iUniverse author John C. Woodcock’s insights on writing: Part 10

In the previous post in this very interesting blog series from iUniverse author, John C. Woodcock, we were discussing the total reversal of our understanding of our consciousness status quo, in that dreams are reality, sane is, in fact, insane and so on. Let’s explore more:-

“What this means for us is this: Where we feel most sane is where we are in fact insane. Our modern consciousness has so far isolated itself from everything else (the private self) that it is now psychotic—yet, of course, it thinks of itself as totally sane. Furthermore those aspects of our psychological being, now persona non grata—dreams, visions, “accidents”, etc.—are the harbors of the very sanity that can cure us of the insanity of psychological isolation.

This is also my conclusion, based on many years of immersion in “madness”, and taking them every bit as seriously as Philip K. Dick does, until they restored me to sanity.

This kind of writing demands both reflection and doing, i.e., what I earlier called participation! The ability of the author to engage this way probably determines the extent to which he could legitimately be called mad. The doing is a needing to act without knowing the outcome in the sense that modern consciousness knows (subject-object knowing). If we know the outcome then obviously we are merely repeating the past in some way, since present-day consciousness knows only in terms of the past (memory). This “doing” can at first be frightening to those who feel the “demand” to act in this way. Yet one can get used to it and even become curious.

Read here to know more about iUniverse author John C. Woodcock’s insights on writing