Inner Sanctum: Mankind Reaching for the Universe the Gift of Three

By Don Erdek

Things abruptly changed when the 1963 economic recession set in. The work-study position with Franklin Institute fell through and he instead took a position with Bell Telephone Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and changed his career direction to engineering and making money. He continued with an education and did graduate study at Brooklyn Institute of Technology. Abruptly, his career objectives turned to travel and to see the world. He moved to Miami, Florida, and, shortly thereafter, took a job on Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific followed by one in Tripoli, Libya, then one in Saudi Arabia that lasted some eighteen years. He retired in May 1991 at the age of fifty-six. But later as a lark took another position with Johnson Controls at Cape Canaveral just because the position was a challenge to work at the Cape and on the space programs launch towers.
Returned to Texas in 1996 and he bought a seventy-three-acre ranch in Colmesneil in the deep east Texas piney woods.
Was a rancher of seventeen years on one of the most beautiful pieces of Gods green Earth. Today he decided it was time to write a book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503594395

Don Erdek

Don was born on December 21, 1935, in Manville, a small New Jersey factory town where he spent his early childhood. He graduated with high honors from Rutgers University in 1963 earning a degree in chemistry. He took a position with prestigious Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey and continued his education with a graduate study program in chemical physics at the Brooklyn Institute of Technology. He moved to Miami, Florida in 1965 and shortly thereafter took a job on Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific followed by one in Tripoli Libya, then one in Saudi Arabia that lasted some eighteen years more. He retired in May 1991 at the age of fifty-six. He was lured out of retirement to take a position with Johnson Controls at Cape Canaveral. Working at the Cape on the space program and specifically on the launch towers was an exciting challenge. He retired once again in 1996 and purchased a seventy-three-acre ranch in Colmesneil, Texas in the deep East Texas piney woods. Was a rancher for seventeen years on one of the most beautiful pieces of God's green Earth. Moved to Naples, Florida in 2015. Today he decided it was time to write a book with a poetic take on life.

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Copyright © 2015 by Don Erdek.

Library of Congress Control Number:         2015913028

ISBN:         Hardcover         978-1-5035-9437-1

         Softcover         978-1-5035-9438-8

         eBook         978-1-5035-9439-5

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Rev. date: 08/17/2015

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CONTENTS

Preface

1. The Gift

2. Youth

3. Quantum Leap

4. Old Age and Retirement

5. The Here and Now

6. Stepping Away from Humanity

7. Morals

8. Virtues and Vices

9. The Goal of Life

10. From Here to Infinity

Attachment

To the memory of

Matilda Pitinski Erdek

and

George Erdek

The two that made me

PREFACE

To Live

We are what our past says we are.

Ask not for good fortune.

We were given good fortune at birth.

Start each day by making sure your head and your heart are in the lead.

Everything is what it is and not some other thing.

The world is a place to be investigated for itself.

One’s life is a search for the best use of the assets given at birth.

Our role is to succeed by overcoming any deficits.

—Don Erdek

Inner Sanctum is a story written to explain a pair of exclamation remarks.

In the big scheme of things mankind is insignificant!

In the big scheme of things mankind is magnificent!

With the tales told in Inner Sanctum, I hope to define an ethical and moral understanding of nature and how each individual fits in. How an individual can connect to the universe through an inner sanctum. I seek to answer What does it mean to be alive, to be aware that we are here now alive and thinking? Each of us is a human being living our own life but together with others of like kind on the surface of a small dirt planet we call Earth. I narrow things down a bit by proposing that America has been mankind’s best effort so far to find uniqueness and to contribute to the effort for each individual to find a loftier ideal. Where individual freedoms are foremost and a stepping-stone to man’s greater destiny.

Inner Sanctum defines how each of us fit into the big scheme of things. Each fit is a temporal one. That fit is explained through a dialogue between one common guy and his conscience that is somehow connected to a broader, more-knowing, more-persuasive Inner Sanctum. The book is meant to show gratitude for one’s life and thankfulness for the existence.

For sure, the words to follow are a conversation between myself and my conscience. Yet with these written words a seemingly private conversation is now open enough to greet an audience of other Homo sapiens. I seek an objective definition of life’s values that becomes a philosophy for having been born on planet Earth. It includes a very special, very opinionated view of politics and religion. Just about everything I ever wanted to do I have done. I have no bucket list … I need no bucket list. Living today is icing on my cake and I write to share the sweetness of the life I enjoyed.

