Category Archives: Feelings

The body’s defense system is automatic.

And yet to a certain degree it is a secondary rather than primary system, coming into mobilization as such only when the body is threatened.

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The body’s main purpose is not only to survive but to maintain a quality of existence at certain levels, and that quality itself promotes health and fulfillment. A definite, biologically pertinent fear alerts the body, and allows it to react completely and naturally. We might be reading a newspaper headline, for example, as we cross a busy street. Long before we are consciously aware of the circumstances, our body might leap out of the path of an approaching car. The body is doing what it is supposed to do. Though consciously we were not afraid, there was a biologically pertinent fear that was acted upon.

If, however, we dwell mentally in a generalized environment of fear, the body is given no clear line of action, allowed no appropriate response. Look at it this way: An animal, not necessarily just a wild one in some native forest, but an ordinary dog or cat, reacts in a certain fashion. It is alert to everything in its environment. A cat does not anticipate danger from a penned dog four blocks away, however, nor bother wondering what would happen if that dog were to escape and find the cat’s cozy yard.

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Many people, however, do not pay attention to everything in their environments, but through their beliefs concentrate only upon “the ferocious dog four blocks away.” That is, they do not respond to what is physically present or perceivable in either space or time, but instead [dwell] upon the threats that may or may not exist, ignoring at the same time other pertinent data that are immediately at hand.

The mind then signals threat — but a threat that is nowhere physically present, so that the body cannot clearly respond. It therefore reacts to a pseudo-threatening situation, and is caught between gears, so to speak, with resulting biological confusion. The body’s responses must be specific.

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The overall sense of health, vitality, and resiliency is a generalized condition of contentment — brought about, however, by multitudinous specific responses. Left alone, the body can defend itself against any disease, but it cannot defend itself appropriately against an exaggerated general fear of disease on the individual’s part. It must mirror our own feelings and assessments. Usually, now, our entire medical systems literally generate as much disease as is cured — for we are filled with the fear of disease, overwhelmed by what seems to be the body’s propensity toward illness — and nowhere is the body’s vitality or natural defense system stressed.

Private disease, then, happens also in a social context. This context is the result of personal and mass beliefs that are intertwined at all cultural levels, and so to that extent serve private and public purposes.

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The illnesses generally attributed to all different ages involved. Those of the elderly, again, fit in with our social and cultural beliefs, the structure of our family life. Old animals have their own dignity, and so should old men and women. Senility is a mental and physical epidemic — a needless one. We “catch” it because when we are young we believe that old people cannot perform. There are no inoculations against beliefs, so when young people with such beliefs grow old they become “victims.”

The kinds of diseases change through historical periods. Some become fashionable, others go out of style. All epidemics, however, are mass statements both biologically and psychically. They point to mass beliefs that have brought about certain physical conditions that are abhorrent at all levels. They often go hand-in-hand with war, and represent biological protests.

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Whenever the conditions of life are such that its quality is threatened, there will be such a mass statement. The quality of life must be at certain level so that the individuals of a species — of any and all species — can develop. In our species the spiritual, mental and psychic abilities add a dimension that is biologically pertinent.

There simply must be, for example, a freedom to express ideas, an individual tendency, a worldwide social and political context in which each individual can develop his or her abilities and contribute to the species as a whole. Such a climate depends, however, upon many ideas not universally accepted — and yet the species is so formed that the biological importance of ideas cannot be stressed to strongly.

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More and more, the quality of our lives is formed through the subjective realities of our feelings and mental constructions. Again, beliefs that foster despair are biologically destructive. They cause the physical system to shut down. If mass action against appalling social or political conditions is not effective, then other means are taken, and these are often in the guise of epidemics or natural disasters. The blight is wiped out in one way or another.

Such conditions, however, are the results of beliefs, which are mental, and so the most vital work must always be done in that area.

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Side note:

Photosynthesis is the imperfectly understood process by which the green chlorophyll in plants uses the energy of sunlight to manufacture carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide. This “stored sunlight” can then be used as food.

Probing the brain of an idiot or genius will find only the physical matter of the brain itself.

Not one idea will be discovered residing in the brain cells. We can try to convey an idea, we can feel its effects, but we cannot see it as we can the chair. Only a fool would say that ideas were non-existent, however, or deny their importance.

We cannot find any given dream location, either, within the brain itself. The solid matter of our world is the result of the play of our senses upon an inner dimension of activity that exists as legitimately, and yet as tantalizing hidden, as an idea or a dream location.

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It is easy for us to see that seeds bring forth the fruit of the earth, each [of] their own kind. No seed is identical to any other, yet generally speaking there are species that serve to unite them. We do not mistake an orange for a grape. In the same way ideas or thoughts form general patterns, bringing forth in our world certain kinds of events. In this respect our thoughts and feelings “seed” physical reality, bringing forth materializations.

We operate quite nicely politically, living in villages, townships, countries, states, and so forth, each with certain customs and local ordinances. These in no way affect the land itself. They are designations for practical purposes, and they imply organization of intent or affiliation at one level. They are political patterns, invisible but highly effective. There are, however, far more vigorous invisible mental patterns, into which the thoughts and feelings of humankind are organized — or, naturally, organize themselves.

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Each person’s thoughts flow into formation, forming part of the earth’s psychic atmosphere. From that atmosphere flows the natural earthly patterns from which our seasons emerge with all of their variety and effects. We are never victims of natural disasters, though it may seem that we are, for we have our hand in forming them. We are creatively involved in the earth’s cycles. No one can be born for oneself, or die for oneself, and yet no birth or death is really an isolated event, but one in which the entire planet participates. In personal terms, again, each species is concerned not only with survival but with the quality of its life and experience.

In those terms, natural disasters ultimately end up righting a condition that earlier blighted the desired quality of life, so that adjustments were made.

