All posts by zzzesus

Everything on Earth Remains The Same Except Human Activity

I could list hundreds of examples of what I mean. This is one of those obvious ideas that seem childish once it’s thought of. I don’t care whether or not it’s profound thought; it has meaning for me. But as far as I know, we humans are the only species that’s obsessed with ‘change’ , and ‘progress’ , and ‘controlling or mastering nature’ ; with learning about our past and with charting our future. We strive toward an impossible , or at least rosy, future in which we will have met all our challenges, so that we’ll live in some sort of unreal wonderland on earth. What do we do next — or will we give up on that idea too? Perhaps we’ll spend all of our time contemplating each other!

The rabbits in our neighborhood would continue to live as usual without our help. although they might miss nibbling upon the leafy vegetables in the local gardens. The fish and all of the complex minutiae of the local river bottoms would go on living as they always have. The sheep I see in the woods north of Vegas would continue to bound through the brush and among the mountains. They’d live  the same as ever, since it’s illegal for us to feed them — although they do like to move down the mountains at night and sample certain shrubs we have kindly planted about our houses.

In my darker moods I find myself thinking that I love the earth and everything upon it except the increasingly destructive activities of human beings — and sometimes I wonder about the human beings themselves! I love the deserts and forests, the oceans and rivers and lakes of the earth, the plains and the poles, the marshes and the mountains. And I know that in the Puerto Rico trench in the Atlantic Ocean, life in the sea at more than 8,000 feet down goes on just as it has for many millennia. It’s been like that for all of the interwoven life forms of the poles and the tropics, of the deserts and woodlands and prairies. Each species lives within its environment, whatever its conditions. And I think that in it way each life form must know that and love its home and has no desire to change or destroy it.

All Other Species Preserve Nature, While Man and Woman Has a Propensity for Destroying It

I have myself heard it said that other creatures behave with a natural grace, save man and woman. I have myself heard it said that all of nature is content unto itself save man and woman, who is filled with discontent. Such thoughts follow “naturally” the dictums of so-called rational thought. When we think such thoughts, we think of them at the most strained level of intellectual speculation — that is, the thoughts seem self-evident to the intellect that is forced to operate by itself, relatively speaking, divorced from the self’s other faculties. It then does indeed seem that man and woman is somehow apart from nature — or worse, an ungrateful blight, almost a parasite, upon the face of the planet.

That view itself is a symptom of the intellect’s difficulty. In the position in which our culture places the intellect, it does see itself quite alone, separated both from other portions of the personalities, from other creatures, and from nature itself. Therefore science, for example, says that creatures — except for man and woman — operate by blind instinct, and that term is meant to explain all of the complicated behavior of the other species. Therefore the gulf between man and woman and animals, the intellect and nature, seems to deepen.

In those terms, it is quite as truthful to say that man’s and woman’s intellect is also instinctive. He or she begins thinking at once. He and she cannot help but use his or her intellect. The intellect, again, operates magically, spontaneously, automatically. It’s most keen reasoning processes rise as a result of that natural magical action.

The intellect has been taught to divorce itself from its source. It realizes in that regard a sense of powerlessness, for to some extent it is philosophically cut off from its own source of power. When it looks, therefore, at world of political events, the problems seem insoluble. Man and woman makes decisions that may seem quite wrong to the intellect because of its belief systems, and because it is so cut off from other sources of information. A goodly number of those mistaken decisions, or “poor moves,” often represent self-corrective actions, decisions taken on knowledge not consciously perceived, but this escapes our consciousness.

In the same way, some private-life decisions or events may appear disadvantageous to the intellect for the same reasons, while instead they are also self-corrective measures that we are not able to perceive because of our beliefs. The rational approach, as it is now used, carries a basic assumption that anything that is wrong will get worse. That belief of course is highly detrimental because it runs against the basic principles of life. Were this the case in our terms of history, the world would never have lasted a century. It is interesting to note that even before medical science, there were a goodly number of healthy populations. No disease rubbed out the entire species.

When we believe that the worst will happen we must always be on guard. In our culture people use the term “intellect” almost like a weapon to protect themselves against impending disaster. They must be alert for dangers of all kinds. They begin to collect evidence of danger so that any other kind of orientation to life seems foolhardy, and to be a realist means in that framework to look out for the worst.

First of all, if we realize that the intellect itself is a part of nature, a part of the natural person, a part of magical processes, then we need not overstrain it, force it to feel isolated, or put it in a position in which paranoid tendencies develop. It is itself supported, as our intuitions are, by life’s magical processes. It is supported by the greater energy that gave us and the world birth. That power is working in the world, and in the world of politics, as it is in the working of nature, since we make that distinction.

When we follow that so-called rational approach, however, we are bound to feel threatened, divorced from our body. Our thoughts and our body seem separate. Divisions seem to appear between the mental and the physical, where again each are supported by those magical processes. That rational approach goes against what I can only call life’s directives and life’s natural rhythms. It is contradictory to biological integrity, and again, it does not make sense.

That rational approach is, of course, connected now with scientific ideas mentioned earlier: life surrounded by chaos, the struggle for survival, and so forth. I do not mean to put down the intellect. It is highly important, but it is, if you will forgive me, as natural as a cat’s whiskers. It is not some adjunct to nature, but a part it.

The magical approach takes is for granted, in the simplest terms, that the life of any individual will fulfill itself, will develop and mature, that the environment and the individual are uniquely suited and work together. This sounds very simple. In verbal terms, however, those are the beliefs of each cell. They are imprinted in each chromosome, in each atom. they provide a built-in faith that pervades each living creature, each snail, each hair on our head. Those ingrained beliefs are, of course, biologically pertinent, providing the impetus of all growth and development.

