Some part of the individual is aware of the most minute portions of breath; some part knows immediately of the most minute particle of oxygen and other components that enter the lungs. The thinking brain does not know. Our all-important ‘I’ does not know. In actuality, my dear friends, the all-important ‘I’ does know. We do not know the all-important ‘I’, and this is our difficulty.
It is fashionable in our time to consider man and woman as the product of the brain and an isolated bit of the subconscious, with a few other odds and ends thrown in for good measure. Therefore, with such an unnatural division, it seems to man and woman that he and she does not know themselves.
He or she says, ‘I breathe, but who breathes, since consciously I cannot tell myself to breathe or not breathe? He or she says, ‘I dream. But who dreams? I cannot tell oneself to dream or not to dream.’ He or she cuts himself or herself in half and then wonders why he or she is not whole. Man and woman have admitted only those things he or she could see, smell, touch or hear; and in so doing, he or she could only appreciate half of himself or herself. And when I say half, I exaggerate; he or she is aware of only a third of himself or herself.
If man or woman does not know who breathes within him or her, and if man or woman does not know who dreams within him or her, it is not because there is one self who acts in the physical universe and another who dreams and breathes. It is because he or she have buried the part of himself or herself which breathes and dreams. If these functions seem so automatic as to be performed by someone completely divorced from himself, it is because he or she have done the divorcing.
The part of us who dreams is the ‘I’ as much as the part of us who operates in any other manner. The part of us who dreams is the part of us who breathes. This part of us is certainly as legitimate and necessary to us as a whole unit is, as the part who plays Pokemon or Scrabble. It would seem ludicrous to suppose that such a vital matter as breathing would be left to subordinate, almost completely divorced, poor-relative sort of a lesser personality.
As breathing is carried on in a manner that seems automatic to the conscious mind, so the important function of transforming the vitality of the universe into pattern units seems to be carried on automatically. But this transformation is not as apparent to the one part of ourselves that we are pleased to recognize, and so it seems as if this transformation is carried on by someone even more distant than our breathing and dreaming selves.
We form the world of appearances as effortlessly and unconsciously as we breathe.
Because we know that we breathe, without being consciously aware of the mechanics involved, we are forced to admit that we do our own breathing. When we cross a room, we are forced to admit that we have caused oneself to do so, though consciously we have no idea of willing the muscles to move, or of stimulating one tendon or another. Yet even though we admit these things, we do not really believe them.
In our quiet unguarded moments, we still say, ‘Who breathes? Who dreams? Who moves? How much easier it would be to admit freely and whole-hearted the simple fact that we are not consciously aware of vital parts of oneself and that we are more than we think we are.
Man and woman, for example, trusts himself and herself much more when he or she says ‘I will read,’ and then he or she reads, than he or she does when he or she says, ‘I will see,’ and then he sees. He remember having learned to see, and what he or she cannot consciously remember, he or she fears.
The fact is that although no one taught him or she to see, he or she sees. The part of himself or herself that did ‘teach’ him or her to see still guides his or her movements, still moves the muscles of his or her eyes, still becomes conscious despite him or her when he or she sleeps, still breathes for him or her without thanks or recognition and still carries on his or her task of transforming energy from an inner reality into as outer one. Man and woman becomes trapped by his or her own artificially divided self.
It is true that, as a rule, we are not aware of our whole entity. There is no reason, however, why we must be blind to the whole self of our present personality, which is part of the entity, and which can be glimpsed in terms of the breathing and dreaming ‘self’ of which I have spoken.
It is convenient not to be consciously aware of each breath we take, but it is sheer stupidity to ignore the inner self which does the breathing and is aware of the mechanics involved. I have said in past blogs that the mind is a part of the inner world, but we have access to our own minds, which we ignore; and this access would lead us inevitably to truths about the outer world. Working inward, we could understand the outward more clearly.