Free The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce Page B

suggest a continuum of experience

underlying our surface realities. To imply that this continuum is

"thought" as we know it can cancel the open end it holds , and we must

dismiss universal pools of metaphysical knowledge, a fixed scheme of a

priori facts awaiting discovery "out there," or cosmic helping-hands

available to clear-thinking minds or pure-minded souls. Attributing

characteristics of personality to the function is a projection device

which turns the open end into a mirror of ourselves, trapping us in our

own logical devices.

The "universal pool" is as 'much "in here" as anywhere. Being autistic

by nature, anything desired can be gotten from it, if one is willing

to pay the price and has an ultimate commitment around which the process

can orient. Hard discipline of mind and passionate adherence to a belief

in spite of all obstacles and all evidence to the contrary, can overcome

all obstacles and bring about the necessary evidence. The mirrors of

reality play are brought into alignment by a nonambiguous commitment

from a conscious mind. The "other mirror" is automatically unambiguous.

The close relation between our commitments of life and what we perceive

was explored by Livingston in the Bulletin of Atomic Science , February,

1963. Livingston discussed the idea, inherited from the Greeks, of a

common logic of thinking. Recent studies have questioned this Greek

notion. Culture and language affect one's world view, the very process

by which we think, and the "logic assumed for the operation of the whole

universal process."

We inherited from Descartes the notion that there is a close

correspondence between what we perceive and the "real nature of our

environment." Descartes believed that a world of objects existed in a

stable form and that reasonable men could "divest themselves of their

passions" and by methods of reasoning arrive at an objective comprehension

of physical things, social events, and forces.

Descartes granted us a relatively one-to-one correspondence between

our subjective experience and the world "out there." He also gave us the

notion that each of us has access to a relatively uncontaminated screen of

perceptual experience upon which our judgements and actions can be based.

Livingston points out that our logical processes of thinking are relative

to the language learned. He questions the correspondence between what

we perceive and the "real nature of our environment." I would extend

his question tol ask: Is there such a thing as a "real nature of

our environment"? Cohen assumes that if there is, man can never know

it. All we can know, as Bruner says, is our own representation of the

world; a representation, Jung might add, carried as a blueprint within

our culture, filled with an endless variety of diverse content -- from

Solley-Murphy's sea of stimuli, shaped by Sapir-Whorf's concept-percept

in this semantic universe of Levi-Strauss's, and so on.

There is nothing orderly or logical to the function I am trying

to outline. I find no evidence that great cosmic powers keep the

process on an upward trend, keeping an eye on us to assure our eventual

success. There is no hierarchy of criteria or value for what is or is not

"realized," made real, by the function. It is a contest of inhibitions and

strengths, choices and allegiances. We are the source of value and choice,

the source of ideas around which the procedure of our reality orients.

On the one hand it is argued that there is no world "out there" available

to dispassionate observation. Objectivity in relation to reality is

a naive delusion on our part. On the other hand, a universal common

knowledge is denied. There appears to be no world-mind from which we

may get cues, no secret wavelengths for our perceptors.

There is, nevertheless, an open-ended aspect for us, a creative one, and

glimpsed through autistic thinking. There is a bridge between clearing

and forest, between logical man and his