, mother, or love, or freedom, or happiness? Imagine then what we can expect to find dealing with words representing non-concrete, non-material processes like consciousess.

Another problem with words is that they must be delivered sequentially and cannot convey the sudden, complete, ‘aha’ experience that occurs in work in consciousness. You cannot replicate a cognitive experience by merely observing the subject from the outside or intellectualizing a sequence of words describing someone else’s subjective experience. Following the trail of words can lead to that point of embarcation, but you must see the light for yourself to subjectively know it to be real. You must ‘grok’ it. [grok – from Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger In A Strange Land, a Martian word meaning to understand something so well that it is fully absorbed into oneself.]

This is why I have created these consciousness games. Playing them offers a much better chance of achieving the desired breakthrough into the new consciousness than merely reading about it. Grok what I have to say yourself.

So with this apparent paradox in mind, the common experience of unique experiencing, shared via the imperfect medium of words, I open the doors of my lab, Conshus1, for your inspection. Come on in, enjoy your visit, and feel free to take anything back to your own lab for testing. Just please clean up after yourself.

* * *

Chapter 1: Silverman Smokes a Joint

David Silverman, surprisingly depressed for this early in the day, glanced in the rear view mirror as the '84 Honda crossed Market Street, but Shelly had already disappeared in the crowd in front of Nordstrom’s. She had things to do all morning. He did not.

Breathing the sigh of a man set free, he turned left on Ellis, removed his seat belt and slowly, casually, with the grace of one who has done it many times before, reached for the wallet in his hip pocket and removed the joint neatly stashed inside. It was in the little flap just behind the picture of Ganesha. “Om gam Ganapataye namaha”, he intoned somewhat reverently to the elephant headed Hindu deity known for his power to remove the obstacles in life. “Do your thing”, he thought silently.

Directly ahead a white delivery van was double parked with its taillights blinking and its rear gate open. The driver was nowhere in sight. Peering over his shoulder, David moved smoothly into the middle lane, then slowed and stopped at the light at Larkin, reaching into the denim jacket's left inside pocket and pulling out a box of matches as he did. They were from Melody’s, one of the night spots in The City where Adam had a regular gig. Adam was a jazz musician and a good one, enough others had said so that he knew it wasn’t just his own bias.

David had been his first teacher, sitting at the old upright piano in the family room, pounding out basic blues chords in the bass as four year old Adam sat on the bench to his right.

”You do the top part”, David had urged. “Play a note”.

“What note should I play?” Adam had asked.

“Any note you want”, David had answered. “If it sounds good play it again. If it doesn’t, try another one.” That was twenty-five years ago. Adam had progressed beyond what David could teach him a long time ago. Adam also didn’t smoke pot. Adam didn’t smoke anything. Never had. Never would. Adam didn’t like David’s smoking. Neither did Shelly.

Checking out the drivers on either side and pleased that none was taking notice of him, Silverman raised a cupped hand and placed the crinkled paper cylinder between his lips. He pulled ahead as the light turned green and raising his left thigh till he could steer with it, let go of the wheel, struck the match, lit the joint, and inhaled. He felt the pleasant feeling of smoke in his lungs as he shook out the flame and took the wheel again in his hands.

Traffic was light and he was in no hurry, no need to play New York cabbie today and draw attention to himself. He kept to the speed limit and took another drag. Funny how he was taking the risk of being caught smoking pot in public just to avoid the risk of being caught smoking pot in private. He was engulfed in a thousand kinds of guilt, he loved her so much.

He and Shelly had met at college back in New Jersey, he a first year grad student at Rutgers, she a sophomore at Douglass. He didn’t smoke pot in those days. He probably wouldn’t have made it through college if he had.

"What do you want to be," Shelly had asked on their first date, “...when you grow up” being unspoken but implied. They had been talking across a table over ice cream sodas at Mal’s.

"I want to be happy," he had answered. This time his mother was not there and nobody slapped him. Shelly just smiled like she knew what he meant. "And you," he asked her in return.

"I want to live happily ever after", she responded without skipping a beat and he knew right away he had found his soulmate. Afterwards, they had driven down to Riverside Park and danced on the benches and tables till curfew, pretending to be Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Then they had gone back to her dorm and he had played piano in the lounge and sung to her. “When I faaaall in love...... it will beeee foreverrrr.......”. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her. He hadn’t needed to, he felt so great just being with her.

