Awakening

Why didn't I take the advice of Phil "Suit" earlier? When I was at Cardiff University studying English Literature, Phil "Suit" (a delightfully eccentric astrophysicist friend who always wore a suit, apart from one day when a distant super-nova was observed and he wore an Aloha shirt, Bermuda shorts and carried a beach-ball around with him all day) often recommended the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Dr. Oliver Sacks to me. Now, some twenty or so years later, I have finally gotten around to reading it and, oh my, I am hooked!

From my early teens, Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke have been two of my greatest heroes; I think Oliver Sacks is likely to join them. This gentle, compassionate, deeply empathic man writes in a profoundly moving and philosophical manner about cases of neurological impairment which are often profoundly disturbing, unsettling, tragic or, quite simply, terrifying. Imagine, for example, only being able to see the external world as a mosaic of abstract images with absolutely no coherent meaning to such a degree that, although seen perfectly clearly, you cannot see the difference between your wife and your hat. Or imagine that your memory only lasts for two minutes, after which time you can no longer remember who you are, let alone who anybody else is, and you are forced to constantly confabulate fictional biographies for yourself and the people who surround you.

So far I have been unable to determine where Dr. Sacks stands on the neurological foundation of religious experience considering the intensity, the "realness," of hallucinations. Perhaps he deliberately avoids the issue, though he doesn't seem to me to be the type of scientist who would avoid searching for the truth of such a fascinating subject from fear of causing offense by what is discovered but, if he has written about it, I am sure to read about it because I intend to read many more of his books.