Travels (Vintage Departures)

Crichton’s TRAVELS becomes uniquely fun as he attends a New Age retreat in California and has several conversations with a cactus; I suspect psychedelics, despite his denying it. Possibly the leader spiked their food or gassed the participants without their knowing? Then he starts defending the I CHING and tarot cards. He is the most scientific novelist I know and seems to fall into some of the same beliefs as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Spiritualism. (The divining I CHING also strangely features into the science fiction of Philip K. Dick and Philip Pullman. We’re apparently all looking for something to believe in.) I like the following quote—not sure what value it contains, however, if any: (reminds me of dream analysis; at some point he even compares divination to the Rorschach)DivinationOf course, the [I CHING] can’t tell you the answer. The book doesn’t have that power. You do. You can answer your own question. You already know the answer, if you can just gain access to it. And in the end, your unconscious mind does answer your own question, and that is why many people, including Carl Jung and the Chinese scholar John Blofeld, have been struck by the specific, personal quality of the answer that is provided.The purpose of the I CHING, or the tarot, then, is to help you get access to yourself, by providing ambiguity for you to interpret. And this quality of ambiguity is shared with nearly all other forms of divination – cast artifacts, or entrails, or weather formations, or events, such as the flight of birds, that one could choose either to see as ‘omens’ or to ignore.—TRAVELS: “Cactus Teachings,” by Michael CrichtonHere is Crichton at his best—discovering Christian values buried within New Age / Spiritualism:Christianity Mixed with New Age / SpiritualismThe conference continued. We were assigned meditative exercises. One was to send unconditional love and forgiveness to everyone in your life whom you hadn’t forgiven. We were to envision the people standing before us, and then send love and forgiveness, and release them.I discovered I had a long list of people to forgive. It was startling, how long the list was. I was also startled to see who I could envision, and forgive quickly, and who was hard to visualize, hard to forgive. My mind would wander when I tried to forgive these difficult cases.I took days to work through my list. Everybody else had gone on to other things, and I was still forgiving people. I thought, What a cluttered life I have, carrying all these grudges around with me. It was a relief to get rid of my old animosities, but it was often accompanied by deep sadness.…It was ultimately reassuring, to see all the different things that snagged people. It made you less harsh with yourself. We were all in this together. What difference does it make that I cried because I didn’t like the music, and someone else cried because he couldn’t eat during the fast? Neither thing was better or worse. These were all just examples of getting stuck, making yourself miserable by your opinions and beliefs.As if protecting your opinions was more important than having a fresh experience and rolling with the punches.– TRAVELS: “Cactus Teachings,” by Michael CrichtonAnd here is the whole theme of the book itself:Direct ExperienceModern city-dwellers cannot even see the stars at night. This humbling reminder of man’s place in the greater scheme of things, which human beings formerly saw once every 24 hours, is denied them. It’s no wonder that people lose their bearings, that they lose track of who they really are, and what their lives are really about.…The acquisition of self-knowledge has been made more difficult by the modern world. More and more human beings live in vast urban environments, surrounded by other human beings, and the creations of human beings. The natural world, the traditional source of self-awareness, is increasingly absent.…Cut off from direct experience, cut off from our own feelings, and sometimes our own sensations, we are only too ready to adopt a viewpoint or perspective that is handed to us, and is not our own.– TRAVELS: “Preface” and “Direct Experience,” by Michael Crichton

"Travels" by Michael Crichton.Michael Crichton didn't want to be a doctor, but he attended the entire course and worked in different department. At the end, he refused to receive his right to practice his art, despite he received his diploma.This decision was based on his childhood, that was not easy. Actually, he never wanted to be a doctor, this was his parents' decision.So after having written four very good novels including "Andromeda Strain", which became a tremendous success; after making a movie ("West World") which was a great success -the movie didn't cost much- and being a doctor, he settled in a apartment building in Hollywood. The right place to live experiences. He was THE DOCTOR in this building and he was bothered by the other tenants. After succeeding in litterature, in movies, and being a doctor, he suddenly felt sad, depressed.Simply because he didn't have any goals to achieve. Then he saw a psychiatrist and after several weeks, he realized... (I don't tell you).He spent his childhood to travel in America, Europe, South America and this was what he knew the best. He never intended, then to write other books. First, he had to clean up his mind and arrange all his things otherwise. He had too many ideas to write other books. So he was married, but was seducing several women."Travels" his a strange book, made from his souvenirs, corrected later. His style is natural since he didn't intend to publish it. It's the story of a gifted man who lacked of assurance and a goal in his life. It's funny, scary, surprising and he wrote about events that we would forget. Anything inspired him.What saved him is that he decided to travel. You will travel through time and space, since his book tells us adventures happening years ago, in a different world, where Africa was not tamed. (He was not Tarzan, just a writer).You will learn how doctors are prepared for their work since the first day when they dissect a corpse. This training for years change their mind, they have to see things otherwise which is the best thing that happened to Michael Crichton.His book allow readers to know better about themselves. To take risks, to admit that reality differs from peoples and others; that culture can be strange and probably the result of varying conditions of living, with strange taboos in each society and to me, it meant that a Global Village can be something good or bad, strange, that forces our mind to open to these realities. It seems easy, but it is not.We have to travel around the world to become a traveler, then we travel in our mind to face the ugly and the scary and tame the unconscious part which is protecting us clumsily.I fought to have "travels" for Christmas and I have no regrets. And by the way, visit his site, there is a series of essays by Michael Crichton, texts. Michael Crichton raises questions and it's up to the readers to find the answers.