My Library

I believe I could have lived with the loss of face if it involved only myself. But for the first time in my life, and much to my surprise, the current situation involved many of others, all of whom I respected and whose friendships were entirely meaningful to me. I, poor little Moi, was caught between those painful circumstances typically described as the damned if you don't try and damned if you do try - and fail. But there is no shame in failure IF one gives one's best shot at trying. Right? After all, that's what sports competitions are all about. And here was my first real intimation of the "circumstances" thing I presented in Chapter 1 of this book. I had never before really felt I was sucked into circumstances - other than those which seemed to be of my own making. The circumstances now surrounding my trip to California were not made by me, but had come about because of situations which involved others - situations which I had been sucked into simply because I had volunteered to try lab experiments. And I was caught into them as a portended victim is caught between two pincer prongs - thereafter to be jerked around as the circumstances desired. To be more clear, I had always felt that my life was more or less under my own determination, for better or worse. In large part, I could take part in what I wanted, and I always could walk away from whatever. No one cared one way or another. In any event, the experiments with Puthoff would at least be under excellent auspices auspices far beyond anything parapsychology had to offer anywhere. Stanford Research Institute WAS an eminent SCIENCE center. The whole of parapsychology was, if anything at all, only a fringe science affair, with the mainstream and academic emphasis on "fringe."