My Library

Times have changed since then, of course. But the money-control factor has not -- and unknown to me back then there were to be many bitter disputes over this in the years ahead. Still, this gratuitous money-raising gesture was one of the most wonderful things which has ever happened to me. Although I didn't really know what to do about it, I felt stronger by this -- well, by this evidence of substantial support. During January and February of 1972, I began realizing that I didn't know nearly enough about how the human organism biologically PERCEIVES. I knew a great deal about this regarding art and the creative experience and its processes. But this had more to do with aesthetics, creative imagination and mental imagery. Our modern mainstream culture had distinguished between these and so-called "psychic" perceptions (but managed to utilize the term "perceptions" for both categories, while science held that real psychic perceptions didn't exist. You figure it out.) I decided that I was weak regarding the biology of perceiving, and so when I wasn't working at the ASPR I undertook the one thing I liked best back in those years -- library research. The situation was this, and it needs to be described as concretely as possible since it became terribly important in the years ahead.