“Now, there is something fascinating going on all the time, and this morning, for some reason, I am suddenly privy to it in myself. I have long been aware that my peripheral visual faculties, to which I pay little attention and, unlike my foveal (central) faculties, do not ‘congratulate themselves in my own consciousness simply for doing what they do’. In other words, my peripheral vision is saving my life (and those of others, literally) all day long, and no one, including me, usually notices. There are exceptions. For example, when one narrowly avoids a high-speed accident with split-second precision.

Move the metaphor to mind; particularly those aspects which emerge as constellations of activity whose produce is creative. Problem-solving. Forming art. What is the underlying force that lends itself to insightful invention, which might be approximated as ‘unexpected -learning- prowess during attempted expression’. An event like this might be understood as reaching for a vague idea in such a way as to arrive at a sophisticated, powerful instance of the idea -embodied for communion-. This is something like prodigy, and it is natural to all of us.

What I was privileged to notice this morning was this: half-remembered dreams were feeding directly into the aspects of my mind involved in learning and communicating, particularly those who were seeking means that were at once powerful and highly creative. I was astonished to discover that what seems to me the lion’s share of the ‘force’ that was transforming what might otherwise be mundane, disposable experience into ‘transmissible toys of insight’ was, in fact, these half-remembered dreams.

And then it occurred to me that something similar might be happening in the physical aspect, that our dreaming informs our peripheral senses and intelligence… forming something akin to a preternatural relationship with space, motion and time… in the image of insight’s preternatural relationship with meaning, identity, and relation. You might recognize this from having seen animals in high-speed physical relation or martial artists performing tasks such as catching arrows shot at them. These are the results of input from the aspects of consciousness we ordinarily consign to oblivion with our rational waking minds. In fact, ordinarily, we cannot consciously detect any of this activity. But it is possible to interact with it more directly than we ordinarily do without destroying it…

This note you are now reading contains the fingerprints of minds rarely detected in -any- form of awareness. And those fingerprints are on nearly everything we do well. They are the fingerprints activities involving situations of consciousness familiar from dreaming, and they form the basis both of the rationality that would eject them and the prodigy that here confirms them.

Astonishingly, all of the most amazing aspects of our cognitive and relational intelligence -never show up for praise-. And if they did? The whole system would crash. They are too busy being excellent to talk about it. This should remind you of nature in general, and living things in particular.

What we have here is their ghost. In my case, their insane brother conserved the evidence of their nature and activity and presented to you on their behalf. Enjoy, and please make wise use of it.”

— an anonymous informant