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The “victims” choose to participate in those conditions at spiritual, psychological, and biological levels. Many of those who are counted among the fatalities might otherwise die of extended illnesses, for example. At cellular levels such knowledge is available, and in one way or another imparted, often in dreams, to the individual. Consciousness comprehension need not follow, for many people know such things, and pretend not to know them at the same time.

Others have finished with their challenges; they want to die and are looking for an excuse — a face-saving device. However, those who choose such deaths want to die in terms of drama, in the middle of their activities, and are in a strange way filled with the exultant inner knowledge of life’s strength even at the point of death. At the last they identify with the power of nature that seemingly destroyed them.

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That identification often brings about in death — but not always — an added acceleration of consciousness, and involves such individuals in a kind of “group death experience,” where all of the victims more or less embark into another level of reality “at the same time.”

Those people were aware just beneath consciousness of the possibilities of such an event long before the disaster occurred, and could until the last moment choose to avoid the encounter. Animals know of weather conditions ahead of time, as old tales say. This perception is a biological part of our heritage also. The body is prepared, though consciously it seems we are ignorant.

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There are innumerable relationships that exist between the interior environment of the body and the weather patterns. The ancient feelings of identification with storms are quite valid, and in that respect the “realism” of feelings is far superior to the realism of logic. When a person feels a part of a storm, those feelings speak a literal truth. Logic deals with exterior conditions, with cause-and-effect relationships. Intuitions deal with immediate experience of the most intimate nature, with subjective motions and activities that in our terms move far quicker than the speed of light, and with simultaneous events that our cause-and-effect level is far too slow to perceive.

In that regard also, the activities of the inner environment are too fast for us to follow intellectually. Our intuitions, however, can give us clues to such behavior. A country is responsible for its own droughts, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes — and for its own harvests and rich display of products, its industry and cultural achievements, and each of these elements is related to each other one.

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If the quality of life that is considered spiritually and biologically necessary fails, then adjustments occur. A political problem might be altered by a natural disaster if political means fail. On the other hand, the rousing creative energies of the people will emerge.

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Excellence will show itself through the arts, cultural creatively, technological or sociological accomplishments. The species tries to fulfill its great capacities. Each physical body in its own way is like the world. It has its own defenses and abilities, and each portion of it strives for a quality of existence that will bring to the smallest parts of it the spiritual and biological fulfillment of its own nature.

The self out grows the flesh.

Man’s and Woman’s physical relationship with nature

Environmental questions are being raised about human’s effects upon the world in which he or she lives. There is, however, an inner environment that connects all consciousnesses that dwell upon our planet, in whatever form. This mental or psychic — or in any case nonphysical — environment is ever in a state of flux and motion. That activity provides us with all exterior phenomena.

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Our sense perception, physically speaking, is a result of behavior on the part of organs that seem to us to have no reality outside on their relationship with us. Those organs are themselves composed of atoms and molecules with their own consciousnesses. They have, then, their own states of sensation and cognition. They work for us, allowing us to perceive physical reality.

Our ears certainly seem to be permanent appendages, and do our eyes. We say: “My eyes are blue,” or “My eyes are small.” The physical matter of those sense organs changes constantly, however, with us none the wiser. While our body appears quite dependable, solid, [and] steady, we are not aware of the constant interchanges that occur between it and the physical environment. It does not bother us one whit that the physical substance of our body is made up of completely different atoms and molecules than it was composed of seven years ago, [say], or that our familiar hands are actually innocent of any smallest smidgen of matter that composed them [even in recent times past].

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We perceive our body as solid. The very senses that make such a deduction are the result of the behavior of atoms and molecules literally coming together to form the organs, filling a pattern of flesh. All other objects that we perceive are formed in their own way in the same fashion.

The physical world that we recognize is made up of invisible patterns. These patterns are “plastic,” in that while they exist, their final form is a matter or probabilities directed by consciousness. Our senses perceive these patterns in their own ways. The patterns themselves can be “activated” in innumerable fashions. There is something out there to observe.

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Our sense apparatus determines what form that something will take, however. The mass world rises up before our eyes, but our eyes are part of that mass world. We cannot see our thoughts, so we do not realize that they have shape and form, even as, say, clouds do. There are currents of thoughts as there are currents of air, and the mental patterns of man’s and women’s feelings and thoughts rise up like flames from a fire, or steam from hot water, to fall like ashes or like rain.

All elements of the interior invisible environment work together, and they form the temporal weather patterns that are exteriorized mental states, presenting us locally and en masse, then with a physical version of man’s emotional states.

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The physical planet is obviously also ever-changing while it is operational or realistically or pragmatically relatively stable. The physical matter of the planet is also composed of literally infinite hoarders of consciousnesses — each experiencing its own reality while adding to the overall cooperative venture.

Natural disasters represent an understandably prejudiced concept, in which the vast creative and rejuvenating elements important to planetary life, and therefore to humankind, are ignored. The stability of the planet rests upon such changes and alterations, even as the body’s stability is dependent upon, say, the birth and death of the cells.

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It is quite obvious that people must die — not only because we would overpopulate our world into extinction but because the nature of consciousness requires new experience, challenge, and accomplishment. This is everywhere apparent in nature itself. If there were no death, we would have to invent it — for the context of the self-hood would be as limited as the experience of a great sculptor given but one hunk of stone.

The sculptor’s creation is pragmatically realistic, in that it exists as an object, and can be quite legitimately perceived as can our world. The sculptor’s statue, however, comes from the inner environment, the patterns of probabilities. These patterns are not them selves inactive. They are possessed by the desire to be-actualized. Behind all realities there are mental states. These always seek form, though again there are other forms than those we recognize.

