Category Archives: Gestalt

Dreams Occur at Many Levels

Dreams occur at so many levels of reality that it is quite impossible to describe their true scope. For one thing, that scope includes levels that are consciously unknown to us. Dreams serve as backup systems also, for example, in the important communications between various peoples or nations — and, particularly when physical communication is cut off between such groups, dreams provide the continuation of information’s flow from one part of the species to another.

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There are dreams of different import, some triggered genetically, that serve as sparks for particular kinds of behavior — dreams, in other words, that literally span the centuries in that regard, coiled latently in the very chromosomes; and no level of consciousness is without some kind of participation in dream states. In that regard even electrons, for example, dream. Dreaming touches upon both microscopic and macroscopic events, or realities, and is not simply a human characteristic, appropriately appearing within our own range or within our own species. It is instead one area of subjective experience that is everywhere prevailing within the universe.

As I have mentioned many times, animals then dream, as do plants, insects, and all form of life. All molecular constructions exhibit that certain kind of introspective activity, as if the inner working of some giant computer was intimately in touch not only with its own programming and the probabilities connected with it, but with a deep psychological awareness of the activities of the electrons and various visible and invisible particles that form its own physical construction.

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We are bound to have, then, many larger dream formations that can only be called group dreams — subjective events in which our own dreams happen, and in which our own dreams take part. We expect all of the elements of the physical world, however, diverse, to fit together and for a certain kind of permanency and order. It should be no surprise, then, that this same kind of “fitting together” includes subjective life also — or that, say, our private dreams are also fragments in a vaster dream reality. They are as important to the operation of that reality as electrons are to our physical one, providing inner pathways for the accumulation of wisdom and pleasure.

There are certain kinds of dreams in which the various species then communicate, and in which the energies of the environment and its inhabitants merge. These include a kind of horizontal psychological extension, the translation of one kind of dream into another kind — the transference of information from one system to another, in which the symbols themselves come alive.

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I can only hope to evoke some feeling within you that is reminiscent of our own actual behavior at those hidden levels of dreaming activity, but they have remained highly pertinent in the development of all species with their environments, keeping the intents and purposes of one alive in the other. I have told in previous blogs, that in actuality, now, no genetic knowledge is gone from the earth. It does not vanish. It is retained in latent form within a kind of backup system, so that in terms of probabilities each species carries within its own genetic patterns the blueprints and specializations of each other’s genetic sequence.

Those sequences follow the pursuits of value fulfillment so smoothly that they can be reactivated whenever the conditions are fortunate — for even the animals are not concerned with simple survival alone, not the plants, but with what I can only call emotional qualities: qualities that seek a full appreciation and creative extension of those conditions of consciousness that stamp each species as itself and yet join it with all others.

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In a fashion our own dreams operate or appear as electrons in other realities. That is, they change their form, their subjective force or direction, and become part of the working mechanics of the universe. The same applies to our own thoughts. They are not “wasted” after we have thought them, or simply discarded. They do not become extinct either, but go on to serve other functions in the universe than those which we are presently aware.

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This all involves a lush multitudinous creativity. The pleasure principle can probably be likened most to the latent appreciation of beauty that is everywhere apparent if we look for it: the ecstasy of each form of life for the wonders of its own existence, in which love’s values go beyond themselves, and yet a condition in which each species or life form “realizes” that its own fulfillment adds immeasurably to the existence of all other forms.

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We did manage at least to hint of some material that almost exists on the edge — the very edge — of any rational understanding.

Man and Woman explored the World in the Dreaming State long before they explored it Physically

Such dreams gave him and her the assurance that other lands existed outside of his and her own, and spurred him and her onward into those physical expeditions in which the species has always taken a particular delight.

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A man or woman might be while dreaming suddenly in strange territory, looking at the sky from a different viewpoint, with say, a familiar river nowhere in sight, and with a mountain where ordinarily a plain might be. This was in a way as startling an experience as it would be to us to find ourselves on some distant planet. (We do, for that matter, explore space in the same fashion, and on at least some occasions our own “visitors from outer space” are dream travelers from other dimensions of reality.)

In such a fashion man and woman learned the location of the oceans upon the earth — or at least was given the  assurance that such large bodies of water existed, along with clues as to their locations, and the placement of the stars overhead.

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Also in the same manner dreams were an aid in navigation, so that they served to let sailors know when land was near before it could be physically perceived — and there is no human activity to which dreams and group dreams have not contributed.

They were of great aid, of course, in human politics, so that through dreams  the intents of tribal leaders, say, were known to the others. Some people within the tribe specialized in such dreams, and again, dream content was and is directed by the individual intents, purposes and interests of the dreamer. In a certain manner dreaming, then, helped sharpen such individual tendencies while still directing them toward the public value fulfillment. The person interested most in herbs and plant life would also find that nightly dream excursions might find the dreamer examining strange herbs in another location than the native one. Or he or she might be given knowledge as to how the herbs could best be used for healing purposes. People are natural mimics, as are some animals and birds, so when tribal members related their dreams, they did not just tell them but acted them out with great mobility, carefully mimicking whatever animals or people or elements of land they may have encountered.

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The origins of drama began in just that fashion. Tribal leaders were usually chosen only after long “dream investigations,” in which the new leader’s name cropped up, say, time and time again in the people’s dreams. They expected to receive counsel from their dreams, such information was then aired and shared, studied and examined along with ll physical considerations that applied, before important decisions were made.

