In 1945, after I had been working for two months at the Institute of General Semantics in Chicago on 56^th Street, I took a seminar with Dr. Frank Chisholm, and then an intensive summer seminar with Alfred Korzybski.  I purchased a copy of Science and Sanity and immersed myself in its pages for a solid month, hour after hour, each day, reading through it, thoroughly, in a week and a half, pausing only for quick meals and a few hours sleep each day. On my second reading I made extensive marginal notes, and the third time, I paused long enough to write down my own “take” on various notions that Korzybski presented.

I was especially impressed with AK’s central formulation of the consciousness of abstracting.  I felt that was the keel of the ship – in Book II, Part VII: On the Mechanism of Time-Binding.

And the neurological data that AK reviewed In Chapter XVII, On the Notion of ‘Matter’, Space’, ‘Time’, gave me a very solid understanding of the physical nature of ‘sensation’, and the tools employed by the mind-body in the process of abstraction.  He quoted directly from Introduction to Neurology by Professor C. Judson Herrick.  Herrick’s Table of Physical Vibrations had a tremendous impact on my re-orientation.  I began to realize how very little of the process level we actually had access to in our view of the ‘universe’ (the process level.)

I discussed these notions from Korzybski’s book with my friends at the dormitory where I lived.  They were fascinated by my summary.

We decided to set up our own “laboratory” in the commons room at the dormitory.  Two of our number volunteered to be blind-folded – we took turns at this – and when their vision was thoroughly blocked by a layer of cloth, covered with a black mask that prevented all possibility of ‘peeking’, we rearranged all the furniture in the commons room into an ‘obstacle course’.  The idea was to traverse the obstacle course without touching any of the rearranged furniture, by depending only on the sound waves, and our interpretation of those sound waves, and perhaps temperature differences on various parts of our skin surface, like the forearm, palm, forehead, etc.

One experiment – my favorite – consisted of approaching a solid wall, while blindfolded and getting as close to it as possible, without actually touching it, guided entirely by sound wave reflections, and heat transfer from the cooler wall plaster.  I became very good at this after some hours of practice, and could get my nose as close as a quarter inch without touching.

We also used a pair of points on a drawing compass that we could adjust to a fraction of a millimeter, and test the skin sensations on the back, the chest, the arms, etc., while we were blind-folded, to measure the ‘resolution’ of the touch sensation on various parts of the anatomy.  The table that Korzybski quotes in his book (IV Structural Factors in Non-A Languages) correlated nicely with our experience in this set of experiments. Points as far apart as four inches are felt as a single point on the skin of the back.  Points together as close as two millimeters are still felt as two points on the palmar surface of the forefinger. Survival seems to dictate that we ‘face’ danger and not turn our back on it.

Points on the tip of the tongue as close as a millimeter are still ‘perceived’ as two points.  But why is the tip of the tongue so capable of resolution compared to the fingertip?  Think of the last time you detected that tiny, sharp piece of bone in your chicken salad sandwich.

I cannot over-emphasize the ‘impact’ that these experiments have on one’s view of the world.  When one finally gets the ‘big picture’ of how very little of the process level we base our abstractions on, we are astonished that we are at all capable of survival.

We measure the sun’s ‘diameter’ confidently at about 600,000 miles by use of visual observation and ‘physical’ measuring instruments.  However, if we switch to ultra-violet light to observe the sun we get a disc measurement of far different than 600,000 miles.  The sun ‘shrinks’?  Certainly not.  If we measure with a sensitive Geiger counter, the radiation produced by the sun’s ‘field’ there is no sharp edge anywhere. The sun’s radiative, gaseous field decreases in density smoothly, and does not drop to zero.  What we are ‘seeing’ is the fixed limitation of our own eyes to detect frequencies of radiation beyond a certain point. This is an example of an ‘artifact’ our eyes produce – an interaction, an abstraction. The sun is not limited in size, there is no measurable diameter.  The sun belongs to the universe.

When a loved one dies it is as if the light of that intimate luminary has been snuffed out suddenly.  There seems to be a sharp edge between life and death.  But people who barely knew my loved one feel a slower extinguishing of the light.  And for people who did not know the loved one at all, who still read the books and essays and listen to the recordings, the poetry, see the paintings and sculptures, and look at the photographs, the light still shines, albeit softly.

How many suns in the universe are dark and cold, while still their light is racing through space-time? We see them still in the sky.  My loved one belongs to the universe.