I wrote to Mr. Barrow last month, May 2002 to ask him what exactly he had in mind concerning: 'unobtrusive words with uncertain meanings that having lost their metaphorical significance are unconsciously mistaken for objective realities'.
His answer was:
"Dear Betty: Becker's quote spoke to me about the idea that might be around, unrecognized in any time, that if pursued opens a new world of truth. Einstein's simple questions about the speed of light and why everything falls under gravity in vacuum with the same acceleration are examples. It was nice to hear of your interest in my book and in these questions more generally. You might like my latest book 'The Book of Nothing' which is about all aspects of nothing, including the mathematical, philosophical, physical and theological. Best wishes, John"
The quotation from the introduction to Pi In The Sky by John Barrow was about the 'mysterious' as a mathematician understood it: The first chapter is named:
Chapter 1: From mystery to history
The words 'mystery of history' reshaped in my mind into "my story of his story" and I realized suddenly that everything I knew about history was 'his story'. The idea was new to me, it's common now though. That was about when Michael Jackson's album History came out and it was obvious the songs were related to his real life story at that point. 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
"If we could discover the little backstairs door that for any age serves as the secret entranceway to knowledge we will do well to look for certain unobtrusive words with uncertain meanings that are permitted to slip off the tongue or the pen without fear and without research; words which having from constant repetition lost their metaphorical significance, are unconsciously mistaken for objective realities. " Carl Becker
"the idea that might be around, unrecognized in any time, that if pursued opens a new world of truth."
The idea I have had to learn to understand is about what happened in 1984 on this planet. It was an event that does open a new world of truth, at least to me, possibly to others. Although it begins in the most mundane everyday level of events it proved to me in a way I can never doubt that: we are not alone in the universe, we are receiving information from an intelligence that does not physically exist on Earth except in 'man'. Whether it's a biology based 'feed back' of some kind (which is most likely) or otherwise I don't know, but there is such specificity of content, unique memories of a few events that happened when I was very young especially were involved that this factor alone validates it. My name was 'said' to me in a most unusual form, and many times what I was doing physically was 're-iterated' in a particular form that I did not recognize for several years.
The reason I cannot doubt it, is that the information that I understand now, was created in my mind, in a visible way, based on my memories, certain of them having been re-generated throughout my life for no reason I could see. Keep in mind this repetition caused them to eventually cause me to wonder to myself about them. Because these memories occurred early in my life and many of them were like a short video compacted into a fraction of a second, before VCR's and computers the idea was hard to find words to describe. Some were a vivid life photograph of a moment that replayed complete in every detail how I felt, what I was doing, thought created in my mind by what I was doing as well as the feelings in my body. All the content of that moment was actually re-played and re-lived in a flash of time. The content was compacted into a tiny increment of time, so rapid that it took years to notice each one of them because each was different in content, then wonder to myself about them. It seems obvious now that these few events were 'highlighted' by this retrieval and replay but saved for later use. This 'highlighting mechanism' sorted them out and made them significant, made them objects to look at although they were 'within my mind' and only the curious replaying caused me to wonder to myself about them. They were very specific memories.
Other memories from my past and certain events that I knew were unique to me were clearly retrieved and displayed for no reason I could see after 1984 when I had experienced the event that I later named a 'mindquake'. The content of my mind was primarily visible to me then, rather than what was outside of my body! There was a relationship that I had to recognize when certain memories from my past began to move through my mind, like 'ghosts riding along the backroads of my mind'. they marked the backroads, the depths of mind.
Images from my past began to occur and that was different, so different I was curious about that too. After some unusual experiences it was so obvious the memories that were being retrieved in some way were symbolically representing something and I didn't know anything about symbolism then. I couldn't ignore it or fail to notice it, I realized the memory related directly to what was happening in my life. At times, there was a direct relationship to what was in front of me at the moment, describing' (I also use the word 'echoing back' to me a detail about my specific life at that moment. This is not an easy idea to grasp, it took me about 3 years after 1984 to even begin, just barely begin 'get it' myself.
A few incidents happened in which the relationship was impossible to not see. It was and still is a process of instruction but it's also a naming process, and identification process, and 'like' a Global Position Satellite in that where one is exactly at times, is made quite obvious. In 2000 I went back to my home town and had an experience there that I could not possibly have caused to happen, and that event clearly revealed that what I was doing was not really of my own 'will', that day. That story is in The Hill link and the Majesti Watch link.
Yet there were events unconnected to what happened to me that involved other people, real living people whose lives somehow formed a kind of living 'class room', These people spoke words that gave evidence that they were participating knowingly, acting out the 'plot' of a drama they were to present to an audience of one person, me, who did not know the 'plot' myself. It was concerned with a 'secret about the insane, just around the corner, just out of sight'.
This idea brings into focus a completely unsuspected new idea about certain kinds of experiences that have been cast into the categories of 'psychotic' as events that are really understandable but not in a process that uses ordinary logic, i.e. the Aristotlean form. This kind of experience is not evidence of 'mental derangement', it is part of the 'language' that can actually teach itself. They are in fact not irrational events, they do generate authentic and factual 'meaning' to that person's life.
There is a process of human individuation (C. G. Jung) as well as a more intense encounter with the content of every day life situations, Emanuel Swedenborg's regeneration. How I became aware of this 'connection' is the most difficult thing to try to describe.
I've not written to many authors to ask for clarification about something they wrote. The first time I was curious enough to write to an author happened a few years after 1984, when I felt a response in my body from words I read in a book by M. Scott Peck. Somehow one sentence in the book stood out because of this body response, and the words lingered in my mind so that I wrote to him to ask what he meant when he wrote: "The affairs between one man and one woman can be of cosmic significance." I wondered then if the circumstance between my husband and myself, and the continuing flow of 'strangeness' that I could not find a name for in our life was what he meant. His secretary answered. She mentioned that Josephine had an influence on Napoleon as an example. I felt ashamed that I'd not been able to think about that myself, but then I'd not read much about actual history either at that point.
Reading a few words in a book that I chanced to pick up somewhere that had an 'effect' on my body was something that was just beginning to happen in 1982; it was part of the new 'strangeness'. I could see no reason why a few words or sentences in a book could affect my body and arouse enough curiosity to think about them. It was a new kind of 'event', being affected that way by words in a book. But this new effect was more easily detected than being affected by a new way of seeing lights at night. Or understanding why hearing trains in the valley that I'd been hearing for years suddenly began to make me feel sadness and a terrible sense of grief. More than 15 years scrolled through my life before I knew the real reason for the terrible sense of loss and the greater almost devastating reason for the grief.
However odd it may read, when I was attracted beyond the normal to the words in this sentence: "The affairs between one man and one woman can be of cosmic significance." they were actual facts about my life at that moment, describing what was just beginning to demand to be understood.
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