Each cell believes in a better tomorrow. I am, I admit, personifying our cell here, but the statement has a firm truth. Furthermore, each cell contains within itself a belief and an understanding of its own inevitability. It knows it lives beyond its death, in other words.

The idea of heaven, for all of its distortions, has operated as a theoretical framework, assuring the intellect of its survival. Science has believed to the contrary in the utter annihilation of the intellect after death, and since man and woman had by then placed all of his or her identification with the intellect, this was a shattering blow to it. It denied man and woman a necessary biological imperative.

All of these reasons lie beneath men’s and women’s mass problems, and apply in each life.  I feel I have never learned to use the power of reason, and instead trust every stray thought that comes into my head. So to doubt myself is protective.

I also feel that the questioning power of the intellect is not just one of its functions –which it is — but is primary purpose, which it is not. In our terms the intellect’s primary function is to make clear deductions and distinctions involving the personality’s relationship with the world. Our society, however, has indeed considered the rational approach to be the masculine-favored one — so I have an additional reason in that regard to be such a proponent of the rational approach. All of the beliefs connected with the sex were of course erroneous, but they are part and parcel of the “rational” framework itself.

It is certainly too simple to say what I am going to say, yet it is almost as if we would be better off turning the entire rational approach upside down, taking it for granted that all of its assumptions were false, for they are indeed more false than true. Again, the result of highly spontaneous processes of which it itself knows nothing, and the intuitions that are considered so undisciplined and unreasonable are based upon calculations far more spectacular than those of which the conscious mind can conceive. The intellect could not follow them, so the distinctions are not basic: They are the result of beliefs and habitual usage. Therefore, of course, I speak of them separately, as we think of them.

The magical approach takes it for granted that the human being is a united creature, fulfilling purposes in nature even as the animals do, whether or not those purposes are understood. The magical approach takes it for granted that each individual has a future, a fulfilling one, even though death may be tomorrow. The magical approach takes it for granted that the means for development are within each individual, and that fulfillment will happen naturally. Overall, that approach operates in our world. If it did not, there would be no world. If the worst was bound to happen, as the scientists certainly think, even evolution, in their terms, would have been impossible, of course.

You needed this background, for I want to build up the atmosphere in which this magical approach can be comprehended. Then specific material can be utilized.

In our dreams we are, of course, in the process of forming new ideas about the nature of the magical self and also in our way working that idea out through imagery. The dreams are above all an example of “work” being done at other levels of awareness.

All of these experiences are indications of the exquisite kind of reasoning that goes on at the levels of awareness that are usually considered unreasonable. That kind of material enriches the intellect and reassures it.

Certain portions of the personality or psyche must very shrewdly and carefully construct dreams in advance, so that when the dreams are played back they render just the right message to the parts of the psyche that need it. I’m not being contradictory here when I write that the dream is a spontaneous production, also.
Continue reading All Other Species Preserve Nature, While Man and Woman Has a Propensity for Destroying It

Only Human Beings, With Their Ideas of ‘Progress” and “Development Change.

Over very long spans of time the earth and all of its creatures stay the same, relatively speaking. Human beings haven’t changed, really, our more complicated mental processes only make it seem that we have. Coupled with this is the idea that magic, as we call it, reflects a basic part of our natural mental equipment and abilities, but that our present course of action, our focusing upon the material and the intellectual — the ‘reasonable” portions of quite ‘unreasonable’ or unreal. Actually, our need for magic is a very real, vital, and integral portion of our psyches.

The conscious idea of  magic, then, is a mask, or contrived version, of the psyche’s innate clairvoyant, telepathic, and precognitive abilities. We permit distorted versions of those attributes to surface as magic, as entertainment — which thus relieves us of the need to take them seriously. That’s the course our species has chosen during much of our recorded history, so far, and for many reasons.

I think that it’s frustrating for us that we cannot perceive the fascinating facets of any event. We still do not feel the unsurpassable force that thoughts have. We do not understand that they do form events, that to change events we must first change thoughts. We get what we concentrate upon.

The Intellect and The Magical Approach

It is not that we overuse the intellect as a culture, but that we rely upon it to the exclusion of all other faculties in our approach to life.

The intellect is brilliant, but on its own, it is indeed in its way isolated both in time and in space in a way that other portions of the personality are not. When it is overly stressed, with all of the usual frameworks or rationales that go along with it, it can indeed become frightened, paranoid, because it cannot really perceive events until they have already occurred. It does not know what will happen tomorrow, and since it is overly stressed, its paranoid tendencies can only fear the worst.

Now those tendencies are not natural to the intellect, but only appear when it is forced to operate in such an isolated fashion — isolated not only in time and space, but psychologically isolated from other portions of the personality that are meant to bring it additional information that it does not possess, and a kind of magical support.

The so-called rational approach to life, as it is practiced, is a highly pessimistic one carrying along with it its own methods and “solutions” to problems, its own means of achieving ends and satisfying desires. Many people are so steeped in that approach to life that they become psychologically blind to any other kind of orientation. Such is obviously not the case for me or I would not be having this discussion, or any other such activity.

The rational approach of course suits certain kinds of people better than others, even while it still carries its disadvantages. We have been living in an industrialized scientific society, so that the benefits and the great disadvantages of the rational approach appear everywhere in the social and political world. Artists of any kind find such an approach the least friendly, for it directly contradicts the vast thrust or man’s and woman’s creativity in several important areas. I, however, have evidence that hardened reality is quite different. In the past I have felt at some disadvantage myself, feeling ,my work to be theoretically fascinating, creatively valid, but not necessarily containing any statement about any kind of “scientifically valid” hardened reality.