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A chair is a chair for our purposes. As you read this blog you most probably lounge on a chair or couch or bench — all quite sturdy and real. The atoms and molecules within those chairs and couches are quite alert, though we do not grant them the quality of life. When children play ring-around-the-rosy, they form living circles in the air. In the game they enjoy the motion of their bodies, but they do not identify with those swirling circles. The atoms and molecules that make up a chair play a different kind of ring-around-the-rosy, and are involved in constant motion, forming a certain pattern that we perceive as a chair.

The difference in motion are so divergent that to us the chair, like our body, appears permanent. The atoms and molecules, like the children, enjoy their motion — solidly sketched in space from our perspective, however, with no “idea” that we consider that motion a chair, or so use it.

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We perceive the atoms’ activity in that fashion. [Nevertheless] the agreement takes place at mental levels, and is never completely “set,” though it appears to be. No one perceives the same chair [all the time], though perhaps a given chair will seem to be “the same one” seen from different angles.

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The dance of the atoms and molecules is continuous in our area. In greater terms, any given chair is never the same chair. All of this must be taken into consideration when we discuss mass events.

We live in a community of thoughts and feelings also.

We live in a physical community, but we live first in a community of thoughts and feelings. There trigger our physical actions. They directly affect the behavior of our body. The experience of the animals is different, yet in their own ways animals have both individual intent and purpose. Their feelings are certainly as pertinent as ours. They dream, and in their way they reason.

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They do not “worry.” They do not anticipate disaster when no signs of it are apparent in their immediate environment. On their own they do not need preventative medicine. Pet animals are inoculated against diseases, however. In our society this almost becomes a necessity. In a “purely natural” setting we would not have as many living puppies or kittens. There are stages of physical existence, and in those terms nature knows what it is doing. When a species over-produces, the incidences of, say, epidemics grow. This applies to human populations as well as to the animals.

The quality of life is important above all. Newborn animals either die quickly and naturally, painlessly, before their consciousnesses are fully focused here, or are killed by their mothers — not because they are weak or unfit to survive, but because the [physical] conditions are not those that will produce the quality of life that makes survival “worthwhile.”

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The consciousness that became so briefly physical is not annihilated, however, but in our terms waits for better conditions.

There are also “trail runs” in human and animal species alike, in which peeks are taken, or glimpses, of physical life, and that is all. Epidemics sweeping through animal populations are also biological and psychic statements, then, in which each individual knows that only its own greatest fulfillment can satisfy the quality of life on an individual basis, and thus contribute to the mass survival of the species.

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Suffering is not necessarily good for the soul at all, and left alone natural creatures do not seek it. There is a natural compassion, a biological knowledge, so that the mother of an animal knows whether or not existing conditions will support the new offspring. Animals instinctively realize their relationship with the great forces of life. They will instinctively starve an offspring while its consciousness is still unfocused, rather than send it loose under adverse conditions

In a natural state, many children would die stillborn for the same reasons, or would be naturally aborted. There is a give-and-take between all elements of nature, so that such individuals often choose mothers, for example, who perhaps wanted the experience of pregnancy but not of birth — where they choose the experience of the fetus but not necessarily [that] of the child. Often in such cases these are “fragmented personalities,” wanting to taste physical reality, but not being ready to deal with it. Each case is individual, however, so these are general statements.

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Many children, who, it seems, should have died of disease, of “children epidemics,” nevertheless survive because of their different intents. The world of thought and feeling may be invisible, and yet it activates all physical systems with which we are acquainted.

Animals as well as men can indeed make social statements, that appear in a biological context. Animals as well as men can indeed make social statements, that appear in a biological context. Animals stricken by kitten and puppy diseases, for example, choose to die, pointing out the fact that the quality of their lives individually and en masses is vastly lacking. Their relationships with their own species is no longer in balance. They cannot use their full abilities or powers, nor are many of them given compensating elements in terms of a beneficial psychic relationship with man and woman — but instead are shunted aside, unwanted and unloved. An unloved animal does not want to live.

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Love involves self-respect. The trust in individual biological zest and integrity. To that extent, in their way animal epidemics have the same causes as human ones.

Animals can indeed commit suicide. So can a race or a species. The dignity of a spirited life demands that a certain quality of experience be maintained.

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The infamous “Black Death,” were (and still are) spread to man by fleas carrying a bacterium from infected rats. Other forms of affliction are carried by other rodents. The complicated interactions and communications involving all forms of life, man’s and woman’s deep dissatisfactions would have periodically helped trigger the resurgence of scourges like the plagues: In 3rd-century Rome, for instance, several thousand people were said to have died each day; estimates are that over a 20-year period in the 14th century three-quarters of the population of Europe and Asia perished; there was the great plague of London in 1665, and so forth.

Many can thankfully praise a given doctor for discovering a disease condition ‘in time.’ so that effective countering measures were taken and the disease was eliminated. We cannot know for sure, of course, what would have happened otherwise. To those people who wanted to die. If they did not die of the disease, they may have ‘fallen prey’ to an accident, or died in a war, or in a natural disaster.

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They may have been ‘cured’ whether or not they had treatment, and gone on to lead productive lives. We do not know. A man or woman who is ready to die, if saved from one disease will promptly get another, or find a way of fulfilling that desire. Our problem there rests with the will to live, and with the mechanisms of the psyche.

The English naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), maintained in his theory of organic evolution that all plants and animals develop from their own previous forms by inheriting minute variations through succeeding generations, with those forms best fitted to the environment being the ones most likely to survive.

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Amazingly, another English naturalist, Alfred Wallace (1823-1882), independently developed a similar theory, and the two men had their work presented to science in the same paper in 1858. The next year Darwin published his The Origin of Species.

Thorns or Roses May Grow Within.

