The "Rarefied Air" and "Ultralogical Plane" of the Mind
"One's
voice is very important. If you have a slurred voice, people are "
likely to treat you as mentally deficient." - - Stephen Hawking
[brilliant physicist with a degenerative disease
which made his voice slur before it became
impossible for him to speak at all except
with the aid of an electronic device]
The transformation that is taking place in Americans' attitudes toward mental health is very exciting. Of course, as an astrologer, I see this as the result of Pluto, the planet of transformation, moving slowly through the polar signs of Gemini and Sagittarius. These two signs deal with the workings of the mind.
One of my clients devoted her life to a study of the mind. When she was
in high school, she fell in love with a very nice boy. His parents were
against the liaison because she was not of the same religion. They dated
for 3 years but were forced by family pressure to end the relationship.
He "lost his mind". The last time my client saw him was a visit
to a mental hospital where he had been committed -- labelled incurable.
"What is a mind that you can "lose" it?" she thought.
Thus began a lifetime journey for her to settle this question to her own
satisfaction.
The much acclaimed film, "A Beautiful Mind" has been the first
of many recent films to take a new look at the mystifying territory of
"the Mind". The mental disintegration of mathematical genius
John Nash is explored with interest and sensitivity.
Nash wrote a 27-page dissertation, "Non-Cooperative Games", in 1950 when he was just 21 years old. Eight years later he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In 1970 the disease went into remission and in 1994 John Nash was honored with the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Nash claimed his mental condition was due to living on the "ultralogical plane" and breathing "rarefied air" not meant for mere mortals. Nash believed this permitted him to make unique contributions to his field. He was not so sure that being normal was the way to go.
In less politically correct times, I attended a high school in the Midwest with over 4,000 students. We were not burdened with euphemism as we are today.
Our school was divided into sections according to how smart we were. The
academic pecking order was no secret.
The "gifted" on one extreme and the "educable mentally
handicapped" (henceforth, EMH) on the other, flanked the vast "average"
majority which included homecoming queens, cheerleaders, football captions
and others equally blessed with normalcy. The three groups were segregated
from each other during the school day because they were in different classes.
Deeply imbedded by IQ in the gifted group, I nevertheless managed to pass
for normal due to the unshakable belief of my mother, a Southern Belle,
in dumming down for dates. I dyed my hair platinum and talked like a very
little girl. I wanted to look as much as possible like Marilyn Monroe.
Monroe, by the way, was a Gemini and her astrology chart reveals her to
be quite an intellectual. She was, in fact, a person not unlike myself
… except for the fame, income and fabulous body. As an astrologer
one can't help but muse that Arthur Miller was the perfect outside to
Monroe's inside. Anyway, I kept my intelligence to myself.
Along with my platinum hair and dummed down personality, my life long
habit of philosophical contemplation was beginning to emerge. As an introvert,
I opted out of all possible social intercourse. I finished my assignments
ahead of time and often had nothing better to do in study hall than observe
others.
I looked clearly at the world around me. I was without prejudice. I seemed
to wear a special pair of glasses that refused to bend light to the expectations
of others' realities. With wisdom beyond my years and no stake in the
social politics of my peers, I steadfastly saw what I saw.
Kids from all three learning groups were mixed together in study hall
and I noticed that the two extreme groups - the gifted and the EMHers
-- seemed to meet somewhere in the middle. They were more like each other
than either was like the normal.
This is a phenomenon of polarity. For example, hot and cold are both degrees
of temperature. Dry ice, a temperature extreme, is so cold that it burns.
It really seems hot. In this context, the saying "when hell freezes
over" really makes sense.
Both the gifted and the EMH groups were fidgety and restless. Both were
socially ill at ease and amazingly un-self-conscious for high school.
Both groups tended to "read aloud", mumbling words or moving
their fingers across a page as they were reading. And, I'm sorry to say,
both groups were chosen with equal degrees of victimization to endure
the teasing of the average group in the middle. They were the favaored
targets for the homecoming queen and the captain of the football team.
The boys in both groups failed to keep their shirts tucked in, wore clothes
that didn't match and failed to acknowledge the existence of "style".
The girls ignored posture and propriety and were also indifferent to current
fashion. Boys of both groups tended to leave their flies unzipped and
the girls in both groups were notorious for poor grooming. Please bear
in mind that I am being descriptive not critical. There is a greater power
that sees far beyond the appearance of things.