I did not think I was dealing with fiction. On the other hand, I was not willing to call is fact, either. I am, in fact, dealing with a larger version of fact from which the world of fact emerges.

There have been numerous fascinating bits of evidence in our own lives, apart from these blog discussions, though certainly to some extent stimulated by the knowledge we gain in the discussions. They remain isolated bits, odds and ends, in which case they begin to present us with a larger factual representation of reality.

All of this material applies to our lives in general and to my physical condition, because we must be clear in our minds as to our own status in that regard, and much of this material will clear the air and dissolve lingering doubts; doubts that cause us to hold on to the rational approach in a misguided effort to maintain what we think of as a balanced viewpoint and open mind. It seems, because of the definitions we have been taught, that there is only one narrow kind of rationality, and that if we forsake the boundary of that narrow definition, then we become irrational, fanatic, mad, or whatever.

The thin, cold “rationality” that is recognized as such is instead a fake veneer covering a far deeper spontaneous rationality, and it is the existence of that magical rationality that provides the basis for the intellect to begin with. The rationality that we accept is then but one small clue as to the spontaneous inner rationality that is a part of each natural person.

For example, in one dream when asleep, when we are seemingly not rational, when our intellect is seemingly not operating, we perceive information about our physical environment. Old neighborhoods, animals and industry in every place. Symbolically we see situations in our own fashion, but know. We still have a love of certain areas. We are in a certain correspondence with it. In a fashion, we keep our eye out for information regarding it.

We are somewhat idealizing the past, present and future, however, so we do not simply get the information “straight on,” but we receive it in such a fashion that it makes its own psychological points also, and is furthermore wound into other action not only within the dream, but in a series of dreams.

Any dream makes it’s point, in fact, whether or not we remembered it. Some people remember because they want to bring into their conscious range instances of their own greater knowing. The portion of us that form the dreams knows. All of this involves a psychological motion of natural, magical import. It shows us that the rules of the rational world are filled with holes. It shows us that the rational world’s views do not represent the bulwarks of safety, but are instead barriers to the full use of the intellect, and of the intuitions.

Free flow of information at other levels.

Now when we understand that intellectually, then the intellect can take it for granted that its own information is not all the information we possess. It can realize that its own knowledge represents the tip of the iceberg. As we apply that realization to our life we begin to realize furthermore that in practical terms we are indeed supported by a greater body of knowledge that we consciously realize, and by the magical, spontaneous fountain of action that forms our existence. The intellect can then realize that it does not have to go it all alone. Everything does not have to be reasoned out, even to be understood.

This information is factual. I am not forced at times into symbolic statements, but when I am I always say so, and even those statements are my best representations of facts too large for our definitions. The intellect, then, can and does form strong paranoid tendencies when it is put in the position of believing that it must solve all personal problems alone — or nearly — and certainly when it is presented with any picture of worldwide predicaments.

The rational approach, built up around this framework, insists that the best way to solve a problem is to concentrate upon it, to project its effects into the future, to ruminate upon its consequences, “to stare at the bare facts head on.”

This brings about an atmosphere in which the problem is compounded. The intellect on its own — so it seems — must deal not only with the problem today, but with its effects in the projected disastrous tomorrows. This well-intentioned concentration, this determination to solve the problem, this rational approach, then causes an even deeper sense of inadequacy. The concentration upon the problem brings about a kind of mechanical repetition, a repeated type of hypnotic focus.

The intellect is a great organizer — along certain lines, now — so if this concentration is continued it begins to organize its perceptions and experience along the same lines. It is a kind of misguided attempt to find order by finding data that agree with itself. It collects evidence, then, to prove its point, because the rational mind, as we understand it, must  have an acceptable reason for everything.

In the meantime, of course, quite valid rockbed evidence that does not fit into the picture gradually becomes discarded, ignored, thrown away. It is there but it is not used. It disappears as evidence, becomes inactive. That method of problem-solving, need I say, is a poor one, and if anything it causes far more problems than it ever solves.

In terms of a physical condition, some people often thinks that he or she is “faced with the evidence” that his or her condition is not improving, that it is growing worse, that all the evidence says such conditions do deteriorate rather than improve. He or she sometimes thinks he or she is being rational with such thoughts.

What happens, of course, is the process I have just outlined. Other quite real, quite physical evidence — always, now, apparent in his or her body at any given time — is ignored as nonessential, too trivial to bother with, or take seriously, because it does not fit into the so-called rational picture that has been developed.

The process is exactly as given in the paragraph above, so I want that understood. Any improvement, unless stated, is almost overlooked, not considered as much hard evidence, while any difficulties definitely are considered hard evidence because they fit into the overall data-collecting intellect, as stated above. They are significant, while the improvements do not seem to be nearly as much so.

When we are corresponding with the environment, we change our focus point. We change what we consider significant. This blog brings us to the beginning of a discussion of the magical approach to life, to the solving of problems. I hope to stress what to do, rather than what not to do, although at times I must make the distinction clear.

If you understand this blog thoroughly, and if you have the intent to really change your orientation, then the atmosphere will automatically  be created in which desired changes occur.

 

 

 

 

True Creativity Comes From Enjoying The Moments

True creativity comes from enjoying the moments, which then fulfill themselves, and a part of the creative process is indeed the art of relaxation, the letting go, for that triggers magical activity.