The individual will grow outward toward the world, encountering and forming a practical experience, traveling outward from his center in almost vine-like fashion, forming from the fabric of physical reality a conglomeration of pleasant or aesthetic, and unpleasant or prickly events.

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The vine of experience in this analogy is formed in quite a natural fashion from “psychic” elements that are as necessary to psychological experience as sun, air, and water are to plants. But as the individual’s personal experience must be seen in the light of all of these issues, so mass events cannot be understood unless they are considered in a far greater context that unusual.

The question of epidemics, for example, cannot be answered from a biological standpoint alone. It involves great sweeping psychological attitudes on the part of many, and meets the needs and desires of those involved — needs which, in our terms, arise in a framework of religious, psychological and cultural realities that cannot be isolated from biological results.

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I have thus far stayed clear of many important and vital subjects, involving mass realities, because first of all the importance of the individual is to be stressed, and his or her power to form this or her private events. Only when the private nature of reality was emphasized sufficiently would show how the magnification of individual reality combines and enlarges to form vast mass reactions — such as, say, the initiation of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow or governments; the birth of a new religion that sweeps all others before it; mass conversions; mass murders in the form of wars; the sudden sweep of deadly epidemics; the scourge of earthquakes, flood, or other disasters; the inexplicable appearance of periods of great art or architecture or technology.

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There are no closed systems. This also means that in world terms, events spin like electrons, affecting all psychological and psychic systems as well as biological ones. It is true to say that each individual dies alone, for no one else can die that death. It is also true that part of the species dies with each death, and is reborn with each birth, and that each private death takes place within the greater context of the existence of the entire species. The death serves a purpose species-wise while it also serves the purposes of the individual, for no death comes unbidden.

An epidemic, for example, serves the purposes of each individual who is involved, while it also serves its own functions in the greater species framework.

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When we consider epidemics to be the result of viruses, and emphasize their biological stances, then it seems that the solutions are very obvious: We learn the nature of each virus and develop an inoculation, giving [each member of] the populace a small dose of the disease so that a man’s or woman’s own body will combat it, and he or she will become immune.

The shortsightedness of such procedures is generally overlooked because of the definite short-term advantages. As a rule, for example, people inoculated against polio do not develop that disease. Using such procedures, tuberculosis has been largely conquered.

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In the first place, the causes are not biological. Biology is simply the carrier of a “deadly intent.” In the second place, there is a difference between a virus produced in the laboratory and that inhabiting the body — a difference recognized by the body but not by our laboratory instruments.

In a way the body produces antibodies, and sets up natural immunization as a result of say, inoculation. But the body’s chemistry is also confused, for it “knows it is reacting to a disease that is not “a true disease,” but a biologically counterfeit intrusion.

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To that extent — the body’s biological integrity is contaminated. It may at the same time produce antibodies also, for example, to other “similar” diseases, and so overextend its defenses that the individual later comes down with another disease.

No person becomes ill unless that illness serves a psychic or psychological reason, so many people escape such complications. In the meantime, however, scientists and medical men and women find more and more viruses against which the population “must ” be inoculated. Each one is considered singly. There is a rush to develop a new inoculation against the newest virus. Much of this is on predictive basis: The scientists “predict” how many people might be “attacked” by, say, a virus that has caused a given number of deaths. Then as a preventative measure the populace is invited to the new inoculation.

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Many people who would not get the disease in any case are then religiously inoculated with it. The body is exerted to use its immune system to the utmost, and sometimes, according to the inoculation, overextended [under such] conditions. Those individuals who have psychologically decided upon death will die in any case, of that disease or another, or of the side effects of the inoculation.

Inner reality and private experience give birth to all mass events. Man and woman cannot disentangle himself or herself from the natural context of his or her physical life. His or her culture, his or her religion, his or her psychologies, and his or her psychological nature together form the context within which both private and mass events occur. My discussions will be devoted to the nature of the great sweeping emotional, religious, or biological events that often seem to engulf the individual, or to lift him or her willy-nilly in their power.

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What is the relationship between the individual and the gigantic mass motions of nature, of government, or even of religion? What about mass conversions? Mass hysteria? Mass healings, mass murder, and the individual?

 

Each of us possesses a unique, original stance in space and time, regardless of time’s relative existence.

That reality contributes to the experience of others. Only when we operate from our own stance can we help others to the best of our ability. To anticipate danger, or to imaginatively take on the troubles of others robs us of the very energy with which we could help them. I am not saying, therefore, to turn our eyes from the unfortunate conditions of the world. Practical help is needed in all areas of the human life. Yet it is far better, and more practical ultimately, to concentrate upon the beneficial elements of civilization — far better to organize our thoughts in areas of accomplishment than to make lists of man’s or woman’s deficiencies and lacks.

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Such a practice leads to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, in which effective action seems impossible. Life possesses an exuberance. If this is cherished, nurtured, encouraged, then additional energy is generated that is not needed for the purposes of daily private life — a superabundance, that can be effectively directed in those areas of the world where help is most needed.

The strength, vitality, and effectiveness of thought is seldom considered. Though, we may say will not stop war — yet what do we think started such a war? Throughout history the downtrodden have often risen into power, using force, rebelling against their oppressors; and yet, learning little from that experience, they turn and become the new elite, the new power-holders. Their physical conditions may be completely changed, Now theirs, the offices of government, the wealth. Gone are the conditions that, it would seem, caused the uprising. Yet in retaliation they strike out, forming a new class of downtrodden who must in their turn rise and retaliate.

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Despite all appearances, conditions of an exterior nature do not cause wars, or poverty, or disease, or any of the unfortunate circumstances apparent in the world. Our beliefs form our reality. Our thoughts generate practical experience. When these change, conditions will change. To add our own energy, focus, and concentration of dire circumstances in other portions of the world does not help, but adds to, such situations.

