Synchronistic events are not 'visionary' experiences.

The truth is sometimes literally 'funny'.

From my own experience I know they are every day events, that are 'like' particles in the processes of individuation, 'bits of information' in the context of F. David Peat's idea of an 'interactive force'.

The first  'coincidental' event that happened to me didn't produce a sense of awe, wonder, or curiosity. Let me describe it: I went to a friends house for coffee one spring morning. She was unusually happy because it was her birthday and her husband had given her not one birthday card but two.  I read both cards and  made appropriate remarks about what a thoughtful man her husband was. I had noticed that he seemed attentive and helpful and perhaps I felt envy, just a tad of envy, nothing else.

When I left I went to a pick up some pictures I'd left to be developed from a roll of film I'd found in our van when I cleaned it. The roll of film was under a seat and I had no idea what pictures were on it or how long the film had been laying there. When I riffled through them I realized they were from the last trip  my husband and I had taken in the fall, several months ago.
 One image made me feel 'funny'. It was a picture of myself wearing a bathing suit, a pink sweater over it, running through the  silvery sunset tinged surf, waving my hand at my  husband who was taking the picture. Then I recognized that this picture was virtually identical to one of the cards my friend's husband had given her! It had a woman, wearing a swimsuit topped by a pink sweater, waving as she ran through silvery sunset tinged surf.
I didn't think about the timing for very long except that  it did seem unusual that just on that day I picked up the old roll of film,  she had a card that was identical  not just basically but in such specific detail. I thought about showing the card to her, but decided not to mention it. It was just an 'event', nothing personal and the word 'coincidence' did not occur to me.
I forgot that event  until another similar event happened, then another, then others happened more frequently, not always similar in content except that the timing seemed to be unlikely, even impossible to happen once in a lifetime.
 How could it happen that I am driving, we are in heavy traffic and suddenly I  hear myself blurt out that I don't feel like myself any more, that I'm going to change my name to Ju-anna. And I've not thought about that before; the words spontaneously came out of my mouth, unwilled by me!  Suddenly a white van passes from the passenger side to in front of me, dangerously close then veers into the left lane and speeds away but I saw the first vanity plate  I've noticed it was letters:  DJWANNA. The letters decoded themselves spontanteously into Do you want to? Then a 'second sight' (literally)  revealed that they repeated what I'd just said my  name was: 'Ju-anna'! Different letters, same sound! "Did you see THAT?" I yelled and tried to speed up to make sure I'd seen what it seemed I'd seen but traffic made that a dangerous thing to do so I didn't think more about it. That was in 1983 probably.


Then over a span of a few years (1982-1989) similar  and a variety of other 'kinds' of unusual  events happened. Some were all in my mind, a kind of content that I'd never had in the past, or so I believed at the time.  Occasionally I noticed thoughts that occurred that seemed faint, they were not quite words somehow, but were a suggestion of words, like a fragrance identifies an object before its visible. I watched two such events  advance to becoming real words in my mind! Then later that content met its exact match on the jacket of a book, An Imagined World, by June Goodfield!!!! I felt 'funny' when I read about Anna Brito, who 'caught a  sudden glimmer of possibility; she observed a pattern that had hitherto been unnoticed or ignored and she began to think of explanations for what she'd seen. Her superiors weren't very impressed, but she persisted, thanks not only to tenacity but to inexperience--a mind uncluttered by pre-conceptions...." There was a faint sense of more words in my thought, added to words on the jacket but they were in the book!  That variety of inner content began to accumulate, it became a stream that gradually paralleled the understanding of my 'normal' experience, built up from every day situations at times, but not always. I could see the accretion of the new understanding and how it was built as I lived, from events in my life in a perception that was new to me, unfamiliar and it made me feel 'funny' very nearly constantly by 1984 and afterwards until about 1995. I'd become comfortable and familiar with this 'funny stuff' and I could relate to my own  inner content when it emerged, and at times say it aloud in it's 'now'.  As a comparison I remember having a different understanding, before I was 5 decades in age.
I noticed that certain new (to me) content was 'inserted' into my mind. Example: The word 'overt' came to mind one day, then it re-occurred until I wondered why. Then the word 'covert' began to 'haunt' me the same way. I wrote the words down one day and laughed (to myself) when I saw that the difference between the two words was also a similarity, the word 'see' and the letter 'c'. An overt thing can be seen, a covert thing cannot be seen.  It meant nothing to me then, but much experience followed so now I realize the words were telling me something, they suggested that an 'overt' thing and a 'covert' thing was happening.

 The words 'the numinous is hard to bear ' occurred into my mind, spontaneously one day in 1985 and I wondered what the 'numinous' was. I looked it up but didn't understand the definition. (I remembered that in the past I'd been able to understand dictionary definitions but now I could not.)  Then within a few days I read the word in a book, Contact by Carl Sagan which I was reading then. That book made me feel 'funny' all the way through it and I 'met' ideas in it that I'd never known about.
The word 'palimpsest' began to hang around in my thought after reading the book, then a most amazing thing happened soon after that when the book's main theme which was about a message that was a palimpsest took root in my mind, and seemed relevant to me.  I noticed that a new context  at times emerged in my thought, automatically produced, and immediately, so quickly that it took a few years (2 at least) to identify was a kind of 'echo' of content that had occurred into my thought. Or from what I was looking at at the moment. It began like a 'drip'  then became a deluge,  that changed over a span of years. (My next post will be more explicit about this and how it began.)
I realized the thing was 'talking' to me, this 'interactive force', which is how I thought of it after reading F. David Peat's book in1989. There was a replay of content literally. , At times this was thoughts that occurred about something I was doing or thinking about; the content re-occurred in a bundle, no space between words, but a different  kind of hearing the bundle turned the words towards me, and simultaneously formed a personal 'bit of information'. This had to happen in one specific situation where I  could see this happen,  but the word 'echo' is good too.
The timing was what should have puzzled me, should have aroused curiosity but I'm a slow learner. 
 The duration, the span of time through which  this kind of event happened convinced me that there was a purpose other than my own behind them. I could see that I didn't will them and could not have understood them myself because  the new meaning was produced, given to me in a variety of forms. Some could be recognized immediately, others required certain events in the real world to happen later. There were incidents where suddenly  memories from a very early age were retrieved and  linked to 'right now' , and they had information in them, only then.

