Let's examine this. The behavior of a stable system may be described as goal-seeking. Conversely, an unstable system is one dominated by a positive feedback loop and has no goal. As I said to myself with all my heart and soul, 'I will not be a nothing', I had no goal on the plane of action, but I was striving for transcendence to a higher plane. At a deep level I didn't like engineering. It was not my "right livelihood." My motivation for having become an engineer was to escape service in the Korean War. The eventual result was that I had somehow become a slave, a nothing, to a social system, in particular this company's social system. Therefore, deep down, I cared not whether I was moving up or down the ladder of worldly success. To me higher or lower on that plane of action was nothing.
What was left to me it seems was to BURN - the soul afire. The engineering device that I was designing and building at that time was in keeping with such a state of mind. Unconsciously I was worshipping God in the form of Fire, or perhaps something more. The device was a cylindrical metal- ceramic electron tube the size of a 5 inch long crucifix with a copper rod down its center. A high electric current (about 200 amps) flowing in the rod generated a magnetic field. The electron tube was mounted or jury-rigged on a frame. At the heart of the assembly was a one-half inch diameter by one inch long cylindrical tantalum cathode heated to 3100 deg F. Its intense white light emanated from the openings between the plates of the electron tube and I was aware of its rays as I waited for it to heat up or as I worked around it, studying for countless hours how it operated. This could be done since in its vacuum phase it was enclosed by a highly evacuated glass bell jar and in its cesium phase by a metal bell jar with a quartz window. I was not aware at the time that the electron tube was in the form of a crucifix, but what joy I felt to see it work.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
And with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."
Jesus (Matthew 22:37)
"If.....thou shalt seek the Lord thy God,
Thou shalt find him, if thou seek him
With all thy heart and with all thy soul."
Moses (Deut 4:29)
"Whoever has God in mind, simply and solely God, in all things, such a man carries God with him into all his works and into all places, and God alone does all his works."
Meister Eckhart
The original mechanical drawings for this design are not available to me.
However, a later design of an entirely different electron tube also shows
crucifix-like qualities. The mechanical drawing (full scale) of the latter
are shown below.
Return to the narrative of the religious crisis, An Engineer's Story, and look for reference#17.