I want it understood that we are indeed dealing with two entirely different approaches to reality and to solving problems — methods we will here call the rational method and the magical one. The rational approach works quite well in certain situations, such as mass production of goods, or in certain kinds of scientific measurements — but all in all the rational method, as it is understood and used, does not work as an overall approach to life, or in the solving of problems that involve subjective rather objective measurements or calculations.

Those methods work least of all for any art. It is a trite statement, perhaps, but the ruler’s measurements have absolutely nothing to do with the measurements made by the heart, and they can never be used to express the incalculable measurements that are made automatically by the smallest cell.

The rational mind alone, as it is presently used ( because it is a rather artificial construct, a function given prominence), can never understand the dream measurements that we undertake.

Keeping psychic activity in line, in our society this seems the only rational thing to do. Ironically, our problems have not been solved, then largely of course because we have taken the wrong approach, and that is because we are not convinced as yet. We still hold to those trained beliefs.

The old beliefs, of course, and the rational approach, are everywhere reinforced, and so it does indeed have a great weight. The magical approach has far greater weight, if we use it and allow ourselves to operate in that fashion, for it has the weight of our basic natural orientation. The rational approach is the superimposed one. I think my blog readers are ready to understand that.

Inner reality, contain the creative source from which we form all events, and  that by the proper focusing of attention we can draw from that vast subjective medium everything we need for a constructive, positive life in physical reality.

Any event, therefore, has an invisible thickness, a multidimensional basis. Our skies are filled with breezes, currents, clouds, sunlight, dust particles and so forth. The sky vaults above the entire planet. The invisible [vault of] inner reality contains endless patterns that change as, say, clouds do — that mix and merge to form our psychological climate. Thoughts have what we will for now term electromagnetic properties. In those terms our thoughts mix and match with others in inner reality, creating mass patterns that form the overall psychological basis behind world events. Again, however, inner reality is not neutral, but automatically inclined toward what we will here term good or constructive developments. It is a growth medium. Constructive or ‘positive’ feelings or thoughts are more easily materialized than ‘negative’ ones because they are in keeping with inner reality’s characteristics.

Instant Magic Represents Part of Our Natural Heritage

Magic as we call it represents (reflects) a basis part of our natural heritage. We permit distorted versions of the psyche’s attributes — clairvoyant, telepathic, and precognitive abilities — which surface as magic.

We are practicing some precise psychological art, one that is ancient and poorly understood in our culture; or as of we are learning a psychological science that helps us map the contours of consciousness itself. My blog readers and I are finally examining the trance view of reality and comparing it to the official views of science and religion.

The natural person is indeed the magical person, and my blog readers and I have both to some extent had very recent examples of such activity. We were, and are, trying to teach ourselves something. This is somewhat lengthy to unravel, but our behavior and experience, or course, is the result of our beliefs. Framed -mind-2 has been a rather fascinating but mainly hypothetical framework, in that neither of us have really been able to put it to any perceivable use in our terms. This is not to say it has not been operating. We have not had the kind of feedback, however that we want.

When we were both intensely involved in our projects, just finished, we let much of our inner experience slide, relatively speaking. The two of us operating together, however, then came up with an idea — an important one — that allows us to interpret the Framed-mind-2 material in our own ways. We had instant feedback — the interplay of a creative nature between the two of us involving our dreams and the computer, and so forth. We were each struck by the magical ease with which we seemed, certainly, to perceive and act — information that we did not even realize we possessed.

Some of my notes that my blog readers have not seen have further important insights as to such activity. The main point is indeed the importance of accepting a different kind of overall orientation — one that is indeed not any secondary adjunct, but a basic part of human nature. This involves an entirely different relationship of the self we know with time. We can make our own connections here, as per our own dreams of late.

Important misunderstanding involving time have been in a large measure responsible for many difficulties, and also of my own, though they have been of a lesser nature. All of this involves relating to reality in more natural, and therefore magical, fashion. There is certainly a kind of natural physical time in our experience, and in the experience of any creature. It involves the rhythm of the seasons — the days and nights and tides and so forth. In the light of that kind of physical time, which is involved within earthly biology, there is no basic cultural time. That is, to this natural rhythm we have culturally added the idea of clocks, moments and hours and so forth, which we have transposed over nature’s rhythms.

Such a cultural time works well overall for the civilization that concentrates upon partialities, bits and pieces, assembly lines, promptness of appointments, and so forth. It fits an industrialized society as we understand it.

The time that any artistic creator is involved with follows earth’s own time, however. The creator’s time rises out of the seasons and the tides, even though in our society we make a great effort to fit the creator’s time into what I will call assembly-line time. If you are a writer or an artist, then it seems that you must produce so many paintings or books or whatever as, say, an automobile worker must process so many pieces of the overall car chassis. Particularly  if you want to make a living at your art, you fall into the frame of mind in which you think that “each minute is valuable” — but what you mean is that each minute must be a minute of production. But each moment must be valuable in itself, whatever you do with it.

I have culturally felt, for many reasons that have been discussed, that each moment must be devoted to work. My blog readers have to some extent felt the same. I said that the artistic creator operates in the time of the seasons and so forth, in a kind of natural time — but that natural time is far different than we suppose. Far richer, and it turns inward and outward and backward and forward upon itself.

Being our own natural and magical self when we dream, we utilize information that is outside of the time context experienced by the so-called rational mind. The creative abilities operate in the same fashion, appearing within consecutive time, but with the main work done outside of it entirely. Sometimes when we finish our project, we have several days of feeling miserable, but we catch ourselves and turn ourselves around beautifully, and we have every right to congratulate oneself in that regard.

