Robert A. Heinlein Groks The Observing Self

The Martians had it right

In the novel Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein describes the similarities and differences between Martian and Earth culture. A human raised by Martians on Mars goes to Earth for the first time and struggles with his relationship to himself and others.

Smith, the protagonist, “Grok’s” reality. What does it mean to Grok something? Read on from this excerpt of the book:

‘Grok’ means “to understand,” of course, but Dr. Mahmoud, who might be termed the leading Terran expert on Martians, explains that it also means, “to drink” and “a hundred other English words, words which we think of as antithetical concepts. ‘Grok’ means all of these. It means ‘fear,’ it means ‘love,’ it means ‘hate’—proper hate, for by the Martian ‘map’ you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you—then you can hate it. By hating yourself. But this implies that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate—and (I think) Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called mild distaste.

’Grok’ means ‘identically equal.’ The human cliché ‘This hurts me worse than it does you’ has a distinctly Martian flavor. The Martian seems to know instinctively what we learned painfully from modern physics, that observer acts with observed through the process of observation. ‘Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science and it means as little to us as color does to a blind man.

All that groks is God.

This concept of Grokking is about as close to the Self-as-Context as I’ve ever come across. “observer acts with observed through the process of observation. ‘Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed”

When doing ACT work (or matrix work), this is the kind of process of observation that we are aiming for. I’ve been having a rough few weeks, with thoughts that I am really not a very good therapist. There are a few clients that I work with who I struggle with every week. And I noticed that I have begun to think that there’s nothing I can do, and that it’s all the client’s fault that I feel this way. That’s me acting as if the client is in the room by themselves and I’m just watching what’s happening from a different planet. But no, I am in the room. Whatever happens in there is only possible because it’s an interactional relationship between them and me. The very patterns of behavior that frustrate me are possible precisely because I am playing a part to maintain them.

The center circle of the matrix represents this point of view of the observing self, and it’s so important to be able to step back into that perspective and really see what’s happening. To really be a part of the observed.

If you’ve caught yourself having doubts about your work, or putting everything that frustrates you onto your client try to deliberately notice what’s showing up inside you and what your body is doing, and ask yourself how is what I’m doing reinforcing what’s happening here?

Respectfully Submitted,

Jacob Martinez // Through The ACT Matrix