Lost in the Cosmos

self-transcendence, especially Zen and Tibetan Buddhism.
    In his book, Space and Satori, a version of the British starship Daedalus, powered by nuclear fusion, is proposed, the crew to be commanded by an experienced astronaut but with a spiritual leader on board, the noted Tibetan mystic Ti Chen.
    Tonight, your neighbor, Dr. L___, and Ti will promote their book, Space and Satori, on the Carson Show. Both of you know that it is more desirable to be on the Carson Show than on the Tom Snyder Show.
    As you make your morning trip to the paper-tube, you meet not Dr. L___ but his wife, who has bad news. She has reached her paper-tube first and is holding aloft the L.A. Times. There on the front page is an article exposing a sexual scandal at the Ti Chen Institute at La Jolla. Described by a disaffected disciple as an orgy, an incident is described in which Ti Chen is alleged to have engaged in a debauch with some of his young male disciples, in the course of which your neighbor, Dr. L____, appeared unexpectedly, flew into a jealous rage, and assaulted Ti Chen with a broken bottle. Everyone at the institute, in various states of undress, was arrested by the La Jolla police.
    “Can you believe such crap!” cries your neighbor’s wife, in a tearful rage, and slaps the L.A. Times. “I mean, my God, this you would expect from the National Enquirer. The same tissue of lies. I’m going to sue the bastards. Wouldn’t you?”
    You nod gravely and solicitously. This is bad news, indeed. This could mean the end of Dr. L__'s career at NASA, the end of his “scientific Buddhism.” His wife says: “Would you believe Carson canceled him tonight?”
    You shake your head, one arm around Dr. L__'s wife, patting her solicitously.
    You grow thoughtful. Taken altogether, this is
    (a) Unrelievedly bad news.
    (b) Putatively bad news.
    ( CHECK ONE )

    (8) You are one of two distinguished Southern writers in residence at Yaddo and living in neighboring cottages. You are both men of letters, noted for your poetry, fiction, and criticism. For years, even though you both live in Massachusetts, you have both attacked the crass, materialistic, money-grubbing society of the North and defended the traditional, agrarian, Christian values of the South, with its strong sense of place, family, and roots.
    After a day of work, Writer A meets Writer B, as is their wont, on a pleasant woodland path to the dining room. The excited hostess of Yaddo breaks the rule of silence and accosts them in the woods. She has news that won’t keep. Dan Rather has just announced it on the six o’clock news: Writer B has just won the Nobel Prize for literature!
    Writer A embraces Writer B warmly. B shrugs: We both know what we think of the Nobel, etc. Yet B looks pleased. Whatever they think of the Nobel—e.g., people like John Steinbeck and Pearl Buck getting it, Joyce not getting it—it comes to over $200,000. Writer B looks pleased. Writer A horses around a bit, dares B to do a Sartre and turn it down, but still and all shows his pleasure: I’m so damned pleased for you.
    If you are A, are you
    (a) Unrelievedly pleased.
    (b) Putatively pleased.
    ( CHECK ONE )

(10) The Bored Self:
    Why the Self is the only Object in the Cosmos which Gets Bored

    THE WORD BOREDOM did not enter the language until the eighteenth century. No one knows its etymology. One guess is that bore may derive from the French verb bourrer, to stuff.
    Question: Why was there no such word before the eighteenth century?
    (a) Was it because people were not bored before the eighteenth century? (But wasn’t Caligula bored?)
    (b) Was it because people were bored but didn’t have a word for it?
    (c) Was it because people were too busy trying to stay alive to get bored? (But what about the idle English royalty and noblemen?)
    (d) Is it because there is a special sense in which for the past two or three hundred years the self has perceived itself as a leftover which cannot be accounted for by its own objective view of the world and that in spite of an ever heightened self-consciousness, increased leisure, ever more access to cultural and recreational facilities, ever more instruction on self-help, self-growth, self-enrichment, the self feels ever more imprisoned in itself—no, worse than imprisoned because a prisoner at least knows he is imprisoned and sets store by the freedom awaiting him and the world to be open, when in fact the self is not and it is not—a state of affairs which has to be