We do still continue such activity, again, although we have turned conscious minds away from those directions. Most of it does not become conscious because we do not want it to. In some areas, however, with the acceleration of physical travel, certain kinds of dreams have become more highly pertinent. Families in our society are often broken up, parents and children living quite apart in other portions of the country or in different countries entirely, so dreams that connect us with such relatives have risen to the fore, so to speak. People often keep track of changes in hometowns that they may not have visited for twenty years except in the dream state, when they familiarize themselves with the alterations that have happened, visit beloved streets and houses, or view old classmates.

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Very few people make any attempt to check out such information in physical terms. There is an entire global dream network, in other words, that goes quite unrecognized — one of spectacular organization in which exchanges of information occur that give us the basis for the formation of recognized physical events.

If small families kept track of their own family dreams, for example, they could discover unsuspected correlations and sense the interplay of subjective and objective drama with which they are always psychologically involved. Notice what kind of information you seek out from the internet, for example. Do you read the headline page and ignore sports, or vice versa? Do you read gossip column? The obituary? Do you seek out stories of lurid crime, or look for future incidents of political chicanery? The answers will show us the kind of material we look for most often. We will to some extent specialize in the same kind of information when we dream. We will organize the contents of our mind and the information available to us according to our own intents and purposes.

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One person’s dreams, therefore, while his or her own, will still fit into an important notch in the dreams of a given family. One person might, because of his or her own interests, seek largely from dreams warnings of difficulty or trouble, and therefore be the family’s dream watchguard — the one who has, say, the nightmares for everyone else. That person will also serve a somewhat similar role in the waking state, as a member of a family. The question in such instances is the reason for such a person’s over-concern and alarm in the first place — why the intense interest in such possible catastrophes, or in crime or whatever? — and the answer lies in an examination of the person’s feelings and beliefs about the nature of existence itself.

As far as group dreaming is concerned, however, there are still some people who have served as watchdogs in that regard, while others even in the dream state operate as healers or teachers or explorers or whatever. There is no craft that was not first conceived of by an individual dreamer, who later transferred it to the social world or activity.

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In the dreaming state, then the needs and desires of families, communities and countries are well known. The dream state serves as a rich source for the world’s knowledge, and is also therefore responsible for the outgrowth of its technology. This is a highly important point, for “the technological world out there” was at one time the world of dreams. The discoveries and inventions that made the industrial world possible were always latent in man’s and woman’s mind, and represented an inner glittering landscape of probability that he and she brought into actualization through the use of dreams — the intuitive an the conscious manipulation of material that was at one time latent.

Value fulfillment will always provide inner directions that remind man and woman constantly of the best ways in which such technology can be used. The need to possess such knowledge in uppermost in men’s and women’s mind now, and so it also becomes a vital dream topic or subject. In the dream state, then, to one extent or another man and woman seeks solutions to the problems of his and her age.

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The entire idea of the magical approach, is of itself sustaining.

It should remind us of the true effortlessness that is in a fashion responsible for our very existence. When you become overly concerned or worried in any area, remember that we are thinking those thoughts while the process of thinking is utterly effortless. That realization alone can further remind us that the conscious mind does not have to have all the information required. It only needs to have the faith that means are available — even if those are beyond its own scope of activity.

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There is an entire global dream network, in other words, that goes quite unrecognized — one of spectacular organization in which exchange of information occur that give us the basis for the formation of recognized physical events.

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People could be helped to consciously realize their participation in this worldwide dream organization. Why, I wonder, couldn’t the nations of the world set up cooperative studies to verify its existence? I think that science and religion would be violently opposed to the idea, at least in the beginning, for it would challenge many rigid beliefs held by each of those disciplines. In the deepest terms of course, such a study would actually validate the sources of science and religion. The experiment has the potential for significantly broadening our conscious understanding of the world we’re creating.

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Setting up such a global organization to study dreams, would probably require a decade of arguing among nations. Would governments gather the information, or independent agencies? How would all of this be paid for, administered and analyzed? How long would it take to acquire statistically significant data? Would the peoples of the world cooperate? I say they most enthusiastically would, for the dream research would have a sound intuitive basis: It would uncover and reinforce many deeper aspects of our individual and collective beings — and I know of few things more important than that consciously we understand ourselves as well as we can in order to meet the great challenges we’re creating.  But, imagine trying to win the cooperation of the nations of the world for such an undertaking! Actually, it would be quite an advance of we could even agree to begin talking about such a study.

Inner Backbone of Perception

Master events are those that most significantly affect our system of reality, even though the original action was not physical but took place in the inner dimension. Most events appear both in time and out of it, their action distributed between an inner and outer field of expression. Usually we are aware only of events’ exterior cores. The inner processes escape us.

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Those inner processes, however, also give many clues as to some native abilities that we have used “in the past” as a species. Those inner processes do sometimes emerge, then. Here is an example.

One morning last weekend I found myself suddenly and vividly thinking about some married friends. They lived out of town, separated in time by a drive of approximately half and hour. I found myself wishing that the friends lived closer, and I was suddenly filled with a desire to see them. I imagined the couple at the house, and surprised myself by thinking that I might indeed call them later in the day and invite them down for the evening, even though my wife and I had both decided against guests that weekend.

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Furthermore, I did not like the idea of making an invitation on such short notice. Then I became aware that those particular thoughts were intrusive, completely out of context with my immediately previous ones, for only a moment or so earlier I had been congratulating myself precisely because I had made no plans for the day or evening at all that would involve guests or other such activities. Very shortly I forgot the entire affair. Then, however, about fifteen minutes later I found the same ideas returning, this time more intently.

They lasted perhaps five minutes, I noticed them and forgot them once again. This time, however, I decided not to call my friends, and I went about my business. In about a half hour the same mental activity returned, and, finding myself struck by this, I mentioned the episode to my wife and again cast it from my mind.