To close our eyes to them in an ignorant fashion, to wash our hands of them, so to speak, is equally shortsighted. To pretend such situations do not exist, out of fear of them, will only bring the feared reality closer. It is far better to situate oneself firmly in our own reality, acknowledge it as our own, encourage our strength and creativity, and from that vantage point view those areas of the world or of our own society that need constructive help. Purposefully in our own life, in our daily dialogues with others, in our relationships through our groups or clubs, reinforce as well as we can the strength and abilities of others.

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That reinforcement will add to the personal power of all other individuals with whom those people come in contact. Find the beliefs responsible for the unfortunate conditions. Each individual should be able to assess his or her own reality realistically. There would be no need to arm a nation in advance against another nation’s anticipated — but imaginary — attack.

Personal grudges would not build up, so that men or women so fear further hurts that they attempt to hide from life or relationships, or shy away from contact with others. It is not virtuous to count our failings. Self-conscious righteousness can be a very narrow road. If each of us understood and perceived the graceful integrity of our own individuality, just as we try to perceive the beauty of all other natural creatures, then we would allow our own creativity greater reign. There is order in all elements of nature, and we are part of it.

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The greater sweep of the seasons represents the reaches of our soul. We will not attain spirituality by turning our eyes away from nature, or by trying to disentangle oneself from it. We will not “glimpse eternal life” by attempting to deny the life that we have now — for that life is our own unique path, and provides its own clues for us to follow.

All That Is vibrates with desire. The denial of desire will bring us only listlessness. Those who deny desire are the most smitten by it. Each of our lives are miniature and yet gigantic episodes, mortal and immortal at once, providing experiences that we form meaningfully, opening up dimensions of reality available to no one else, for no one can view existence from our standpoint. No one can be you but you. There are communications at other levels, but our experience of existence is completely original, to be treasured.

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No one from any psychological threshold, however vast, can write a book that defines the psyche, but only present hints and clues, words and symbols. The words and ideas stand for inner realities — that is, they are like piano keys striking other chords; chords that, hopefully, will be activated within the psyche of each person.

Each or us is couched now in the natural world, and world is couched in a reality from which nature emerges. The psyche’s roots are secure, nourishing it like a tree from the ground of being. The source of the psyche’s strength is within each individual, the invisible fabric of the person’s existence.

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Nature is luxurious and abundant in its expressions. The greater reality from which nature springs is evens more abundant, and within that multidimensional experience no individual is ignored, forgotten, dismissed, lost, or forsaken. A tree does not have to ask for nourishment for the ground or the sun, and so everything that we need is available to us in our practical experience. If we believe we are not worthy of nourishment, if we believe that life itself is dangerous, then our own beliefs make it impossible for us to fully utilize that available help. In large measure, since we are still alive, we are of course nourished. We cannot close out the vitality of our own being easily, and the vitality “squandered” on deeper bouts of depression is often greater than the energy used in creative pursuits. We are a portion of All That Is; therefore the universe leans in our direction. It gives. It rings with vitality. Then forsake beliefs that tell us otherwise. Seek within oneself — each of us — those feelings of exuberance that we have, even if they are only occasional, and encourage those events or thoughts that bring them about.

We cannot find our psyche by thinking of it as a separate thing, like a fine jewel in an eternal closet. We can only experience its strength and vitality by exploring the subjective reality that is our own, for it will lead us unerringly to that greater source of being that transcends both space and time.

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The overall stance of the species is largely maintained by the waking-sleeping patterns. In such a fashion, one large portion of the species focuses in physical reality while the other large portion holds a secure foothold in inner reality.

In inner reality we are working on the interior patterns that will form the next day’s realities, and providing probable previews of the future events. Waking and sleeping reality is therefore balanced in the world mind — not the world brain.

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However, the sleeping portion of the species represents the brain’s unconscious activities in the body — particularly when we think of the motion of all of the species’ action en masse in a given day. Those conscious motions have an unconscious basis. If we think of a mass world brain — one entity — then it must wake and sleep in patterns. If we think of mass daily action as performed by one gigantic being, then all of those conscious actions have unconscious counterparts, and a great intercommunication of an inner nervous system must take place.

Part of such brain would have to be awake all of the time, and part engaged in unconscious activity. This is what happens.

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Diverse cultures are thus able to communicate as the cultural knowledge of various parts of the world is given to the sleeping portion of the entire organism. When they sleep, the waking nations add the day’s events to the world memory, and work out future probabilities.

When we are safely ensconced in a comfortable room…

In no present danger, our senses should assimilate it. It should be an easy enough accomplishment to look around us and see that we are in no danger.

Our conscious mind is meant to give our body an assessment of what I will call cultural conditions, for there are sophistications and specifications that in our terms consciousness alone can assess. If under conditions naturally safe in the terms of primary experience, we become overwhelmed by unsafe signals from secondary experience — that is, from our reading or whatever — we show lack of discrimination. We are not able to differentiate between the physically safe present situation, and the imagined which is perhaps unsafe, calling forth the alarms of danger.

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The body mechanisms become highly disoriented. The signals to the body are very contradictory, so that after a while, if such conditions continue, we can no longer tell whether we are in actual danger or imagined danger. Our mind then forces our body to be in a state of constant alert — but more unfortunately, we train ourselves to ignore our direct, sensual feedback in the present moment.

Our body then might say we are safe, and our senses show us that no danger is present — yet we have begun to rely so upon secondary experience that we do not trust our creature reactions.

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Because of man’s and woman’s great gift of imagination, however, the alarm signals not only invade a safe present moment, but go jangling into the future. To whatever extent, and in whatever fashion, each individual is therefore robbed of his of her beliefs in the personal ability to act meaningfully or with purpose in the present.

