Even though Inner Infant sounds uncomfortably close to Dr. Dolores Rusk’s dreaded Inner Child, Hal’d be willing to bet that here it’s some sort of shorthand Narcotics Anonymous sobriquet for like ‘limbic component of the CNS’ or ‘the part of our cortex that’s not utterly wretched and bereft without the drugs that up to now have been pulling us through the day, secretly’ or some affirming, encouraging thing like that. Hal wills himself to stay objective and not form any judgments before he has serious data, hoping desperately for some sort of hopeful feeling to emerge.
This is actually recommended in the AA doctrine of Open-Mindedness. But Hal's going to have to move next into Willingness (AA Principle 3) which is a whole nother ballgame.