I'd not read anything about  psychiatric ideas and when I began trying to describe my experiences to a psychiatrist I didn't realize this was a 'kind' of experience that has psychiatric names and definitions until one day I asked to read what a therapist wrote while she listened to me! I was puzzled then outraged.
 It was obvious she recognized a pattern but nothing I'd actually said was on the record. Nobody who read that report would know what I'd talked about. That may be different now, when psychiatric names and definitions are everywhere in news, movies, television shows like NCIS, CSI.  Hearing names is not likely to convey the kind of meaning that experience does. I've read a lot but it was 'events' that produced a new understanding.

This post has  some examples that I'm using to try to make a point about how these kinds of unusual 'events' that  produces the process of individuation, but more than that: information, fragments at  a time usually. But there's a lot I didn't know then about  history, especially the origin of psychoanalysis, nothing about my own  mind, thought, mechanisms that alter thought, (even changing the direction of my own thought, so that its 'heard' the way another person would be heard.) (That's a really big change!) And noticing how much spontaneous content that is not self willed or self generated occurs,  just comes into my mind, its thought embedded, but that it was not my own thought took a long time to become curious about, and attentive towards.

 Especially I could not have suspected depths of mind exist or that there's a variety of inner content that may  not be available for articulation for a long span of time. There are levels in the mind where content occurs that  requires years of attention turned towards 'me' as an object, an observer to 'me' as an actor and its own audience because there is at this point, (and not before) a point where  both inner and outer world interfaces, becoming one.. When that kind of event occurred at first there was no sense of 'numinosity', only a kind of 'dizzy-ness', momentary confusion, wierdness. I don't rule numinosity out, but words need to get connected to their real world meaning, in lives. That's where meaningful coincidence is an 'interactive, information generating force'. The word 'numinous' doesn't attach itself automatically to any event.

There is a consensus that there's a thin line between normal experience and the kind of experience that is essential to a process of individuation. 
"There are certain dangers that are not necessarily associated with psychosis, which is a common diagnosis;  ignorance that such a process exists; the span of time over which the process evolves; and the fragmented, non-linearity of related events, as well as the apparent doubleness; literally an alternate to 'normal' reality emerges. Its there already.

What some authors have named 'numinous events'' does not always seem to be anything but 'strange', unreal. I can only understand what I've experienced myself, and there was a distinct loss of volition but also a distinct change in perception and thoughts.

I hope this is useful information to other individuals like myself, who didn't  know what 'psychosis' is, and do not suspect what the content of 'psychotic thinking'  is, what kind of 'events' are psychotic, when it can vary so greatly in content. When the content is so explicitly related to what the 'I' that's observing  understands with 'my' normal way of getting meaning, it can turn reality upside down, inside out.  I hope these posts and the examples I give are  re-assuring and helpful. It's difficult to live through the apparently  'non-numinous' when years of events have to occur, and there's no linearity of events.

Easter Sunday 2011, I Read Matthew 13 and understand "illustrations'

Click to enlarge the image.

These images show a reflection of a box that fascinated me after I noticed a third invisible compartment in it that was useless and is invisible from some perspectives. It triggered a variety of object generated 'thought' about what is 'invisible' and why its visible in a reflection from the object. The use-less compartment in the box is visible in the upper image, left side bottom. I had a moebius band that was clear plastic and I had photographed it  in some strange places, laid it on snow, hung it from a tree branch, my impulses were directing me to do such purposeless things.

 I was watching my body from a new eye and ear as I lived my ordinary life. 

 What  did  Jesus mean when he talked in 'illustrations' to the crowds that followed him and then in  private the disciples asked why he spoke to them by the use of  illustrations'? 

What does this quotation refer to, if it's not a reference to a special 'sense'? THE BIBLE:


"Let the one that has an ear listen to what THE Spirit sayeth unto* the CHURCHES(CONGREGATIONS). To him that conquers I will give some of the hidden manna. and I will give him a white pebble and upon the pebble a new name written which no one knows except the one receiving it.

A conversation between myself and a person that is 'strictly material world oriented' caused me to read Matthew last week. As I read chapter 13, there was a 'sense' behind my ordinary thought that what we experience today in a different way, pathological thinking in some cases,  was ordinary when the Bible was the most shared book, even before printing presses made it available to everyone. 

 Matthew 13:3- 13:9 "A sower went out to sow; and as he was sewing some (seeds) fell alongside the road and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell upon the rocky places where they did not have much soil and at once they sprang up because of not having any depth of soil. But when the sun rose they were scorched and because of not having any roots they withered. Others too fell among the thorns and the thorns came up and choked them. Still others fell upon the fine soil and they began to yield fruit, this one a hundredfold, that one sixty, the other thirty." "Let him that has ears listen. " His disciples asked why he spoke by the use of 'illustrations".

13:11 In reply he said: "To you it is granted to understand the sacred secrets of the kingdom of the heavens, but to those people it is not granted. For whoever has, more will be given him and he will be made to abound; but whosoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in illustrations because looking they look in vain, and hearing they hear in vain, neither do they get the sense of it.  

Then He explains the 'illustration' of the sower and its not about seeds at all:
13:18 thru 13: 24  "You then listen to the illustration of the man that sowed. Where anyone hears the word of the kingdom but does not get the sense of it the 'wicked one' comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one sown alongside the road. As for the one sown upon the rocky places this is the one hearing the word and accepting it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself but continues for a time and after tribulation or persecution has arisen on account of the word he is at once stumbled. And as for the one sown among thorns this is the one hearing the word but the anxiety of this system of things and the deceptive power of riches choke the word and he becomes unfruitful. And as for the one sown upon the fine soil, this is the one hearing the word and getting the sense of it, who really does bear fruit and produces this one, one hundred fold, that one sixty, the other thirty."
 Then he tells other 'illustrations'  based on what He had already said: "The kingdom of the heavens has become 'like' a man that sowed fine seed in his field. While men were sleeping his enemy came and oversewed  weeds among the wheat and left".

