This is David Blatner who authored a book, Joy of Pi.  There a story behind the picture. Short version of the story:

I was involved in a law suit that went through the lower courts.  When I decided to appeal to the State Supreme Court I retained an attorney, Gary  Marshal, recommended by the attorney that had handled the case in lower court proceedings. 

One day soon after I'd retained him I was writing out checks to pay my bills (on my ironing board). I put the check into the addressed envelope then I noticed some pictures I'd just gotten. Without thinking I reached for one of the pictures, put it into the envelope and sealed it. 

About a year later, during a conversation Gary asked me if I remembered sending him a picture of a statue of pi. I told him I did. Then he told me that as soon as he'd gotten the picture he'd sent it off to a friend of his who was writing a book about pi. The book was ready to be published and the friend wanted to know where the statue was, so he could have his authors picture taken beside it.  He made no comment about what an unusual situation it was, nor did I mention it to him then, or later.

David Blatner sent me a copy of the UK edition which does not have the pi model picture on the jacket. The print he used in the book is 'money green'.

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The point I want to make is that I did not have any reason to send the picture, nor did I think about it afterwards.  And  Gary Marshall never mentioned getting it or asked about why I'd sent it. Nor did he mention that he'd sent it off immediately until this conversation took place.

Think about this:

One day I wrote the check for my attorney's bill and put it into the envelope. Some pictures I'd just gotten developed were laying nearby. I reached for one of them which happened to be on top. It was  a picture of a pi model that's in  the courtyard of where I work. I  slipped it into the envelope with the check without any comment about it.  Then I forgot about it. The impulse to include the picture was quite automatic, I had no reason to believe it would be interesting to this attorney and there was no decision that I was aware I had made, to send it to him.

I saw my hand perform the action but it was a genuine 'thought'-less action.

The attorney never mentioned getting it and he did not ask about it.

Almost a year passed then one day in a telephone conversation  the attorney asked me if I remembered sending him a picture of a pi symbol. He said he had sent it off right away to a friend of his who was writing a book about pi. He told me the book was ready for publication and his friend wanted his author's picture to be taken alongside the pi model. He wanted to know where the pi symbol was, so I told  him.

The point is that an apparent foreknowledge existed within me about the relationship between this attorney, a friend of his and an object I was passionate about at that point in time.

The result of an impulse that I didn't think about prior to acting on it was that a quite perfectly timed coincidence of the meaningful kind happened.

David Blatner's book Joy of Pi came out at about the same time the movie Pi came out.

Theodore Reik wrote in "Listening With The Third Ear" that no studies have been done on the effects of one person's unconsciousness on that of another person

But then again, it may be that an almost undetectable arrangement brings about 'impulses' such as the one that caused me to reach for a picture that just happened to be laying near by so that future events can make sense, even to just one individual, who just happened to work where that pi model has stood since 1979.

This impulse is one that I have had to become more aware of through experiences such as this, and many of a different kind. This mechanism of projection cannot be understood by reading a definition in any book. There are impulses such as this behind my life story, and they made sense only when a certain change in my thinking began to cause me to hear differently, I saw everything in a different way that altered nothing at all (??!!!) and my body felt very different.

That impulse knows much about Time that I don't know, didn't suspect for most of my life. But at least now I suspect much more than I used to, about what 'time' is.  It's like I am a camera at times, one that snaps a vivid photograph of what's outside the body at that moment  and because I have memory as well I record some of  what the body experiences, complete with thought. That assembled that moment was not 'me'. The 'camera' takes pictures of what's  in front of me. One of it's first appearances in my life, happened when I was barely a toddler. I had the first 'thought' generated by that  which was going to use what I was looking at in the future.  

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Because I learned something about the 'literal sense' and the 'law', during  the years long civil suit this which follows  is a more detailed version of what happened in the law suit. I hired an attorney, then let him go and represented myself for a time, then hired another attorney who read every paper and told me the suit didn't make sense. But what he said in court did not reflect what he had told me. I asked why, he'd not told the court what he told me but by then it was too late. After the judge ruled against me, my attorney told me that he couldn't accuse the other side of lying, a judge doesn't want to hear that kind of thing. "I tell a story, and the other side tells a story and which ever story the judge likes best, he decides for. I was thinking the judge would see a nice lady that wouldn't do the kind of thing they say you did." ((????!!!!!!!) There were documents and dates that were proof but they were never mentioned in court.

