Satrurday Memory for ASugust 15, 2026

It was 1956. I was a freshman at USC. I had a work-study job in the Computer Science Laboratory. USC had just received shipment of the IBM 305 RAMAC computer consisting of many modules taking up a whole room. It was IBM’s newest main-frame. My job was punching data into punch cards, loading paper into the printers, putting labels on tape canisters from the tape drives, and other such tasks. Some of the people that were in the lab were consultants from the Rand Corp[oration, whose headquarters was in close-by Santa Monia. I was invited to join them for lunch-time discussions. Among things discussed were artificial intelligence (AI). The term was not yet generally known, having been coined only the year before by John McCarthy, a mathematician at Dartmouth. But even before the word was coined, Rand Corporation was working on the mathematical and computer tools that were making artificial intelligence possible and manifest. A good bit of this was happening in the USC lab. Rand was one of the few places that was working on AI in the world. One thing that stands out in my memory is what one of the consultants told me. He aid, “Pay attention to AI. Do not ignore it.” I wish I had paid more attention . In many ways I was there where and when AI was born. I did not have the presence of mind to really understand the implications. Years later, in 1969, I was a professor at UC Santa Barbara. I was in the lab when the first ARPANET was executed between UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, and the University of Utah. This was the first physical manifestation of what later became the “internet.” I was there. Again, I did not have the presence of mind to foresee what it was that was being born. In 1972, while I was in training to be a Jungian Analyst, I had a dream referring to these two aspects of my earlier life. The dream called me an “uncomprehending witness.” That, I cannot deny.

Acupuncture. The vision started in the usual way, but the scene was less colorful than usual, somewhat gray. Nothing happened for a long while and then a white bird appeared and flew about the stage, the tower, and over the seats where I was sitting. I watch the bird fly about and then Orogine’s voice asked me, “What do you see?” I answered: “A bird flying about.” “Well, yes, but what else?” I respond: “Just the bird nothing else.” Orogine: “You don’t see the pattern the bird is flying?” I say, “No, but I am watching that now.” This scene is repeated with a butterfly, then a bee, then a spider, a snail, and a sow bug. This was followed by a cat, a squirrel and a lizard. With each new animal, I saw the animal as well as the pattern it was moving in. Then Orogine said: “Good. Now think of dreams, thoughts, feelings and intuitions. You must learn to see the patterns that these things move in, like the animals.” At this [point the session came to an end and was followed by the strong energy boost. In addition, I experienced a strong feeling of wellbeing.   

On the way home from school. Running across a field. I fell. I fell on a broken bottle of Clorox. I cut my right hand badly. It was bleeding profusely. I got up. I looked deeply into the gaping wound. I was fascinated by the inside of my hand and what I saw there. I got home. I couldn’t find mom. So, I went next door and showed by hand to Rocco, my Communist mentor. He was in his shorts. [When I was younger, that’s what I thought a Communist was.] Nonetheless, he took me to the emergency room. They worked on my hand and it took a long time with the stiches and all. At the time, I was often speaking with a British accent. In response to Rocco’s note he left for my mom, she rushed in to where I was being treated. I said, “Well, here’s my bloody mother!”

Thought for the Day – August 5, 2026

Acupuncture. The scene began with an unusual light. It was a kind of white light, soft and highlighting the whole scene. This had never happened before. I then saw a stream of gemstones that formed a cone, with the stones covering it all around. A voice asked, “What do you see?” She was not present, but it was the voice of Orogine. I told her, and she said “no.” The gemstones disappeared, and I then saw nothing. She said that you cannot see the shape of energy until matter takes on the shape. The gemstones appeared again, and I could see the cone-shaped surface covered with them. Orogine said I needed to understand that energy forms in shapes and then attracts matter to that shape. She then said that I would need to work on the obvious questions. What factor or force causes energy to form shapes? What draws matter to the energy shape? What is that forms matter? There was then a sequence of different shapes that could not be seen until matter was drawn to them. Orogine said I would need to think hard about these questions. She said that she and Tonarius would help me but not until I put in some real effort. Then she said I needed to understand the most important thing. That what I had just experienced was also true of thought. Thoughts, like energy, formed in shapes but could not be experienced until the shapes attracted…attracted what? Orogine said: “Guess it.”

I called her to make an appointment. That was easy enough. However, I forgot to ask her where her office was. When I called back, quite embarrassed, to ask for her address, before she told me, she said, “this is a very promising way to start. You don’t know where to go.” Hilde Kirsch was always coming up with these odd angles of reply, quite different than the norm.

I’m recalling a time in 1950, as I recall, during the off-season in football, when Bob Waterfield of the Los Angeles Rams played with us kids on our street in LA. He was one of the best quarterbacks in the National Football League, and it was a lot of fun to have him play with us. I can’t remember why he was in our neighborhood, but it was a joy, for sure. I was not yet 12. I recall him being very funny and full of humor. As teens, or almost teens, we were impressed that he was married to Jane Russell.

Dreams are stories, fragments of stories, or invitations to story. Analysis, interpretation, and efforts at understanding are types of stories, but they are different from the story potential of dreams.

Saturday Memory
July 18, 2026

It was 1992. Santa Monica. A large event with several hundred in the audience. I had called the conference “Writing Inside Out.” The presenters were Annie Dillard, Allen Ginsberg, Natalie Goldberg and me. What I am remembering is at one point Allen and I were talking about my visit to Sorley MacLean, the great Gaelic poet. Allen said: “Hold on, Russ. I want to give something to your son.” He picked a small book from his leather bag, jotted a few liners and a doodle in it and handed it to me. “He will like this.” It was a copy ofHowl, the book he had been prosecuted form. Indeed, my youngest son, who is the poet among my children, was happy to have it. Quite a memento!

It was early 1977. I and others in my cohort of new analysts, had our applications for the psychology license denied. The reason given was that our clinical experience at the Jung clinic in Los Angeles was not broad enough or clinical enough. We appealed, and this decision was overturned. We were admitted to the written examination and all of us having passed, we were admitted to the interview.
At the exam, I s asked why I felt my training was adequate for the psychology license. I answered that the requirements for the license were unrelated to the work I did as an analyst. Why then, they asked, apply for the license. I answered that I wanted recognition that the real work of the logos of the psyche was recognized professionally. I did not want to be licensed only on the basis of meeting relatively surface requirements, but for the deeper work of the psyche.
There were no more questions and I left feeling like I had done myself in. However, to my great surprise, on 7.7.77, I received my license as a psychologist. I remembered this experience a few days ago on the 49th anniversary of getting my license, I notice as well that 49 us 7×7,

Saturday Memory
June 20, 2026

Sometimes, things hang together with the thinnest of threads. I was at my annual physical and everything was checking out just fine. I had an intuition that I should have a cardiac stress test for a baseline. The doctor did not think it was necessary, but because of my intuition I pushed for it and it was scheduled. After I did the stress tests, I was called and told there were some anomalies that needed further investigation. I was scheduled for a nuclear stress test. The results of that indicated I needed a catheter study of my heart vessels (a coronary angiogram). That procedure revealed that all five of my heart vessels were almost completely blocked and I was immediately scheduled for a heart bypass operation. After I was out of recovery, the surgeon told me that without the bypass, I had no more than a month to live. That intuition was the thin thread that saved my life.