He  further describes the 'kingdom of the heavens'  by the use of 'illustrations'.
The kingdom of the heavens is 'like' a tiny mustard seed that in maturity is a fine lodging for the birds of heaven.
The kingdom of the heavens is 'like' leaven which a woman hid in three large measures of flour until the whole mass is fermented."
Then speaking to the  crowds by using 'illustrations'  which He says He does to fulfil prophecy, after dismissing the crowds  His disciples came to Him and asked that He explain the 'illustration' of the weeds in the field. In response He said: "The sower of the fine seed is the Son of man, the field is the world. As for the fine seed these are the sons of the kingdom but the weeds are the sons of the wicked one and the enemy that sowed them is the Devil.The harvest is a conclusion of a system of things and the reapers are angels. Therefore just as the weeds are collected and burned with fire so it will be in the conclusion of the system of things.The Son of man will send forth his angels and they will collect out from his kingdom all things that cause stumbling  and persons doing lawlessness and they will pitch them into the furnace;  there is where their weeping and gnashing of their teeth will be. At that time the righteous ones will shine as brightly  as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let him that has ears listen.

Then He  continues:  "The kingdom of the heavens is 'like' a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and  for the joy he has he sells everything he owns  to buy the field. "
"The kingdom of the heavens is 'like' a traveling merchant seeking pearls who sees one fine pearl of great value  and promptly sold all he had and bought it."
"The kingdom of the heavens is 'like' a dragnet let down into the sea, gathering up every kind of fish, the fine are kept and the unsuitable ones thrown  away."
"That is how it will  be in the conclusions of the system of things...." "Did you get the 'sense' of all these things."  His disciples answer "Yes."  then He says: another ' illustration':
"That being the case every public instructor when taught respecting the kingdom of the heavens  is 'like' a man, a householder who brings out of  his treasure store things that are new and old."

What did Jesus intend to convey when he talked in 'illustrations' to the crowds that followed him and then in private the disciples asked why he spoke to them by the use of illustrations?
I believe He introduced the very idea of a  'kingdom of the heavens' and what It is 'like', what it 'is' and how It was experienced even 2000+ years ago when a new 'system of things' was begun.

I'm thinking after reading Matthew that the 'illustrations" are the use of  art  is to force the mind to think of 'things'  that cannot be seen. Recently I read the same remark in a  graphic cartoon book about calculus: "What is the use of calculus?" The answer was: "To force the mind to think of things that cannot be seen."

More on this topic will follow. I believe the sacred secrets of the kingdom of the heavens are revealed by the transcendental function, as Freud described what he believed is a function of mind that I've mentioned several times. This function creates 'ambiguous sayings' and more, much  than that, a conversation between an individual and the kingdom of the heavens.

I'd like to suggest Maurice Nicoll's book, The Mark or The New Man  and his Living Time and Integration of the Life but a willingness to learn  more about  history and origins of our modern psychiatry  is necessary to 'get the sense' of what the 'extra sense' conveys and how it conveys information  to an individual. A specific individual.

An example, a personal experience, this was the first of its kind' happened to me  in the summer of 1984,  I was sewing, emersed in thought one day. The television  was on  but ignored until my attention was plucked from my intense reveries to the words  coming  from the television: "The second world is here and in the second world all the rules are changed." It was shocking, literally to hear those words. For a few minutes I thought about how advertisements didn't have to make sense, then I went back to my sewing. Until the words re-occurred into my thought along with memories of a few events that had happened fairly recently when I'd felt 'wierd', dizzy. They were just normal events but somehow something 'else' than normal. Then the words began to make sense, they were being said directly to me,'who had the ear' then. They explained the 'new world' that was beginning to speak to me.  It was a few weeks before the Los Angeles Olympic Games opened that it happened, that I heard the television talk to me the way a person would but it  was only an advertisment for a new automobile. Or was it the 'extra sense' at work?  It was both. It was only the beginning of a long process of synchronization between my inner content and the material world's events

I repeat this as I do other ideas that  need to be emphasized and held in conscious understanding, as a foundation for what I write,  its from a book, Oedipus authored by Patrick Mullahy and its only in a Footnote, (!!!!) page 507. I believe 'illustrations' and 'reflections' (both definitions) create the 'voice' attribute of events.


"Often in explaining his ideas Freud resorts to analogies or conceptions from the physical world. Another conception of his is “that among the psychic functions there is something which should be differentiated (an amount of affect, a sum of excitation), something having all the attributes of a quantity—although we possess no means of measuring it—a something which is capable of increase, displacement and discharge and which extends itself over the memory traces of an idea like an electric charge over the surface of the body…for the present it is justified by it’s utility in correcting and explaining diverse psychical conditions. Collected papers, Vol I, p.75"

The process of becoming twice born.

The 'voice' begun to speak this way, in a surprising form:  using words someone else had written in a book! While I read the book, one evening a  selection from the book affected me 'like' a shock, literally I felt the words in my body.  This particular selection was a few paragraphs that were  literally abstracted from embeddedness in the book, it was highlighted by some mechanism of mind. Which at that time I knew nothing about. It was just a shocking event, literally, I didn't understand the content had any relevance to me or a fact about my life that I didn't suspect was a factor in my real life.
 I didn't realize this was the kind of coincidence that describes to me a detail about my life, one I didn't know myself, until the pattern had repeated often enough to be noticed, then understood. Many events had to occur and the content is very specific in each event but the common theme was that each event described a detail of what was happening 'now' in my life. This kind of coincidence as I had to find out also, is currently not recognized to be a 'symptom' of a process of individuation (Jung's term); re-generation (Swedenborg's term); the 4th Way (Ouspensky's term, the path of personal development that's lived in the ordinary life. ) It was a personal discovery to learn that this life path was experienced in ancient times from which arose ideas of fate, destiny, karma, Fortune, a 'god within', that are carried forwards in Time, in history somewhat 'like' a signal, at least that's how I think of it now. I believe it is the pattern that C. G. Jung identified in his time as 'inherent in all men'.

 The book was one I just happened to notice because it had a lovely sky blue jacket. I saw only the spine, as clean as any new book. That made it hard to miss in a tall stack of used books. The Weaver of Dreams by Myrtle Reed was an old book. The cover was bright, the top edge was gilt and in perfect condtion as though it had just been printed although the book had been published in 1911. On page 175 begins a conversation between characters in the book that caused me to feel an unusual body response. I'd name it a shock now but then it was just 'wierd', unexplainable. I was in an unsual situation when I read this the book, the situation was an ingredient, the necessary ingredient for  'getting the message'  eventually, that the event conveyed to me. It was about a situation I was involved in at that time.

"I don't believe you can live with other people and not absorb something from their ways of thinking and manner of expressing themselves. Moreover Aunt Cynthia has a very penetrating personality."