The body cannot act tomorrow, today. Its sense data must be clear. This resulting feeling of powerlessness to act leads to a state of hopelessness of varying degrees — and that mood does not tie itself to specific details, but pervades emotional life if it is allowed to. To whatever degree, the condemning, critical material too often becomes self-prophesying — for those who put merit on it allow it to cloud their reactions.

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In our terms, while we live, and in the most pertinent terms of intimate sensation, our reality must be what we perceive in the framework of our time, and what we create within that framework as it is experienced. therefore, I entreat not to behave as if man or woman is an imbecile, doomed to extinction, a dim-witted, half-crazy animal with a brain gone amuck.

None of the prophesied destruction man and woman so fears is a reality in our time; nor, for all of the critical prophets through the ages, and the forerunners of doom, has the creativity of man and woman destroyed its self in those terms.

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There are those who make careers of condemning the faults and failings of others, or of the species itself, and because of that attitude man and woman’s great energy and good intent remain invisible. Man and woman are in the process of becoming. His and her works are flawed — but they are the lawed apprentice works of a genius artist in the making, whose failures are indeed momentous and grotesque only in the light of his senses genius, whichever leads him or her and directs him or her onward.

When we are considering the future in our terms, constructive achievements are as realistic as destructive ones. In those terms, each year of man’s existence in fact justifies a more optimistic rather than pessimistic view. We cannot place man or woman’s good intent outside of the physical context, for outside of that context we do not have the creature that we know. We cannot say that nature is good, but spawned man and woman, which is a cancer upon it, for nature would have better sense.

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We cannot say, either, The Nature — will destroy man and woman if he or she offends her or him, or The Nature — has little use for its own species, but only wants to promote Life– for Nature is within each member of each species; and without each member of each species, Nature — would be non-existent.

Because we are natural creatures, within us there is a natural state of being. That state can be an ever-present reservoir of peace, vitality, and understanding.

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Whatever our scientist think, our body and our consciousness and our universe spring constantly into actualization. Therefore, through cultivating the clear experience of our own consciousness and being with time and with the moment as we feel it, we can draw upon the greater vitality and power that is available.

To do this, reply upon your immediate sense data, not secondary experience as described. That primary sense data, while pinpointed in the present, providing us with the necessary stance in time, still can open up to us the timelessness from which all time emerges, can bring us intuitive intimations, hinting at the true nature of the ever-present coming-to-be of the universe.

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That kind of experience will let us glimpse the larger patterns of man’s and woman’s creativity, and our part in it. We have been taught to concentrate upon criticisms and faults in our society; and in our times it seems that everything will work out wrong — that left alone the world will run down, the universe will die, man and woman will destroy themselves; and these beliefs so infiltrate our behavior that they organize much of our experience and rob us of the benefits nature itself everywhere provides in direct primary experience.

Often then we ignore our senses’ reality in the world — the luxurious vitality and comfort of the daily moment — by exaggerating the importance of secondary experience as defined for this discussion.

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The most negative projection or prophecy seems to be the most practical one; when we are reading of the world’s ills we say in all honesty, and with no humor: “How can I ignore the reality, the destructive reality, of the present?” In the most practical, immediate, mundane terms, however, we and our world are in the moment naturally and physically safe, as our bodily senses immediately perceive. In the most basic of bodily terms we are not reacting to present conditions.

This would be only too clear if we were physically experiencing the conditions about which we might be reading. If the world were falling down about our shoulders, we would only too clearly understand that “earlier” we were reacting to an imagined and not a real situation.

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While disasters, imagined or encounter second-handedly, may in fact later occur, they are far different from physically encountered ones. We only add to their unfortunate nature by negatively brooding upon what might happen in the future, and we destroy our own stance. Our stance in time is highly important, for it is our practical base of operations.

We must trust our sense data in that regard. Otherwise we confuse our psychological and corporal stance, for the body cannot be in a situation of safety and danger at the same time. It wastes its resources fighting imaginary battles.

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To some people wars, poverty, murder, treachery, corruption, are primary experience and must be dealt with — as requiring immediate action. The body must react. Such persons are beaten up, or robbed. Those are immediate sense data, and in one way or another, they do react. However feebly, their point of power corresponds immediately with the point of danger.

We cannot react physically in the same way to projected or imagined dangers. Some install a security system like those from www.verisure for peace of mind, others keep a bat by their bedside or a pepper spray in their purse. Each of these solutions is for an anticipated danger, but when the danger comes? There seems to be no possible reaction. We are frustrated. We are meant to deal with our immediate, primary experience, and in so doing we take care of our responsibility. We are able to take action in our own experience, and therefore affect others. We do not have to be ignorant of wars in other corners of the world or close our eyes. But if we allow those experiences to over-cloud our present, valid intersection with reality, then we speak and act from a position not our own, and deny the world whatever benefits our own present version of reality might allow us to give.

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The natural creature-validity of our senses must remain clear, and only then can we take full advantage of those intuitions and visions that must come through our own private intersection with space and time.

In those terms, the ever-actual integrity of nature everywhere surrounds us. It represents our direct experience. It offers comfort, creativity, and inspiration that we only impede if we allow the secondary experience to supersede our daily moment-to-moment encounter with the physical earth.

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The sleeping and waking portions of life on earth.

A Tiger, following its nature is not evil

Looking at our own species we are often less kindly, less compassionate, less understanding. It is easy to condemn our own kind.

It may be difficult sometimes for us to understand, but our species means well. We understand that the tiger exists in a certain environment, and reacts according to his nature. So does man and woman. Even his or her atrocities are committed in a distorted attempt to reach what we consider good goals. He and she fails often to achieve the goals, or even to understand how his or her very methods prevent their attainment.

