Helping The Subconscious Humane Science Emerge

John L. Waters

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Paper Number One

Directed Study Philosophy 399

Professor John Powell

Fall Semester, 2000

John L. Waters

September 3, 2000

Barry Stevens looked at a safety pin reflecting

sunlight and experienced euphoria with a rapid flight

of ideation during which she briefly felt that she had

solved the mystery of the universe and that she was

seeing into the heart of things.(1) Three centuries

earlier, the cobbler Jacob Boehme looked at sunlight

reflected off a pewter vessel and experienced an

episode of euphoria and a flight of ideas which

evolved to become a very popular book entitled "The

Signature of all Things."(2)

It's common knowledge now that during the fall and

winter seasons some individuals become depressed due

to light deprivation. Light is known to be a mood

elevator. Persons who are especially light sensitive

in this way are said to suffer from "seasonal affect

disorder" or SAD. It's reasonable, therefore, to

suggest that for at least some people, gazing at a

bright light such as the sun would uplift ones spirit

greatly.

With this idea in mind, when it's reported that many

autistic children gaze into lights or even at the sun,

the reason might be that each one of these children

has independently discovered that exposing the retinas

to bright light causes a physiological reaction to

occur which lifts the spirits greatly as much as a

mind-altering drug. Many autistic children also rock

themselves and it's known that continuously rocking

the body produces natural opiates which give one a

self-induced feeling of well-being. So the autistic

infant who often rocks his body continuously and who

often gazes at lights doesn't need social

reinforcement to feel good, and this autistic child

grows up feeling less need or feeling no need to be

attentive to the social graces which bring so many

pleasing social rewards to non-autistic children.

WARNING:

Gazing at the sun or at any other bright light may

result in blindness, insanity, constriction and

blockage of the intestine and even death. This is a

warning. Do not experiment with gazing at lights.

Neither the writer of this article nor his associates,

promoters, or publishers will be held legally

responsible for damages incurred by anyone or from

anyone who fails to pay attention to this warning and

heed it. More studies of this subject under the

supervision of trained medical research scientists

need to be made.

Autistic is a word for a person who seems aloof from

those articulate and well-mannered people who pay so

much attention to the conventional interests and to

the social graces. The autistic person pays less

attention to the conventional interests of the social

group. Therefore his interests may seem irrelevant

or unimportant to the social group. But sometimes one

such eccentric person makes a discovery and introduces

a useful novelty, such as the mastery of fire. In

seeking to explain the process by which the most

revolutionary and useful discoveries have been made

the idea of mythical "God"-men and the historical

presence of eccentric living geniuses is linked.

It may be suggested that to a varying degree, creative

geniuses are self-drugged persons whose medication is

self-administered through their unusual behaviors and

through their unusual genetic inheritance. The

question arises as to whether or not a person who

doesn't appear to be talented might engage in certain

behaviors and seemingly miraculously discover a hidden

talent which he or she had never demonstrated or

developed before. Using this method many young

persons who weren't recognized as being especially

talented might develop in a way not expected.

The word "genius" might not be perfectly correct, and

the term "autistic" has come to refer to a small

percentage of severely retarded children. What has

been systematically excluded or left out of

sophisticated modern knowledge is this testable theory

of God, inspiration and the discovery and development

of hidden or dormant talents. Often modern medical

professionals equate the sense of God with psychosis,

that is a chronic disorder in brain chemistry. Rather

than cultivate the divine sense of inspiration, the

modern doctors suppress the incipient development

with powerful anti-psychotic medications.

It's possible to view Jesus the young man as a person

who was susceptible to depressions due to his genetic

inheritance, and see him leaving the security of his

job as an apprentice carpenter to "find himself" on a

vision quest which was an old Jewish custom in those

days. This quest consisted of wandering alone in the

Judean wilderness and engaging in activities which

produced a vision of who he was and what he could

become. In the desert Jesus was exposed to a lot of

bright sunlight. If he discovered what Jacob Boehme

and Barry Stevens discovered, perhaps by gazing at a

rock whose crystals reflected the sun like mirrors,

then Jesus would have felt uplifted to the same

heavenly realm. And like Boehme, Jesus might have

made

up a great story and developed a latent talent for

becoming a story-teller or philosopher. But upon

returning to his nation and promoting his newly-found

ideas, Jesus was much less successful than Jacob

Boehme. In fact some of Jesus' actions and ideas were

so offensive that he was put to death.

The basic underlying question here is this: A male

child is born, and society tries to educate and train

the naive boy so that after about twenty years he

turns into a reasonable facsimile of the ideal

sophisticated cultured man. But the child who has an

exceptional talent or an "odd genius" will not conform

and socialize well with people who just don't have the

exceptional capacity or even have the intelligence to

recognize the exceptional capacity. Life will set the

eccentric young man apart from his more conventional

fellows and the atypical person may never "find

himself" and self-actualize. This failure is a loss

of talent not only to the talented person but to his

whole society as well. So the question is, "How can

modern society help each young person realize his

special hidden talent?" This is really the creation

of a new academy or society for culturing atypical

young persons whose talents are difficult for

conventional parents and educators to assess and

evaluate.

Each one of the old societies has developed a very

narrow ideal standard for a man and for a woman.

Rules of politeness, manners, and personal excellence

differ from culture to culture. But prior to

acceptance into his peer culture, a naive child has

his or her own special talents. But these talents

aren't always evident. Some children keep their

talents secret, even from themselves.

I look at Barry Stevens, Jacob Boehme, Jesus Christ

and other atypical inspired adults as pioneers in

this new subject field of discovering and

revitalizing a hidden or dormant as yet unrecognized

personal talent. And I see my own on-going

independent research as helping many other people

start this new venture in education and in medicine,

with the interest and help of some professional

medical doctors, some professional educators and some

parents.