I suggest reading the earliest posts first

What is the relationship of the experience of synchronicities?

What is the relationship of the experience of synchronicities to the 'rational'? That question has been answered:

"Accompanying the more profound occurrences of synchronicity (is) a dawning intuition, sometimes described as having the character of a spiritual awakening, that the individual herself or himself not only is embedded in a larger ground of meaning and purpose, but also in some sense (is) a focus of it."
Richard Tarnas Cosmos and Psyche

The above quotation is embedded in 492 pages + 50 pages of endnotes, etc, little bitty print, not many pictures in the book.

"There is another world, but it is 'in' this one." Paul Eluard, Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World"

"Here again the dialectic that runs through the whole development of the mythical-religious consciousness stands out with particular sharpness....It is a fundmantal trait in mythical thinking that where ever it posits a definite relation between two members it transforms this relation into an identity. An attempted synthesis leads here necessarily to a coincidence, an immediate concrescence of the elements that were to be linked. " Ernst Cassirer, page 250, The Philosophy of symbolic Forms, Vol 2.

Concrescence is a term coined by Alfred North Whitehead
to show the process of jointly forming an actual entity that was without form, but about to manifest itself ...


"I saw not with the eye of the body, but the eye of the soul." Goethe; Theodore Reik's Fragment of a Great Confession

In discovering the other world, the hidden world, a very strange kind of conversation can be experienced but it's not the typical 'voice' that speaks in that other world. It's created artificially! It uses whatever is available to the individual, the specific individual.

This quotation is from War In Heaven by Charles Williams.

"When Mr. Batesby had spoken that morning it had seemed as if two streams of things: actual events and his own meditations had flowed gently together; as if not he but Life were solving the problem in the natural process of the world. He reminded himself now that such a simplicity was unlikely; explanations did not lucidly arise from mere accidents and present themselves as all but an ordered whole."
Read only the words in Bold-red. and that's the best example I can give of the process of 'abstraction' from embeddedness. This is an excellent description of synchronization as a life process. One's own meditations and actual events flow together and a new 'voice' speaks through this natural process.

Its an individualizing experience in every day life that has been named various names throughout history. C. G. Jung named it individuation, Emanuel Swedenborg had accurately identifed it as regeneration, a process that includes a life review.
An individuation process is not commonly recognized because its such a unique personalized life experience of one's own body and mind. You may be as surprised as I was to have to learn that the 'irrational' is what can't be scientifically validated because it's unique, ultra personal experiences that happen over a life span and science requires repeatability.
So the irrational is what ever isn't rational because science excludes personal analysis, the process requires repeatability. In fact the irrational is a wholeness of experience in that it includes the rational when the individuation process operates in a life or in lives. An individuation process is not commonly understood yet but I became aware of the process and the pattern without knowing about it myself!
How it creates a 'voice' and a conversation is the most personalizing life experience that can be experienced if it's recognized, because the form of its 'speech' is difficult to be discerned. Order emerges from chaos, literally over a span of time that may be decades in a life. It's speech is created artificially, the 'voice' aspect is created by a process of abstractions from every day life content. The bibliography at the end of a technical non-fictional book is in my opinion the result of that process of abstractions, its basically invisible to the author.
When quantum physics was 'discovered' that was a message that 'said': "The physical world is derived from another world" and: " there are no causes in the physical world, only effects." (Emanuel Swedenborg had already written that fact and other important details about the process of life, regeneration was his name for it, that he believed prepared a person for life after death.) One attribute of its speech is symbolic but literalness is also part of how the' voice' is created by a process literally of 'abstractions' , highlighted by the mind from every day life content, by a special function of mind that creates a 'second under lying context' automatically, with an extra 'sense'. The term 'second underlying context' was my own definition but a local Jungian psycyhiatrist told me it was an excellent term. Swedenborg's term, 'double thought' is appropriate too.

Only last year I saw an old movie (Blade Runner) and the process of 'abstraction' caused me to hear a remark made in it about 'tears lost in rain' with that 'extra meaningful sense' that I've noticed myself in my mind. It has helped me describe the undescribable invisibility of such events that occur, embedded in every day life until the 'extra sense' abstracts and highlights them. The 'jokes' that cause you to laugh most heartily are the simplest example I can give now. Television situation comedies in our time are popular from this mechanism's operations but that's just one of 'its' attributes.

