Subject: Re: book project
   Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 00:47:48 -0700
  From: mcpherso (John McPherson)
    To: mcpherso, tazz4@ix.netcom.com, e7750010@tsai.es, Frank@gerryts.demon.co.uk,
       Tice@writeme.com, jheflin@mail.portup.com, Kuene@cts.com, RickAshby@aol.com,
       Swcgluck@aol.com, straveca@erols.com, GeoNelson@aol.com, mjoyner@botree.com,
       mcole@napanet.net, anakin@dur.mindspring.com, sunni-snake@utah-inter.net,
       win@thebestweb.com


Win wrote:
There is not, to my best knowledge, an established body of
literature doing what we are aiming to do. [...]
Well--it's not quite that dire. Remember that famous episode in Rudyard
Kipling's Kim where the guru smashed a vase and tried to hypnotize Kim
into seeing the vase magically come back together? [...]
I noticed the same theme go by many years later in Robert
Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy.
I started reading AE Van Vogt's novels
[...]


        This reminds me ... Do y'all remember _The Book of
        Merlyn_ by T.H. White (author of _The Once and Future
        King_)?  In that book, Arthur takes two (shamanic) trips
        that are about as psychegenic as I've seen in literature:
        he first "becomes" an ant and experiences life as an ant
        in the totalitarian ant hill, as if he really were there.
        In the second, he "becomes" a wild goose and lives life
        and experiences the freedom of pacifist-anarchism and
        almost chooses not to "come back".  These episodes are
        highly visual in nature, and he learns some important
        things ... and there is even discussion about his 
        experiences afterwards.  What really got me the most,
        though, was the initial preparation phase, where the
        now old Arthur gets a full-blown brain-invigoration-
        treatment ...

        "Imagine a rusty bolt on the garden door, which has been
        set wrong, or the door has sagged on its hinges since it
        was put on, and for years that bolt has never been shot
        efficiently [...] Imagine then that the old bolt is
        unscrewed, rubbed with emery paper, bathed in parafin,
        polished with fine sand, generously oiled, and reset by
        a skilled workman with such nicety that it bolts and
        unbolts with the pressure of a finger - with the pressure
        of a feather - almost so that you could blow it open or
        shut. Can you imagine the feelings of the bolt? [...]
        It would look forward to being bolted, yearning for the
        rapture of its sweet, successful motion. For happiness
        is only the bye-product of function [...] man must seek
        to be like the working bolt; like the unimpeded run of
        electricity; like the convalescent whose eyes, long
        thwarted in their sockets by headache and fever, so that
        it was a grievous pain to move them, now flash from side
        to side with the ease of clean fishes in clear water."

        "'Good heavens!' [Arthur] exclaimed, jumping to his feet.
        In leaving the chair he did not take his weight upon his
        wrists, like an old man, but upon the palms and phalanges.
        'Look at the dog's hollow eyes! The candles are reflected
        from the back, not from the front, as if it were from the       
        bottom of a cup. Why have I never noticed this before?
        And look here: there is a hole in Bathsheba's bath, which
        needs darning. What is this entry in the book? [Let him
        be hanged.] Who has betrayed us into hanging people?
        Nobody deserves to be hanged. [...] What an extraordinary
        thing a tent is! Half of it is trying to push it up, and
        the other half is trying to pull it down. Ex nihilo res fit.
        And look at those chessmen! Check-mate indeed! Nay, we will
        try the ploy again...'"

        It occurs to me that this book should be added to the 
        growing list of relevant literature ...

        John McPherson