The Crack in the Cosmic Egg Read Online Free PDF

really talking about

the unknown nature of the forest beyond their circle of reason and

logic. They talk about their garden within it, the forest converted,

the trees labeled, the plants and shrubs cataloged, selected, arranged

in orderly patterns. When the scientists look at the forest, they look

for additions to their garden, and they look with a gardeners eye.

The nature "discovered" is determined, to an indeterminable degree, by

the mind that sets out to discover. We can never know the full extent we

play in this reality formation. It will never be computable or reducible

to formula. An ultimately serious commitment of mind, however, can be

the determinate in any issue, overriding randomness and chance.

In the following chapters I hope, by showing what I have found about

this reality play, to suggest a way by which we may take a more active

part in shaping our events. I will explore the formation of world view,

which determines our adult world-to-view, and this will require some

exploration of different phenomena of mind, particularly from that

shadow-side of thinking called autistic. Then I will explore the way a

passionate pursuit or commitment of mind shapes its own fulfillment --

the way a question can bring about its answer, a belief its illumination,

a desire its gratification, by reshaping, as needed, those concepts

shaped from birth, and so reshaping perceptual patterns.

I have traced this mirroring of mind and reality in scientific pursuits,

the postulate, the 'Eureka!' the new notion that changes the actual

tangibles for a civilization. Then I have tried to show how this same

relation between idea and fact found in science equally underlies such

a cultic affair as fire not burning a person under certain circumstances.

Mind over matter is a misnomer, and even to speak of a mirroring between

the two probably implies a false dualism. I will try to trace the function

by which events are shaped, and avoid those comfortable categories, those

idolatries, those easy psychological clichés that act as stopping-places

before the goal is reached. And the goal is nothing less than the very

ontological underpinnings of things, the reality-shaping way by which

events come about.

In this opening chapter I have given a rough survey of the kinds of

questions, and the kinds of answers, I will deal with in the rest of the

book. Our clearing in the forest is all there appears for us to go on. I

have no 'deus ex machina' to introduce skilfully at the last. There is

no magic for us -- and no outside interference. The game is ours. Our

responsibility is ultimately serious, yet there is often only one way

really to serve our cultural circle, and that is by breaking through

its tight logic, and plunging into that empty category, the dark forest

beyond. I attempted to do this when disaster struck at my own little

world. I failed in the last analysis -- though of course in retrospect

I see my failure as needless.

The high priests of the disciplines controlling our cultural circle

try to tell us that logic and reason are the sum total of things, or,

if more is possible, that it is only so through their controls, which

are their own logical rules. Logic and reason are surely the stuff of

which the clearing is made, and the high point of life's thrust. Yet

these techniques of mind tend to become destructive and to trap us in

deadlocks of despair.

Logic and reason are like the tip of an iceberg. The naive realists, the

biogenetic psychologists, the rats-in-the-maze watchers, claim the tip is

all there is. Yet life becomes demonic when sentenced to so small an area.

There are times when we need to open the threshold of mind to that unknown

subterranean depth -- and we always need to believe in its existence.

And so, though our cosmic egg is the only reality we have, and is not to

be treated lightly, what I hope to show is that there is available to us a

crack in this egg. For there are