He proposed two days later on their second date, sitting on the stone steps in front of his off campus apartment on Bayard Street. She had said they couldn’t get together on Saturday because she needed to be in the lottery for next year’s dorm rooms. “You won’t need a dorm room next year”, he had told her, “we’ll be married by then.”

“Hey”, he had added, almost as an after thought, "I may not be the best husband in the world, but life with me will never be dull". She had laughed at the time and told him he was crazy, but they were married in six months.

“I should have believed you, you warned me, you really did. Why didn’t I listen to you?” she cried the last time they had a fight. Was it only last night? It had been a while since they had danced on tables.

He was driving through the projects of the Western Addition now. He knew that if any of the men in undershirts sitting on the upturned boxes playing cards actually looked in his passing car and saw him smoking pot, their only reaction would be "Hit me, man". Yet he remained circumspect. God, he was paranoid.

The pot was beginning to have an effect. That indescribable something was happening that took him over, that took him off to another place. He couldn’t deny that he was different stoned than not stoned. After all, changing the way he felt was why he smoked in the first place. Why else would he take that yutz into his lungs if it didn't have some positive effect on his being, on how he experienced reality. So yes, he had to admit, she was right. He did relate differently to Shelly when he was high than when he was straight.

But it's not like he turned into a Mr. Hyde or anything. He always stayed within control, didn't become loud, or violent, or nasty, or mean. He was still a loving husband, possibly even more so than usual because he was out of his intellect and into his feelings. That’s why he gave such good massages when he was stoned. Shelly liked massages. What woman doesn’t?

“But that’s not the point”, she had sighed. “You are missing the point completely. I've seen it over the years. When you are in a smoking stage nothing gets accomplished. When you are in a non-smoking stage it does.” The sigh became a sob. “When you smoke everything is just fine and dandy. The universe is just as it should be. You don’t earn any money because you don’t think you need to. I love you, dammit, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But I do not intend to work until I drop. I'm tired, exhausted, burned-out, spent. I want to stay home and do whatever it is I want to do. Just like you do. I don't even know what it is I want to do anymore. You go out and bring in the money. You promised!!!"

That had been a low blow. Sure he had promised with all the fervor of his twenty-three year old heart to provide the income that would allow them both to play games together for the rest of their life. He had meant it, too. And he had tried, Lord knows he had tried, in fact he was still trying. It's just that nothing had changed in his job karma over the past thirty-two years and he was rapidly hurtling head first into economic oblivion. Ironic, wasn't it. He didn’t care about money. Shelly’s freedom and happiness were all he really wanted. But he needed money for that. His freedom and happiness depended on it.

He turned left onto Masonic and headed across The Panhandle. Was it wrong for him to still believe that he could get a job that paid him for doing what he wanted to do? Was it wrong for him to believe that he could still be one of the fortunate ones who gets to live his dreams? How can you settle for less than you want when you know it can still be achieved. And you know it can still be achieved because you can still vision it happening! It’s like seeing the top of the mountain and aiming for something else. And that made no sense to him. Why would you aim for anything other than what it is that makes you happy?

"The world is full of people who would like to get paid for doing what they want to do", a mentor had told him once. The guy liked David and was the Executive Director of a foundation where David had tried to get a job, but there were no openings. At least that’s what he had been told. A lot of people who liked David hadn’t given him jobs, and what the hell did that mean?

A vision of Cheech and Chong formed inside his head holding this same conversation several years prior.

"Hey man, this is fuckin' great. I'd sure like to get paid for gettin' stoned."

"Yeah, man, fuckin' great."

He took another drag. He also took a reality check of the world around him and the improbability of the ‘here and now' boggled his mind. Here he was, David Silverman, afraid to smoke in front of his wife, driving through the intersection of San Francisco's Haight and Ashbury Streets, the power spot that had given its name to the New Age hippie movement of the sixties, with the remnants of a joint dangling from his lips right out in the open. That was a fact. That was reality.

Another reality was that if anybody on the sidewalk or in a passing car saw a roach in his lips, nobody would care. Even the occasional policeman wouldn't care. What would they do? Run out in the street to stop his car and arrest him for smoking pot in the heart of Haight/Ashbury? Yeah... right. He felt suddenly relaxed and safe. He had definitely gone over.

Up ahead in the crosswalk, a young woman wearing army boots, torn granny skirt, gold camisole, and bright green hair crossed in front of him in earnest conversation with a man of indeterminate age dressed in maroon medieval garb complete with a black velvet Tower of London hat. “That, too, is reality”, thought David, “though highly improbable.”

