Only after such a basis [is established] will the idea of reincarnation achieve its natural validity, and only when it is understood that the subconscious, certain layers of it, is a link between the present personality and past ones, will the theory of reincarnation be accepted as fact.
Man sees not not even half of the whole entity which is himself/herself.
Scientists have glimpsed the complications of the human body. They have scarcely glimpsed the complicated realities of the mind.
Merely certain qualities which we call male and female. The qualities are real, however, and permeate other planes as well as our own. They are opposites which are nevertheless complementary, and which merge into one.
We have little idea that the psyche is inherently able to seek its conscious experience from all of the known ranges, according to the kind of experience chosen at any given “time.”
Beta was not meant to carry the full weight of conscious activity, however, although its accelerating qualities can lead to initiations into “higher” realms of consciousness, where indeed the brain waves quicken. The other patterns (delta, theta, and alpha) are highly important to physical and mental stability, being very inter-wound with cellular consciousness. In cases usually call schizophrenic, the beta acceleration is not supported by the stabilizing attributes of the other known frequencies.
If is possible, then, for a brain to register all of the known patterns at once, though our machines would note only the predominating rhythm.
A kind of inverted beta pattern, difficult to describe, often appears suddenly in the midst of the other ranges, driving through them. Accelerating consciousness to a high degree of creativity. The brain waves as they are known are separately registered segments of a greater “whole” kind of consciousness, and our machines are just as segmented, activity escapes them. They cannot note the rapidity with which we move through all the known patterns constantly. This behavior can be learned by anyone willing to take the time and effort. Some courage would also help.
We flash in and out of the reality that we know. In between one moment and the next of the waking day, there are, in our terms, long delta and theta waves that we cannot recognize. They are not recorded by our machines because quite literally they go in a different, “unofficial” direction. Each official waking brain wave is a peak in our world of a far deeper “wave” of other experience, and represents our points of continuity.
Each beta wave rides atop the other patterns. In normal sleep, the “conscious” wave rides beneath the others, with the face of consciousness turned inward, so to speak. All the recognized characteristics of consciousness are “inverted,” probing other realities than the one we know. They are quite effective and lightning fast. In sleep the beta waves are not turned off–the “conscious” part of us, with its beta rhythms, is elsewhere.
In my writing sessions the full range of brain waves are utilized as I understand them. Here, in a highly creative, disciplined, and yet spontaneous performance, a situation is set up in which knowledge is obtained from the known frequencies, combined so that consciousness can use itself more fully, reaching into many areas closed to one range of consciousness alone. The various diverse, unique characteristics of each level of awareness are given play. In a way this is like an accelerated, chosen, well organized “conscious” dream venture. Still being myself but, no longer myself, but me.
The most elemental portions of reality begin at the furthest reaches of our own reality. In sleep our ordinary brain waves as we understand them register a chaotic jungle or experience not normally processed. Biologically or psychically, there is little need for such disorientation. The normal waking consciousness, with its characteristic patterns, can indeed follow [into sleep]. A mixture of brain waves would result. Consciousness as we think of it expands tremendously under such conditions. We would follow our own pattern of continuity and understanding, weaving this into the sleep and dream states, forming a “new” pattern that triumphantly combines all, as to some extent this occurs often.
In an ideal society, each brain wave would be utilized purposefully. We would go to sleep to solve certain problems. There is an overall general difference, nationally speaking–that is, people of various nations do differ to some extent in their prevalent brain frequencies. All in all, however, the beta has predominated, and has been expected to solve many problems unsuited to its own characteristics.
Despite our reliance upon one range only, our world of consciousness draws heavily upon all of the known wave patterns, and from others of which we are unaware.
There are four recognized [electrical] brain waves, and in speed they range upward from 0 to 26 and more Hertz units, or cycles per second. These rhythms can vary somewhat, and are best thought of as areas of activity. Brain waves overlap. Very simply, delta brain waves are connected with dreamless sleep, theta with creativity and dreams, alpha with a relaxed alertness and changing consciousness; beta–the fastest–with concentration, and with an intense focus upon all of the challenges [and anxieties and stresses, many would say] faced in the ordinary daily world.
Even if beta waves, then, seem to be the “official pulses” of our civilization, when aren’t we actually in a state of altered consciousness? For no matter which brain rhythm may predominate at any time, that state is certainly an altered one in relation to the other three. But more than this, why not call all actions of the brain “altered” when compared to the concept of the individual personality’s whole self or entity?