"All strong natures have." Chandler answered. "Some people are shaped wholly by their environment, as plastic material conforms to the receptacle in which it is placed. Others mould their environment to meet the demands of individuality."

"Can it be done?" asked Judith, thoughtfully.

"Always, if one is strong enough. From mysterious sources we draw to ourselves that which we require or expect. If a tree may lift into it's trunk the materials for sap and fibre, and if the moon may control the tides why should not thought which is the most wonderful and powerful of forces bring harmony into one's daily life, if not the absolute control of circumstances." 

This was the first time I felt an effect in my body, merely from reading words. What I described when I began the post with this event, was this content,  the first of its kind that I really felt when it happened. This kind of content from which a conversation  was created was  aimed towards me. It's a fact  that no one else will ever  understand  this kind of conversation unless specific content, of which this incident is just one example (and  the content was assembled over a long period of time) is put under the 'scope'. It's a well known pattern. The incident informed me about a detail in my life exactly and literally when I understood more about the kind of synchronization that created the conversation.

It was fragmented content, bits of information that assembled a new understanding and context that emerged in my mind,  parallel to my 'normal' understanding.  That's a surprising fact about 'meaning full coincidences'. In the beginning it seemed as though my unspoken inner content was known to even objects that use words, such as books, televisions, radios. What a shock! What a new experience! What I read affected my body in a different way than I'd ever experienced!
 It seems like 'mind reading' but I believe there's another explanation. It's something that looks like non-verbal communication but isn't that either.  There are psychiatric names for this kind of experience but I'd no knowledge of them and even knowledge of them is not enough information to understand what it's like when it begins and continues. Bits and pieces have to accumulate, then be assembled by the mind itself.

I don't believe the process of assembly differed greatly from how an author of a non-fiction work, such as the bibliography in Harold Searles Selected Essays on Schizophrenia  or any similar work was assembled. At this point I'll explain why I mention this book because its an example also: I read an essay on the Internet that had a biblography that included a mention of an article: 'Driving the other person crazy', by  Harold Searles. I searched for the article and found it was in a book that cost $79.50 so I put the urge to read it aside. A short time later I'm in Borders Books, waiting to check out when I notice a rack of books, marked down 75% . Laying on top is a book, Selected Essays on Schizophrenia by Harold Searles. Of course I bought it and have read it. He described one aspect of his relationship to his patients that interested me very much: They seemed to read him psychologically and accurately, because he noticed they acted out some aspect of his own nature at the moment, but did this in a symbolic way unknown to themselves. This was one factor that C. G. Jung made note of, that at depth level, a well part of his patients seemed to speak in  kind of code or symbolic form that the individual could not hear and or understand themselves. This is an important fact to keep in mind, that a use of 'codes', symbolisms that were unknown to the person that was the patient were picked up by the therapist. That points towards a connection between patient and therapist as well as what the therapist knows.  Not many therapists know as much as Mr. Searles did. 

These fictional people created by a female that ultimately ended her own life  spoke about two kinds of people; about 'mysterious forces';  about thought;  about what we require;  or expect (??) and about a force bringing harmony into one's life. The part about absolute control of circumstances is possibility. I personally believe all  thought does not do anything, some may seem to. There's  a variety of thought  levels that are unconnected and there are depths that are so far from speech that no author other than Emanuel Swedenborg  made reference to them and he had to experience that himself. Certain thought and inner content that isn't words  can seem to affect the world outside the body, that seems obvious to the individual, when this kind of 'event' happens  for an extended period of time. There are levels in the mind, as we now realize there are levels in personality and in 'understanding'.

I felt how my body reacted to the  printed words in the conversation, that memory created a beginning point of me, noticing my own body as though 'I' was not connected to it.

 For a few years it seemed to me I was dying but I've lived too long since 1983 (?) for that to be true. Life as a near death experience may be part of nature too. The process of becoming 'twice born' is probably in our genes by this point in time.
It doesn't always happen in a blinding flash of ecstastic influx. It's necessary to see one's self, know what one is doing, and to the degree it's possible, know why one is 'doing' in the body whatever I am witnessing to from a detached perspective, that is not 'astral projection' or anything like it. I've read a lot of Swedenborg and found much verifiable information about the mind is embedded in his writings. Last week I found this which reminded me of the movie Contact and the trip Ellen Arroway seemed to have taken in the machine.  I'd underlined it in Arcana Coelestia, paragraph #10763 in  "A Sixth Earth In the Starry Heaven" .

"Once more I was conducted to another earth that was in the universe outside our solar world and this also by means of changes of state continued for about twelve hours. The company with me there were a number of spirits and angels from our earth, with whom I conversed on the way or during the progression. I was carried sometimes obliquely upwards and sometimes obliquely downward, continually towards the south. In two places only did I see spirits and in one I spoke to them."

The trip Ellen Arroway took in Contact was different than how it was in the book, but in many ways the 'changes of state'  that we now realize are experienced by people who don't take drugs, who don't meditate may be that they are in such states, now. I don't believe everything I read in books about the mind unless the author is like Colin Wilson, or Joseph Campbell, aware of the ideas that have been cast into the 'shadow world' of the irrational part of mind.

Possibly there was in my understanding, some glimmer of how the mind works in some reality other than 'normal' only partly from having read books, I'd had my own experiences and realized the mind can insert or delete some content of it's own. Because I'd read all of Robert Monroes' books about his journies out of his body(!!)  and read Joseph Chilton Pearces' wonderful description of an event that happened to him in The Bond Of Power, there was enough information about the mind to begin understanding my own.  He wrote about the 'insight' realm without a religious foundation, but I wouldn't eliminate religion from that realm. Also and more to the point, physically I was working in a location where events began to happen that seemed perfectly timed to synchronize with some mental activity in my own mind.

I've had to learn what I write about on this blog, the hard way, the very most personal way, from experiences of my own.  The details are very specific in any life. I don't know how to convey to someone else what an isolated kind of 'space' I lived in after I had a dream late in 1981 and I'm still in that space, isolated from other people but not alone. That's obvious.

Starting with a point in the center.

This is an interesting image, it begins with one whole and a point in it's center, successively divided by one line, then 3 lines to form a triangle, 4 lines make a square, five point star, etc. Every number except 2 lines has been used to create a form on a flat image of a circle. Circles have been a generator of thought on many levels in mathematics but less commonly in psychology as the 'ego'. Where is the center of 'me', or am "I" the whole and the dividing into parts creates a confusion at times ( purposefully it seems to me) of what is reality? But a circle is  flat.