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By the time it was somewhat later in the day, my wife and I ate lunch, and the mail arrived. There was a letter written the morning before (on Friday) by the same friends that had been so much in my mind. They mentioned going on a trip (on Saturday), and specifically asked if they could visit that same afternoon. From the way the letter was written, it seemed as if the friends — call them Drick and Dorian — had already started on their journey that (Saturday) morning, and would stop in San Diego on their return much later toward evening. There was no time to answer the letter, of course.

Drick and Dorian would be on the road, it seemed, unreachable by cellphone, though they had included the number of their answering service, and had also written that they would call before leaving — yet no such call had been received.

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It would be simple enough, of course, to ascribe my thoughts and feelings to more coincidence. I remembered the vividness of my feelings at the time, however. It looked as if Drick and Dorian were indeed going to arrive almost as it I had in fact called and invited them. That evening the visit did take place. Actually, some work had prevented the couple from leaving when they intended. Instead, they called later from their home to say that they were just beginning their trip, and would stop on their way.

I was well prepared for the call by then, and for the visit. Now the visit and my earlier feelings and thoughts were part of the same event, except that my subjective experience gave me clues as to the inner processes by which all events take place. More is involved than simple question: Did I perceive the visit precognitively? More is involved than the question: Did I perceive my information directly from the minds of my friends, or from the letter itself, which had already been mailed, of course, and was on its way to me at the time?

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What we have is a kind of inner backbone of perception — a backup program, so to speak, an inner perceptive mechanism with its own precise psychological tuner that in one way or another operates within the field of our intent. This is somewhat like remote sensing, or like an interior radar equipment that operates in a psychological field of attention, so that we are somewhat aware of the existence of certain events that concern us as they come into the closet range of probabilities with which we are connected.

In a certain fashion we “step into the event” at that level. We accept or reject it as a probability. We make certain adjustments, perhaps altering particular details, but we step into and become part of the inner processes — affecting, say, the shape or size or nature of the event before it becomes a definite physical actuality.

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For centuries that is the main way in which man and woman dealt with events of his or her life or tribe or village. Our modern methods of communication are in fact modeled after our inner ones. My thoughts almost blended in enough to go relatively unnoticed. They were almost innocuous enough to be later accepted as coincidence. They did have, however, an extra intentness and vitality and peculiar insistence — qualities that I have learned are indicative of unusual psychological activity. The point is that in most such cases the subjective recognition of an approaching event flows so easily and transparently into our attention, and fits in so smoothly with the events of the day, as to go unnoticed. We help mold the nature and shape of events without realizing it, overlooking those occasions when the processes might show themselves.

Even the conscious mind contains much more information about the structure of events than we realize we possess. The physical perceiving apparatuses of all organizations carry their own kind of inner systems of communication, allowing events to be manipulated on a worldwide basis before they take on what appears to be their final definitive physical occurrences in time and space.

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Individually and globewide, value fulfillment is in a fashion the purpose of all events. Value fulfillment, again, is the impetus that drives the wheels of nature, so to speak. As the origin of our world did indeed emerge from the “world of dreams,” so the true root of all events lie in such subjective activities, and the answers to individual challenges and problems are always within our grasp, ready to appear in physical actuality.

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In my next blog I hope to show the importance of value fulfillment on our own life, and give clues that will allow us to take better advantage of our own subjective and objective opportunities for such development.

Time Overlays

Time overlays are versions of master events, in that they occur in such a fashion that one “face” of an overall event may appear in one time, one in another, and so forth.

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Time overlays are the time versions of certain events, then. These time overlays always exist. They may become activated, however, by certain associations made in our present, and therefore  draw into our present time some glimpses either from the future or the past. So-called present time is thickened, then, by a psychological realization on deep levels of the psyche that all events are interrelated, and that the reincarnational experiences of any given individual provide a rich source of experience from which each person at least unconsciously draws.

Such usually unconscious knowledge is of great benefit to the species itself, so that at certain levels, at least, the knowledge of the species is not imprisoned within any given generation at once, but flows or circulates within the overall larger reincarnational picture. Probabilities are very much involved here, of course, and it is easier for particular events to fall within one time sequence than  another.

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I do not want us to feel that we are fated to experience certain events, however, for that is not the case. There will be “offshoots” of the events of our own lives, however, that may appear as overlays in our other reincarnational existences. There are certain points where such events are closer to us than others, in which mental associations at any given time may put us in correspondence with other events of a similar nature in some future or past incarnation, however. It is truer to say that those similar events are instead time versions of one larger event. As a rule we experience only one time version of any given action. Certainly it is easy to see how a birthday or anniversary, or particular symbol or object, might serve as an associative connection, rousing within us memories of issues or actions that might have happened under similar circumstances in other times.

Actually, that kind of psychological behavior represent the backbone of social organization as far as the species is concerned, and it is the usually hidden but definite past and future memories of reincarnational relationships that cement social organizations, from small tribes to large governments.

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To a certain extent, or course, we have been or will be each related to the other. In that light all of the events of time rub elbows together. We brush against the elbow of a future or past event every moment of our lives.

In the culture that we know, such information remains hidden from us. Our main belief systems lead us to feel that our present life is singular, unsupported by any knowledge of prior experience with existence, and fated to be cut off or dead-ended without a future. Instead, we always carry the inner knowledge of innumerable available futures. Our emotional life at certain levels is enriched by the unconscious realization that those who love us from past or future are connected to us by special ties that add to our emotional heritage and support.