Highly creative people usually generate large amounts of theta and low-alpha waves pretty constantly while doing their thing. Measuring and recording brain waves is a complicated task, however; not only is it important which areas or lobes of the brain are monitored–if not all of them–but because of the mechanical limitations of the EEG itself much that goes on in the brain is necessarily missed. In addition, the two hemispheres of the individual brain often show variations in electrical energy states. But most importantly, I think, while the EEG can indicate broad categories of brain activity, it can hardly probe the participant’s very individual and subjective content of mind within this camouflage [physical] reality. The state of “EEG art” isn’t that advanced yet [if it ever will be].
I am encouraging each human to focus joint energies in this direction. We will be dealing with symbols, yet we will learn that symbols are reality, for we are symbols of ourselves that live and speak. We do not think of ourselves as symbols [but] there is no symbol that does not have its individual life.
I speak of other theoretical realities. I challenge each human now to be as creative in another reality as we are in this one. And if it seems to us, because of our beliefs, that we are limited here, then I joyfully challenge each human to create a city, an environment, and perhaps a world, in which no such limitations occur. What kind of world would we create?
This knowledge speaks to us from the known and unknown desire that gives us our own birth, and that speaks to us from the tiniest, least-acknowledged thought that flies like a pigeon within our skulls. And in this moment of our reality, and in the desire of our being, do we even create All That Is. Bow down before no man, no woman, and no belief–but know we are indeed the creators.
For some of us the city will have theater. For some of us it will not. For those of us who like theater, it will be like none we have ever seen. In it the actors and actresses will take the parts of beliefs–of fleshed beliefs–and the morality play, so to speak, will deal with the nature of beliefs and how they are enacted through the centuries as well as through the hours. that theater then will serve many purposes, even as each of us are exquisite performers, and have chosen the roles and beliefs that we have taken.
Now there are books programming out-of-body activity; millions of us are told that when we leave our body we will meet this demon or that demon, or this or that angry god. So, instead, we will form a free city to which those travelers can come, and where those who enter can read books about Buddhism if they prefer, or play at being Catholic. There will also be certain beloved traps set about the city, that will be of an enlightening nature. Now, you think there is nothing intrinsically impossible about building a platform in [dream} space? I am suggesting, then a platform in inner reality. It is as valid–far more valid–as an orbiting city in the sky, in physical terms, and it challenges our creative abilities much more. Humans need a good challenge, and its fun! Not because we should do it, but because we desire it. It is a great creative challenge that we can throw down to ourselves from our future.
A beloved trap is one that we set for oneself. And so our city will be full of them. When we are tired of playing a Catholic priest, for example, we will fall into our own trap–in which our beliefs [as such a one] are suddenly worked out to their logical perfection, and we see what they mean.
Now when children walk down streets, they count the cracks in the sidewalks. And so our city will have its own kind of tricky walks! There will be sidewalks within, and above and below sidewalks. But it is for each individual to decide which one he or she will follow.
“You make your own sidewalks,
And I make my own sidewalks.”
And so our city will simply have alternate sidewalks, and they will be beloved traps, set by each self.
A true teacher allows us to learn from oneself. We enjoy the great vitality and exuberance of our reality, and our city will have joy and exuberance. Now joy sounds quite acceptable, but our city will also have fun–which in many spiritual circles is not so acceptable.
We can colonize an entire inner level of reality. To do so, we must give our best with dedication and joyful creativity. This will not be an imaginary city. It will have a greater reality than any physical city that we know, and it can, in its own way, shine with brighter lights in inner reality than any nighttime city display. I hope we will work at developing skills, in terms of the, dream-art-scientist.
We can learn more from watching the animals than we can from a guru or a minister. But first we must divest ourselves of the idea our creaturehood is suspect. Our humanness did not emerge by refusing our animal heritage, but upon an extension of it.
I certainly believe that our physical existences and mental experiences are quite “real” in themselves. A good general question, I think, I would like to see discussed with ideas of the inviolate nature of the individual in mind,that has to do with the prevalence of ordinary, daily, conscious-mind thinking and perception throughout much of the world. In historical terms this situation has always existed for the human species and I think it applies almost equally in Eastern lands, especially among the political leaders and ruling classes within them.
