Good Evening Friends,

Consider the magnitude of what we've been discussing. Biff and Hap were like spiritual half-brothers, who had the same bio-spiritual father but different spiritual grandfathers, known to them (Biff and Hap) and acting upon them through the conduit of Willie Loman alone. It is the two polarities or (under conditional circumstances we might say "personalities") that are being channeled through Willie and acting on his two sons.

There are different views about reincarnation. There are those who believe this process is routine. There are those who believe reincarnation is a rare phenomenon done under rare circumstances.

Remember what we've been saying about the nature of identity, as one of the mechanisms of the self.

1) identity is a lifelong, accumulative thing and process [we each carry around dozens, maybe hundreds of subatomic particle fragments of dozens, maybe hundreds of different people whom we come in contact with and we will probably pick up dozens or hundreds more before we die. there is no self without others.

2) following from the first factor is the fact, I believe, that every human personality is not only multifaceted, which is a given, but also, for lack of a better word, multi-modular. that is, we could dissect any human personality, and if we wanted to, we could conceptually segment it into different components that we could refer to as "personalities," [which nevertheless operate within a relatively fixed frame of reference, I think] and which, in a few people, for reasons we don't fully understand, become semi-detached ("Multiple Personalit Disorder").

3) a behavior or method of doing something can persist for generation after generation after generation even after the original behavior has been long ago detached from its original cause. i gave as an example a story about the woman and the ham (cutting off both ends first), from John Bradshaw's book, Family Secrets.

4) trauma can go on generation after generation, after generation, as well, even when it has been detached from its original cause. i talked about the story of the man who got a rash on his neck every Feburaru 14, Valentine's Day. his mother and grandmother both killed themselves around that date. the man carries around the trauma and it manifests itself physically.

this story also comes from the book, Family Secrets. i also made a parallel to the Jesus story in the New Testament about the disfigured and how it was not he but his parents who'd sinned.

Taken together I'd like to think we have a firm basis for a naturalistic foundation for what would become the supernatural, and by definition, exaggerated, doctrine of reincarnation. I believe these things had been recognized by the ancient masters.

Arthur Miller, the great writer that he was, recognized these things even if he could not describe them with the vocabulary we can bring to bear. There may not have been a knowledge base from which he could draw in the 1950s.

Indeed, if the Adam Curtis BBC documentary, The Trap, is any indication, then the state of psychiatry was primitive, retrograde, even inexcusably backward for its time.

I'll leave it there. Next time we'll look at Hap and try to understand Biff's transformation.

wingedcentaur