Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Human intelligence science has revealed that our enormous intelligence is the result of possessing dual minds. These dual minds create pictures of a dual world in which we live. Most of us don’t know we have dual minds and almost all of us don’t know we live in a dual world. We live in two worlds all of the time. Let us begin by examining the world created by the space-mind. Space-mind is in charge of survival. So it needs to know what the world is really like. Boy if you are in your space-mind, you better live in the real world. Right? Ever play dodge ball? When I was a kid, dodge ball was a big game. I don’t know whether they even play it any more. You go into the gym and line up against the wall and somebody throws a volleyball at you at high speed. Right? You dodge it Right? You better know where the ball really is or you are going to get hit. Ever play snow ball fights? Same thing right? You better know where those snowballs really are or you’re going to get hit. The space-mind has to know where things are in space. Where they really are. When I’m teaching this lesson to a group of students I’ll suddenly toss a pencil to someone sitting in the first row, and it’s amazing, they almost always catch it. One hand will fly up and catch the unexpected object. Their space-mind reflex puts their hand up. The space-mind has to know what’s real and what’s really going on or you don’t survive. If there is a tiger in this room I had better know it’s here. So the space mind makes a picture of reality from its sense images and feelings. That’s picture of reality is what I call the world of “is”. … Now humans also have the time-mind which is into becoming, it’s interested in cause and effect, it is always predicting the future based on its understanding of the past. So the time-mind forms an opinion of reality from words and thoughts. This opinion of reality is what I call the world of “ought to be”.  (11/18/02)
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Jake Bergman and Julia Reynolds report: In the summer of 1998 Stephen Jorgensen began buying the first of what were eventually more than 800 MAK-90 semiautomatic rifles at a store called Gun Land in Kissimmee, Florida. He did not have a resale permit–known as a Federal Firearms License, or FFL–and he was not required to present one. But Jorgensen wasn’t stockpiling the guns for his personal use; he was taking them to Opa-Locka airport near Miami and loading them aboard a light airplane headed for airstrips in Venezuela and Colombia, via Haiti. Jorgensen’s South American clients originally wanted AK-47s, but in the United States, the fully automatic AK-47 can be purchased from a dealer only with a Class 3 permit, which is difficult to obtain. The AK was modified in 1990 to get around the California Assault Weapons Ban–hence MAK-90, or “Modified AK 1990.” It is virtually identical to the AK-47 but costs only $200 to $300, compared with $1,000 to $3,000 for a Russian-made AK-47. It is exempt from the national Assault Weapons Ban, enacted after the California ban, because it has slight alterations that give it a hunting-rifle appearance. … The Venezuelan customers needed 200,000 rounds of ammunition, so Ceruelos agreed that Jorgensen would buy the ammo at a local gun shop in 10,000-round increments, so as not to arouse suspicion. Jorgensen assured Ceruelos, “They don’t monitor buying the ammunition; you don’t sign, nobody knows you bought it. So that’s a fairly low risk.” … Law enforcement officials describe the United States as a one-stop shop for the guns sought by terrorists, mercenaries and international criminals of all stripes. And September 11 has not changed that in any significant way. (11/18/02)
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Donivan Bessinger, MD writes: One’s view of the world derives from one’s view of oneself in relationship to the world of society and to the world of knowledge. Since antiquity, great teachers have stressed the importance of the understanding of one’s self, whether for religious enlightenment or as the basis for knowledge. … Self awareness and self knowledge have also been seen as critical in philosophy as well. Socrates had the distinction of being named by the oracle at Delphi as the wisest of the Greeks. Of course, Socrates was wise enough to know that he was wisest because he knew this: “One thing only do I know, and that is that I know nothing.” For Socrates, the beginning of knowledge is to doubt. One must particularly doubt one’s cherished beliefs, lest they interfere with the precision of one’s questioning. (After all, if one is confident of one’s beliefs, one will have no reason to fear examining them!) As Will Durant summarizes Socrates, “There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.” “Know thyself” was the cornerstone of Socrates’ teaching. (11/18/02)
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