INTRODUCTION

In the early 1970’s, I experienced many thoughts that would race through my head, sometimes at inconvenient times.  Most of them were in the form of fragmented notions, incomplete visions, questions and fleeting ideas that would literally enter my “central processor”, perhaps having some analysis started, and then they would just disappear . . .  most of the time never to return.  Much was forgotten and this frustrated and disappointed me.  However, I felt that the concepts that I could remember were interesting and could be of value in trying to discover the truth about life and existence, and of course about me.

I had a very extensive exposure to conventional protestant religions training.  As a boy growing up in the city of Oakland, California, and later in near by Lafayette, I went to Sunday school, and then to the church service every Sunday.  I sang in the junior choir, participated in youth activities, performed in church sponsored plays, and provided music on occasion since I was an excellent trombone player.  My parents also sang in the choir.  Mom played the piano for special events and Dad had a great baritone voice and was soloist for special music.  I guess my musical sense, while it was already genetically within, was nurtured by my parents . . . . And it developed as I was growing up.

The dogma of the church never really got through to me, even though I was exposed to all of the rituals that one does as a young member of a church.  The sermons were usually boring, the Sunday school stuff was usually very “plain vanilla” and benign, and my mind would drift quite a bit.  We didn’t have “Hail Marys", but we had a lot of ritualistic responsive reading and it seemed very repetitive and mechanical to say the least.  Singing hymns was okay, but the words were basically a drag.  I soon found that whatever spiritual benefit I got from the whole thing was from the music.  Being basically a “long hair” musician, I really enjoyed Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and the religious musical compositions of the other great composers.

In later years, I continued with my music, but then I made a career choice.  It was going to be either music, or chemistry.  Well, the thought of making enough money to live on won,  and so I went to the University of California at Berkeley and got a B. S. degree from the College of Chemistry in Chemical Engineering.  This curriculum was very technical, and I might say difficult, but this was fine with me because I was so inclined.  Literature, the Arts, History, and the less quantitative subjects were harder for me than the math, physics and chemistry required for my area.  This whole sequence of events influenced me to develop logical processes in my thinking.   This was, of course, much different than the approaches that students must take if embarking on a career in philosophy, law, Classic literature, or psychology, etc.  Although, I did take on course on the works of Plato . . . and of course, Socrates was quite logical and I liked him very much!  The result was that I didn’t have to do much high volume reading, only very slow analytical digestion of technical papers, complicated descriptions and mathematical  notation with defined nomenclature.  So, throughout my college, and working career, I was not, as one would say, well read.  But, I still had these metaphysical thoughts nevertheless!

 In 1976, I decided to do something about the dilemma.  I believed that if I could capture a “ fleeting idea” as it was passing through my head by recording it with pen and paper, I could preserve the concepts for further processing.  Even if what I wrote down was stupid, incorrect, heresy, or whatever,  I could capture it and then think about it later.  I could even upgrade previous erroneous entries so that I could ultimately get my own thinking straightened out.  One ground rule was that all entries would remain and not be crossed out.  So, this was to be sort-of an experiment to see just what conceptual information I had from within, devoid of any outside influences.  I purposely did not research any of the great thinkers and writers because I wanted simply to see what was inside of me.

Realistically, my writing it is not great pros, and I cannot even claim that it is accurate.  The following text simply records what I thought about various things, and my conclusions based only on what I knew (as opposed to what I did not know) from first hand perception and subsequent conception.  I tried not to invent truths, or take what anyone said or wrote down (including scriptures) as the truth.  As you read through the following, know that it has not been modified, except for spelling and some grammatical upgrades, in any way.  Take it for what it is and draw your own conclusions.