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As many have supposed, particularly in fiction, love relationships do indeed survive time, and they put us in a special correspondence. Even as we were aware of reincarnational existences, our present psychological behavior would not be threatened but retain its prominence — for only within certain space and time intersections can physical actions occur. The more or less general acceptance of the theory of reincarnation, however, would automatically alter our social systems, add to the richness of experience, and in particular insert a fresh feeling for the future, so that we did not feel our lives dead-ended.

In earlier blogs I mentioned several times that we must reach a point at which we are able to see around the corner of seemingly contradictory material, and this is one of those occasions. Time overlays present us with a picture in which we have free will — yet each event that we choose will have its own time version. Now those time versions may be entirely different one from the others, and while we certainly initiate our own time version, in terms of usual understanding there is no true place or time in which that version can be said to actually originate.

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Such a time version suggests an occurrence in time, of course, and yet the event may leave only a ghostly track, so to speak, being hardly manifest, while in another life the time version may be of considerable prominence — while in our own experience it represents a fairly trivial incident of an ordinary afternoon.

The inner core of events, however, is held together by just that kind of activity. We are at every hand provided an unending source of probable events from past and future, from which to compose the events of our lives and society. Again, let me remind  you that all time exists simultaneously.

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In an experience last evening in the dream state, I received fresh evidence by viewing for myself portions of two other lives — merely snatches of environment, but so dearly filled with precious belongings and loved ones, so alive with immediacy — that I was shocked to realize that the full dimensions of existence could continue so completely in such detail and depth at the same time as my present life.

It seemed that I could step from any one such existence to the other as we might walk from one room to the other, and I knew that at other levels of the psyche this was indeed possible– and, of course, at other levels of the psyche those psychological doors are open.

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I have had particular difficulty, however, with “the theory of reincarnation,” because as it is usually described, it seemed that people used it to blame as the source of current misfortune, or as an excuse for personal behavior whose nature they did not otherwise understand, and it has been so maligned. Its reality, however, serves to generate activity throughout time’s framework as we understand it, to unite the species, to reinforce structures of knowledge, to transmit information, and perhaps most of all to reinforce relationships involving love, brotherhood, and cooperation between generations of men and women that would otherwise be quite separate and apart from each other.

Through such relationships, for example, say, the cavemen and cavewomen and the people of the 22nd century rub elbows, where in strict terms of time the species would seem to be quite disconnected from its “earlier” or “later” counterparts.

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Through such behavior the overall value fulfillment purposes and intents of the species are kept in focus, and those necessary requirements then planted in whatever space or time is required. Again, free will still operates in all such ventures.

Now while it seems that our world contains more and more information all the time, our particular brand of science is a relatively narrow one, in that it accepts as valid only certain specific areas of speculation. The areas outside of its boundaries become taboo, so that the realm of the unknown is no longer the material universe or the mysteries of space, but the interior universe and the mysteries of the mind as these are experienced or suspected to exist outside of those official areas. To that degree, the unknown is more feared by science than it ever was by religion.

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Religion was hampered — and is — by its interpretation of good and evil, but it did not deny the existence of other versions of consciousness, or different kinds of psychological activity and life. Reincarnation suggests, or course, the extension of personal existence beyond one time period, independently of one bodily form, the translation or transmission of intelligence through non-physical frameworks, and implies psychological behavior, memory and desire as purposeful action without the substance of any physical mechanism — propositions that science at its present stage of development simply could not buy, and for which it could find no evidence, for its methods would automatically preclude the type of experience that such evidence would require.

People can become quite frightened, then, of any kind of experience of a personal nature that imply reincarnational life, for they are then faced with the taboos of science, or perhaps by the distorted explanations of some religions or cults. We therefore protect ourselves from many quite natural up thrusts that would on their own give us experience with our own reincarnational existences, and we are often denied psychological comfort in times of stress that we might otherwise receive.

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I do not necessarily mean that full-blown pictures of other existences would necessarily come into our mind, but that in one way or another we would receive a support or change of mood as those loved by us in other lives in one way or another sensed our need and responded.

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The entire nature of events, then, exists in a different way than we have supposed, only small portions slicing into the reality that we recognize — yet all underneath connected to a vast psychological activity. We might compare events to psychological consonants that underlay or underlie the more unusual features of physical psychological environment.

The Outside-of-Time Activity

Master events, involve “work” or action whose main thrust exists outside of time, yet whose effects are felt within time.

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Such effects may appear suddenly within time’s context, rather than slowly emerge, say, into that framework. It is of course, that kind of outside-of-time activity that in our terms explains the origin of our universe. There are dimensions of activity, then, that do not appear within time’s structure, and developments that happen quite naturally, following different laws of development than those we recognize. It is not just that highly accelerated versions of time can occur at other levels of actuality, but that there are dimensions in which those versions are not impediments to the natural “flow” of events into expression.

Our closest approximation will be, again, our experience with time in the dream state — or instances in which complicated problems are suddenly solved for us in dreams or in other states of consciousness, so that the answers appear full-blown before us.

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There are “durations,” then, that have nothing to do with time as we understand it: psychological motions that manipulate time but are apart from it. Any sudden emergence of a completed universe would then imply an unimaginable and a spectacular development of organization — that it did not just appear from nowhere, but as the “completed physical version” of an inner highly concentrated endeavor, the physical manifestation of an inspiration that then suddenly emerges into physical actuality.

That kind of activity, that kind of “work,” exists behind all of the structures and organizations and experiences with which we are familiar.