 

I used to wonder how a sphere could be drawn, how would the lines on this image appear on/in a sphere?  The question formed after I'd  read Flatland by Abbott then by chance, (that's where I can see purpose is at work in my life)  Sphereland by Dionys Burger, then  read as though some foresight other than mine had arranged the sequence The Persian King Allegory by Charles Hinton. Thought about 'dimensions' and 'points of view'  within me, in my mind grew slowly, evolving when I became aware of different  thought than was normal for me, but there were changes in how things  looked and sounded outside my body too.  

 

I just watched a news video that showed how the first real 3 dimensional image of our sun had been made. It also proved the sun is round.

                                                      88888

I thought I'd discovered the 'moebius twist point' until by accident I saw a mathematical equation for it. This YouTube video comes close to illustrating it but not how I became aware of it, bit of information by bit of information over a span of several decades. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX3VmDgiFnY

 Hinton's book, Scientific Romances is not about surfaces but about interiors of a king's mind, after he is led across an abyss into an isolated land. He has to figure out how to motivate creatures that lay about listlessly, and he decides they must require feeling more pleasure than pain so he absorbs a measure of their pain himself. That difference creates activity and a busy civilization, but as time passes the amount of pain the king absorbs becomes unbearable so he has to leave them, inert again and he is led away by the being that led him into isolation. Do I have a similar need, to feel more pleasure than pain?

I remember something that happened at about the same time I read The Persian King. It was a foxglove bloom in my yard  that had the shape of a nautilus shell, the  familiar chryslys  form;  the form so often associated with the Fibonacci sequence, 1,1,2,3,5,8... and certain ideas in quantum physics. That shape is a circle opened up, this foxglove had a door in it!

 

 This was an unusual foxglove plant, it was thought provoking too, in fact it generated thought that I would not have experienced ever, except in my experiences with this foxglove and its progeny after 1989 until this year, 2013. As I looked at it "I" began to think about it's 'spirituality', i.e.,  it's attributes, characteristics, qualities, etc and the strange fact that it is both life saving and death dealing. A lot of thought was produced when I noticed how unusual it was. Every stalk had a different kind of bloom at the top. I'd never seen anything like it but every year it  has re-produced and foxgloves aren't supposed to do that.  Until 1995 I'd always had a plant that produced round blooms on the top of each stalk;  I thought of them as a mandala flower.  Then as a result of thinking about 'dimensions' and how a sphere really can't be drawn, somehow that impossibility caused me to think my center could be anyplace at any time in one of the layers I couldn't see in my mind. What if my 'soul's eye'  looked out at the world from different locations in my mind? (I  had become convinced there is a soul eye , after reading that Goethe mentioned he saw not with the eye of the body but the eye of the soul).

What if "I" was looking within my mind, and seeing from it at the same time, but sensing purposefulness  behind even the distress and discomfort at times, where motivation didn't just happen? What ever is 'me' now,  its not always a center point in a Cartesian like three dimensional space, with 'ego' in one place, it can be moved anywhere without any awareness of crossing from one 'part' to another. I hope this makes sense?  I  began to wonder whether all the different problems I had with people in my life, and with situations that caused me a lot of inner turmoil happened because I didn't understand the value of unpleasant situations and thoughts.  

 If other people are like me, it takes something really unusual to cause me to think about thinking, and what produces it. Thinking about the kind of thinking that was produced (or generated) by objects or situations has evolved from a point where my 'eye' was like the center point on a circle, when every thing was 'flat'. The sphere within 'me' extends back into history and very certainly into the future at times. What if I'd merely glanced at the strange (to me) book,  Flatland, then Sphereland and passed them. Or ignored the strange title of Charles Hinton's Scientific Romances, seeminlgy unrelated? 

There are quite a few images of my foxgloves from1989 to last summer.

http://s138.photobucket.com/albums/q251/ayesha32/

A planet that 'speaks', and how it creates it's language

  When I chanced to read Men Who Have Walked With God by Sheldon Cheney in 1986, I was informed for the first time in my  54 years old mind that Socrates mentioned the 'god within that tells us about our universe' and that he didn't fear death  so he willingly drank the hemlock. This was an utterly new idea to  me as were the stories about the other men who had 'walked' and been talked to by God!!

I read only fictions unless absolutely necessary and was even proud of it!!! I grew up in a very restricted environment and was not aware of it until one day I heard myself say to a woman I knew,  she wasn't a friend but she was an important presence in my life as I found out later, something I'd not thought about myself.  I heard myself suddenly tell her that it seemed to me I'd been raised like one of those animals in scientific experiments, in a cage, with blinders on. I'd lived without  seeing certain things and I'd had certain experiences but like a mouse in a scientific experiment, they were limited.  I  heard myself tell her that it seemed to me suddenly I was taken from the cage, the blinders removed and I was put into a giant maze where I had to run and look for 'something'. I'd find a little of 'something' and I could rest a while but then I had to go back into the maze to find more 'something'. I didn't know what 'something' was. I did not suspect then that the maze was my every day life and the circumstances in my family at that point.

 It was a few years later that the memory of the conversation was retrieved in my mind and I wondered only then, and vaguely not with a lot of curiosity, why I'd said something to her that I'd not thought about myself and had no reason to say to her!!! That is an example of how the 'depths began to enter into my everyday life, through 'embedded in the ordinary' situations.

In a casual conversation we had later, she mentioned to me that people seemed to open up to her;  they told her things they wouldn't tell other people. She also mentioned she'd felt she might be going 'crazy' because she knew a woman that seemed to be able to read her thoughts, and  that's 'thought broadcasting and ideas of reference' which are symptoms of schizophrenia.

 I'd never heard or read those symptoms but soon afterwards I had reason to look for the definition of 'ideas of reference' in a dictionary and it was a psychiatric dictionary: "Delusional associations formed from irrational sources." I didn't know what 'irrational sources' were at that point in Time. It's a specific part of reality that is difficult to describe and impossible to validate except at the pattern level, in my opinion which is from my own experiences.

Emanuel Swedenborg is only one of the authors who have described their  mental experience in life and if their work had not come to my attention, I'm sure my own mental world would never have become distinct to me as a world, with space, time with flora and fauna that's different than the physical world.  I would have lived my entire life believing my thoughts, impulses, habits were 'me'.