Yet Buddhist belief, for instance, maintains that our perception of the world is not fundamental, but an illusion; our “ignorance” of this basic undifferentiated “suchness” then results in the division of reality into objects and ideas. But why call our generalized awareness an illusion, instead of regarding it as one of the innumerable manifestations that reality takes? No one is free of certain minimum physical needs or of self-oriented thought. Each nation strives to expand its technological base no matter what its philosophy may be. Would a widespread use of Eastern religions doctrines be more practical on our earth today, or self knowledge? Even given their undeniable accomplishments, why didn’t the Eastern countries create ages ago the immortal societies that could have served as models for those of the West to emulate–cultures and/or nations in which all the mundane human vicissitudes (in those terms) had been long understood and abolished: war, crime, poverty, ignorance, and disease?
Certainly the species must be putting its conscious activities to long-term use, however, even with the endless conflicts and questions that grow out of such behavior. During the many centuries of our remembered history, those conflicts in themselves have been–and are–surely serving at least one of consciousness’s overall purposes, within our limits of understanding: to know itself more fully in those particular, differentiated ways.
There are no limits to its development or growth, if it will accept no limits. There are no boundaries to the self except those boundaries which the self arbitrarily creates and perpetuates. There is no veil through which human perception cannot see, except the veil of ignorance which is pulled down by the materialistic ego.
That which appears empty, such as our space, is empty only for those who do not perceive, who are blind because they fear to perceive that which the ego cannot understand. The ego, however, is also capable of greater knowledge and potentiality and scope. It dwells in the physical universe, but it can indeed also is part of the personality and as such it can partake of sturdier, heartier, more vivid realities. The personality can dwell and does dwell in many worlds at once.
The inquiring intuitions and the searching self, like summer winds, can travel in small and large spaces, can know of actualities that are more minute than pinheads and more massive than galaxies. The power and ability of the human personality, in a most practical manner, can be seen as unlimited.
It is true that dream locations do not exist within our heads in the same way the physical streets exist within the place of cities. While we are within the context of a dream, however, the location appears to be immediate. In dreams we may walk down avenues which do not exist in physical terms. We receive data we would call sensual if we were awake. We hear, touch, taste, smell, and operate in a manner that we would call physical if we were awake. We walk, talk, act, work, play, while our actual bodies are at rest.
I can find any Main Street at any time I choose: for all practical purposes it is a permanent feature of any city. But I cannot return to a dream location anytime I choose. Can we say, then that dream locations are different from physical places in that we cannot return to them? Not quite, since in recurring dreams many of us do visit the same streets and houses with which we have become familiar in other dreams. If we cannot find dream locations when we are in the waking state, neither can we find physical locations when we are dreaming. There is good reason to suppose that we can return to various dream locations simply by suggesting we will do so before we go to sleep. So the dream world may possess an organized structure also, just as the physical world does, and one in which we all know our way very well–while we are sleeping.
Such matters may at first seem far divorced from a discussion of the so-called spirit world. However, perhaps you can now see that we are much more than creatures composed of physical matter. Our intimate direct experience transcends physical reality as we know it. We are a mixture of corporeal substance and something else that we can only approach through subjective experience, a something that makes us what we are, and without which consciousness would be meaningless.
It makes no difference what we call this portion of our personalities, spirit, or soul, or mind. The point is that the most vital aspects of the self are not physically materialized.
It is true, however, that clues to the existence of this portion of the human personality can be found in physical matter. Our emotions can be tampered with through the addition or subtraction of chemicals and hormones. To some extent our personalities can be manipulated. Even a subtle alteration in physical make-up will effect a change in our inner selves. But the fact remains that very significant experiences upon which our consciousness and identities depend are not physical in the usual terms.
If this reality of ourselves is not contained within matter but only connected to it, then it is quite legitimate to say that we operate and exist in both physical and non-physical dimensions. At times we are more closely allied with the corporeal universe than at other times. In dreams, for example, we are less closely bound to the physical world than we are in the waking state. Our sensual apparatus is turned down low to the idling stage. We are maintained within the physical universe, but we limit our operations within it. It becomes as unreal to us as the dream state becomes when we are awake.
It is at least conceivable that the I of our dreams is but another aspect of our own identity; an I that continues now to exist as itself despite the ego’s manipulation of the physical universe; and an I that will continue to exist after the alliance with physical matter is finished.
Consciousness is precisely that part of ourselves which does not exist as an object within the physical universe, and it is composed of those thoughts and emotions and dreams in which we realize ourselves most intimately.