"You cannot come to the Himalayas to escape your duties", the immortal Babaji had told Lahiri Mahasaya in response to his pleas, after opening the disciple’s mind to the Absolute. "Your role is to be a householder yogi, to show that it is possible to live a spiritual life while still participating in the world." The first time David had seen Lahiri's picture in Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi he had felt an immediate connection to this gentle looking man seated in lotus position, eyes turned inward. Only then did he read about him, about his job and his wife and his children and the enlightenment experience in his mid-thirties and how he had wanted to run to the mountains but knew it was impossible. This is the way it had happened to David, too and why he thought of Lahiri Mahasaya as his guru even though Sri Lahiri had died half a century before David was even born. “What I did in India in the last century you do in America in this one” the tiny voice inside had chanted. Lahiri's picture was in his wallet, right behind Ganesha. Lahiri had probably never smoked ganja.

He suddenly realized his mind had wandered off inside into a world far from the streets on which he was driving. He refocused on the world around him and continued to drive slowly up Haight, taking in the street musicians, Vietnam vets sitting in doorways, college kids on break, homeless women pushing shopping carts, black leather silver chained punks huddling on the corners. This was not the sixties of flower children but the new millennium of whatever you wanted to be. Inside David's head he could hear the Sesame Street song he and Adam used to sing together, "Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood... in your neighborhood... in your neigh... bor... hood...".

One of them was a stoned fifty-five year old writer driving an '84 Honda, with plans to enjoy himself for the next six hours. He took another drag but the joint had gone out.

* * *

Editor's Prologue

This is a work in progress, aimed as far as we can figure towards four distinct and differing ends. Ours, which are, in no particular order...

…a chance to finally bring in a decent income so Shelly can quit working and once and for all get off my back...

…a way to add value and meaning to a life that has focused solely on personal gratification or maybe just have some fun...

…a seminal work that can lead humanity into a new millennium of peace, understanding, and personal self enlightenment and fulfillment.

…and yours.

Whether these goals are truly compatable is yet to be determined. We think they are, or at least can be, or we wouldn’t be doing this. However, this is where you come in. Without your presence these words are just meaningless wavy squiggles on a computer screen. So rest assured your intellectual, emotional, and psychic participation in this project is critical to the success of ours. Hopefully ours will prove similarly useful to you and whatever your ends. May the benefits be mutual.

ag brought us together. He originally placed an ad on Craigslist looking for an editor to give feedback on his writing. I responded hoping for a little income and he contacted me drawn by the obvious connection in our names. That was followed some months later by his answering Andrej’ ad on the same site looking for marketing know-how for his work. We began emailing back and forth discussing our projects; a novel entitled Manifest Destiny; a group of essays called Gut Feel; and a how-to manual with the working title Pragmatic Integralism: Shifting the Consciousness Paradigm.

When it came out that each of these writing projects was designed to fill what we had to admit were major gaps in our lives, well, that’s what led to the painful admission that since working alone hadn’t worked, perhaps we could only achieve as a unit what we each desired most as individuals. Hence, this unusual collaboration of varied style, content, and purpose, fueled by a trifurcated, occasionally hostile jealousy that persons so different and antithetical to our individual selves should not only be necessary to our own success, but have already achieved the goals each of us so desperately desires. It is safe to say that if we felt we could go it alone we would.

But enough prologue. In the words of the three of us…

"Poof! We’re off and running."

"Om gam Ganepataye namaha."

"Whatever."

Guess who said which?

Ritual

“As you get up in the morning, before starting the day’s activities, sit down for a while quietly and in a relaxed mood. Then concentrate upon your true self as an instrument of the Divine. Or, as an active center of the dynamic world-spirit. Or, in case you have inwardly revolted against all religion and philosophy, you may concentrate upon yourself as a creative artist. You are an architect of new, higher values. Your life has been given to you - with all its impulses and urges, thoughts and emotions, talents and handicaps - as the raw material to be fashioned into a thing of beauty and joy, by whatever creative ability you can summon.”

- Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri
Philosophy of Meditation

The Meaning Of Life

At my eighth birthday party Aunt Clare asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I want to be happy,” I answered.

My mother was walking past at that moment. She stopped long enough to cuff me along side the head. “You can’t be happy,” she said. “You have to be something.”

Forty-seven years later I realize that may have been the defining moment of my life.