Papa sang bass--Med School Tales Part III

I supp hose that there may be readers out there who would like me to stay on task, so here goes--I am rained out of the great outdoors soooo



It would only be appropriate to throw in the mention of the fact that, by virtue of my girlfriend and her mother, I was somewhat peripherally involved in a form of religion for about 4 1/2 years while all this was going on. It was based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner who was at one time a student of Annie Besant, the woman who founded Theosophy, one of the first successful British movements to embrace Eastern religion, with total rejection of Christianity. Dr. Steiner felt this was entirely inadequate but was still drawn to mysticism and eastern concepts; so his reaction was to found a philosophy called Anthroposophy, which is an attempt to merge Eastern philosophy and Christianity and science, by means of what he called spiritual science, and that involved clairvoyance, which was a pretty big deal at that time in Europe. It was actually an outgrowth of Gnosticism and repeated all the mistakes thereof, perhaps unknowingly, perhaps knowingly. In order to obtain higher knowledge, it was a matter of working towards it, in the usual religious manner of hoisting one's self up by one's own bootstraps and/or petards. In this way an elite is theoretically formed by works, a kind of a priesthood, but not of "all believers".

To my mind all of this is reactionary to the Person of Christ, if not the religion called Christianity, or perhaps both. The desire of probably all of us to belong to some ultraknowing in- group may be universal as far as the human race is concerned. Not once during all this time was I led to acquaint myself with the concept of Grace, all I knew was the tune, not the words much less the reality. At any rate, I am not unfamiliar with religion, both conceptually and experientially. As to the supernatural, I never did attain to any thing like clairvoyance but I did ask God to break in on occasion,albeit in my usual pushy and inappropriate manner. To say that this was undermotivated and halfhearted would be understated!

Some of you may be acquainted with Esperanza Schools, which are Steiner's most notable legacy and his most widespread currency of influence.

Meanwhile, back at the ranchero de Guadalajara, I was pressing said girlfriend to get me an early interview with her medical school, Chicago Medical School, in hopes of gaining an early entrance to avoid Vietnam and Mexico both, as well as get back to the girl. Even though I was learning a lot, much more than I knew which would eventually be most useful (Spanish), I did not want to do a second semester at the Automata.

Amazingly enough, she actually managed to do this so that I was actually able to get an interview and an acceptance while I was still in the United States for Christmas vacation!!! I suppose it didn't hurt anything that there was a profound Jewish influence at this school, so that Christmas vacation didn't get in the way very much!

Thus, I never returned to Mexico except for a brief vacation in Veracruz during my semester -long sabbatical that was to follow. The next six months were filled with activities such as getting interviews with the University of Illinois and Loyola, both of which went very well for some reason, unlike my experience at Stony Brook a year earlier. It was also six months of intense independent study. I found one of the first programmed texts, ironically on neuroanatomy, which gave me a very solid education on my own brain, at least as much as we knew at the time--compared to now, not very much. I am one of the few to graduate from medical school with almost no acquaintance with any cadaver! But I am getting ahead of said self...
Next time: THE TEST