Overall  it was an event that triggered me to begin to read law citations, read about legal process (??) and the history of law. At the end of the appeals process, I realized that there's a literal sense., it's a particular mindset that has certain  ways of hearing. It's a real mindset, it's 'concrete' in a certain way and logical in a distinct way. I became aware that this 'sense'  is most obvious in law where only a 'Yes' or 'no' answer does not give enough information but more information is neither encouraged, permitted or entered into court records. . Some people have this 'literal mindset', which in this protracted legal process was acted out. I found out that I could be manipulated into answering a question put to me, either "Yes" or "No", when neither answer gave any information that was necessary to my case. That happened a lot.   I began to spend a lot of time in the University of Washington Law Library.

It is also appropriate for me to mention several years before this situation evolved, I'd been through a long law suit that was presided over by a Judge Gary Little who surprised Seattle by committing suicide several years later. During the trial I had noticed he seemed completely unawares of the real issues in the law suit. A woman had died of cancer and within days of her death her husband of 17 years had gotten rid of everything that was hers, much to the outrage of her adult children. He'd been a father to them for 17 years so they were shocked and surprised at his lack of apparent  knowledge and consideration for their mothers' wishes. They'd each been promised things  by their mother which were sold for "25 cents a box" in a yard sale, before her children knew about the yard sale!  There were neighbors called to witness that indeed everything had been hauled into the front  yard one morning and everything was gone that day.

 Judge Gary Little had  interrupted several times to burst out that "We are taking up time, wasting 3 lawyers time and money as well as mine, talking about boxes of stuff that was worth 25 cents!!!"  

  (Two lawyers from a title company represented me, because I'd bought the house they'd lived in and he'd not had her will probated.  . We owned the property  next door already, so that's why we were approached by the man as soon as he found out his wife had cancer and was expected to live less than  a year. I thought that was a bit  callous, but I said nothing. The title company had not found the will so they represented me. My husband and I were involved in a horrendous situation in our life, and much more could be written about the reason I bought the house myself, without his getting involved in buying the property or the trial.)                                       

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 In 1994 I was involved in a civil suit about a real estate transaction which I'll have to write something about to set a context. The property I was wanting to buy was a dream come true, 5 acres on the Cedar River, a lovely rambler home and a garage that had a very nice apartment already established. The suit was filed after  my buyers did not get financing in time, but  even though the contract terms expired, they insisted I sell even when I could no longer buy the property I wanted. I didn't want to sell by then, so they sued for specific performance, which I'd never heard about. "Time is of the essence." was the law I knew about . There's an 'equity law', which was defined to me  as a meaning a strict interpretation of the law would be unfair.

The civil suit was strung out over about 3+ years, it was expensive and if I'd not had a job I would not have been able to pursue contesting it. I got the papers and much to my surprise I noticed the details in the transaction  had been reversed, the sellers had claimed I'd done, what they had done themselves. And there were signed, dated papers to prove it.

And also when  I read everything that had been cited ( to support the 'allegations' against me) in the papers I was baffled because there seemed  to be no connection to the citations from case law that supported filing the 'cause of action' against me and my situation. These 'citations' are decisions from cases judges had heard in the past that were supposed to be similar to the situation I was in.   I had already been startled when I read the papers that initiated the suit because  I saw immediately that the attorney that filed the suit had  reversed every detail as to who did what and when. They had asked me for extensions, we'd signed them when I agreed to them, but the suit claimed I'd asked for extensions and that they had given them to me which was not true. They had promised a closing within 45 days, and that didn't happen so I lost the property I wanted to buy. My property was valuable and I was only willing to sell it to buy something I wanted very much and the price had been established so I would have a fast sale.

 I went to show  their attorney  the supporting papers but he wouldn't look at them. He waved his hand and told me forthrightly: "The papers don't mean a thing. The judge is going to decide what happened. Why don't you just sign the papers and spare yourself the expense and emotional turmoil of a protracted legal process?" I was horrified and outraged.

 Later I was told by an other attorney that it often happens that suits like this one are filed so the attorney can get in front of a judge, then a completely different story is told. But most often, people who are being sued don't want to go through the 'protracted legal process' so they'll do anything to avoid being sued. . He told me the allegations in the original suit  do not even have to be true, or  proved, nor even mentioned again!!

That's what was so outrageous and that is what happened in court. The allegations were never mentioned, a completely different story was presented in court.  I believed it could not happen until I saw it and saw how it happened. Nobody ever mentioned even one 'allegation' in the suit, and nobody ever mentioned the strange reversal of details, as to who had  done what and when. The judge, an aging pro tem judge, dozed at times.

 Even my own attorney did not bring out the fact that the suit twisted every fact around, so that what had actually been said in the suit to have been done by me was done by the other side, nor were the papers looked at that proved this.

When  I went to the attorney to show him the documents and he didn't look at them, he also reversed roles several times during the trial. There's a psychiatric term for that kind of 'role reversal', where an individual seems to experience another person doing what in fact he/she is doing themselves. I didn't know about it during this trial, but by the end of the trial, many aspects of my life had shown me in great detail much about this  mechanism of mind. It's known to create 'self observation', but it's twisted around. I think of it as a 'switch' that makes decisions about what is 'me' or 'not me'. I will clarify that later.