There is a kind of rational logic inherent to the process, not Aristolean, or linear, because 'it' uses personal memories and experiences as the content of the process. But that's a fact that had to be recognized over a span of time when 'it' created in my life a consistent synchronization between inner content that was new to me, certain memories from my past and everything, every thing, outside my body.
The process itself was almost overwhelming for a few years until it was a new kind of 'normal', but not yet invisible. What's new eventually becomes normal but whatever is normal gets to be invisible eventually, its ever presence has made it invisible.

The process as I had to figure out myself, operates 'in' every day events. I believe it is a special sense that unites (synchronizes is the best word to use) the body and brain with what's outside the body, history and Time itself with the flow of what I believe is the 'ongoing endeavor of Time'. It may be a function of the unconsciousness itself to create the process of individuation, from the depths of mind but I'm not sure about that. But let me emphasize that I had to discover all, every 'bit of information' myself and notice how it was created from mechanisms of mind that alter 'thought' and the direction of attention. The most difficult to discover was that there is a kind of 'prompter within'. It created a new relationship with every day life events gradually.'

" The medium is the message." The extension in Time of an idea can be 'like' a signal, in my opinion.

The process of individuation is virtually unknown but I have experienced that the 'transcendental function' is in charge, it's building a future event: The Future. Sometimes long strings of events have to happen, widely spaced in time so that the personal 'meaning and context' can in some situations only be given decades later. I've had several events, separated by even decades happen, then a 'closing event ' completes the string and then an inner display retrieves them and assembles them in a flash of a second as 'insight'. Only then suddenly, it's obvious that part of me in the past somehow 'knew' the future.

I wouldn't abandon 'string theory' which F. David Peat wrote is an 'interactive force'. He did not write about or mention a process of individuation. I will have to describe in detail why I believe Sigmund Freud's 'discovery' of psychoanalysis was his experience of this individuation process and Carl G. Jung's much deeper experience was the result of recognizing the effects of the same pattern.

What ever "it" is that energizes my body in that 'kind' of event, which often happens as an ordinary situation, it's not always 'numinous' (feelable at the moment) or even unusual. It's 'feelable' when a creative 'function' of the unconscious mind that is not unconscious its self., 'highlights' the event or the memory of an event. I know it never sleeps, I've had more than acceptable evidence of that fact. That's where its possible to see evidence of foresight, when I see what happened when I was 'moved' by that function in certain specific events and finally realized I'd been alone when many of them happened.

The depths of mind is where an unsleeping part of me (and probably everyone else) is at work. Nothing materially changes but 'associations and understanding'. Its nearly impossible to detect that there's a vast space between upper regions of mind and the most remote regions of mind that produces content that is thankfully strangely visible. It uses symbols that the individual 'knows' or can recognize.

My main symbol is the moebius band in all it's forms. An impulse caused me to make my first one in 1941 when I was 9 years old. The same impulse caused me to discover its 'secret', it's hidden forms that day after I'd made the band with a 180 degree turn. "Cut around it lengthwise." was a thought and I cut it once lengthwise, surprised at the result. The thought words repeated : "Cut around it lengthwise." so I obeyed again. The result was two bands separated but joined in a knot that didn't look like it could be undone. The two bands were joined but separated. The impulse has caused me to look over my shoulder at just the right moment, in the right location and what it brings to my attention is ALWAYS a surprise, sometimes its a real shock, perfectly timed.

It's connected to a part of 'me' that knows where I am, what's in front of me, where I've been and 'it' knows my most private thought. That part evidently knows the future, it has foresight and 'it' or whatever it's connected to uses a different language than our words. But it's within me, looking through my eyes, and I'm not unusual.

The four world balloon was created from an impulse to do something irrational.

About the image of 4 balloons?

I had an impulse to create my own image to represent (re-present) of the four worlds that William Blake's Tree of Life allegory had brought to my mind. I described what I wanted to a young man in a craft store and he thought it was impossible to do what I had in mind. Yet he did it without too much trouble then he made one for himself.


