                           19979729.01

     I am unsure how best to reply to your letter.  The attempt
to give advice is ridiculous, and it is presumptuous to assume
that an account of ones own experience should be meaningful,
implying as it does that one has found the way and has been
saved, or worse yet, has saved oneself.

     I don't think I made myself clear with respect to the
serpent. I was referring simply to the contemplation of that by
which one is plagued. If there is nothing to contemplate, all the
better, then ones illness is imaginary; but I am convinced that
if the plague is real then the burden is eased by lifting up the
serpent and gazing upon it. Perhaps that is one meaning of
efforts at philosophical thought.

     With respect to the "life-lie" theory which you trace to
Nietzsche, - Ibsen exploited it in "The Wild Duck", I have for
some years been interested in processes which I refer to as
idealization and deidealization.  I have convinced myself that
not only our thoughts but the simplest of auditory and visual
perceptions are syntheses of experience, that the view of the
world which each of us elaborates is a synthetic idealization
which is by its very nature "untruthful."

     The task then becomes one of disabusing oneself of
illusions, or dismantling ones ideals, of coming to terms with
oneself and ones world as one begins to accept them devoid of
idealization. The physician's perspective is helpful; for the
physician understands disease and dying as integral constituents
of human existence. He does not condemn them as evil or wicked
but views them as a necessary limitaion upon our existence; and I
think if such equanimity could be extended to the emotional and
sprititual spheres of existence, we would be less unhappy and our
lives would be a bit less unproductive.

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