When my blog readers and I are both working on projects our cultural time is taken up in a way we find acceptable. Creative time and cultural time to some extent merge, in that we could see daily immediate evidence of creativity’s product, coming out of the computer, say, like any product of an assembly line. We are “using” time as our cultural training told us to do.

When the projects were done, particularly with me, there is still the cultural belief that time should be so used, that creativity must be directed and disciplined to fall into the proper time slot. In other words, to some extent or another I tried to use an assembly-lined kind of time for my creative productivity. This may work when my blogs are being typed, and so much physical labor is involved, but overall I am using the “wrong” approach to time, particularly for any creative artist. This again applies particularly to me, though my blog readers are not exonerated in that regard.

There is much material here that I will give, because it is important that we understand different ways of relating to reality, and how those ways create the experienced events.

We have not really, either my blog readers or I, been ready to drastically alter our orientations, but we are approaching that threshold. The magical approach means that we actually change our methods of dealing with problems, achieving goals, and satisfying means. We change over to the methods of the natural person. They are not esoteric methods by which man or woman are meant to handle his or her problems and approach his or her challenges.

I use the word “methods” because we understand it, but actually we are speaking about an approach to life, a magical or natural approach to life that is man’s and woman’s version of the animal’s natural instinctive behavior in the universe.

That approach does indeed fly in direct contradiction to the learned methods we have been taught. We have held onto those methods to varying degrees, since after all it seems that the world shares them. They are understood ways of dealing with events. Once again, however, with the experience of the last few days, I am astonished by the magical ease by which work — real work — can be accomplished: events perceived out of place and time and so forth.

All of that can be transferred to other areas of our lives, and in particular to physical difficulties.

It certainly seems that the best way to get specific answers is to ask specific questions, and the rational mind thinks first of all something like a list of questions. In that regard, I am responding before a blog is natural, and to an extent magical, because I know that no matter what I have been taught, I must to some degree forget the questions and the mood that accompanies them with one level of consciousness, in order to create the proper kind of atmosphere at another level of consciousness — an atmosphere that allows the answers to come even though they may be presented in a different way than expected by the rational mind.

What I will be discussing in the next several blogs, will be the magical approach to reality, and to our private lives specifically, in order to create that kind of atmosphere in which the answers become experienced.

Trying to fit the great thrust of creativity into assembly-line time is in itself bound to lead to conflicts, dissatisfactions, and frustrations. If the proper creative and magical orientation is kept primarily in mind, other things will fall into place. We do not say to the creative self “Now it is 7:30. People are at their assembly lines. I am at my desk: produce.”

Assembly-line time does not really value time — only as time can be used for definite prescribed purposes. In that framework, to enjoy time becomes a weakness or vice, and both my blog readers and I, to some extent have so considered time. With creative people strongly gifted, the natural person is very prominent, no matter what they do. It therefore strongly resents any basically meaningless constraints placed about its experience. It knows, for example, how to enjoy encounter, how to enrich itself physically through household chores or other activities. It dislikes being told that it must work thus and so at command of unreasonable restraints.

The natural person is anything but irrational. It gathers all of experience together and transforms it, so many of our problems have been caused by applying the wrong kind of orientation to our lives and activities.

I say wrong, meaning no moral judgment, but the application of one method to a pursuit that cannot be adequately expressed in such a fashion. The assembly-line time and the beliefs that go along with it have given us many benefits as a society, but it should not be for gotten that the entire framework was initially set up to cut down on impulses, creative thought, or any other activities that would lead to anything but the mindless repetition of one act after another.

In other words, that entire framework is meant to give us a standardized, mass-produced version of reality. None of its concepts can rationally be applied to creative endeavors. The orientation that gives us the creative achievement lies in the opposite direction.

Creativity itself has its own built-in discipline, the kind that, for example, in a dream can rummage through the days of the future to find precisely the data required to make a specific point.

All of this material applies to each of our condition, and an understanding of it will create the climate in which beneficial results can appear.

The Human Magic Show

What magicians we are,

turning darkness into light,

transforming invisible atoms into the dazzling theater

of the world,

pulling objects,

(people as well

as rabbits)

out of secret

microscopic closets,

turning winter into summer,

making a palmful of moments

disappear through time’s trap door.

 

We learned the methods

so long ago

that they’re unconscious,

and we’ve hypnotized ourselves

into believing

that we’re the audience,

so I wonder where we served

our apprenticeship.

Under what master magicians did we learn

to form reality

so smoothly that we forgot to tell ourselves

the secret?

Normal Dreams

I believe that normal dreams are the outside shell of deeper inside experience. The interior reality is clothed in dream images as, when we are awake, it is clothed in physical ones. Dream objects and physical objects alike are symbols by which we perceive — and distort — an inner reality that we do not seem able to experience directly. In certain states of consciousness, particularly in projections from the dream state, we achieve a peculiar poise of alertness. This lets us briefly examine the nature of our consciousness by allowing us to view its products — the events and experiences that it creates when released from usual physical focus.

l4

Consciousness forms its own reality, physical and otherwise. I think there is a “mass” dream experience, however, as there is a collectively perceived physical life and definite interior conditions within which dream life happens. Only inner experimentation will let us discover this interior landscape. Perhaps one day we will move freely within it, alert, conscious and far wiser than we are now.

l5

It is a dimension native to consciousness, I believe, at whatever stage of being, physical or nonphysical. We have our primary existence in it after death and spend a good deal of physical time wandering through it, unknowingly, in sleep. Clues as to our creativity and the nature of our existence can be found there and from it emerges the organizational qualities of normal consciousness as we know it.

l7

I do not believe that there are any more dangers facing us in the interior universe than there are in the physical one. We should explore each world with common sense and courage. The interior universe is the source of the exterior one, however, and traveling through it we will encounter our own hopes, fears and beliefs in their ever-changing form.

l11

And so the exterior emerges from the interior one even as this physical blog materialized from the inner reality of inspiration, creativity and dreams.