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Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Amazing Martin Gardner. revised 6-15-2010

This was intended to be a short post because I wanted to write something about Martin Gardner, who has just left us. I didn't know anything about him when I spotted The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix in 1993 and bought it because it had some interesting puzzles on the jacket. As I read the book I experienced a bundle of the most unexplainable  synchronizations between what he wrote as Dr. Matrix in the book and some experiences I'd had. I called him and asked if I could write to him and being the open hearted  man he was he told me he'd like to hear from me.  We exchanged a few letters afterwards but its not like we got to be chums though.

I can't think of the exact words I'd like to  use to describe how I felt about him, but coincidentally I just read them in a book I'm reading: Many Dimensions by Charles Williams. He can write the kind of words I wish I could. Here they are although they are about a character in the book because immediately after reading them a  thought occurred to me that they described the Martin Gardner that offered to communicate with a 'crank'. Until I got a letter from him I didn't know what a 'crank' is!!! And I didn't know about 'numerology' either!!!
 "But Lord Arglay,(Martin Gardner)  at once in contact  and detached, at once faithless and believing, beheld all these things in the light of that fastidiousness and ironical good will which, outside of mystical experience, is the finest and noblest capacity man has developed  in and against the universe

I've never read a more concise description of a person that has learned to live between the 'interaction of opposites'Those words describe how I see Martin Gardner, as I experienced him; he was a poised point of view between opposites writing from a uniquely unsophisticated way of seeing relationships and patterns that others' wouldn't know about unless he made his observations public.   As I mentioned already I chanced to spot The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix and was interested in the puzzles on the cover, then I read the book not realizing Dr. Matrix was a fictional man. I'd never heard of Martin Gardner so I didn't know who I was writing to, and he didn't get mad when he read my letter. He did get a bit perturbed when I mentioned Jung, Swedenborg and synchronicity, just a bit.

It seemed to me that the language of whatever the 'zeitgiest' really is happened to both of us, 'it' used both of us when just by chance I noticed some puzzles on the jacket of The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix and a mild curiosity caused me to buy the book. On the jacket liner Mr. Gardner said that the name of HAL the computer in 2001 Space Odessey is one letter behind IBM in the alphabet. That's quite a coincidence!  He apparently asked Arthur C. Clarke if that was an intentional choice and it was emphatically stated that it was not. They were both skeptics but it seems to me Mr. Gardner hesitated to be totally skeptical about whether we are alone in the universe. If there is a God, we are not alone in the universe. He left that door open.

 An almost unbelievable  bundle of 'coincidences' happened when I read the vignettes  by Dr. Matrix about patterns in pi, 3.1415926535... that caused me to call him, then write a letter, then go back to reading the book, then read another vignette a 'hidden order' in the numbers: 8549176320. I saw my mind operate on those numbers and produce a detail about my life that I wouldn't have recognized.  The events  bundled to produce a single event that could have been 'chance' but probably was not.

 I've been attempting to explain 'synchronicity' the way  F. David Peat somewhat described it, as an 'interactive force'. However he did not identify the 'force' with a process in life, an individuation process that C. G. Jung named 'individuationn'. I had come to believe Jung was obviously influenced by having read Swedenborg,  who used the name 'regeneration' for the same process.  That's my opinion but I wouldn't suggest reading Swedenborg until AFTER reading Robert Monroes' three books, in their order: Journey's out  of Body; Far Journeys; Ultimate Journey.  Ultimate Journey is a real surprise but it prepared me for reading about Swedenborg's description of what he experienced at times,  when he was 'yet in my bed'.

Mr. Gardner was no believer in Jung, Koestler, or Swedenborg as he informed me when he answered my letter to him, all of whom I mentioned in my attempt to describe  to him the synchronization between the different vignettes in his book and events in my past.

I'd had extra ordinary experiences with pi. Not the least of which is that after 2-11-85 , I worked for Boeing in the Fabrication Division in Auburn, Washington and there's a model of the pi symbol in their courtyard.  In 1989 I'd had what I named for lack of a better word, a 'pi quake' that revealed a hidden pattern in the first 10 numbers in pi: 3141592653... . If   14, 1 5, 92, are 'cross summed', the result is:  356 2 653..., the numbers mirror from the center outwards, but that's just a part of what was revealed in a flash when the mindquake  followed, at first glance. Time was different then.  I didn't look for anything when I glanced at the back of Petr Beckmann's History Of Pi and saw 10,000 of 100,265  decimals that had been calculated in 1962.