An astrologer notices that the amount of mental energy surging through
the circuits of the gifted mind does not leave much to focus on the physical
world. As with Nash, these people tend to live in a rarefied atmosphere
and don't often "touch down" to the mundane world to take care
of things like dandruff, acne and body odor.
In the case of the EMH students, one suspects disrupted mental circuits,
dead ends and hot wires, to speak descriptively. The charts of both gifted
and educable mentally handicapped are indistinguishable save for the focus
and grouping of planets so common in the charts of the gifted (called
Stelliums or more correctly Stellia). Without this grouping, they would
be as "scattered" mentally or mentally "undone" as
the EMHers.
Another characteristic of gifted charts is an afflicted Ascendant. What
results from this is that many gifted people are unable to make a positive
first impression. If you will pardon a play on words, they do not speak
well for themselves. Is it any wonder they escape to the higher realms?
Or is it because they escape to the higher realms that they make such
a poor first impression? (Fortunately there are plenty of people in this
world who can see beyond first impressions.)
The Ascendant describes the way you appear upon first meeting, including
the way you talk and process information from your environment. The genius
Albert Einstein may not have talked until he was 3 years old. Winston
Churchill, another genius, had a lisp and failed often in school when
something didn't capture his interest. According to his official biographer,
Churchill was believed to be physically repulsive to his own father. Of
course this is entirely subjective and unjustified, if you look at photos
of this great man as a baby. But life behind the Ascendant of an astrology
chart IS very subjective and the outer world will confirm to the expectations
embodied in the chart.
No one would argue that Stephen Hawking is a very compelling example of
this phenomenon. Hawking, who suffers from Motor Neurone Disease or Amyotrophic
Lateral Sclerosis, the complications of which have made it impossible
for him to speak at all (tracheotomy), is quoted on his website (www.hawking.org.uk)
as saying, "One's voice is very important. If you have a slurred
voice, people are likely to treat you as mentally deficient."
Often in the charts of the educable mentally handicapped, the afflicted
Rising Sign characterizes a physical condition which has led to mental
problems or an approach to social situations that reflects an inability
to process and respond to social cues such as proper distance, appropriate
gestures, chat style, and so forth.
Sometimes mentally deficient individuals simply do not understand or care
how their physical body connects with the social stratosphere. I once
read an article about a retarded couple who had a baby that kept slipping
out of the carry seat because her well meaning but borderline retarded
parents simply could not remember to strap her in. Please remember that
I am being descriptive, not critical.
What happened to John Nash? Did the bundling pull too tight and break
the circuits? Was too much mental energy sent through the circuits at
one time because of the tremendous rate of vibration of his brain? Were
emotional and psychological territories starved for energy and left to
atrophy like a limb with gangrene? Nash's own words are as descriptive
and "poetic" as these … rarefied air and ultralogical plane.
We don't know what happened. We are all fascinated.
On the other end of the spectrum, in June 2002 the Supreme Court overturned
in a 6-3 vote the 1989 decision in Penry v. Lynaugh ( 492 US 584), that
mental retardation would not prohibit the death penalty but it would be
considered an extenuating circumstance in the crime.
Thirteen years later, Atkins v Virginia (122 S.Ct. 2242) purported to
reflect "changing views" toward mental retardation. Apparently
Americans were no longer willing to see people executed who could not
be held morally responsible for their actions
Atkins argued that the mentally retarded could not reason well enough
to aid in their own defenses. In most cases, they could not understand
abstract concepts such as Miranda rights, self-incrimination and death.
As many newspapers agreed, it had now become possible to be "too
dumb to die".
In its decision, the Supreme Court referred to "evolving standards
of decency" regarding mental condition. Gallup Poll findings from
May 23, 2002 indicated that 82% of Americans opposed the use of the death
penalty for the mentally retarded, while 13% supported it. Estimates vary
but most sources agree that at least 34 people with mental retardation
have been executed in the United States since the repeal of a ban on capital
punishment in 1977. Most of these people had an IQ of around 66.
One of the things that may have shaped public opinion is the January 24, 1992 execution of Ricky Ray Rector in the State of Arkansas, with the blessing of Bill Clinton. Laura Mansnerus writes in a July 21, 2001 New York Times article, Damaged Brains and the Death Penalty, "You don't have to be a psychiatrist, Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis says, to know that something was terribly wrong with Ricky Ray Rector, who before his execution in Arkansas ordered his last meal and asked that the pecan pie be set aside so he could have it later." Rector was not mentally retarded but had shot himself in the head at the time he committed his capital crime. He had a lobotomy.