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He and she as indeed as blessed as the animals, however, and his or her failures are the results of his or her lack of understanding. He or she is directly faced with a far more complex conscious world than the other animals are, dealing particularly with symbols and ideas that are then projected out ward into reality, where they are to be tested. If they could be tested mentally in our context, there would be no need for physical human existence.

Too many complicated issues are connected here, so that I must at best simplify. It is as if man and woman said: “Now what about this idea? What can we do with it? What will happen if we toss it out into reality, physically? How far can we go with any of the great social, scientific, religious ideas that are so peculiarly the offshoots of man’s and woman’s mind?”

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If such issues could all be mentally worked out on some non-physical drawing board, again, the great challenge of physical existence would be neither necessary nor meaningful. How far, say, can nationalism be carried? To what extent can the world be treated as if it were external to man and woman, as an object? What can man or woman learn by treating the body as if it were a machine? As if it were a mirage? As if it were driven by blind instinct? As if it were possessed by a soul?

To some extent, these are all unique and creative ponderings that on the part of the animals alone would be considered the most curious and enlightening intellectual achievements. The animals must relate to the earth, and so must man and woman. As the animal must play, mate, hunt his prey or eat his berries within the physical context of sun, ground, trees, snow, hail and wind, so in a different way man and woman must pursue his/her ideas by clothing them in the elemental realities of earth, by perceiving them as events.

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When he or she is destructive, man or woman does not seek to be destructive per se; but in a desire to achieve that which he or she thinks of as particular goal that to him or her is good, he or she forgets to examine the goodness of his or her methods.

One animal chasing and killing its prey serves the greater purpose of preserving the balance of nature, whether or not the animal is aware of this — and again, the animal’s intent is not evil. Man and woman consumes ideas. In so doing he or she contributes to a different kind of balance, of which he or she is usually unaware. But no man or woman truly acts out of pure intent to do wrong, or to be vicious. Storms rend the summer sky, sending forth thunder and lightening. Earthquakes may ravage the countryside. We may deeply regret the havoc worked, knowing that neither the storm nor the earthquake is evil. Not only did they have no wrong intent, but the overall conditions corrected the earth’s balance.

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This requires some unique understanding. The destructive storms worked by mankind ultimately cannot be said to be any more evil than the earthquake. While man’s and woman’s works may often certainly appear destructive, we must not blame man’s or woman’s intent, nor must we ever make the error of confusing man and woman with their works. For many well-intentioned artists, with the best of intentions, produce at times shoddy works of art, all the more disappointing and deplorable to them because of the initial goodness of their intent.

Their lack of knowledge and techniques and methods then become quite plain. By concentrating too deeply upon the world of newspapers and the negative reports of man’s and woman’s actions, it is truly easy to lose sight of each man’s and each woman’s basic good intent.

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That intent may be confused, poorly executed, tangled amid conflicts of beliefs, strangled by the bloody hands of murders and wars — and yet no man or woman ever loses it. That represents the hope of the species, and it has ever remained lit, like a bright light within each member of the species; and that good intents is handed down through the generations. It is far more potent, that illumination, then any hates or national grudges that may also be passed along.

It is imperative, for any peace of mind, that we believe in that existence of man’s or woman’s innate good intent.

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It is shared by all of the other animals. Each animal knows that under certain conditions the other may fight or posture aggressively, or defend its nest. Each animal knows that in time of hunger it might be hunted by another. Except for those situations, however, the animals are not afraid of each other. They know that each other animal is of good intent.

We should grant our own species the same. We can collect books of man’s and woman’s failures. Why would anyone collect the worst works of any artist, and get pleasure in ripping them apart? Man and woman has produced some fine works: The high level of verbal communication, the multitudinous varieties of emotional interactions and of cultural exchange, the facility with exteriorization of ideas and concepts, the reaches of the imagination — all of these, and many others, are unique in the universe.

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To identify man or woman with their poorest works is to purposefully seek out the mars, the mistakes, of fine artist, and then to condemn him or her. To do this is to condemn ourselves personally. If a scientist says consciousness is the result of chance, or Darwin’s theories say that basically man and woman is a triumphant son and daughter of murderers, many people object. If we say, however, that men and women are idiots, or that they are not worth the ground they walk upon, we are saying the same thing. For we must be concerned with this reality as we know it; in those terms, to condemn man or woman is to condemn the species as we know it, and the practical terms of our world.

To say that people can escape to another probability is pragmatically a cop-out — this is apart from the reality of probabilities, for I am speaking from our emotional viewpoint.

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Physically our body has a stance in space and time. Speaking of primary and secondary experience. Let us call primary experience that which exists immediately in sense terms in our moment of time — the contact of body with environment. Creating certain divisions there to make our discussion easier. Therefore, I will call secondary experience that information that comes to us through, say, reading, television, discussion with others, letters, and so forth.

The secondary kind of experience is largely symbolic. This should be clear. Reading about a war in the middle of a quiet sunny afternoon is not the same thing as being in the war, however vivid the description. Reading about the energy shortage is not the same as sitting in a cold house. Reading about the possible annihilation of man-womankind through nuclear destruction or other stupidities, while we are sitting calmly enough in our living room, is obviously far divorced from the actuality described in an article.

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At the levels with which we are concerned, the body must primarily react to present, immediate, primary existence in space and time. At other levels it is equipped to handle many kinds of data, i.e. The precognition of cells. But the body depend on the conscious mind to give it a clear assessment of precise conditions of the space and time it occupies. It depends upon that knowledge.

The Origin of the “interior” universe from which the exterior one ever emerges

Here we must part company with treasured objectivity, and enter instead a mental domain, in which it is seen that contradictions are not errors; an inner domain, in which it is seen that contradictions at one level, for at another level they are seen to be no contradictions at all.

In science as it stands, it is necessary that self-contradictions do not arise. If a hypothesis is “proven true,” then it cannot be proven false — or, of course, it was never true to begin with.