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The world of ideas everywhere permeates physical reality, but ideas, even they are unexpressed, possess their own organizations, correspondences, their own spheres of motion and development. Master events emerge from that reality of idea, now, from which all ideas originate, uniting these through the use of natural correspondences. Every physical manifestation that we know has its non-physical counterpart, in which it is always couched, from which it came, and to which it will return.

Our historical time is, say, but one species of time that dwells upon the earth. There are many others. Time itself emerges from idea, which is itself timeless, so in those terms there was no point where time began, though such a reference becomes necessary from our own viewpoint.

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It is probably almost impossible for man or woman to see that he or she forms the idea of historical context through his or her own associations and focuses. The heavy, specialized use of so-called rational thought has often caused him to narrow even his or her neurological recognition of other kinds of experience that might enlarge his or her view. In dreams there is greater leeway in that regard. Consciousness becomes more familiar with its own inner motion, and even with the kinds of work and actions it performs outside of its usual waking prejudices. The story of the Creation, as Biblical stated, is the symbolic representation of a master event — a legend that became its own event of course, forming about it whole arts and cultures, religions and disciplines. The same applies to Christianity itself, for all of the seemingly historical events connected with the official Christ did not happen in physical reality. They happened at another level of actuality, and were inserted into our time framework — touching a character here, a definitely known historical event there, mixing and merging with the events of the time, until the two lines of activity were so entwined that we could not unravel one without unraveling the other.

History happened in certain definite forms because of a belief in events that did not , in our world of facts occur. The main, brilliant thrust of those inner events, therefor, splashed out upon the human landscape, propelling peoples and civilizations.

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The Christ story in the beginning was not nearly as singular and neat as it might now seem, for the finally established official Christ figure was one settled upon from endless versions of a god-man, with which man’s and woman’s psyche has long been involved: He was the psychic composite, the official Christ, carrying within his psychological personage echoes of old and new gods alike — a figure barely begun, to be filled out in time, although originating outside of it.

Such master events cause physical events, but they do not emerge originally from them.

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Paul (Saul of Tarsus) had his vision. Now the vision (in which Paul not only saw the light of Christ, but heard his voice) happened in the world of fact. It occurred — but Paul did not see, or communicate with, a person of divine heritage, sent by his father to earth, who lived the life of the official Christ, and who was crucified. Paul had a vision in response to the needs, desires, and dictates of his own psyche as it was connected to the world of his time, following the patterns of stories about Christ that he has heard that had begun to release within him a great yearning that was, in that vision, then, expressed.

Christianity for many centuries served as an amazingly creative organizational framework, that expressed the vast complexity of the soul’s reality. It also in its way managed to even focus some of man’s and woman’s less handsome attributes toward ends that were less reprehensible than in the past. Master events of that particular nature bring about a completely new interpretation of historic events. Their intensity, power, and seemingly impelling nature exist precisely because their origins are not physical, but are drawn from the psyche’s deepest resources.

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If I have believed in the phenomenon of sin and sought — apparently too rigidly — to avoid it, my intentions and interests always were not the avoidance of sin so much as the pursuit of eternal truths; the alliance with universal mind. Those goals ignite our creative powers and have (and still do) propelled us to explore all categories of existence possible, seeking to express those divine mysteries that lie within and behind each existence — yours and mine as well.

Our explorations involved no second-handed evidence handed down by others, but the direct personal encounters of our consciousness and being with the vast elements of the unknown — a meeting of the self (human and vulnerable) with the psychological realms of gods and eternities; giant realms of mind that our nature felt attracted to, and was uniquely equipped to perceive.

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I believe in the soul’s survival first of all, and inspired the ‘creative self’ to step out as freely as possible even while in my heart I also believed in the existence of sin and devil. I felt upon my heart the heavy unkind mark of Cain, sensing that humanity carries (unfairly) the almost indelible strain — the tragic flaw — of being tinged by sin and ancient inequities. Thusly I reasoned: If I am flawed I must automatically distort even those experiences of the soul that seem clearest. I must unwittingly fall into error when I trust myself the most, since I share that sinful propensity. Yet despite those feelings I do (we do) unswervingly set forward.

The Knower Self

These knower selves represent the greater source-selves out of which our present persons spring. We possess far more knowledge about our own lives, and the lives of others, than we were intellectually aware of. We act on that knowledge, for one thing, when we are born physically, when we grow. The squirrel acts on that kind of knowledge when it buries nuts and the squirrel’s greater knowledge includes the knowledge of its species as well.

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Knower represents the part that possesses such knowledge. In practical terms, it is very important to understand that such knowledge and protection do exist, that all of our problems need not be solved through conscious reasoning alone — and, indeed, few problems can be solved exclusively in that fashion.

Our work is protected, not only because it is one of our projects, but also because in a fashion it becomes its own kind of entity — a well-intended one that exists in a rather concentrated form, distilled from our own best aspirations. Hence it is also filled with energy, and also becomes a collector of it.

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I do not want to become involved in a confusion of terms. The mind’s powers are far greater than those generally assigned to rational thought alone. Rational reasoning, overdone, can for example actually limit practical use of the intellect’s faculties, and therefore serve to dim some of the mind’s scope. In a fashion, again, Knower represents the true capacity of the mind’s functioning, the kind of instant comprehension that is behind both the intuitions and the intellect’s activities. We are dealing, then, with the spacious intellect, the knower.

That knower in instantly aware of all our needs, and is the portion of the universe that is personally disposed in our direction, because it’s energies form our own person. That protection always couches our existence. We can be unaware of that state. We can deny it or refuse it, but we are within it regardless. It forms the very fabric of our individual beings. Value fulfillment means that each individual, each entity, of whatever nature, spontaneously, automatically seeks those conditions that are suited to its own fulfillment, and to the fulfillment of others.