Furthermore, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens writes, "Evolving standards of decency mean many different things to different people. But an important part of our standards of decency derive from our scientific understanding of behavior. I believe the time will come when we recognize that it is equally indecent to execute the mentally ill."
Most people did not expect the results of Atkins, even those who were most ardently advocating for it. It seems that times have indeed changed. And if the time comes when mental illness as well as mental retardation becomes grounds to avoid the death penalty, transformation will indeed have occurred.
As astrologers we understand that the mutable modality deals with the sensitive connection between the mind and the body or psycho-soma. Early attempts to understand this connection resulted in the label "psychosomatic" for certain conditions for which there appeared to be no physical basis, such as hysteria, certain types of paralysis, colitis and heart palpitations.
The mutable signs are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces. As Pluto
travels through the sign of Sagittarius, and recently opposed by Saturn
in Gemini, .these planets also squared Virgo and Pisces.
Michael Lutin has called Gemini and Sagittarius "the mental health
axis". A condition such as schizophrenia can in simplistic terms
be the result of a child wishing to reconcile the beliefs and demands
of two parents from insurmountably different backgrounds.
For example, one parent says if you're not a Catholic your soul will be
doomed to eternal damnation and further believes that divorce is a mortal
sin. The other parent initiates divorce proceedings, begins going to Unitarian
Church and tells you that if you continue going to Catholic Church s/he
will quit seeing you on the weekends because it's "too stupid".
A child trying to reconcile this set of instructions could blow a few
circuits in the brain. These conflicts are not solved at the mental level,
least of all by a child.
I do not mean to oversimplify mental illness. I'm explaining in esoteric and intuitive terms the underlying beliefs that cause mental imbalances. In this case the underlying belief would be that things like this are reconcilable which they are not. The healthy choice - if this child makes it to adulthood in reasonably good shape -- would be to transcend this inner dialogue into something that says, I love both my parents but I do not love their beliefs. I accept that each is well meaning but I also accept that I do not need to be like them in order to love myself. I will choose a religion that works for me or none at all while continuing to love both parents. And if this means that I lose the love of one parent, then at least I love myself and have the other." Alas, this transcendence is not easy and many fall by the wayside.
Pluto (and Saturn) also square Virgo and Pisces at the same time that they are traveling through Gemini and Sagittarius. The Virgo/Pisces axis produces negative mental conditions such as free floating anxiety, phobias, autism, anal compulsive disorders, despair, suicide and "suicide by cop/traffic accident/innocent bystander/or/freak accident", etc.
The mental imbalance that produces these conditions is a defense against the inherent chaos of life and feelings of helplessness. In turn, the basis of this fear is an irrational belief that the universe is ordered in the first place.
Further disruptions in these energies can occur with the presence of over-crowding,
air pollution, noise pollution and stress.
The mutable signs are connected with the pulse of life, the rhythm of breath and threshold sequences such as in/out breathing, day/night, land/sea, dusk/dawn and crossroads. Proper rhythms are of the utmost important for good mental health. During the transit of Pluto through Sagittarius, we are experiencing many disruptions of these energies on the planet. The rise of asthma, now a chronic condition in many children, is a result of over crowding and air pollution. Sometimes the over-crowding can be of one's own schedule. There needs to be spaces in life. This is something the Orientals are far more aware of than we Occidentals.
The Internet is another manifestation of this phenomenon. The super glut of information, the speed of transmittal, the galactic rate of evolution and the transformation of the entire field of communication has resulted in a type of paralysis in all but the more intrepid of the mutable signs. In this regard, esoterically, Sagittarius is of great help, because it contributes the understanding that at some point information must be turned into knowledge and a decision made or it is of no use whatsoever. More is not better. Enough is good.
You may have
noticed that the Internet is designed the way an intuitive thinks. This
is a function of Sagittarius and in this way, it is developing intuition
in everyone that uses it. The way you can hop from page to page and topic
to topic is similar to the way Gemini multi-tasks or watches several different
tv shows at one time. It will be interesting to see how much the Internet
has transformed our ways of learning by the time Pluto leaves Sagittarius
in 2008.
Comments:
3.8.2004: this is the first time i have read an opinion on this subject that felt as though i were saying it myself. thank you
3.25.2004: Excellent article. It made a lot of things fall into place. You've got to love those "a-ha!" moments. :) Sue