The History of Pi is a book  I read only because I worked for Boeing and it used to be their 'pride in excellence' award program logo:  PIE. An unexpected mass of information that I realized nobody else would every understand was revealed when I glanced at the first rectangle of decimals in the back of Petr Beckman's History of Pi.

I  had just read the copyright statement, then  paused to wonder why 100,265 decimals had been calculated rather than a nice round number like 100,000. Then I turned the page back and noticed 265 in the first 10 decimals, and then.... a sudden extremely rapid slide show-like shifting of numbers revealed patterns and relationships that I knew immediately could only be recognized by me, with my particular habits,  memories and  especially my experiences in life. The number 651 was everywhere, explicitly and coded, that was nothing I looked for but a habit I'd had since I was 9 years old was obviously what created these relationships, where 14 = 5; 15 = 6. 651 was familiar to me.  That number and  permutations of 256/651 had begun to come to my attention strangely over a span of years  after I bought a 1979 Datsun 210 that was already tabbed as ETW 651. At first glance ETW generated Extra Terrestrial Woman, to my amusement, as spontaneously as BYOB produces 'bring your own bottle'. It seemed likely Mr. Gardner's mind worked naturally that way, he had 'mindquakes' all the time.

 The kind of 'quake' that I experienced just happens, I can't make them happen and  they are always unexpected but what makes them 'strange' is that they generate information that shakes up my world view, exposing something that was hidden. They were perhaps normal every day events to Mr. Gardner because I had become aware that "what you get used to gets to be normal". To me they were not frequent events.

It began when I read the vignette on page 59 about a 'curious reflection in pi' then  called him, then read further in the book. On page 72-73 Dr. Matrix tells about a 'woman named Betty who had a compulsion to put things in order, who was the first person to guess what the hidden order was in these 10  numbers: 8549176320'. That was a bit of surprise to me because I'd just written about a hidden order in 10 numbers: 3141592653... , my  name is Betty and at the time I was driven by a need to put things in order, but  I'm not talking about housekeeping. I was trying to figure things out, and they were not material things.

When I glanced at 8549176320 I couldn't guess what the hidden order was but as I looked at the numbers, I 'saw' 917 slip directly below 854 and I recognized 8547198, my telephone number. Read 854 then down to 719 then up to 8, we'd had the number for a decade by then. 1-2-3  sum to 6, they are the numbers in my birth day/year (1-02-32) and obviously  0 was my point of origin.

Thus 8549176320 was information about me, very specifically. I didn't look for or expect to see that. The kind of 'seeing' that happened to expose my phone number is depicted in Mercury Rising, in a scene where an autistic boy looks at a puzzle, the numbers shift around then he goes to the phone ,  dials a number then says: "You are a Stranger." A hidden message had been revealed, he recognized  the message and made a phone call that wasn't supposed to ever be made. The movie gave me an  idea because until computers wre so much a part of every day life I had no prior sense of what a 'slide show' was. The scened in the movie was  very similar to what happened to me. Habits I've had since I was 9 years old made the slide show happen. That kind of mental activity, visible and unwilled may be an explanation for how Mr. Gardner 'saw' as Dr. Matrix.

II couldn't see the 'hidden order' in the 10 numbers so  had to look in the answers at the back of the book. I didn't see the hidden order in 8549176320. I couldn't see  that the numbers were arranged alphabetically the way they are spelled. eight, five, four, nine, one, seven, three,two, zero. But I did 'see' that after my phone number, 854 7198, the number 6 is the sum of the 1,2,3, the numbers in my birthdate, 32 is the year I was born and 0 was my point of origin.  I had observed my hand write a poem about zero as a point of origin one day when I was at work. The 'interactive force' had certain been involved in how that poem was written but thats' another topic, observing one's body from a 'once removed' perspective.

When I read the above paragraph in Williams book, I was sitting by my window, alternately watching the torrents of rain and reading the book. Charles Williams can create scenes with words that carry as much information as a mathematical formula. It's just a different kind of information.  Martin Gardner was very different, but he produced an 'effect' in his own style, that's obvious. So many other people felt something from reading  his books but I'm no mathematician. When  I told a co-worker about the sequence of events, he suggested I read The Ambidextrous Universe. also by Martin Gardner and that was a different kind of coincidence too. Reading words must in some way affect the mind, and even 'feed' the mind. freeing up some kind of information that's 'bound up' until it meets its exact match.