"Projection" as it is defined psychologically is a mechanism of mind that creates 'self observation' but  it turns content that is 'self observation' around from inner content, in certain very specific situations to seeming to be outside of the body,  outwards.

Experience I'd had in my past had somewhat introduced the idea to me: We'd had a tenant that believed his apartment was bugged, the FBI had a wire tap on his phone, people he worked with were sabotaging his work, his car and finally he'd lost his job.  He was starving when I  found him in the immaculate apartment. He'd paid rent rather than eat. But he told me he felt watched, everyone was watching him, talking about him. He felt everything he said was being listened to and although this didn't seem likely, I could see he clearly was being made very sick by his beliefs. Nothing I said, nothing anyone that tried to help him made any difference.  When I went through his belongings to find his relatives, I found he'd a degree in theology from Harvard University.

Another experience: I had an aunt who had worked for the post office, and literally, she had gone 'postal', she couldn't work and as far as we knew she was diagnosed as being schizophrenic. I knew nothing about that either when  this civil suit began and when it ended. I did know my aunt fairly well, and she had feelings that she was being stalked, that someone was coming into her house, so she rarely would leave it even for medical care. She had rigged up a complicated system to show whether someone came in, everything that got broke or lost was attributed to the stalker doing it. Her house was so full of stuff that we believed things got lost, or she simply didn't remember what she'd done. She had suspicions of everyone, almost everyone found themselves accused of something. . But in her way she manages to survive and keep herself busy.

This mechanism is a puzzling mechanism, it's like a 'switch' that functions during certain events that are relevant to certain life processes that are highly individual. This is a mechanism of mind that is nearly impossible to discern personally. I didn't know much about it when these events happened.
This was like going to a live classroom, it was just one incident where I began to learn about this 'switch' that basically decides what is 'me' and what is 'not me' observations.

 Some individuals 'project' much of their own inner content, outwards, and that's where the problem gets very serious. I knew very little about this serious mechanism until after 1998.

In the trial, which happened in 1994-5 the entire record consists of a completely different situation being talked about in court. Too complicated to write about.

 I was so outraged at the attorney who had told me I ought to just 'sign the papers and avoid the expense and emotional turmoil) that I called  him at times a day, very angry and at times I know I was hysterical and unafraid for some reason, to tell him exactly what he was doing that was against the  law. That happened  when he kept sending requests for 'discovery' information that were excessive and utterly absurd. There were pages and pages of demands for 'discovery information' , and I really yelled at him. I'd read enough by then to know that's not supposed to happen.

 He never hung up on me. Much to my surprise. I was also amazed later that I had what seemed to be the 'gall' to confront him, to literally yell at him, describing exactly what he was doing to me.

He told me I must be off my medication, but he did not ask me if any medication had ever been prescribed! 

I had begun to read about the law, it's history because my attorney didn't seem to be doing the simple task of forcing someone that needed to do it,  to read the documents in the transaction. . I also read and felt that I understood the very complicated material s that had been 'cited' as a cause of action.  By then I wondered why people do not get involved in their own suits, and learn enough themselves to have more influence on what the attorney does in court.. I began to wonder whether lawyers practiced law, and whether anyone other that lawyers even began to try to understand legal language, which did not seem all that difficult once I began to spend enough time in the law library.

The lower court proceedings  turned out to be an education in the legal system, exposing  me in depth to how the 'legal' process operates in reality.  I had been somewhat exposed to the 'law'  prior to this suit, in fact I had already become outraged at the legal process. 

 I appealed to the State Supreme Court and I retained Gary Marshall as an attorney. I'd had two other attorneys in the lower court proceedings before I finally decided to handle everything myself because it seemed nothing was happening except that I was paying a lot of money every month.

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 As a result of getting involved, totally committed to my real life issues  I became aware of not having anyone consider the important documents or the strange trial that ignored the allegations in the papers, especially in court.

During this 3 years period I began to live in a world where documents and facts are supposed to be important but it turned out to be an almost  unbelievable fantasy in action every day. In a place where facts and reality were supposed to be the topic, nothing but fantasy happened.  I experienced an almost unbelievable situation marked by actions and a lot of talking going on between unconscious but highly educated individuals.

My 'issue'  required only that those  who were the 'law' get involved enough to  read documents that readily proved the suit had been filed to put pressure on me sell some property I no longer needed or wanted to sell  after the real estate contract expired.  I was heartbroken to lose the property I wanted.

Now back to the picture of David Blatner standing by the pi model at what used to be the Boeing Fabrication Division in Auburn, Washington: