The Crack in the Cosmic Egg Read Free Page B

which concepts are reorganized. Metanoia is a specialized, intensified adult form of the same world-view

development found shaping the mind of the infant. Formerly associated

with religion, metanoia proves to be the way by which all genuine

education takes place. Michael Polanyi points out that a "conversion"

shapes the mind of the student into the physicist. Metanoia is a

seizure by the discipline given total attention, and a restructuring of

the attending mind. This reshaping of the mind is the principal key to

the reality function.

The same procedure found in world view development of the child, the

metanoia of the advanced student, or the conversion to a religion,

can be traced as well in the question-answer process, or the proposing

and eventual filling of an "empty category" in science. The asking of

an ultimately serious question, which means to be seized in turn by an

ultimately serious quest, reshapes our concepts in favor of the kinds

of perceptions needed to "see" the desired answer. To be given ears to

hear and eyes to see is to have one's concepts changed in favor of the

discipline. A question determines and brings about its answer just as

the desired end shapes the nature of the kind of question asked. This

is the way by which science synthetically creates that which it then

"discovers" out there in nature.

Exploring this reality function shows how and why we reap as we sow,

individually and collectively -- but no simple one-to-one correspondence

is implied. The success or failure of any idea is subject to an enormous

web of contingencies. Any idea seriously entertained, however, tends

to bring about the realization of itself, and will, regardless of the

nature of the idea, to the extent it can be free of ambiguities. The

"empty category" of science as an example will be explored later and the

same function is triggered by any set of expectancies, as, for instance,

a disease.

For instance, in my wife's case, a grandmother who had died of cancer

was the family legend, and all the females scrupulously avoided all the

maneuvers rumored to have possibly caused the horror. Then, in neat,

diabolical two-year intervals, my wife's favorite aunt died of cancer;

her mother developed cancer but survived the radical-surgery mutilations;

her father then followed and died in spite of extensive medical

machinations. Naturally, two years after burying her father, my wife's

own debacle occurred, in spite of her constant submissions to the high

priests for inspections, tests, and, no doubt, full confessionals. The

fact that all these carcinomas were of different sorts, and on opposite

sides of the family, was incidental. Few people understood my fury when

the medical center that had attended my wife requested that I bring my

just-then-budding teenage daughter for regular six-monthly check-ups for

ever thereafter, since they had found -- and thoroughly advertised -- that

mammary malignancies in a mother tended to be duplicated in the daughter

many hundred percent above average. And surely such tragic duplications do

occur, in a clear example of the circularity of expectancy verification,

the mirroring by reality of a passionate or basic fear.

The "empty category" is no passive pipe dream -- it is an active,

shaping force in the making of events. There are not as many hard line,

brass tack qualifications to the mirroring procedure to be outlined

in this book as one might think. For instance, the Ceylonese Hindu

undergoes a transformation of mind that temporarily bypasses the ordinary

cause-effect relationships -- even those we must have for the kind of

world we know. Seized by his god and changed, the Hindu can walk with

impunity through pits of white-hot charcoal that will melt aluminum

on contact. Recently, in our own country, hypnotically-induced trance

states have replaced chemical anaesthesias, allowing bloodless, painless,

quickly-healing operations to be