Inner Sanctum is a composition of thoughts and cracker-barrel-like tales. Tales spun from an old man’s reverie over months, and even years, of his talking to himself and finally putting them on paper. Many different moments are pieced together in a manner not unlike forcing a piece of a jigsaw puzzle into a segment not meant for it to be. The moral in these tales imply that even if an old man really knows himself that in itself may not be enough. Regardless of how much he thinks and what he knows and has developed very strong opinions about, when it comes to modernism and futurism, one sure can get the knickers in a bind.

I have come a long way to explain my thinking, even to myself, and to put them into writing in a rational, readable way. Previously I attempted to put bits and pieces into cyberspace with e-mail topics and blogs, but that was neither successful nor helpful. In fact, it was counterproductive and discouraging because some individuals cannot discuss a topic without taking or creating umbrage. Too many individuals believe they occupy the higher ground, that they further define as any place they wish to stand. There are so many who think as an individual they are all-knowing, but really, they are not! Polarization caused by a combination of politics and the media have sorely divided our nation.

I had hoped to present a lighthearted yet introspective book about an old man with time on his hands. Time to think about things of the past and of the present. With the realization that the road ahead is much shorter than the one traveled. A disjointed assembly of thoughts, opinions, and judgments recalled or transcribed as remembrance. An attempt to put value to a life while ever thankful for its richness. So appreciative of immigrant eastern European grandparents who came through Ellis Island in the late 1800s.

Almost to the writing I cherish and glorify life. It was my ego that told me to write. It was my conscience that told me what to write. It said that my life has a purpose. It further said that if you live it right you will find that purpose. If you don’t, you won’t.

It is my drive to make the case that to know is to live. I believe an individual’s role must be synonymous and in harmony with the nature’s laws. Any and all subjects I tackle are a means of understanding the world we live in. It is my end play to gather everything under three main topics of an individual’s life, namely, self-reliance, responsibility, and conscience. From these three tenets, morals, and ideals become the all-important guide for those who believe in the future of America, the American way of life, and an ultimate destiny for all mankind.

Here is my definition of a human life.

Life is an entity of one mind within one body. That entity’s function is to survive as long as possible in the extension we call time. The entity is aware of its oneness with the universe which guides its existence. Seeking as much knowledge as humanly possible from both the inside and outside of the entity is to live life to its fullest. Employing self-reliance, responsibility, and conscience to always live in harmony with nature and never, if ever, against its omnipotence.

In America this definition is clearly voiced as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I was not my intention to write an autobiography. However, no sooner did my pen hit the pad when the writer’s persona became the written about. It is not in any way a complete autobiography, but it does give my own personal experiences and insights into what aging can reveal. I tried to avoid too much detail of my education, my career, and my life not wanting this to be a life’s tale, hoping instead for it to be a philosophy of life for most any ordinary human being. It reaches deep into humanity, the conscience, and one man’s nook in the universe. Lots of reminiscing and talking to a somewhat strange aura, which manifests itself as an inner sanctum. It is my sincere hope that this does accomplish my intent of portraying a common guy and a working stiff in capitalistic America. And by the way, my definition of a working stiff is anyone who has or had a boss. And my definition of a common man is anyone who is not a politician.

In addition, I hope my writing style is not too distracting. Most often thoughts are not sentences. They are often grammatically incorrect because that is how we think. We may write in prose, but we think poetically. Hence, much of my writing has become a cross between prose and poetry. Compressing messages, thoughts, opinions, or an argument into fewer words with each word working harder. That also requires that the reader work harder with cause to think. To emphasize that all significant life choices come at a cost. I hope to implant more meaning into fewer words to become more interesting, more important, more to force the reader to create his or her own slant on the topic or the opinion. Every mind creates its own specific images, which then expand one’s range of thinking. It may be the writer’s words, but it is the reader’s thoughts that matter. I write to the many monks of the world. Those who think deeply yet say so little. They who keep so much wisdom in guarded restraint. To those who listen and say so little … the silent majority in America.

