Sunday, December 9, 2012

Mount Algebra

Mount Algebra


 
Some years ago I was a (politically correct) “returning student,” (read old person) at the local community college.  I had taken five or six fun and easy courses, each rewarded with an “A” and a ratchet up in confidence.  Finally I felt ready to take Beginning Algebra.  Be impressed.  This move demonstrated a bravery equal to falling on a live grenade, considering the fact that I have a math phobia and had managed to graduate high school innocent of even rudimentary contact with said algebra.
That first day in class I realized that my peers, most of whom were less than one-half my age, had taken algebra before and this class was designed for them, not an algebraically uninitiated like myself.  The teacher blithely rattled on about formulas, equations, real numbers, natural numbers and irrational numbers.  Perversely, she wrote letters on the blackboard, instead of any of the aforementioned numbers and some were embraced by parentheses, which I had foolishly assumed were used only to cozy up groups of words.  The teacher’s language was worse than gibberish.  I felt as if I were about to become an irrational number, so at the ten minute break, I exited and didn’t return.
Next semester I took the same class with a different teacher.  Same result, except this time I controlled my panic attack until class was dismissed.  Devastated, I dropped the course.  But I had committed to working toward a degree, which would be the first in my family of origin, and follow my daughter’s college degree.  No one would award that coveted B.A. until I had passed College Algebra, four courses and a universe away.
Before the start of next semester I asked around: who was the best algebra teacher in the school?  I made an appointment to talk with that awesome lady.  I related my humiliating story and in anguish, asked, “Will I have to give up getting a college degree because I can’t do algebra?”  She reassured and encouraged me.
I prepared for that class like plotting an assault on Mount Everest.  I purchased the text book weeks beforehand and perused it until it sent me and my irritable bowel to the bathroom.  (Maybe I should have just left it in there for bathroom reading.)  When I talked to my next door neighbor, who was trained as a teacher and was home-schooling her children, she agreed to help me with homework if I got stuck.  I made the acquaintance of the math lab at the college, where they provided free tutoring any time during school hours.  The first day of class felt like a long workout on a balance beam but I stuck the landing -- er, the first class and the second, and the first week.
This wonderful teacher had a precise grading system.  She awarded points for tests, of course, but also for each class attended, for each homework assignment handed in, and for each of a limited number of extra credit assignments.  Together, the points totaled 100, for a perfect A.  As I looked at the syllabus with that grading system, an outrageous idea struck.  Maybe I could get an A in this class, to match all the others:  a very seductive prospect.
As the weeks went by, this possibility was nurtured by modest success.  I did every homework assignment.  These weren’t graded for content or accuracy just checked briefly to see that the student actually did the work instead of entering a solution from the section at the back of the book.  I did check my work with the answers in the book, and the few times I had to consult my next door neighbor it was because the book’s answer was a misprint.  It was tough.  Each homework session produced a pounding headache, the result of new algebra synapses firing in my brain, I was convinced.  One day I just couldn’t take it; I decided to skip class.  No problem.  Next week I was back plodding away, still reasonably on track for my A.
Before the final exam, I checked my accumulated points and knew I had to get at least a 92 to get the coveted A.  The exam was excruciating.  I was the last person to leave the classroom.  We knew the teacher posted exam results on her classroom door, identified by the last four digits of the students’ social security numbers.  I held my breath as I located my grade.  91.  Mount Everest, ha!  I had failed to reach the summit; it was nauseating.  I felt like I was suffering from altitude sickness.  A sympathetic friend told me to ask the teacher to give me an extra point.  I considered it, but what stopped me was the though of that one day I had skipped class.  One day, one point.  I got what I deserved.  Two weeks later when my grade report for all my classes came in the mail, lo and behold, an A in Algebra, stacked sweetly in the column with the others.  To this day, I wonder:  did she give me a pity A, or when I totaled class points, did I make a mistake in my math?

    

Can you believe this book:  Proof of Heaven  A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, M.D. ?

     This book relates the “near-death experience” (NDE) of a neurosurgeon.  There are hundreds of such accounts in the media, but this book claims that its author’s experience was both unique and compelling enough to render proof that consciousness exists independent of bodily existence, that life goes on after death.  Woody Allen once said, “I don’t believe in an afterlife but I’m taking a change of underwear anyway.”  We share his equivocation but we prefer to know for sure if we should pack those skivvies. 
     Twenty-one years ago, I wrote a report on the NDE for a college class.  I began my research by attending a meeting of a local chapter of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, where I met and heard the stories of several NDE’rs.  Why do such accounts fascinate us?  Perhaps because they offer the best elements from both a good old-fashioned ghost story and a bulletin from the frontiers of science.  They tantalize us with the promise of eternal life, a form of comfort that formerly only religious faith could supply.  While faith is the purview of the devout, belief is available to all if it is supported by scientific “fact.”  In an age of conflict between science and religion, any revelation that purports to reconcile the two paradigms offers us psychological integration or what used to be called peace of mind.  This new field of study, dignified with the multi-syllabic Latin name “circumthanatology,” has been cleansed of superstition and religious dogma and sanctified instead by statistical study.
           The book under discussion, however, is just one more of many “anecdotal reports,” anathema to the scientific mind.  The author claims that what makes it different is the absolute incapacitation of the “human” parts of his brain while in a coma with e-Coli meningitis.  He even includes, in Appendix B, rebuttals to various neuro-scientific hypotheses that would explain the NDE experience.  Yes, his account of factual details and more emotional, human-interest details was fascinating and compelling.  I was convinced.  Or was I?  One unique feature of Dr. Alexander’s NDE was that he had no sense of self, no awareness of an individual identity while in that state.  He points to that fact as further proof of the independence existence of consciousness.  Couldn’t one also hypothesize that the very fact that his neo-cortex was “bathed in pus” and therefore totally inactivated, was the cause of his lack of a sense of identity?  If proven, that hypothesis would strengthen the “brain produces consciousness” theory.
     So, before packing my underwear in anticipation of my own journey into the afterlife, I checked out the web site of his nonprofit organization, Eternea, at www.Eternea.org.  Interesting.  The site states that “anyone can join” yet the fee for basic membership is $50 and there are tiers of membership according to the amount of the “donation” given, with increased privileges for those higher on the tiers.  Proof of hierarchy based on financial status, even among Heaven’s advocates?
     The most compelling statements in the book, for me, were those that revealed that, and I paraphrase, God is love; love and compassion are real, concrete, and are the very fabric of the spiritual relm.  Further, Alexander states that God loves us.  How well this harmonizes with the basic precepts of the great religions of the world.  Take this statement as an example, "You must...look toward each other and then toward mankind with the utmost love and kindness...This has been the essence ...of the teaching of the Prophets, saints, seers and philosophers..."  Abdu'l-Baha.  For more about and from Abdu'l-Baha and the Baha'i Faith, go to www.usnsa@usbnc.org.