 

Basic Reality in The Dream, Hallucination and Objects

We will sometimes automatically translate this reality into physical terms. Such images will be hallucinatory, but it may take awhile for us to distinguish their true nature. It must be understood, however, that all physical objects are hallucinatory. They may be called mass hallucination.

z7

There is constant translation of inner reality into objects in the waking state and a constant translation of ideas into pseudo-objects in the dream state. Within a certain range of dream reality, ideas and thoughts can be translated into pseudo-objects and transported. This is what happens when we adopt a pseudo-form in projection, though I am simplifying this considerably.

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When we travel beyond a certain range of intensities, even pseudo-objects must vanish. They exist in a cluster about, and connected to, our own system. The lack of these, obviously, means that we have gone beyond our own camouflage system. If it were possible, we would then travel through a range of intensities in which no camouflage of the next system. This would or would not encounter the heart of the camouflage area. The completely un-camouflaged areas at the outer edges of the various systems should remind us of the undifferentiated areas between various life cycles in the subconscious. This is no coincidence.

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As a rule, we see, there is little communication within the un-camouflaged areas. They act as boundaries, even while they represent the basic stuff of which all camouflage is composed. (Without the camouflage, we would perceive nothing with the physical senses.)

The sentence is really meaningless, however, because the physical senses are themselves camouflage. There would be nothing to translate. It is only the inner senses that will allow us to perceive under these circumstances. Theoretically, if we can bridge the gap between our system and another.

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Once more: The undifferentiated layers are composed of the vitality that forms the camouflage of all systems. Such an area is not really a thing in itself, but a portion of vitality that contains no camouflage, and is therefore unrecognizable to those within any given system. We are in touch with infinity in such areas, since it is only camouflage that gives us the conception of time.

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Now, during some projections, we may be aware of nothing as far as surroundings are concerned. There will only be the mobility of our own consciousness. If this occurs, we will be traveling through such an un-camouflaged area. We could then expect to encounter next a more differentiated environment, that seems to become clearer as we progress toward the heart of another system.

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The completely un-camouflaged layer would be rather bewildering. We might automatically be tempered to project images into it. They would not take, so to speak, but would appear and disappear with great rapidity. This is a silent area. thoughts would not be perceived here, as a rule, for the symbols for them would not be understood.

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If a certain intensity is reached, however — a peak of intensity — then we would perceive the spacious present as it exists within our native system. We could, from this peak, look into other systems, but we would not understand what we perceived, not having the proper root assumptions. I have used the idea of neighboring systems for simplicity’s sake, as if they were laid out end to end. Obviously, such is not the case. The systems of reality are more like the various segments of a tangerine, with the un-camouflaged boundary areas like the white membrane between the tangerine sections.

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The tangerine, then, would be compared to a group of many systems, yet it would represent in itself but one portion of an unperceived whole. The tangerine would be but one segment of a larger system. We can see, then, why some projections would lead us in a far different direction from our linear sort of travel and why time as we know it would be meaningless.

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Nor do such projections necessarily involve journeys through space as we know it. There are systems, vivid in intensity, that have no existence in physical reality at all. It is now thought, I believe, that time and space are basically one, but they are both a part of something else. They are merely the camouflage patterns by which we perceive reality. Space as we perceive it in the dream state comes much closer to the reality.

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Projections within our own system will, of course, involve us with some kind of camouflage. If none is present, we will know we are out of the system. The dream universe is obviously closely connected with our own, since pseudo-objects are present. Even there, we are to some extent free from the space-time elements of our own system. Within the dream state, then, we are in the ‘outward’ areas of the physically oriented universe.

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One point: There are other systems all about and within our own. The undifferentiated areas move out like spirals, through all reality. Little resistance is encountered with them. They represent inner roads that connect systems, as well as divide them. The traveler must leave his or her own camouflage.

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It is possible, theoretically, to travel to any system in this manner and bypass others, you see. Such a traveler would not age physically. His or her body would be in a suspended state. Only a very few individuals have traveled in this manner. Most of the knowledge gained escape the ego, and the experience cannot be translated by the physical brain.

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However, it is possible to travel under such circumstances, and some of the data would be retained by inner portions of the self. In a creative individual, some of this information might be symbolically expressed in a painting or other work of art.

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Each brushstroke of a painting represents concentrated experience and compressed perceptions. In a good painting, these almost explode when perceived by the lively consciousness of another. The observer is washed over by the intensities. The excellent work of art recreates for the observer inner experience of his or her own, also, of which he or she has never been aware. As we know, paintings have motion, yet the painting itself does not move. This idea should help understand experience in terms of intensities and projections or the movement of consciousness without necessarily motion through space.

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True motion has nothing to do with space. The only real motion is that of the traveling consciousness.

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These dimensions as we know it, and I believe that in them we exercise abilities that are ours by right and heritage.

Root Assumptions

Root assumptions represent the basic premises upon which a given existence-system is formed. These are the ground rules, so such a way that reality is perceived through the lens of particular root assumptions, then. Using the physical senses, it is almost impossible for us to perceive reality in any other way.

