Determinism
“Thanks, I Needed That!” Is every experience, whatever it may seem to be, somehow Meant to help us with our mothers and, through them, to Beyond? There used to be a TV ad for an aftershave lotion. The man would apply it to his face – which he’d then slap. The punch-line: “Thanks, I needed that!” Read More »
“The Unconscious Determines Everything”
To us he is no more a person
now but a whole climate of opinion
under whom we conduct our different lives.
- W.H. Auden, “In Memory of Siegmund Freud”
Freud’s most important contribution: all our activity, mental and physical, is determined by our unconscious. Our decisions are never really based on logic.
Read More »“The Harmony of All the Billions”
“A hundred billion stars in our galaxy, hundreds of billions of galaxies beyond our own.”
–Richard Panek, The 4% Universe
And there’s the other 96% of which we know nothing – the so-called dark matter and dark energy.
Read More »“Dying as Mahler – or Lao Tzu”
I once visited the large estate of Mrs. Carlson, the widow of the inventor of Xerox. Many monks would visit there for its utter tranquility, which she herself radiated.
I asked her the secret of her deep Peace. She smiled: “Don’t read the newspapers.” And I did stop them – and the magazines and, of course, the TV.
Read More »“Georg Groddeck and the Tao”
The great physician and psychoanalyst Georg Groddeck believed that in his unconscious was the patient's desire for disease – as well as for health. And he also believed that in his own unconscious was his desire for the patient's health to then actuate the patient's desire.
But what of the Tao – or whatever Groddeck would have called It? I'm sure, him being as he declared “wild,” he did so believe, but chose to not say lest he be deemed “too wild.”
Read More »
