[Adam]

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein

It is impossible to explain; it can only be grokked. Though the words are in English, is isn't written in a way that can be easily translated into the standard set of American cultural terms... It creates its own culture.

It is also a different story before and after understanding the subjectivity of our consciousness. I read it a few years ago, and just finished reading it again today, and it has helped to open my eyes to my environment each time in vastly different ways. The first time that I read it, it helped me to realize that everybody was a separate individual, just as I am... Not everybody is perfect, and we each have power and responsibility, but we refuse to accept either. Finishing it now, I realize that while we are all also the same with our different perspectives. One thing that stuck out at me was the questions and debates that I've seen on this board and in my recent personal spiritual journeys is also reflected, almost like a mirror, in the book.

The book reminded me that that, no matter what the nature of the whole of reality is, our perspectives are always subjective. We live in a subjective reality, and are all creators within it. Creation and observation are the same thing; as subjective beings, we are incapable of doing otherwise.

To grok is to become something; to experience its love, its fear, its hate, its joy, its pleasure. To grok is to know, to drink, to eat, to be consumed, to have and to be had. To grok is mutual; the thing being grokked becomes the one who groks as much as the one who groks becomes the thing.

I await Steve's opinion of this book. Waiting fills, though.