1 result for (book:ur2 AND session:718 AND stemmed:perform)
[... 14 paragraphs ...]
(Which pointed up our dilemma, I thought at the time. I said little to Jane, but I was most uneasy that she was delivering material supposedly from a member of the famous dead. Actually, we’d always thought that such performances were somehow suspect. Not that mediums, or others, couldn’t communicate with the “dead” — but to us, anyhow, exhibitions involving well-known personages usually seem … psychologically tainted. So our feelings about the night’s affair weren’t of the best at that point.
[... 47 paragraphs ...]
(“What,” I wrote at the time, “would a state other than a conscious one be? I have difficulty conceiving of such a situation — which, perhaps, is more revealing of the way I think than of anything else. But how could the species, or its individual members, not be ‘conscious’? Since I think our collective and individual actions are self-consciously designed for survival, in the best meaning of that word, I’m curious to know in what other state these functions could be performed, for existence’s sake…. There are many ramifications here, as I discovered when I started making notes about this concept, so I’m purposely keeping them short.”
[... 31 paragraphs ...]