One tiny, wicked hint! Each of us has a birthday that we recognize–one birth-date– but there are hidden variables, that do not apply in charts because we have not thought of them.

In our terms only, these other counterparts are like latent patterns within our mind. Echoes. How many of us have actually thought of what the unconscious may be? Or, hear voices that we hear within our mind or heart? Are they ours? To what counterparts do they belong? And yet each of us, in our own identity, has the right to do precisely as we wish, and to form our own reality.

Each of us will create the attributes of reality that interest us and work with them in our own way. If we want to study the nature of religion and do a good job of it, then we must be among other things a skeptic and a believer, and an Indian and a Jew, say. Otherwise we will not understand anything at all, and have a very lopsided picture. And we cannot know what it is like to be black in this culture, unless we are also white in it.

Some physical counterparts can hate each other. The larger self, would be quite capable of seeking experience through its parts in every way imaginable. Although it might be difficult for us to understand, let alone accept, the whole self or entity must regard all of its counterparts as sublime facets of itself– no matter whether they loved, suffered, hated, or killed each other or “outsiders.” Within its great reaches it would transform its counterparts actions in ways that were, quite possibly, beyond our emotional and intellectual grasp. At the same time, the self would learn and be changed through the challenges and struggles of its human portions.

The behavior among nations might be changed for the better if the idea of counterparts were understood, or at least considered–if, for instance, many of the individuals making up a country realized that they could actually be acting against portions of themselves [or of their whole selves] in the persons of the “enemy” country, and so modified the virulence of their feelings. The nations of the world would benefit greatly from even a small improvement in their relationships with each other. And if an individual strongly disliked a counterpart in another land, wouldn’t this quality of emotion be detrimentally reflected in the person doing the hating?