P. D. Ouspensky's books as I've mentioned several times came to me before I read the first quotation from Swedenborg in a book authored by Wilson van Dusen, The Presence of Other Worlds. It contained the term 'double thought' which I read and paused to wonder about what it could mean, but only briefly. That was an unrecognized irrational 'bit of information'  aimed at me before I'd  had experiences and information that would cause me to recognize the two words were being 'said to me'. They described to me an aspect of my own thought that had begun to operate on and in the most private content  as well as the visible content in my life.

 The term 'double thought' became meaning-filled to me one day in 1987 when I was at work and a thought occurred into my mind as a result of what I was physically doing at Boeing in the Auburn fabrication building where I worked. I was having some unusual events and this was only one of them:  I walked onto a metal grid floor that suddenly seemed invisible because a light was in the room below the floor. The thought was that I seemed to be able to see around me but also what was going on below me.   I noticed very distinctly that the thought was 'batched' into a unit with no spaces between the words and the 'unit' was repeated so immediately and at such speed that it was nearly undetectable. It had the effect of 're-hearing' thought produced by what I was doing.  I had begun to notice this 'effect', and be curious about it over a span of 2 very long years.

The repeated 'unit' seemed to be spoken to me the way a person would speak to me. That attribute was distinct in this specific event. Finally.  

In the early 1950's I watched a documentary of John Lilly and his work with dolphins and how he  learned to communicate with them. I remember a thought that occurred into my mind as I watched the show: "I wonder what it must feel like to learn a language from a creature so different as a man must be to those dolphins?"   That thought re-occurred into my mind afterwards  over a span of years for no reason that I could see and eventually because there was no connection to anything I wondered why the  thought  repeated. This thought and the content, which is about learning a new language from some 'thing' that is more than unexpected in how it 'talked' to me, were installed earlier in life for use later.  Swedenborg described them as 'remains' and Ouspensky mentioned he had 're-occurring memories' that had a peculiar sense that marked them.  There were a few other 're-occurring thoughts', quite different in content and eventually I wondered about them also.

Sometime in 1988 as best I can date it I noticed a Thinking Allowed documentary of John Lilly, From Here to Alternity and decided to watch it only because his name was familiar. I was stunned but delighted when he mentioned Earth Coincidence Control Office, ECCO. Although the word 'echo' had been coming to my attention in several different situations that had nothing to do with 'coincidences' to me. But  when he mentioned ECCO I felt a link between what I had begun to name and think about as the Larger Domain. "HE KNOWS ABOUT THE LARGER DOMAIN!"  

The word 'coincidence' had never occurred to me as a definition for the way my own thought was seeming to be linked to what was happening outside of my body.

 This is a recent find on the Internet: The rose colored highlights are my additions.

"EARTH : COINCIDENCE : CONTROL : OFFICE “There is an invisible force, entity, or organization of higher dimension that controls what we think are coincidental events in everyday situations. John C. Lilly called it ECCO. According to John, ECCO also seems to control human evolution, as well as reverberating  with the idea of  synchroncity  that was mentioned  by C. G. Jung;  implicate order of David Bohm (it's all a matter of 'wizzywig' i.e wysiwyg); non-local communication network of Bell’s Theorem, contingent system of Lyall Watson, and cybernetic network of Gregory Bateson who wrote that .(paranoia is 'like' knowledge)"

This is a quotation from C. G. Jung's Red Book which was recently published,:

In I9I8, Jung wrote a paper entitled "On the unconscious," where he noted that all of us stood between two worlds: the world of external perception and the world of perception of the unconscious.
This distinction depicts his experience at this time. He wrote that Friedrich Schiller had claimed that the approximation of these two worlds was through art. By contrast, Jung argued, "I am of the opinion that the union of rational and irrational truth is to be found not so much in art as in the symbol per se; for it is the
essence of the symbol to contain both the rational and irrational.",


Symbols, he maintained, stemmed from the unconscious, and the creation of symbols was the most important function of the unconscious. While the compensatory function of the unconscious was always present, the symbol-creating function was present only when we were willing to recognize it Here, we see him continuing to eschew viewing his productions as art. It was not art but symbols which were of paramount importance here. The recognition and recuperation of this symbol-creating power is portrayed in Liber Novus. It depicts Jung's attempt to understand the psychological nature of symbolism and to view his fantasies symbolically. He concluded that what was unconscious at any given epoch was only relative, and changing. What was required now was the "remolding of our views in accordance with the active forces of the unconscious." Thus the task confronting him was one of translating the conceptions gained through his confrontation with the unconscious, and expressed in a literary and symbolic manner in Liber Novus, into a language that was compatible with the contemporary outlook.

Ernst Cassirer's Language and Myth is a slender book , it's a discussion of the 'form' of
myth and it's origins. The 'form' itself seems to me to be as Jung wrote, a pattern inherent in 'man' but parables in the Bible are that 'form'.

The Science of synchronicity

There's something about acquiring 'wisdom' that requires learning to get information from every day content, much as Freud and Jung 'discovered' there was meaning in 'every day pathology';  interpreting as an artist does, not always dreams but whatever is brought to one's attention in a certain way. There's a difference and sometimes that can be a shock!  Literally.  About language P. D. Ouspensky says better than I can say and I'm repeating this from my first post: "It must be admitted that language is a weak and inadequate vehicle even for the expression of our usual understanding of things, to say nothing of those moments when the understanding unexpectedly expands and becomes deeper, and we see revealed an entire series of facts and relations for the description of which we have neither words nor expressions. But quite aside from this, in ordinary conditions of thinking and feeling, we are frequently at a loss for words, and we use one word at different times to describe different things"


"No study of occult philosophy is possible without an acquaintance with symbolism, for if the words occultism and symbolism are correctly used, they mean almost one and the same thing. Symbolism cannot be learned as one learns to build bridges or speak a foreign language, and for the interpretation of symbols a special cast of mind is necessary; in addition to knowledge, special faculties, the power of creative thought and a developed imagination are required.
But even then a special training of the mind is necessary, in order to comprehend the "language of the Initiates", and to express in this language the intuitions as they arise. There are many methods for developing the "sense of symbols" in those who are striving to understand the hidden forces of Nature and Man, and for teaching the fundamental principles as well as the elements of the esoteric language. The most synthetic, and one of the most interesting of these methods, is the Tarot"

Freud described a somewhat similar idea which I will quote again verbatim because it's important: "Often in explaining his ideas Freud resorts to analogies or conceptions from the physical world. Another conception of his is “that among the psychic functions there is something which should be differentiated (an amount of affect, a sum of excitation), something having all the attributes of a quantity—although we possess no means of measuring it—a something which is capable of increase, displacement and discharge and which extends itself over the memory traces of an idea like an electric charge over the surface of the body…for the present it is justified by it’s utility in correcting and explaining diverse psychical conditions. Collected papers, Vol I, p.75" This is the transcendental function: , 'which extends itself over the memory traces of an idea 'like' an electric charge.

