I try to look at the script objectively and then work backward, trying to figure out what kind of person would ordinarily write this kind of book; and I’m as far from being that kind of person as anyone I know. Or is the unconscious that playful and creative? That is, could the manuscript be the result of my own unconscious productivity? I can’t really accept such a thesis, since I’m not at all convinced that the unconscious operates in such a manner. I’ve always thought of it as containing the suppressed, primitive, unsavory aspects of the self that, quite rightly, we’ve been conditioned to repress. The conditioning process: Everything must return to that basis. And somewhere, in that framework, there must be an answer to my current experience. Yet—nothing in my own background seems to present an adequate explanation.

I am trying a small experiment. A few days before the manuscript “began,” I’d started taking vitamin C. Surely I see no connections. Nevertheless, today I began accelerating the dose of vitamin C to ascertain if there is any resulting alteration in my production of the book. Perhaps in a way that we don’t understand, some vitamins cause an overstimulation of certain hormones that further trigger the creative abilities. I don’t for the moment believe this, but I refuse to discount such a theory either.

One thing in particular bothers me: Why does the material come all prepared, without any conscious work on my part at all? And why do I have the feeling that “someone” is giving it to me? Well, I finally admitted it: More and more I become aware that there is a personified source behind the manuscript. Is such a feeling only the conscious mind’s astonishment with the products of the unconscious processes? This is the most likely explanation, of course. Yet, granting that the unconscious has such abilities—and I’m not at all certain that it does—then why are they showing in my life now, suddenly, and never before?

I’m not doubting the unconscious origin of creativity, but I’m almost certain that conditioning directs its activity. Each act must have its reason, but the reason may simply be the reaction to learned sequences of nerve patterns. So my acts must, it seems to me, be the result of some kind of conditioned response.

I don’t like it. We had a cat when I was a boy. He came without being called, when he heard the noise of the can opener. He was conditioned: He knew that the sound of the can opener, when it wasn’t family mealtime, meant food for him—because we never fed him when we ate. Then, what “conditions” me to sit down and “get” that book each evening after a full day teaching? What element out of my past is wielding the can opener? And what kinds of learning processes are taking place?