bang bang maxwell's silver demon

[Doug Millison]

Jody,

Thanks for another intriguing post. I'm not up on the physics you're using
to inform your reading of M&D -- I wish I were (maybe you could suggest
something I could read therein) -- but I thought of M&D, Rebekah, and the
rest of Pynchon's ghosts and otherworldly apparitions, as I was reading in
another book last night:

"Hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares, visions and apparitions are not
the same as delusions and hallucinations.  ...  The present discussion is
not about delusions and hallucinations, about losing touch with reality,
and neither is it about tricks and lies, about losing touch with honesty.
Trance and ecstasy, vision and apparition are perfectly normal and natural
phenomena. Altered states of consciousness, such as dreams and visions, are
something common to our humanity, something hard-wired into our brains,
something as normal as language itself. They were recognized as common
possibilities in the early first century, and they are still recognized as
such in the late twentieth century. And only when their human normalcy is
accepted can a proper response be offered. That response should not be, We
deny the *fact* of your vision. It should be, Tell us the *content* of your
vision. And then we will have to judge, not whether you had it or not, but
whether we should follow it or not."
--John Dominic Crossan, _The Birth of Christianity:  Discovering what
happened in the years immediately after the execution of Jesus_

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