(Freud didn't  name this function as the 'transcendental function'   it was Jung  who did describe it as being a function similar to a mathematical function. I believe this is an accurate description of the transcendental function: some ‘thing’ having all the attributes of a quantity, "capable of increase, displacement and discharge and which extends itself over the memory traces of an idea 'like' an electric charge over the surface of the body...that's an encyclopedia of implication. That function sorts out, creates significance, importance and relationship in the process of self observation, and life re-view, it brought my central idea to my attention over a span of decades, sorting it out from millions of books, trillions of words.)
What I know about synchronicity as a language that taught itself to me, from a state of ignorance  about it's existence has caused me to believe there's a scientific way to validate individual experience, a pattern that many individuals do experience without any validation. What I know and understand about 'synchronicity' now is the result of 75 years of experiences because  the first memory I had on this planet had a 'double context', a 'double meaning' and that's where 'meaningful coincidences' arise. The memory re-occurred throughout my life, a memory that was as complete as the moment had happened and eventually (I'm a slow learner) I wondered why it flashed briefly into my mind. It was a photograph of what I was looking at, a bare light bulb above me;  how I felt, cold; what I heard, the wind whistling through boards of the one car garage my parents were renting in 1934; the knowledge that my new baby sister was laying on the same bed;  and a thought that occurred into my mind: "I am in a cold place."
 
That re-occuring memory  of a physical world moment had a literal and a psychological context relating to being born in the depression  to barely educated teen aged parents. Several events happened before I was   13 years old, that formed a foundation for recognizing foresight into our lives, by re-occurring into my mind for no reason I could see. Anyone would be curious eventually and wonder about those 'ghosts along the backroads of the mind.' They marked the back roads of the mind.  Who would suspect there are levels  in the mind that produce content that cannot be related to immediately?
 
 When Mt. St. Helens blew her dusty innards on May 18, 1980 at 8:32 a.m, the eruption from my own depths had begun, but that's a fact that took about 2 decades to emerge as an acceptable idea.
 
At times, in a few events there was a synchronization between not just my own inner content  but with activities that involved a  group of other people I knew then. That's important  to get that fact established that it was not a private synchronization there were other people and events in the outside world acting and speaking in my private contexts.  This is not unusual experience, it's happening more and more today to individuals who know nothing about Ouspenskiy,  Jung, Freud, or history itself.  Literalness has a lot to do with how synchronization in an individualizing process becomes distinct, it creates self reference as well as creating a kind of conversation,  if other people experience anything similar. Literally two small groups of individuals were somewhat at war with each other and the mainstream square dancers in our area in the early 1980's.

That memory was a snap shot of what was in front of me at the moment the thought occurred to me, as well as a thought that occurred into my mind: "I am in a cold place."  There's another term  that's  probably not familiar to anyone reading this blog:  'double thought',  and  yet another name that may surprise some readers, thought broadcasting/ideas of reference. These are defined as symptoms of delusional thinking because the contexts and content are not at this time validated by scientists, because a process of individuation is not recognized.

A Sunday Morning in November, revised 11-15-2010

"Somebody said that it couldn't be done, at least nobody ever has done it." Edgar Guest.

“It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening”—H. G. Wells, 24 January 1902, lecture given at the Royal Institute, London. “The Discovery of the Future”.


I believe everyone has an opportunity to do something in life  that nobody has ever done before, it's our reason for being and becoming an individual. Emanuel Swedenborg wrote that every person has a particular 'genius' which I interpret to mean a particular task in life,  that no other person has. That's probably where the processes of individuation occur. Discovering a process of life that individualizes every event has been a small part of my task in life but it's our collective task also.  Recognizing it was being shown to me was the larger part, I didn't go looking for anything. I now believe we each and all are required to locate that 'sequestered hidden world within' because that's where the task is revealed,  in the very deeps of our mind.  Emanuel Swedenborg named the process accurately it seems to me,  as  'regeneration'  because he believed life in the body is preparation for life after death. He was given evidence that's convincing to me now  although if I'd not read Robert Monroe's Journeys Out of Body and Far Journey's before reading anything Swedenborg wrote, I'm sure I would have felt differently. They both described mental adventures that happened 'while yet in their bed'.  Swedenborg wrote that what happens in life and the choices that are made in life determine what  life after life in the body will be.

 I know that the process happens in life  as a  'life re-view' literally, but it's not like someone announces it, that has to be discovered.  "What a gift ye give us, to see ourselves as others see us." W. B. Yeats

Ira Progoff's The Dynamics of Hope, Perspectives  of Process in Anxiety and Creativity, Imagery and Dreams is in my opinion a great book, and  is the result of his recognition of that process in his life. I remember reading Monica Furlong's The End Of Our Exploring, an exploration by a young woman of the various paths in life at time when it was a path I didn't suspect or know anything about. You don't have to be a genius, just be willing to learn and change your mind.

This morning I watched Sunday Morning on Channel 7 which is one of my favorite shows usually. Several segments were especially meaningful to me, and relevant to the task I have reason to believe was assigned to me before I was born. We may be information in a body! One episode in particular was about soldiers who  were denied Medal of Honor awards because forsenic tests done in an autopsy were accepted as evidence that didn't support what  eye witnesses had said happened. There was a specific incident, a specific soldier shielded his men and saved them  from a grenade, they reported it themselves, but forsenics 'proved' otherwise. Forsenics proved that consciouness could not have caused  the act of heroism to be done. I fumed about how 'analysis and statistics' over ruled witnesses and real live experiencers report, I've had that happen to me too often.