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Physically speaking, we will find nothing to contradict these assumptions, since they are all we can experience or perceive physically. These root assumptions are the framework of the camouflage system. As we explore other realities, we almost automatically interpret such data in terms of the root assumptions of our own system.

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This highly falsifies such information. The inner senses are not bound by those assumptions, however. This is why so many psychic or subjective experiences seem to contradict physical laws. We must learn the ‘laws’ that apply to other systems.

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The root assumptions that govern physical reality are indeed valid, but within physical reality alone. They do not apply elsewhere. There is a natural tendency to continue judging experience against these assumptions, however. With experience, the habit will lose much of its hold. Inner experience must be colored to some extent by the physical system, while we exist in it. In order for such data to rise to conscious levels, for example, it must be translated into terms that the ego can understand, and the translation is bound to distort the original experience.

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The whole physical organism of the body has been trained to react to certain patterns, these based on physical root assumptions. The nervous system reacts definitely to visual block images. Such images are received through the skin, as well as through the eyes. The whole system is highly complicated and organized. This is obviously necessary for physical survival.

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The organization however is, biologically speaking, artificial and learned. It is no less rigid for that reason. This organizational structure of perception can be broken up, as LSD and Meth experiments certainly show. This can be dangerous, however. The fact that this does occur shows that the systems of perception are not a part of overall structure biologically, but learned secondary responses. It is disturbing to the whole organism, however, to break up the strong pattern of usual perception. Inner stability of response is suddenly swept away. Changes that are not yet known occur within the nervous system under these circumstances, both electromagnetic and chemical.

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The inner senses alone are equipped to process and perceive other reality systems. Even the distortions can be kept at a minimum with training. Indiscriminate use of the psychedelic drugs, like amazon mushrooms or LSD, can severely shake up learned patterns of response that are necessary for effective manipulation within physical reality. This can break subtle connections and we disturb electromagnetic functions. Some ask “can you smoke magic mushrooms and have lesser distortion?” While there is a lesser distortion as the high is milder, that is not an excuse for indiscriminate smoking. Ego failure is a risk that can result without responsibility.

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Development of the inner senses is a much more effective method of perceiving other realities, and, followed correctly, the ego is not only stronger but more flexible. Even consciousness of physical reality is increased. Such development becomes an unfolding and natural expansion of the whole personality.

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These root assumptions are so a part of our existence that they cloud our dreams. Beneath them, however, portions of the self perceive physical reality in an entirely different fashion, free of the tyranny of objects and physical form. Here we experience concepts directly, without the need for symbols. We have knowledge of our ‘past’ personalities and know that they exist simultaneously with our own.

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The practice of psychological time will allow us to reach these portions of the self. The ego is not artificially disorganized by such practice. It is simply bypassed for the moment. The experience gained does become a part of the physical structure, but there is no massive disorganization of perception, since the ego agrees to step aside momentarily.

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It is not bombarded, as with the drug experiments, and forced to experience chaotic and frightening perceptions that can terrify it into complete disorder. Survival in our system is dependent upon the highly specialized, focused, limited but specific qualities of the ego. It should not be rigid. Neither should it be purposed weakened.

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The root assumption upon which physical reality is formed represent secure ground to the ego. We always operate with the ego’s consent. It interprets the inner knowledge gained in its own way, true, but it is immeasurably enriched by so doing.

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The ego can exist only within the context of these assumptions. The primary dream experience is finally woven into a structure composed of these assumptions, and it is these we remember. These serve us as basic information but the information is in symbolic form. Objects, are symbols. Dream objects are often symbols of realities that the ego could not otherwise perceive.

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Some out-of-body experiences are extremely difficult to categorize and involve extraordinarily sensuous events that remain vivid long after their occurrence. Some are suggestive of drug-induced episodes, except for the greater sense of alertness and self-control.

Continue reading Root Assumptions

The Strange Senses Inside Consciousness

Projections from the dream state intrigue me because in them I believe we encounter the inside of our own consciousness in a most direct fashion. In a way, we are completely on our own, manipulating in a subjective environment, aware of the workings of consciousness when it is not soaked up or fastened upon objective specifics. Such exploration is full of surprises. In these states, consciousness operates within definite conditions, within an ordered system of experience. But we must struggle to discover what these are as opposed to the hallucinatory image we set up ourselves against or superimposed upon this reality.

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While we may “come awake” spontaneously within a dream, certain procedures do help, and these can induce projections from the dream state. They have been mentioned before in previous blogs, but here I’ll give them as briefly and simply as possible. First we must realize that we are dreaming. Suggestion to this effect, given before sleep, facilitates this recognition.

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This knowledge automatically changes the dream state into another in which the critical faculties are aroused and operating. Dream actions are no longer taken for granted. Experience is scrutinized. We may “awaken” in our house, for example. If so, check the rooms against their normal arrangement. Anything that does not normally belong there may be an hallucination, part of the usual dreaming process. If we will such images to disappear, they will, leaving us within the basic un-hallucinated environment. If we rationalize any such elements or accept them uncritically, we may fall back into normal dreaming.

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The next point is to realize that we are alert, conscious and awake, while our body is asleep. We can then explore the environment in which we find oneself or travel to another location. Instead of “coming to” in our home, however, we may instead become alert in another location, a town, another house or unfamiliar place where checking against usual circumstances is nearly impossible.