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In those terms, therefore, the universe either had “a Creator,” or it had none; or it came into being as stated in the Big Bang theory, and is either constantly expanding or it is not. Evolution exists or it does not. As a rule such theories are proven “true’ by the simple process of excluding anything else that seems contradictory, and so generally our scientific theories carry the weight of strong validity within their own frameworks.

In those frameworks we have made certain classifications that now appear quite obvious. Common sense upholds them, and it seems impossible to consider reality otherwise. Yet by their nature such categories structure our experience of reality itself to such an extent that any alternate ways of perceiving life seem not only untrustworthy, but completely impossible.

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Our classifications of various species appear to us as the only logical kinds of divisions that could be made among living things. Quite the contrary is the case, however. That particular overall method of separation leads to such questions as: Which species came first, and which came later, and how did the various species merge — one from the other? Those questions are further brought about by our time classifications, without which they would be meaningless.

Our classifications in such respects set up exterior divisions. Now these serve as quite handy reference points, but basically speaking they in no way affect the natural experience of those various living creatures that we refer to as “other species.”

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Our specializations work as long as we stay within the framework, though then we must wrestle with the questions that such divisions automatically entail. It is perhaps difficult for us to realize that these are written and verbalized categories that in no real manner tell us anything about the actual experience of other creatures — but only note habits, tendencies, and separations of the most exterior nature.

If our purpose is to comprehend what other living creatures perceive, then the methods we are using are at the best short-sighted, and at the worst they completely defeat our purpose. For example: No matter what information or data we receive as the result of animal experimentation or dissection for scientific purposes, and no matter how valuable the results appear to be, the consequences of such methods are so distorted that we comprehend less of life than we did before.

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Our present methods will simply bring us pat, manufactured results and answers. They will satisfy neither the intellect nor the soul. Since our universe springs from an inner one, and since that inner one pervades each nook and cranny of our own existence, we must look where we have not before — into reality of our own minds and emotions. We must look to the natural universe that we know. We must look with our intuitions and creative instincts at the creatures about us, seeing them not as other species with certain habits, not as inferior properties of the earth, to be dissected, but as living examples of the nature of the universe, in constant being and transformation.

We must study the quality of life, dare to follow the patterns of our own thoughts and emotions, and to ride that mobility, for in that mobility there are hints of the origin of the universe and of the psyche. The poet’s view of the universe and of nature is more scientific, then, than the scientist’s, for more of nature is comprehended.

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The child, laughing with joy and awe at the sight of the first violet, understands far more in the deepest terms than a botanist who has long since forgotten the experience of perceiving one violet, though he has at his mental fingertips the names and classifications of all the world’s flowers. Information is not necessarily knowledge or comprehension.

Thoughts spring into out mind as the objective universe swims into reality — that is, in the same fashion. Diagramming sentences tells us little about the spoken language, and nothing about those miraculous physical and mental performances that allow us to speak — an so diagramming the species of the world is, in the same way, quite divorced from any true understanding.

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The subjective feeling of our being, our intimate experience from moment-to-moment — these possess the same mysterious quality that it seems to us the universe possesses. We are mortal, and everywhere encounter evidence of that mortality, and yet within its framework our feelings and thoughts have a reality to us personally that transcends all such classifications. We know that physically we will die, yet each person at one time or another is secretly sure that he or she will not meet such a fate, and that life is somehow eternal.

Through such feelings the psyche breaks through all misconceptions, hinting at the nature of self and of the universe, and at that level there are no contradictions. There is no beginning or end to the psyche, either. We may say: “Granted” yet persist, saying: “In our terms, however, when did the world begin, and in what manner?” Yet the very attempt to place such an origin in time makes almost any answer distorted.

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The truth is that the answers lie in our own experience. They are implied in our own spontaneous behavior — that is, in the wondrous activity of our bodies and minds.

We walk well without having at our fingertips any conscious knowledge of the inner mechanism’s activity. We may have been told, or we may have read about the body’s anatomy, and the interaction of its parts. Yet whether or not we have such information, we walk quite well. Such data therefore do not help our walking performance any.

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For that matter, an athlete may have a great zest for motion and an impatience with reading, caring not what within the body makes it move as long as its performance is superb — within an invalid with great book knowledge about all of the body’s parts is quite unable to physically perform in a normal manner.

Our body knows how to walk. The knowledge is built-in and acted upon. The body knows how to heal itself, how to use its nourishment, how to replace its tissues, yet in our terms the body itself has no access to the kind of information the mind possesses. Being so ignorant, how does it perform so well?

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If it were scientifically inclined, the body would know that such spontaneous performance was impossible, for science cannot explain the reality of life itself in its present form, much less its origins.

Consciousness within the body knows that its existence is within the body’s context, and apart from it at the same time. In ordinary life during the day consciousness often takes a recess, so to speak — it daydreams, or otherwise experiences itself as somewhat apart from the body’s reality. At night, in sleep, the self’s consciousness takes longer, freer recesses from physical reality, and does this as spontaneously as the body itself walks. These experiences are not hypothetical. They happen to each person. On such occasions, each person is to some extent aware of a kind of comprehension that is not dependent upon the accumulation of data, but of a deeper kind if experience and direct encounter with the reality from which the world emerges.

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This is the kind of wordless knowledge the body possesses, that brings forth our physical motion and results in the spectacular preciseness of bodily response. It is, then, highly practical. In our terms, the same force that formed the world forms our subjective reality now, and is a source of the natural universe.

Exploring those realities lovingly will bring us into direct contact with inner dimensions of our being, providing intuitive understandings that are of great import.

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The motion of the universe appears in the motion of our own intimate experience, and in that seemingly most nebulous area the answers will be found.