Later, as I went about making my bed I thought about wars and what is required of men. That  reminded me of an incident that happened in 1964. We had just moved  to Seattle from Indiana. I was washing dishes when I heard my 5 years old son call to me. He was watching the news, war news. "Mommie, how do the soldiers in airplanes that are throwing bombs down and shooting guns know who the bad people are?" It's a question  I'd not asked my self, so I just told him they had no way of knowing who the bad people were."Some good people get killed accidentally."

"I don't ever want to be a soldier, mommie." he said.

I remember feeling a degree of shock that he wasn't patriotic and that I had not taught him patriotism! I remember feeling a kind of horror that he would say he didn't ever want to be a soldier! Later when war protesters arose from his generation I thought there must have been other little boys watching the news and they asked their mother the question that son had asked me. Maybe they got the same answer and made the same decision. He was watching the news  not long after that when he called to me. "MOMMIE, some bad guy shot Mr. Kennedy."
I had to realize this morning  how  at less than 6 years old, he had seen news happen and thought about things I'd never thought about when I was half a century old. Seeing something happen rather than just reading about it made a big difference, probably.
But there may be some truth to the idea of destiny. By that  I mean  that what needs to happen in Time does happen, but  when its supposed to happen and only then.  So our family Destiny might have  prevented me from inquiring until later in life about what a very young boy noticed and wondered aloud to me about.  I also remembered that when he played with his blocks one morning he got up, chuckling to himself as he toddled off to the kitchen: "Something in my head told me to get a drink of water." I remember thinking that seemed a strange thing for an 18 months old toddler to say. "Something in my head told me to get a drink of water." ???
I have come to believe in destiny or something like a Great Plan in life in which we enter if we can become conscious enough of  the prime initiator, which is curiosity and a need to find a truth about some trivial seeming detail in real life. It's a need  that's so great that after it's switched on permanently it  operates like a motor aimed at locating the truth in a specific life in very specific circumstances. My search for truth required  lack of curiosity for more than half a century. Then the 'switch' was turned on pemanently. At this point I'm  somewhat amused at my self, at times because  I feel a toddler like fascination and insatiable curiosity about everything.  That's a fact about old age that I didn't suspect.

Another segment on this Sunday Morning was about Madame Curie and her double  Nobel Prize awards in science.  What arose in my mind then was that there should be an award for people like me who don't go into higher education, never went into a laboratory, never did scientific experiements but who feel somehow they have made a discovery in their life that nobody else has written about, that we do have connection to an intelligence other than our own. "Work done for another level." That's  the way P. D. Ouspensky seemed to me to have described  his experience with that kind of participation in the 'Larger Domain' of life;  his task  was searching for a way to get  new information.

Those of us who lived the events in  their life and tried to understand them; even could prove them in the scienific mode if individual truth can be proved, experience rejection and being labeled a crank or worse.
Trying to prove my personal interpretations when it was necessary to find out whether I imagine things or not was only possible after the sense of needing to find the truth in real life was activated permanently. That didn't happen when I was 6 years old. Some situations in real life  happened but a new sense made that kind of need for truth was not only possible but very, very necessary. It seemed to be a new sense until I found out it's an old sense, it's really a  pattern. Pattern recognition may be what I have been directed to notice, I don't claim to have noticed it myself.

 Wanting recognition seems to be part of the 'drive' behind the search for truth; especially when  the search results in  facts that  displace much that's been accepted as truth by the collective. The mind itself has to be the object of study and most individuals do not feel driven to understand their own mind, or to become 'psychoanalytic' to the degree Freud, Jung, Swedenborg  and William Blake accomplished in their individualized life. A strange detachment from the body creates 'self observation' from either the depths or  some Other that's got a goal of it's own. There seems to be constant consciousness on that level, it's not asleep, ever. There are points in the past where radical changes occurred when a  new idea occurred in the mind of at least one man.
 This morning's segment about Madame Curie was an exception to the usual rule. I thought about what a lucky person she was to marry a scientist, they didn't war between themselves about some of the gender based issues I've confronted.

Last week I read Tolerance, The story of man's struggle to think by Hendrik Van Loon, and that caused me to consider my own past, which is about the incredible struggle of a woman to think independently, to think what has never been thought by anyone else.  Where do ideas come from?" is the question, can that be explained by scientific analysis?
In the mid 1990's I read a book, The Arrow of Time that reported how  Ludwig Boltzmann could not bear the very great torment of knowing he was 'right'  and ended himself just before his idea began to be accepted by his peers. I know there must be other examples that I don't know about of how difficult it is to be 'certain without doubt' and find no, or not much validation.

I've read books authored by individuals who never became famous yet their book contained information that was more valuable than an encyclopedia of information! Sometimes the information made no sense when I read the book, years of experience had to happen before the book made sense. (Bond of Power by Joseph Chilton Pearce, which was re-issued under a different name, The Biology of Transcendence; Ira Progoff's The Symbolic and The Real are two examples.)
Sometimes the book  verified my own experiences exactly and I felt a very great relief and thankfulness coupled with an anguish of frustration. Why should such information be available and so few people know about it? Why do people quarrel about every thing they don't agree with? (Ira Progoff's The Dynamics of Hope; Maurice Nicolls' Living Time and Integration of the Life; The Re-Creating of the Individual by Beatice Hinkle are examples of that kind of validating book. )

There was yet a third kind of book which after I read it caused me to close it and then my mind seemed to 'use' or 're-use' the ideas in the book and present the authors ideas in a completely different context than the author had done. Such a book was The Lord of Thought by Emmett and Dougall which I've already mentioned but The Phenomonen of Man by Teilhard de Chardin had been one book that my mind seemed to select to give me information that the author had not explicitly included in his own book. I felt an explosion of information I'd not thought about ever, even once in my life about how 'man' has not been categorized, classified and how difficult it would be for 'man' to 'see' his own life the way we see animals and other living and non living objects.

I had to create a name that kind of explosion of inner content because there was a demand to 'name what you see, describe what you see' included in it. I named them 'mindquakes' but it's very likely other authors used more well known, more  scholarly words whose meanings are  obscure to individuals like me.
 It seems to me at this point that a certain 'sense' has to be active to some degree or to an excessive degree that initiates a search for and a need to establish what is true in the individual life.

 I felt that those of us who quarrel with the  science of the collective, and who survived with enough sanity intact to function somewhat usefully and decently should have a category in the Nobel Prizes.

 "Somebody said that it couldn't be done, at least nobody ever has done it." Edgar Guest. It could be done.