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In the most basic of terms, no one’s fulfillment can be achieved at the expense of another’s. Fulfillment does not happen that way. Our very lives seeks the best directions for fulfillment. Our work seeks its own best direction for fulfillment.

When we realize this, then we can accept seeming setbacks, or seeming contradictions, with a calm detached air, realizing that such factors appear as they do only in the light of our present intellectual knowledge — a knowledge that must be limited to current events — and that in the larger picture known to us at other levels, such seeming contradictions, or seemingly unfortunate situations, or whatever, will be seen, at that intellectual level, so if we base all our judgments — all or our judgments — at that level alone, then we can be quite short-sighted.

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We are dealing with the psychology of experience, however, so we ourselves alter the situation according to our own reactions. If we feel threatened by certain situations, and lacking protection, then we will take certain steps that might not be taken otherwise, so our actions are vastly different according to whether or not we realize that we are indeed being protected.

If we build up feelings of threat, then at our level we also react to those. The protection exists, but in such cases we do not allow ourselves to take full advantage of it.

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The ideas for inventions, tools or products exist mentally, to be brought into activation whenever they are required, say, by circumstances, or by the environment.

Various tribes in different parts of the earth would suddenly begin using new tools, say, not because there might be any physical communication among them, or cultural exchanges, but because separate conditions in their own environments triggered mental processes that activated the particular images of the tools required for a given job at hand. The information, which was non-physical, was then transformed into practical knowledge either from inner visual imagery by itself, or through the state of dreaming.

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Dreaming have always served as such a connective. We know more about our life than we think we do — and far more about our life and society than we are intellectually aware of. Early man and woman was in that same position, and his or her inventions — his/her tools, his/her artistry, and so forth — came into being from the inner, ever-present realm of the mind, triggered by his/her unconscious but quite real estimation of his or her position within the universe at large, and in regard to his or her own environment.

In a fashion, cultures do not evolve in the kind of straightforward manner that is usually supposed. Of course, cultures change, but man instantly began to fashion culture, as for example beavers instantly began to form dams. They did not learn to form dams through trial and error. They did not learn for untold centuries build faulty dams, for example. They were born, or created, dam makers.

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Man and woman automatically began to form culture. He or she did not start with the rudiments of culture, as is thought. He and she did not learn through trial and error to think clear thoughts. He and she thought quite clearly from the beginning. He and she did learn through trial and error various ways of best translating those thoughts into physical action. The first cultures were as rich as our own. In our terms, reading and writing are great advantages, but it is also true that in the past the mind was also used to record information, and transmit it with an artistry that we do not use.

Memory was so perfected that men and women at one time were indeed living histories, and carried within their minds their genealogies and backgrounds and the knowledge of their peoples, which were then passed on to their children. It is true that reading and writing have certain advantages over such procedures, but it is also true that knowledge possessed in that old fashion became a part of man and woman, and a society, in a much more personal, meaningful manner. It was, of course, a different kind of knowing. At its best it did not lead to rote renditions of remembered material, but to dramatic renderings of it through music, poetry, dancing. In other words, its rendition was accompanied by creative physical expression. It is true that, practically speaking, a man’s or woman’s mind, could not hold all of the information available now in our world — but much of that information does not deal with basic knowledge about the universe or man’s or woman’s place within it. It is a kind of secondary information — interesting, but not life-giving.

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Man and woman did not have to learn by trial and error what plants were beneficial to eat, and what herbs were good for healing. The knower in him and her knew that, and he and she acted on the information spontaneously. The knower is of course always present, but the part of our culture that is built upon the notion that no such inner knowledge exists, and those foolish ideas of rational thought as the only provider of answers, therefore often limit our own use of inner abilities.

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We end up with, if all goes well, a kind of “new” illuminated consciousness, an intellect who realizes that the source of its own light is not itself, but comes from the spontaneous power that provides the fuel for its thoughts.

Master Events

Master events are those whose main activity takes place in inner dimensions. Such events are too multidimensional to appear clearly in our reality, so that we see or experience only parts of them. They are source events. Their main thrust is in what we can call the vaster dimension of dreams, the unknown territory of inner reality. The terms we use make no difference. The original action, however, of such events is unmanifest — not physical. Those events then “subsequently” show themselves in time and space, with extraordinary results.

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They shed their light upon the “facts” of historical time, and influence those events. Master events may end up translated through those events. Master events may end up translated through mythology, or religion or art, or the effects may actually serve to give a framework to an entire civilization. As indeed occurred in the case of Christianity, as I will explain later.

Now the origin of the universe that we know, as I have described it, was of course a master events. The initial action did not occur in space or time, but formed space and time.

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In our terms other universes, with all of their own space and time structures, were created simultaneously, and exist simultaneously. The effect of looking outward into space, and therefore backward into time, is a kind of built-in convention that appears within our own space-time picture. We must remember, then, when we think in terms of origins, that the very word, “origin,” is dependent upon time-conventions, and a belief in beginnings and endings. Beginnings and endings are themselves effects that seem to be facts to our perceptions. In a fashion they simply represent beginnings and endings, the boundaries, the reaches and the limitations of our own span of attention.

I said that in our terms all universes were created simultaneously — at the same time. The very sentence structure has time built in, so we are bound to think that I am speaking of an almost indescribable past. Also, I use time terms, since we are so used ourselves to the kind of categorizing, so here we will certainly run into our first seeming contradiction — when I say that in the higher order of events all universes, including our own, have their original creations occurring now, with all of their pasts and futures built in, and with all of their scales of time winding ever outward, and all of their appearances of space, galaxies and nebulae, and all of their seeming  changes, being instantly and originally created in what we think of as this moment.

