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Library of Congress CCN 67-10417 CHAPTER 07 |
A ten-year-old ho\ cries out in terror in a nightmare at 4:00 A.M. What do you say to him about the rcality of the 159 - nightmare? Do we ever explain to the children that apparently hehind the palpable appearance of things as we see them today there are other types of consciousness awaiting them? Do we ever explarn to them that the kind of consciousness that adults apparently have and they, the children, share and watch, is only one of several? Do we explain to them the experiences that we have had insice during a high fever, with amesthesia, with severe pain, with our dreams at night? Do we explain to them how it feels to have taken too much alcohol? Apparently we do not generally so explain in the United States of America in 1967. Apparently, one does not explain to his children what it is 1ike to be isolated in solitude and to be intensely alone. We leave such descriptions of the different states of consciousness and the experiences there to the literature generated by the previous generations. We leave it to the latest "horror" movies which are not really very sympathetic to the positive aspects of these di ferent states. We leave it to the TV shows which are similar. Most of these media are controlled in such a way that all states of consciousness, other than a certain narrow slot in which one is expected to go, are treated as "negative." These other states are labeled horrifying, tcrrifying, frightening, crazy, irresponsible, addicting, or psychotic. Why do we not give this gift of creative exploration of the mind and spirit to our children? Why do we not teach them directly how to explore their own minds? I helieve it is because we have abdicated our judgment and our reason m this area to specialists. For safe pictures in the area of the spirit we have the religious specialists, For sane and logical constructs of the outer realities we have the scienti'dc specialists. I or healthy pictures of our hiological life we have medical specialists. For "non-neurotic" and "non-psychotic" views of our mental hfe, we have the mental health spcciaiists. We have the explorer specialists and the astronauts to give us complete pictures of strange lands, peoples, or outer space. To give "anthropologicaT" pictures of members of our species other than ourselves, we have the specialists on man himself. Statistical pictures of how we operate in the mass are generated by the psychological specialists. How all animals differ from us is given in detailed pictures by tbe animal spetialists. ithe politicaT specialists give us the 160 latest picture of a human danger to our national and local socTaT extstencc and how to meet it.
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