"Vladimir Savchenko. Self-discovery (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Vladimir Savchenko.

Self-discovery



Translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis
Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon
MACMILLAN PUBLISHING CO., INC. NEW YORK
COLLIER MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS LONDON
Copyright (c) 1979 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
Translation of Otkrytie sebia.
OCR: Tuocs


Contents

INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: Footsteps from Behind
PART TWO: Self-Discovery
PART THREE: Awakening

Introduction


Are you one self or many selves?
Robert Anton Wilson, in his Cosmic Trigger, describes his reactions to
various events as those of The Author, The Skeptic, The Sage, The
Neurologician, The Shaman, and other personae - all Wilson himself, of
course, and by no means the "multiple personality" image first made popular
by Dr. Morton Prince in the early years of this century; facets, rather, of
any whole human being, and not a host of separate entities.
Who, inside yourself, calmly watches you flying into a rage or drifting
in ecstasy or capturing an audience? Do you, as so many do, refer to "a
little person who watches" or "the part of myself that always observes,
never participates"?
(And why do so many of us describe the watcher as a little person?
Sometimes I suspect that mine is big-maybe bigger than I.)
These are the questions-the kinds of questions, of provocations -evoked
by Vladimir Savchenko and his astonishing novel, for at the heart of his
story is the problem of self and personal identity. Krivoshein, the
brilliant young experimenter in cybernetics who is the hero of the novel,
discovers a way to duplicate human beings and, working secretly, brings into
the world many versions of himself.
So you will encounter many Krivosheins here; but in no way are they
identical. This is not cloning, nor is it the kind of duplication described
by Eric Temple Bell in The Four-sided Triangle, nor the rather unbelievable
one I used in When You Care, When You Love. This is something quite
different and, as far as I know, unique. It's a computer-controlled
biological matrix, an intelligent fluid, if you like, capable of organizing,