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Rip got up from his chair. "David," he said, "why don't I show you around our center, or, at least, the parts that are accessible at the present time."

I rose from my place on the couch. I picked up my glass, finished the last remnants of fruit juice, returned the glass to the table top and followed Rip through the door.

Although everything was done on a very modest scale, the center was surprisingly diverse and complete in what it had to offer. There was an infirmary; a small library; a common room in which games could be played or television watched; several places for taking showers; an area for administration; a room capable of holding meetings of up to ten or, maybe, fifteen people; a suite of two or three rooms thaat had been set aside for counseling and therapy sessions, as well as a partitioned dormitory section in which four women and four men could sleep.

In the basement were some laundry facilities, several storage areas and a relatively large, combined kitchen and communal dining room. Despite the time of night or morning, there were, perhaps, seven or eight people scattered about the dining area engaged in various stages of consuming a meal. They all had the physical appearance of being card-carrying members of the homeless.

Rip motioned for me to take a seat at one of the tables. He went into the kitchen area, spoke with the person working there, and, a short while later, came back with a couple of bowls of soup and some coffee.

We were silent for a few moments while we each helped our spoons shuttle soup to our mouths. Finally, Rip said: "The people who come to this center are mostly homeless, but while they share this condition, the routes by which they have come to it may be quite different.

"Some of them have been betrayed, one or more times, by people they trusted, and they have not, yet, been able to recover from the trauma. Some of them may never get over their deep sense of betrayal.

"For instance, some of them may have been sexually abused by parents, relatives, a teacher or a person from the clergy. Others may have come from seriously dysfunctional family or social environments of a non-sexual nature.

"A surprisingly large number of the people who make use of our facilities are Vietnam veterans. Some of them felt betrayed by their government while in Vietnam. Some of them have felt betrayed and rejected by the manner in which the American government, businesses and many of their fellow Americans treated them after they returned from the war.

"Some of these veterans had their sense of identity as human beings shattered in fundamental ways by what they were forced to see and do while on their tours of duty. Some of them are still suffering from various forms of post-traumatic syndrome.

"For all of these veterans, their self-image as individuals, or as Americans, or as human beings has been affected in deep-rooted ways. They feel completely alienated and estranged from everything with which they identified before going to Vietnam.

"They don't know how to reintegrate themselves into the activities, rhythms, purposes and meanings of so-called 'civilized' society. They are still at war, except now it is an emotional, psychological and ideological conflict with themselves, their families, their country and/or their God.

"Some of our ... clients ... are casualties from the collective impact of corporate down-sizing and/or changing technology and/or free trade and/or governmental deficit hysteria and/or economic sluggishness and/or urban renewal. Some of the people who need to use our facilities are the product of a lifetime of racist treatment by schools, various institutions, government officials and employers.

"There are a number of our clients for whom the center represents a way station on the alcoholic or addiction express. Many of them will descend further down the line. A few of them may transfer to the rehabilitation express departing from here on occasion.

"We also try to help people who are just a break or two away from being able to fend for themselves. For example, a few of the individuals who find their way to us are ex-cons who are trying to go straight in a society which is dubious about the degree of their rehabilitation and, therefore, not keen on giving these people a second chance.

"Others who come to us are beneficiaries of relatively recent changes in programs of community mental health. Instead of being kept in protected and therapeutic environments, they have been medicated and dumped on the streets.

"There is another category of people who, from time to time, use our facilities. These individuals, some of whom are men and some of whom are women, appear to be mentally disturbed, if not psychotic.

"In reality, however, they are spiritually intoxicated. Furthermore, notwithstanding the seeming craziness of many of their behaviors or utterances, some of these individuals have roles to play in the spiritual administration of a given geographical region."

Noting the mixed expression of puzzlement, curiosity and scepticism on my face, Rip laughed. He took a few more mouthfuls of soup, pushed the dish aside and wiped his face with a napkin.

He looked again at the expression on my face - an expression that seemed to have become somewhat frozen into a permanent mask of confusion. He smiled, shook his head and turned his attention to his coffee which he began to sip.

Eventually, he spoke again. "Which possibility bothers you the most, David?" he asked.

"I don't follow you," I replied. "I'm not sure to which possibilities you are referring."

Rip took another sip of coffee and, then, proceeded to clarify his question. "Do you have difficulty accepting the idea there are people who you think are crazy but who are not mentally disturbed and, in fact, are saner than most of us? Or, do you have trouble adjusting to the possibility there may be such a thing as a spiritual administration of a given geographical area? Or, are you disturbed by the thought that an apparently crazy person has hands-on authority and responsibility for some of what may be permitted to happen or not happen in a given area?"

I began to reflect on the possibilities that Rip had laid out before me. I finished my soup as I continued to think about his questions.

Smiling, I indicated: "I don't have any problem accepting the last possibility you've mentioned. After all, if one were to suppose mentally disturbed people were responsible for overseeing the administration of the world, then, in a crazy sort of way, a great many things about government, society, economics, religion, education, institutional behavior, and international politics would make an enormous amount of sense."

Rip acknowledged my point with a smile. In response, he asserted: "Your statement, David, is accurate as long as one understands that the people who are really responsible for craziness in the affairs of the world are those whom many of us consider to be sane and that the apparently crazy people to whom I am referring are among the few loci of manifestation through whom elements of sanity are being introduced into the world, although there are few people who understand this."

I had a queasy feeling that the lines of demarcation by which I organized and framed my sense of reality were beginning to shift. I was feeling the debilitating and disorienting effects of a kind of conceptual vertigo or agoraphobia.

Part of my condition was due to the issues that were being raised, and alluded to, by Rip. Part of my growing sense of unreality was, no doubt, a result of the traumatic aftermath of the abduction attempt. A further set of contributing factors probably was rooted in my intense experiences of the past several weeks, beginning with Beth's visit to my office.

I didn't really know how to reply to Rip's queries concerning what bothered or puzzled me most about the idea of people who appeared to be mentally disturbed but who, in reality - or so Rip was maintaining - were spiritually intoxicated and, yet, were performing spiritual tasks having a dimension of sanity to them that belied the crazy packaging wrapped around them. All of this was way beyond the point to which I had been prepared to push, at least until now, the theoretical and personal character of the psychological envelope through which I engaged life.

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