All of the following pages are my own opinions. I’m just an old guy presenting an individual’s view on things. All my life I have taken copious notes of everything, my own form of a diary. I have accumulated a vast collection of words, thoughts, sayings, mottoes, phrases, concepts, and quotes of anything I considered important. Many if not most are found here in the Inner Sanctum. Included are things that have changed so sharply over the last eighty years. In a way I can say my intent to write the book is akin to an early caveman wall painting. More specifically one of those depictions of the human hand on a cave wall. A lasting impression of an individual’s hand merely done to identify one was present. My understanding of how it was done was that the individual put red ocher pigment into his mouth and chewed it fine. He then choose a nice flat spot on the cave wall to place his hand and then proceeded to spit and spew the pigment around his placed hand. Why did he do that? I’m guessing that he didn’t really think it was art or a special talent. Simple … he wanted to say I am here. He wanted to show he was alive. No doubt he knew what he was doing. He wants to define that he existed. As all later can see his hand upon good Earth in this cave wall makes his life a real thing. And more likely, he enjoyed doing it because he could; it looked good and it made him proud of his performance. Now the case in point I choose to spit words on parchment instead of red ocher on a cave wall.

In another way I’m declaring myself the official historian of the old and obsolete. I make it plain and clear that I am an individual who has a hard time accepting being told what to do and in being sternly governed. Expect little polish in the words and verses written. I concede up-front I’m just a common guy who has made a lot of mistakes along the way. I see most things as either black or white, shades of gray I leave to others. Any errors become quibbles; being old I no longer worry about incidental mistakes. So I decided to forgo any extensive professional editing and, instead, want the manuscript left true to an old guy’s version of living in a common speak manner. A manner that shows emotional gratitude for life and significance if one be but true to conscience. I must admit that self-editing of my own writing, my own thinking, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. True honesty sometimes causes one to be very dissatisfied with self.

Within this writing there is one very, very, important four-letter word that must be deeply questioned. That word is time. Now most everyone truly believes that they fully understand what time is. Everyone has a common understanding that today is the present time, yesterday is time before, and tomorrow is time yet to come. We have wrist watches and precision time pieces and a Prime Meridian to indicate time of day anywhere on Earth. We have the Earth’s rotation around the Sun to define a year of time. All of this is well and good for Earthlings who want to know where they are and what’s happening elsewhere right now or in the past on planet Earth. A huge problem arises about the beginning of time. With religions, the start of time is some form of Genesis or an action of a creator. With the sciences it started with a big bang that initiated the start of time. Neither religions nor the sciences have a grasp or choose to speculate what happened before the start of time. Nor do I. So in this writing I will use origin as a proper noun when the start of time is in question. I will use Genesis or creator when specific religious topics are discussed. I will use big bang when specific scientific topics are discussed.

No one needs to agree with the conjecture of an inner sanctum. No one needs to spend any time to disagree. Each needs to decide for themselves in what realm can wisdom and truth be found.

Expect lots of questions. Many of which are left open and unanswered. Which only goes to prove living until eighty is not enough. Nor would eighty more complete the task.

I have come to know the divine of an inner sanctum. An inner sanctum is the province of any individual who seeks its guidance; it is neither racist nor sexist.

To all who read my words I say that with birth you have been endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is up to you to choose your path. Let no one steal your joy.

DON ERDEK

July 10, 2015

LUFKIN, TEXAS

THE GIFT

Surprise

Sometimes I talk to myself.

Sometimes it is to the elements.

Sometimes I know not to whom.

The answers I get dumbfound me most.

"Just one, not all three.

Immortality … eternal youth … above-average evolutionary intelligence.

So be the gift.

For you the selection."

Now I know I like to talk to myself, but who are you that is offering me this unusual gift? Are you some kind of a genie or enchanter that wants to beguile me? I’m not sure what you are offering and then why to me an eighty-year-old man. And if there is a gift, where do I find it? I’m not sure what this all means, but I sure am interested in the offer. You might also want to explain these gifts a bit more. I need some clarification so I can know which one to choose. And of course, I need to make sure this is not another scam or a figment of my own imagination playing tricks on me.

"It’s already there for you to select.

Search your inner sanctum.