Some information can't be conveyed directly, I'm not the first or only one to find out that body experiences are where education about reality happens, but reading some of Martin Gardner's books triggered many such events. The Ambidextrous Universe, The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix were great works, written by a  man that could write about how opposites are necessary to point towards that which is invisible, but which creates them.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Thinking the unthinkable, amended 6-4-2010

"The human consciousness in addition to the  function of  the exploring of the outside world is burdened with the additional task of discovering the sequestered inner world." Norman O.  Brown, Life Against Death, pp 171

The purpose of this post is to describe an Event that happened about 22 years ago after I closed a book I'd just finished reading: The Lord of Thought, it's an old book by Emmett and Dougall. I don't remember where I found it.  I was reading almost constantly, books that caught my attention in various ways at garage sales, swap meets, and only occasionally (thank heavens) by dropping in front of me, open to a certain page.

The authors purpose was to isolate the differences between the life of Jesus and ordinary men.  "What was unique about that life?", was the question the authors tried to answer.

After reading the last page, closing the book  an 'event' happened that produced in my mind ideas and information that was to  me, unthinkable because the ideas were all  ultimate heresy. They had very little to do with religion as its generally put before us. The result of the 'event' overall was that religion is about whether we are alone in the universe. I had never thought such a thought.  I felt a kind of terror at how unthinkable the ideas were;  how unspeakable they were, literally. The authors had not  written any of the ideas that bloomed in my mind, yet they all seemed obviously true, but unspeakable for many reasons, one of which was literally that when this 'event' happened I was unable to articulate or write about  content in my thought as I do now. I discovered space in the mind by having to reach the point where I could relate 'now' to what was really in my thought, when it emerged. That kind of distance is not possible to see, it has to be experienced. I was in pure experience when I had the impulse to read The Lord of Thought.  

I had the sense I didn't 'think' that information, or create those ideas; they were given to me, they flooded into my thought world.

The influx (that's Swedenborg's term but it fits) of ideas began with the authors primary idea of identifying what was unique but they had not mentioned any of the literally shocking ideas that came into my mind. The 'net effects' of that life were not primary to the authors but to me they were. His life had several unique facts that I"d not thought about, only one of which was that it had inserted  a universal 'zero' in Time on this planet.  He had known the future many times. But he also knew the past. And only that one life distinctly related to a 'kingdom of heaven which is within you'.

The one very unique difference in his life was that he and no other religious personality that I knew about had made a distinct reference to a 'father in heaven' and a 'heaven which is within 'you'.  You is a plural and singular word.

His last words "It is accomplished." were aligned with many facts that are obvious now but in 1988 were not. The planet is now zero in space, a kind of 'Cartesian point' in space from which we were beginning to explore space. The International Space Station was a reality, which seemed strangely linked to that point when "It is accomplished." was spoken;  it referenced a future event that was now possible.  The idea that when Stonehenge was  new, there was a purpose at work, a plan was initiated and a goal was established for an event to happen far ahead in Time. It was somewhat possible for almost anyone, even me to realize by then that Time is variable.

We had begun to experience in life not in words written in a book,  the apparently infinite space between one second and the next in computer speeds; contact with extra terrestrials was linked to 'the heaven within you'  in my mind and that alone was terrifying and bizarrely simplistic.

 There were several unspeakable ideas in that influx, primarily associating that   life  with many other 'net effects'.  But the 'kingdom of heaven is within you'. was the most distinct and literal.

When I saw Field of Dreams almost a decade later the idea occurred to me that the way the corn field seemed to talk in the film could have been how the snake in the garden of Eden  had seemed to talk and I'd had many experiences involving 'projection' in the phase where it is exteriorized perception. I had experienced that  there's a faculty of mind that 'projects' inner content outwards to the material world  but it's a phase on a continuum where there are points of change. It's a kind of self self observation that is somewhat distinct. That mechanism had become one I knew about from experiences in my life, and from people I knew. That was an additional level of heresy, to believe that the mechanism of projection was depicted in the Bible in many other stories. "Let him that hath an ear, listen to what the spirit sayeth unto the churches." The spirit talks to the churches, all of them.

