It seems impossible to equal the experience of listening to astonishing music in any place other than the concert hall. We have some remarkable sound systems now that we can set up in our homes, giving us lovely surround sound to watch a ball game or a movie. We can certainly get great surround sound in our cars. When we go to the movies, we are blasted by sound from all corners, often enough to hurt our ears. For some reason, however, none of these compare, for me, to being in the concert hall and listening to music as it is played. Maybe it is the artwork, the fancy furniture, the huge glittering chandeliers, the spectacle of actually seeing people working to produce those sounds. All of that, I think, does have an effect. Most of that experience, however, seems to me to come from the quality of the sounds we hear, which are not quite the same anyplace else. Placed in a room the size of an arena, with speakers and acoustic boards designed to fill the room with sound, the music just seems to engulf me, encase me, isolate me, lift me up to float, as if in a sea of oxygenated fluorocarbon. The various sounds bounce off the walls all around me. All of the instrument sections become identifiable, as they intertwine into complex chords, fascinating rhythms, melodies, counterpoints, agreeing, disagreeing, playing, marching, singing, crying, fighting, forging forward, stepping back, bridging, thinking, tumbling, dancing. I start to see brief flashes of color in my mind as well as feel the vibrancy and tone, deep inside. This cacophony of audible pleasure and displeasure sets me free from everything else around me in this physical world. I am in this world, but also out of it. I am momentarily in tune with, and am an integral part of the entire universe. There seems to be no difference between me, my body, my soul, all other living beings, this music, and all the rest of the universe. It feels to me, at those singular moments, as if we are all one. It is an out-of -body experience that allows me, for a few moments, to feel completely integrated with all else that exists, everywhere, without pain, anguish, ethics, morals, desires, without a beginning or an end.
It never lasts for more than a few minutes at a time, for me. I have to allow these moments to happen: I have to allow myself to be carried away. I think most of us have a few of these moments in our lives, unless we resist them so mightily that we never allow them to happen. If we allow them to happen, our lives are never quite the same afterward. It is as if it is a vital message has been placed in our brains: there is more out there than just our own existence. There is so much more to life than that amount we allow ourselves to experience, even though it seems many times as if we are being driven from pillar to post, bouncing like a yo-yo from one problem to another. There is so much more we can appreciate and learn if we just open ourselves to those experiences, study hard, try to connect dots which have never been connected before. If we stretch our minds, amazing revelations occur. “There were bells, on the hill, but I never heard them ringing; no, I never heard them at all, till there was you.” Intense openness, intense desire, intense striving, allow us to experience emotions and revelations which did not exist before. We figuratively see brilliant colors, whereas all before was drab and gray, or black and white.
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It is not the same intensity, by any means, but the same kind of mind isolation occurs for me when I am out running. Well, maybe that should be defined further. I call it a slow jog. My friends and acquaintances, who have on occasion seen me out running, say that I am slogging, as if running against the wind, or running in deep snow, head down and chugging. They are most likely more correct. Regardless of what you call it, it is usually on the weekend, when very little else is happening down on the campus. Getting motivated enough to get dressed for the occasion, then get there and take the first step, is not easy. I fight it every time, and then say to myself: “Do you want to live?” My answer is, “Yes.” “Then get down there and start running; and by the way, do your exercises afterwards.” So I go, and after the first step, it is okay. Hips are sore, knees are sore, back is sore, but after the first round, none of that matters. What matters is doing what it takes to take care of this one and only body I was given. It becomes a rhythm, and the pain goes away. There is no phone, there are no other chores to be done at that particular time, there is no conversation, there is no distracting music, and my mind becomes free. Major parts of the essays that have made the blogs, and major parts of the books I have written, have been composed while out jogging. Problems at work have been solved. Personal and family problems have fallen to solutions when attacked by a brain which has, for the moment, no other distractions. Letters have been composed, and company policies organized. After mulling a subject over in my head for an hour, these various thoughts start to organize themselves, and the outline of a chapter becomes clear. Whereas there were simply gaps before, now there are sparks and connections, which draw the various aspects of that subject together in a way that makes sense, and answer questions. I am often startled by those mini-epiphanies, and blurt out, “Wow! Thank you Lord! Yes, that’s right! Now I understand!” I am well aware that my creator, whatever it was, does not give a nickel about whether I have reached new understanding or not, but am so excited to learn this new connection, it is impossible to not express my pleasure to someone or something.
