On another note: Slothrop and the Rockets

[Doug Millison]

Fun theory, well worth the trouble of writing down and sharing.

I prefer to think that Slothrop's perceptual filters loosen considerably as
he makes himself more vulnerable and available to the mystery of his quest,
and like the great mystics of the Christian creation spirituality tradition
(Meister Eckart, Hildegarde of Bingen, Mechtilde of Madburg, etc.) Slothrop
moves into levels of consciousness beyond the rational mind that's normative
in the Enlightenment worldview, on to the "psychic", "subtle", and
"non-dual" realms (borrowing Ken Wilber's frame of reference here), which
could account for some of the strange perceptions that Pynchon appears to
present from Slothrop's POV, until Slothrop finally merges so totally with
the source that compels his quest that he seems to disappear.  That's just
my pet theory, of course. When I have more time, I'll pull together specific
citations to support it -- the rainbow that accompanies Slothrop's final
epiphany is rather pregnant with meanings, for starters, and the catalogue
that precedes this epiphany might sustain readings linking the various
elements to the various archetypes of the mystic journey that Pynchon
structures into the novel. 

MalignD at aol.com:
"I say upfront that this explanation is dismissable as crackpot, "

Surely nobody on Pynchon-L would dismiss our pet theories of GR with a label
as crude as "crackpot"?