I was unable to believe "I" thought that event; it was a happening to me.  It was not the only kind of  'event' I was trying to understand at that point. The authors had not written anything about the ideas that poured into my mind so suddenly, as though timed to happen just when I closed the book.

It's not easy to describe how many times my 'thought' has been altered by changes that 'color' what I hear, what I see outside my body  and even how my  own thought was 'turned around' and experienced as being 'said' to me, not created by me but I'll have to try to do that. Time and different levels in the mind don't announce themselves, certain subtle relationships have to be noticed. I had experienced a very few events where it seemed Time was slowed down  and a couple where Time was extremely rapid in comparison to 'normal'. That was difficult to notice but it became obvious that a symptom I'd read about, 'racing thought' doesn't really race.  That particular content can't be retrieved in memory after it moves through the mind. That was an unexpected fact  that  some perhaps most thought content was so far from speech.

Swedenborg's remarks about 'thought nearest to speech' and 'thought that falls into speech' were clues when I read them. But I was driven by a kind of motor that focused my attention on trying to capture and hold one word of certain thought in my mind long enough to write it down. I learned about distance in my mind from that task. It was a task that carried it's own motor that drove me to do that but some toddlers I've known seem to have been driven in the same way.

I realized that certain thought is galaxies away from words that can be spoken when I felt driven to 'capture and remember' one word of certain thought  for at least  a year. There is also content that  can be written more easily, spontaneously, without intentions from me. That kind of event has happened more frequently.

I used to be 'thought' less, and I mean literally my head was basically 'empty' until a distinct point in time that scrolled throughTime,  as late in 1981, at Christmas. That's about when I became 'thought' full.  I don't dream the kind of dreams many people seem to have, but one night I had a dream unlike any dream I'd ever had and after the dream, thought about that dream scrolled relentlessly through my mind. I knew nothing about 'interpretation of dreams' at the time and for several years afterwards. What happened in the dream had seemed real, yet I knew I was dreaming and I even 'thought' within the dream while it happened. I remembered the dream and my mind was different after the dream. 

I noticed a change like that, obviously. I couldn't ignore it  because the stream of thought about one person in the dream never stopped and I couldn't sleep at night.  Anyone would notice a change  that prevented going to sleep at night, not waking up rested, refreshed from the darkness or where ever we go when we really sleep.

At first I was curious and wondered how my mind seemed to produce an endless stream of thought about only one aspect of the dream: one person in the dream.

My point is that I had not paid much attention to what happened in my mind until that change re-directed my attention so drastically from what was outside my body, to what was in my head.   I would not have suspected there was inner territory and that the 'flora and fauna' as well as mechanisms of mind that are visible, 'live' there in the inscape. I had no words for what I saw or how the change altered what was outside my body. It was about that point in time as I found out later, that 'right/left' brain essays began to appear in magazines and books. I believed I had brain damage from a blow on the head in an accident.

After that initiatory change  others kinds of thought seeped into my mind and I wondered at times if I 'thought' my own thought. I couldn't catch 'me', thinking this thought which I was listening to now in a different way, seeing in a different way that aroused an intense curiosity eventually. I chanced to read a book by William Glasser, Stations of the Mind that introduced me to the idea that there's a part of me that 'pre-views' reality and seeks to preserve my comfortable state, that was a truly new idea to me then. The Fourth Way which introduced me to the fact there are different "I"s within but reading that kind of information is not enough to understand it. I was watching my mind without knowing it after the dream. When I read The Lord of Thought I had begun to see certain events happened as though they were timed perfectly to happen, but I was not doing the planning.

 One new kind of thought addressed me the way another person would do, plural, second person  thought suggestions is the best definition I can find. "We should..."; "You could..."; Let's ...."; "We could....";  That lkind of 'thought' was so distinctly new to me that I can honestly write that my own thought was now an object, to be looked at, understood the way a foxglove that was unlike any that I'd ever seen before that  I found growing in my pasture in 1989 inspired me to think about it.

The word 'spirituality' did not seem an appropriate word to use when thoughts about my own thought and objects in the outer world began to coalesce, to blend and create a new understanding, parallel to my 'normal' understanding.

I don't have a better word yet, but I'm thinking about that.