The most difficult patients we have in our clinic at this time are those who come in demanding narcotics for stated pain. Since these patients are often quite disruptive, and our other providers were having difficulty dealing with them and taking care of more compliant patients, I offered to take care of this segment of our clientele. Now, most of the patients that I deal with in our clinic are narcotic dependent patients who have been placed on a controlled substance pain contract, and are followed closely with drug screens. By the rules of our clinic, we are obliged to make sure there is documented moderate to severe disease in the area of pain, before we are allowed to prescribe narcotic pain medicine. Various complaints, previous diagnoses, treatment they have received in the past all do not count. There must be a radiographic report, pathology report, laboratory report, or investigative procedure which proves a disease as reason for that pain, before we can take action on their statement of pain. We do not accept patients for narcotic pain management who are active alcoholics, use cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine or other street drugs, take unprescribed controlled substances, or smoke marijuana, which remains illegal in our state. We do not give narcotics to those who have taken a drug overdose requiring hospital care in the past, or seriously attempted suicide. We do want to extend our medical care to those who have legitimate need for narcotic pain medicine, but not give these drugs to those who either do not need them, or are abusing them. We regularly run state-wide reports on those
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prescriptions they have filled for controlled substances, which tell us who wrote for that medicine, how much was given, who got the drug, which pharmacy filled that prescription, when it was written and when it was filled, and the full names and addresses of all those participants. In addition, if there is at any time question as to drug use, we request unannounced drug screens and pill counts.
In spite of these rather rigid requirements for narcotic and other controlled substance prescriptions, and in spite of the fact that these patients are advised as to these requirements, face to face, about five different ways, before they are accepted into our program, we still have many who immediately disobey these rules and violate our trust. Although we have over two thousand patients who are following these rules, and are still signing up more, we are at this time sending out more than six denial letters per week, telling these patients that we can no longer supply them with their controlled substance, because they have in some way violated their contract. Those who have failed their contracts are offered drug abuse counseling and, if completed, and approved by that counselor, one referral elsewhere for pain management. We continue to offer them any other needed medical care, but not narcotics or anxiety agents. The question that immediately comes to my mind is: Why is there such a clamor for these drugs? Why are large segments of our population so intent on getting a handful of these pills that they would lie about their other drug uses and immediately violate their contracts? There is a lot more to this huge demand for mind bending drugs than just uncontrolled pain or anxiety problems.
I would estimate that, at the current time, more than fifty percent of those patients coming to me who request narcotics or anxiety medicines are doing so primarily for other reasons than those they announce. These are people who, many of them, come from dysfunctional families, live in depressed neighborhoods, have abusive significant others, have very little income and heavy responsibilities, find themselves struggling to make ends meet or improve themselves, and find life exceedingly trying. They are looking for an escape, even though temporary. They want to be in some other world for a while. For those who do not face major difficulties in their life, and who just want to have a “good time,” they are also seeking to escape this world and be in another state of mind that takes them away from the reality of their current world. Humans, it appears, have a deep desire to have “out of this world” experiences. These humans are so anxious to escape their reality that they will pay a very dear price just to get away for a few hours. The unfortunate consequence of this societal escapism is that all of the rest of us pay the price that is extracted. We are producing a large population of drug dependent people, and an epidemic of opiate overdose deaths that now surpasses the death rate from suicides and auto accidents.
I spent most of my career getting five hours of sleep per night or less, often interrupted by phone calls. Days were long, usually starting off immediately with surgery of great variety. That was followed by office hours, hospital rounds, interspersed with emergency room calls and intensive care calls. At the end of all that, I went back to the office to take care of patient calls about lab work, stacks of paper work, and most days did not get back home until twelve hours of work or more. After many of these days, I would suddenly realize that I was just sitting at my desk day-dreaming, had not moved or
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been aware of any of my surroundings for fifteen or twenty minutes, had entirely been out of body, caught up in thought about events of the day, or some other urgent problem to solve. It was if my mind was saying, “Look sucker, if you want me to solve this problem, then I am going to have to get away from all that other stuff for a while. If you won’t give it to me, then I am going to take that time away from you.” It sure did. It also worked. It shut down my body for fifteen to twenty minutes in order to get some unorganized lingering job categorized and back in order. It was always a minor shock to suddenly come out of that trance realizing that I had not been there at all; my mind was off in space somewhere, addressing my most troublesome problems.
None of us can do daydreaming or out of body experiences any better than Socrates, however. He is described as many times not moving or speaking, but seemingly awake, for up to twenty four hours at a time, while he contemplated philosophical questions. When he awoke, he would ask those around him some astonishing questions about their lives and what parts of their lives were most important to them. It appears that most of the major parts of his philosophy came from these prolonged trances. One might say that these Socrates trances, out of body experiences, were what most influenced his beliefs. All of these formed his philosophical tenets, which were later borrowed, in various pieces, by Judaism, Christianity and Islam as core beliefs of their religions. Although it may seem strange to think of it in this way, these three religions would not exist as they exist today without the trances of Socrates.
It is interesting to read that current day psychologists, who study dreams just as much as Freud did, are now saying that although the physical body may need to sleep in order to rest its various organs and motile parts, the most urgent reason for sleep is to let our minds recover for a while from this explosion of sensory data that hit it like a bomb every day. Our supercomputer minds are barraged by sights, sounds, tastes, smells, threats, challenges, touches, position changes all throughout every day, stretched by complex problems, and asked to multitask to a high degree all day long. Our individual brain finally says, “Enough! Gimme a break, man!” And after a brief period of a few hours of deep sleep rest, it goes back to work again, categorizing, connecting, sorting, rearranging, and putting all those experience of that day in their proper place in juxtaposition to other stored memories, so that this data system can be put back to work the next day in an organized and properly positioned manner.