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Our universe cannot be its own source. Its inner mysteries — which are indeed the mysteries of consciousness, not matter– cannot be explained, and must remain incomprehensible, if we try to study then from the viewpoint of our objective experience alone. We must look to the source of the experience. We must look not to space but to the source of space, not to time but the source of time — and must look to the kind of consciousness that experiences space and time. We must look, therefore, to events that show themselves through historical action, but whose origins are elsewhere. None of this is really beyond our capabilities, as long as we try to enlarge our framework.

The entire idea of evolution, of course, requires strict adherence to the concept of continuing time, and the changes that time brings, and such concepts can at best provide the most surface kind of explanation for the existence of our species or any other.

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I hope, again, to stretch the reaches of both imagination and intellect in my blogs, to give a feeling for events larger than our usual true-and-false, fact-or-fancy categories. Our existence as a species is characteristized far more by our unique use of our imaginations than it is by any physical attributes. Our connections with that unmanifest universe have always helped direct our imaginations, made us aware of the rich veins of probabilities possible in physical existence, so that we could then use our intellects to decide which of the alternate routes we wanted as a species to follow.

In that regard, it is true that in the other species innate knowledge is more clearly, brilliantly, and directly translated into action. I am not speaking of some dumb instinct, but instead of an intuitive knowing, a high intelligence different from our own, but amazingly complex, with which other species are equipped.

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Man and woman, deals with probabilities and with creativity in a unique fashion — a fashion that is made possible because of the far more dependable behavior of the other species.

In a fashion man and woman also are equipped with the ability to initiate actions on a non-physical level that then become physical and continue to wind in and out of both realities, entwining dream events with historic ones, in such a fashion that the original non-physical origins are often forgotten. man and woman overlays the true reality quite spontaneously. He or she often reacts to dream events as if they were physical and to physical events as if they were dreams. This applies individually and collectively, but man and woman are often unaware of that interplay.

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In the terms of evolution as we like to think of it, ideas are more important than genes, for we are again dealing with more than the surfaces of events. We are dealing with more than some physical mechanics of being. For one thing, the genes themselves are conscious, though in different terms than ours. Our cultures — our civilizations — obviously affect the wellbeing of our species, and those cultures are formed by our ideas, and forged through the use of our imagination and our intellect.

Certain bloodlines, in our terms, were extinguished because of our beliefs in Christianity, as people were killed in our holy wars. Our beliefs have directed who should go to war and who should not, who should live and who should die, who should be educated and who should not — all matters directly touching upon the survival of certain families throughout history, and therefore affecting the species as a whole.

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I am not here specifically blaming Christianity, for far before its emergence, our ideas and beliefs about good and evil were far more important in all matter regarding the species that any simple questions of genetic variances, natural selection, or environmental influence. In man’s and woman’s case, at least, the selection of who should live or die was often anything but natural. If we are to understand the characteristics of the species, then we cannot avoid the study of man’s and woman’s consciousness.

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Master events are actually other wrinkles in probabilities. They explain why Christianity has had such far-reaching effects, for almost 2,000 years, when its original experiences were so small in time and space — why we attach so much significance to those desert countries over there even now.

Units of consciousness are not neutral, mathematical or mechanistic

They are the smallest imaginable “packages” of consciousness that we can imagine, and despite any ideas to the contrary, basically consciousness has nothing to do with size. If that were the case, it would take more than a world-sized globe to contain the consciousness of simply one cell.

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So our physical life is the result of a spectacular spontaneous order — the order of the body spontaneously formed by the units of consciousness. Our experience of the world is largely determined by our imaginations and our reasoning abilities. These did not develop through time, as per usual evolutionary beliefs. Both imagination and reason belonged to the species from the beginning, but the species has used these qualities in different ways throughout what we think of as historic time. There is great leeway in that direction, so that the two can be combined in many many alternate fashions, each particular combination giving us its own unique picture of reality, and determining our experience in the world.

Our many civilizations, historically speaking, each with its own fields of activity, its own sciences, religions, politics and art — these all represent various ways that man has used imagination and reason to form a framework through which a more or less cohesive reality is experienced.

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Man and woman, then, has sometimes stressed the power of the imagination and let its great dramatic light illuminate the physical events about him or her, so that they were largely seen through its cast. Exterior events in those circumstances become magnets attracting the dramatic force of the imagination. Inner events are stressed over exterior ones. The objects of the world then become important not only for what they are but because of their standing in an inner world of meaning. In such cases, of course, it becomes quite possible to go so far in that direction that the events of nature almost seem to disappear amid the weight of their symbolic content.

In recent times the trend has been in the opposite direction, so that the abilities of the imagination were considered highly suspect, while exterior events were considered the only aspects of reality. We ended up with a true-or-false kind of world, in which it seemed that the answers to the deepest questions about life could be answered quite correctly and adequately by some multiple-choice test. Man’s and woman’s imagination seemed then to be allied with falsehood, unless its products could be turned to advantage in the materialistic existence. In that context, the imagination was tolerated at all only because it sometimes offered new technological inventions.

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I have taken two contrasting examples of the many ways in which the powers of the imagination and those of the reasoning abilities can be used. There are endless varieties, however — each subjectively and genetically possible, and many, of course, that we have yet developed as a species.

Why would an individual form the reality of schizophrenic behavior?