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Here, rely on common sense. If we find a girl in a bathing suit standing on a wintery street, for example, one or the other has to go. If the girl is the main incongruous element, and the rest all fits in, then will the girl to disappear. Keep this up with any other such images that we meet. Again, we’ll be left with the basic environment and can proceed as we want. We can accept such images and play around with them or watch them to see what develops, but only if we realize they are hallucinations. There are exceptions to this practice, however.

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To travel somewhere else, will oneself there. Often travel seems instantaneous. At other times, we may find ourselves swept from place to place, with little control. If we come awake while still within our physical body as described earlier. We may also find ourselves in non-physical locations or places in which matter does not behave the way it usually does.

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We agree to accept certain data in the physical universe. We agree to form this into certain patterns, and we agree to ignore other data completely. These now, called root assumptions, form the main basis for the apparent permanence and coherence of our physical system.

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In our journeys into inner reality, we cannot proceed with these same root assumptions. Reality, per se, changes completely according to the basic root agreements that we accept. One of the root assumption that objects have a reality independent of any subjective cause and then these objects, within definite specified limitations, are permanent.

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Objects may appear and disappear in these other systems. Using the root assumptions just mentioned as a basis for judging reality, an observer would insist that the objects were not real, for they do not behave as he or she believes objects must. Because dream images may appear and disappear, then, do not take it for granted that they do not really exist.

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There is a cohesiveness to the inner universe and to the systems that are not basically physical. But this is based upon an entirely different set of root assumptions and these are the keys that alone will let us manipulate within other systems or understand them. There are several major root assumptions connected here and many minor ones:

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  1. Energy and action are basically the same, although neither must necessarily apply to physical action.
  2. All objects have their origin basically in mental action. Mental action is directed psychic energy.
  3. Permanence is not a matter of time. Existence has value in terms of intensities.
  4. Objects are blocks of energy perceived in a highly specialized manner.
  5. Stability in time sequence is not a prerequisite requirement for an object, except as a root assumption in the physical universe.
  6. Space as a barrier does not exist.
  7. The spacious present is here more available to the senses.
  8. The only barriers are mental or psychic ones. 

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Only if these basic root assumptions are taken for granted will our projection experience make sense to us. Different rules simply apply. Our subjective experiences is extremely important here; that is, the vividness of any given experience in terms of intensity will be far more important than anything else.

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Elements from past, present and future may be indiscriminately available to us. We may be convinced that a given episode is the result of subconscious fabrication, simply because the time sequence is not maintained, and this could be a fine error. In a given dream projection, for example, we may experience an event that is obviously from the physical past, yet within it there may be elements that do not fit. In an old-fashion room of the 1700’s we may look out and see an automobile pass by. Obviously, we think: distortion. Yet we may be straddling time in such an instance, perceiving, say, the room as it was in the 1700’s and the street as it appears in our present. These elements may appear side by side. the car may suddenly disappear before our eyes, to be replace by an animal or the whole street may turn into a field.

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This is how dreams work,’ you may think. ‘This cannot be a legitimate projection.’ Yet we may be perceiving the street and the field that existed ‘before’ it, and the images may be transposed one upon the other. If we try to judge such an experience with physical root assumptions, it will be meaningless. As mentioned earlier, we may also perceive a building that will never exist in physical reality. This does not mean that the form is illusion. We are simply in a position where we can pick up and translate the energy pattern before us.

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If another individual under the same circumstances comes across the same ‘potential’ object, he or she can also perceive it as we did. He may, however, because of his or her own make-up, perceive and translate another portion of allied pattern. He or she may see the form of the man or woman who originated the thought of the building.

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To a larger extent in the physical system, our habit of perceiving time as a sequence forms the type of experience and also limit it. This habit also unites the experiences, however. The unifying and limiting aspects of consecutive moments are absent in inner reality. time, in other words, cannot be counted upon to unify action. The unifying elements will be those of our own understanding and abilities. We are not forced to perceive action as a series of moments within inner reality, therefore.

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Episodes will be related to each other by different methods that will be intuitional, highly selective and psychological. We will find our way through complicated mazes of reality according to our own intuitional nature. We will find what we expect to find. We will seek out what we want from the available data.

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In physical experience, we are dealing with an environment with which we are familiar. We have completely forgotten the chaos and unpredictable nature it presented before learning processes were channeled into its specific directions. We learned to perceive reality in a highly specified fashion. When we are dealing with inner, or basically non-physical realities, we must learn to become unspecialized and then learn a new set of principles. We will soon learn to trust our perceptions, whether or not the experiences seem to make logical sense.

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In a projection, the problems will be of a different sort. The form of a man or woman, for example, may be a thought-form, or a fragment sent quite unconsciously by another individual whom it resembles. It may be another projectionist, like oneself. It may be a potential form like any potential object, a record of a form played over and over again.

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It may be another version of oneself. We will discuss ways of distinguishing between these. A man or woman may suddenly appear, and be then replaced by a small girl or boy. This would be a nonsensical development to the logical mind; yet, the girl or boy might be the form of the man’s previous or future reincarnated self.

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The unity, we see, is different. Basically, perception of the spacious present is naturally available. It is our nervous physical mechanism which acts as a limiting device. By acting in this manner it forces us to focus upon what we can perceive with greater intensity.

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Our mental processes are formed and developed as a result of this conditioning. The intuitive portions of the personality are not so formed, and these will operate to advantage in any inner exploration.

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We are basically capable of seeing any particular location as it existed a thousand years in our past or as it will exist a thousand years in our future. The physical senses serve to blot out more aspects of reality than they allow us to perceive, yet in many inner explorations we will automatically translate experience into terms that the senses can use. Any such translation is, nevertheless, a second-hand version of the original — an important point to remember.