It appears that dreams are the end stage of this reconsideration, weighing and reorganizing process that is considering all the possibilities. They are the remembered demonstration of that game of chance that is always going on inside our heads. Sometimes our dreams may reflect the best possible outcome from those experiences we have had during recent days. These are lovely and happy remembrances, full of freedom, achievement, and dreams of other good things. But our minds are not confined to good events. Our minds are going to consider all the possibilities, including the very worst scenarios. If it pieces various parts of our recent past together as a most untoward conclusion, we are going to have a nightmare. It’s our out of body minds working to tell us what possibly may come of all of our most recent experiences. Dreams are often not mysterious. Simply look at the content, ask what is going on in that person’s life at the time, and it often becomes apparent that the computers in our
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heads are addressing the most stressing experiences that person has had, and are trying to figure out the possibilities of what those experiences mean.
My second wife, now divorced, is a fascinating woman. I have known her many times to walk into a room and within minutes tell me which person can be trusted, which cannot be trusted, and what sign to look for as to when it is time to leave. I have never known a wiser counselor, when there are personal problems to be solved. In an emergency, she is the champion. She knows exactly what is right to do, and does it immediately, while others stand by uncertain and immobilized. She is a thorough and thoughtful health care provider, who is loving but also no nonsense. As is germane to this topic, I have known her multiple times to awaken from sleep and say, “I dreamed that ______ is going to happen.” If she says it’s going to happen, it usually does. Her most astute mind has, in it’s out of body state, sorted through all the evidence and come to the conclusion that, the odds are, this is what is going to happen. It almost always does, pretty much just like she described it, shortly after awakening from her escape from this world. She is setting her plan of action, using her own values, even while she is sleeping
When I suddenly realized that Darwin was right, at that moment previously described, thousands of trapdoors opened, and thousands of weighted fetishes dropped away. I felt like I was set free, for the first time in my life, unencumbered by false mythology. That trance continued for several minutes longer, bringing an immediate second revelation. It was knowing without searching, sensing with every fiber of my being, not reasoning, not rationalizing, not being told, simply that it could not be any other way, did not have to be explained, because it was there. The understanding that I was the universe and the universe was me, was a revelation that changed how I looked at all aspects of life, from that moment on. I believe that there are a lot of people who already had this treasured knowledge, but for me it was a new beginning. Now I see it everywhere. We are mostly carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen. Yet we would not exist unless the heavier elements we need to construct our complex chemical, enzyme and hormone systems did not come from the stars. Only exploding stars could have produced those elements such as sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, calcium, phosphorous, iron, and all those other trace elements which our bodies use to function. We are miniscule pieces of the universe. We are it and it is us. All of our universe, containing all of these elements, runs purely on the laws of chance and probability, by any criterion we wish to measure. So do we also operate on chance, probability, and natural selection. It is lovely to think, plan and scheme; it is clear that each of us is a unique organism; it is also clear that each of us is simply one expression of all the rest of our universe.
Socrates believed in an “intrinsic good” which was completely imbedded as a part of the universe. He also believed in the immortality of the human soul. Plato carried the same beliefs of an “intrinsic good,” or God, of the universe, to which all humans should aspire, so that they could become more godlike. Aristotle, who was a bit wiser, did not voice adherence to the “intrinsic good” concept, but instead believed in an “unmoved mover” who began this universe but then stood back and watched it progress. That Aristotle belief is not too far from the belief of those who reject a personal God which
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constantly intervenes in human affairs. It is clear to me that some kind of force started this universe, since it exists. What that force may be, or what it was, I have no idea. Maybe that force was blown up during the process of creation, because it seems certain, from the evidence we have, that whatever force started this universe has since then had nothing to do with it. Our universe completely begs direction, and runs on the roulette wheel of all things as we know them. We have no evidence whatsoever that our universe has an intrinsic value system. Nor do we, as simply another manifestation of this universe, have an intrinsic good; our values are what we make them.
Our religions would like us to believe, as Socrates and Plato, that there is an intrinsic good God, who runs the universe, to whom we should all aspire, so that we can all become more Godlike. This is such a pipe dream. The universe, from all the evidence we currently possess, does not have justice, truth, good, evil, morals, or ethics. These are human inventions. These value systems apply only to human perceptions. When we seek, or experience, out of body experiences, we find ourselves in a place without any values. The universe, by any criterion we have, is completely amoral, and is completely unethical.
One can define ethics only by terms of life. What does it take to give all life, of which we are all a part, the best chance of existence, opportunity, and the pursuit of fulfillment? That is what ethics should be, as here defined. The universe does not care.