Seek out that what is there in the inner most whorls and not in your basal carpe diem."

Once again, I don’t have a clue what that means. I do know that I have a special life … my own. An existence special to the one and only me. I didn’t realize it back in my youth, only now, only eventually along the way did I wise up. Wisdom and experience enough to have gained the ability and the right to be myself. Yet so often I hear voices. Not from the outside, but from my own nature within. Is it the sideline of my own thoughts? You called yourself an inner sanctum, whatever or whoever that might be. Where and what is an inner sanctum? Are you somewhere hunkered down deep within my mind or out somewhere in my surround? I know I talk to myself quite a bit. Is that what you may be? And I do a good bit of listening, is that you talking? Might it be a first-person to third—person conversation with myself? Might I merely be listening to a voice within? Or might the inner sanctum be tangible and real and a spiritual essence permeating the universe? Then again might it be a duality that comes from deep within as well as outside looking down at the same time? Those introspections or out-of-body experiences are all a companion wonder of being human. Not strange at all for anyone with sanity. Might it be the nature that is both within and without that created the self?

Surely I know I was born of a woman and sired by a man. That Dad was never there, but only because he had no choice in the matter. And Mom, she passed away before I thought to ask any questions about her life. Questions about those years she spent with Dad and what were their dreams of the future. There was little clear acknowledgment about what life had been before I was born. What kind of life did my grandparents live and what were their hopes for life? All that ancestry that came before, what were their thoughts, hopes, and dreams?

If I were to trace my genome back some hundred thousand years, I wonder what I would find? I would need to search not only the last century or two but those thousands and thousands of years before. I’m sure it would be a wild migration of bits and pieces of DNA scattered over vast areas of planet Earth. Who were those humans that came before me? Where did they live? What was their success with hunting and gathering? How did they survive all those harsh conditions? Where did they come to settle down and forgo the nomad and begin to farm? Did they ever move to a village, a town, or into a city? How did they meet? What was their departure? So many questions with no answers and never to be answered.

There is so much uncertainty to account for my being here. So let’s flip this thought on its head, in my head, and ask, What are the chances that bits and pieces of DNA and segments of genes spread all over God’s green Earth would come together to form a single unique genome today a hundred thousand years later living in this place called America? Without a pause I can answer that question with certainty because it did happen. My life says it is so and so does the life of anyone reading these pages.

But I am an old man now. Lost so much of the physical. Gained so much of the mental. I now more and more retreat away from my daily living and listen more to that memory within. This is so because I have gotten to really like old age. It sets me free. I like the person I have become. I find it easier to be positive. I now care less what others think. I have become my own best friend. I find a joy in being imperfect. The wisdom, the experiences, the tumbles along the way. What a story it makes, one special to myself. Yet one that each and every other can tell if they but choose to express. I do believe each can and should have a hand in writing one’s own final chapters.

I have now arrived at the wondrous stage of oldness where the universe is known to be tremendous and my life even more the magnificent. I live here in America on the cusp of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A time of humanity’s fast movements with cars and airplanes and soon-to-be spaceships. I know people from a generation or two that have come before and another two generations out ahead but not much more. Many of those that came before are just names and dates of birth and death.

My life, as all common others, marks a distinctive date for its start. There will also be a date to meet some form of a guillotine of an end—the stopping of the heart, the last thought or word. All tombstones contain a birth date and a departure date with a dash in between. The dash that signifies a life lived but tells little or nothing about the life that was lived. Life is certainly much more than a simple dash. To me the dash is of the greatest importance since it defines the values of the life that lived. It’s the dash between that I think my memory is prodding me to explain. The dash holds a full life in totality. It needs to be defined for it contains the history of myself or any other self. It holds the experiences, knowledge and the wisdom that was gained. I say this for myself as I would advise others.

Today, I have become the physical being of the many of my ancestors who lived before. With most all of those before, American or otherwise, I will never speak, or see, or touch, or hear. Nevertheless, they are all here in my genome and part, no doubt, of my very being. That vast accumulation of genealogy and DNA is my vessel to sail. To pass to others, to add to mankind. To serve a purpose unknown but to the beginning of life itself. And all that which may have been started with the origin of the universe and possibly that mysterious inner sanctum?

My consciousness and my awareness tell me that my path to the here and now was a path built on the many lives that came before. That evolutionary path confirms that no one, not anything, was likely to have been created or evolved from out of a blue. Evolution, a word so much in controversy, explains many real truths. Truths deniable only if misunderstood or be of misplaced consequences. I know my life’s path has been a stepwise search for the most profound of these truths. All of those truths are now evenly spread in my consciousness and subconsciousness. Possessed by the body and of the brain to that which created my mind. I refuse to believe that my life is some kind of a chance thing. My history is everything right up to the now and hopefully continuing even after today. And with the next sunrise, tomorrow will become the new today. I believe I have become the person I will be for the rest of my life. But that was the case when most every day before I thought the same. I always knew how brief a human life is … how soon it can be over. I have become today what old brings to the table.

"This might now be the time to think, to reminisce, to be painfully honest.

The time to tap the wealth of your intelligence, conscience, and an inner sanctum, to tease from them eternal truths.

Play them like the treasure of one’s life that it is.

A treasure made by you for you.

There is within that treasure chest hidden values to find.

Hidden but saved by the self since you had not the time till now.

Find the gift of three, which was offered for you to choose.

Today you know all you have done and never paused long enough to assess.

It is now time for accessing, assessing, and uncloaking the answers to the wonder of all creation … yourself."

But let’s be clear, I care not for lies or bullshit. I know of my conscience, but that inner sanctum I am yet unsure. So we can ping-pong back and forth of what I did or didn’t do. Of what I think today or yesterday or what I should not had thought or done. Just remember that whenever it comes, or came to act, it was my bony ass that was on the line. I’ll give that I’m now an old man and have lots of time. I indeed can give you more time than I ever could before. Yeah, I know you’ve been on the back burner. And yes, sometimes I wonder if solitude is a state to be preferred over company. But you must realize I was too busy earning a living to mess with that deep stuff that you always create. You may claim you didn’t create it, and it’s been there all along. But as I just told you, I don’t like to lie nor am I a bull-shitter. You may call me naive. You can prove me wrong. You can say I don’t know what I’m talking about. But don’t call me a bull-shitter. A bull-shitter doesn’t ask questions. A bull-shitter claims to have knowledge he doesn’t really possess but thinks he does. A bull-shitter mainly bullshits self.

"Well, if indeed, you say you do listen to me and might believe that I am your inner sanctum, then let me for instance give you an example.

Remember, back when you …"

Hold on a minute before you go any further with that for instance; just remember I haven’t forgotten that triple turd you’ve dropped in my head. You know that one about immortality and eternal youth and evolutionary intelligence. And that only one choice. What’s that all about? Come on, no lies, no bullshit.

"Well, let us have little doubt that you have a rendezvous with destiny.

You have the ability, and even now the agility, to place more and more footprints unto the sands of time

You have that at your disposal until the dash debarks on the shores of the River Styx.

I am indeed deep down below your basal carpe diem.

I am suspended in the quantum foam that is well below that which comprises that basic urge to seize the day.

I may be that which Brian Greene refers to as the most basic in his book the Elegant Universe.

Those loops of string that rise to the height of life itself in their reach for elegance.

But don’t let these last bits of pie in the sky statements set you back.

Don’t let me put you off with premature cosmological hocus-pocus.

All of this may be true, but as of yet, there is no proof.

Let none of this deter you from seizing the joys of everyday life.

Let me postpone these deepest secrets … for now at least."

"But let me continue with the ‘for instance’ I started.

This ‘for instance’ will be a superficial one to the many topics you and I need to discuss.

Let’s just start by discussing music, and then more specifically your own take on music.

You know you and every other human being who ever lived liked music.

Humans rattled gourds and banged bones and hopped on legs to the strangest of sounds.

From the get-go, humans especially liked the sounds they made for themselves by themselves."

"You liked music; you always have; it’s the human in you.

You know others like music, many even more than you.

The type of music you like is different than what is preferred by many others.

That is part of the individual in each of us.

You also know that music preferences change with age.

Maybe not so much with you since you always preferred Country and Western and still do.

But come on now, isn’t that a bit odd for a boy from New Jersey?

Odder still because you have no musical talent and never did.

You can’t play a note on any instrument, and we both know you tried