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On the question of “mental disorders,” it is highly important that individual integrity be stressed, rather than the blanket definitions that are usually accorded to any group of symptoms. In many such circumstances, however, such individuals are combining the imagination and the reasoning abilities in ways that are not in keeping with their historic periods. It would not be entirely out of keeping, though somewhat exaggerated a statement, to claim that men and women who stockpile nuclear weapons in order to preserve peace are insane. In our society, such activities are, in a way that completely escapes me, somehow under the label of humanitarianism!

Such plans are not considered insane ones — though in the deepest meaning of that word, they are indeed. There are many reasons for such actions, but an overemphasis upon what we think of as the reasoning abilities, as opposed to what we think of as imaginative abilities, is at least partially to blame.

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In the schizophrenic case, we have a mixture of those characteristics in which interior events — the events of the imagination — cast too strong a light upon physical events as far as the socially accepted blend is concerned. Again, I am not speaking about all cases of mental disorder here. I do however, want to make the point that our prized psychological norm as a species means that we must also be allowed a great leeway in the use of the imagination and the intellect. Otherwise, we could become locked into a rigid conscious stance, one in which both the imagination and the intellect could advance no  further. It is vitally important that we realize the great psychological diversity that is present within our psychological behavior — and those varieties of psychological experience are necessary. They give us vital psychological feedback, and they exercise the reaches of our abilities in ways that are overall most advantageous.

The schizophrenic man or woman wants to live largely in his or her own world. He or she hurts no one. He and she supports himself or herself a good deal of the time. His or her view of reality is eccentric from most viewpoints. He or she adds a flavor to the world that would be missing otherwise, and through his or she very eccentricity, to some extent he and she shows other people that their rigid views of reality may indeed have chinks in them here and there.

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I do not mean to idealize the schizophrenic either, or others of his or her kind, but to point out that we can use our imaginations and intellect in other fashions than we do. In fact, such fashions are not only genetically possible, but genetically probable — a matter I will discuss in later blogs. The imagination, of course, deals with the implied universe, those vast areas of reality that are not physically manifest, while reason usually deals with the evidence of the world that is before it. That statement is generally true, but specifically, of course, any act of the imagination involves reasoning, and any act of reason involves the imagination.

When You Are Who You Are

When you are determines where you are. Space is in many ways more “timely” than we think. I am not speaking of the usual time concepts, of course, of consecutive moments, but of a certain dimension of activity in which our space happens.

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As long as we are trying to explain the origin of our world in a new fashion, we will be bringing in many subjects that may not usually appear in such discussions. The world as we know it emerges from an inner, more extensive sphere of dimensions into actuality. It is supported then by a seemingly invisible framework.

Beyond certain levels it is almost meaningless to speak in terms of particles, but I will for now use the term “invisible particles” because we are familiar with it. Invisible particles, then, form the foundation of our world. The invisible particles that I am referring to, however, have the ability to transform themselves into mass, or to divest themselves of it. And the invisible particles of which I speak not only possess consciousness — but each one is, if you will, a seed that contains within itself a potential for an infinite number of gestalts. Each such invisible particle contains within itself the potential to embark upon an infinite number of probable variations of consciousness. To that degree such psychological particles are at stage unspecialized, while they contain within themselves the innate ability to specialize in whatever direction becomes suitable.

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They can be, and they are, everywhere at once. Sometimes they operate with mass and sometimes without it. Now we are composed of such invisible particles, and so is everything else that we can physically perceive. To that degree portions of our own consciousness are everywhere at once. They are not lost, or spread out in some generalized fashion, but acutely responsive, and as highly alert as our familiar consciousness is now.

The self that we are aware of represents only one “position” in which those invisible particles happen to intersect, gain mass, build up form. scientists can only perceive an electron as it is to them. They cannot really track it. They cannot be certain of its position and its speed at the same time, and to some extent the same applies to our consciousness. The speed of our own thoughts takes those thoughts away from us even as we think them — and we can never really examine a thought, but only the thought of a thought.

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Because we are, we are everywhere at once. I am quite aware of the fact that we can scarcely follow that psychological motion. As we will see later, our imagination can lead us toward some recognition, even toward some emotional comprehension, of this concept. While our reasoning abilities at first may falter, that is only because we have trained our intellect to respond in a limited fashion.

There are what I will call “intervals of perception.” We are usually conscious of events that are significant neurologically, and that neurological timing is the end result of an almost infinite series of sequences. Those sequences are areas in which activities happen. Each consciousness within each area is tuned into its proper sequence. Each area builds on the others. The invisible particles are the framework upon which our body is formed, for example — they move faster than the speed of light, yet we are not dizzy. We are aware of no such motion. We are tuned into a different sequence of action.

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There are, then, different worlds operating with different frequencies at different intervals. They are conscious in other times, though we are neurologically equipped to perceive our own interval structures. When I speak of time, I do not merely refer to other centuries as we think of them. But between the moments that we know, and neurologically accept, there are other kinds of moments, if we prefer, other versions of time, and other kinds of accomplishments and fulfillments that are not dependent upon usual ideas of, say, growth through time.

Some of this may seem quite difficult at first reading, but I know that we are all far more intelligent than we realize we are — far more intuitive. I know also that we are tired of simple tales told to us as if we were children, and that our minds and hearts yearn for worthwhile challenges. We want to extend ourselves as far as possible, because each of us has been born with that urge toward value fulfillment.

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It is only because, particularly in our times, we have trained ourselves to limit the nature of our own consciousnesses that such ideas seem strange. We have thus far believed that we must train our great imaginations and our intelligences to confine themselves and their activities to the physical world as we have been told it exists. In childhood, before we so leashed our imaginations, however, we each had our own dreams — dreams that awakened us to other portions of our own identities. There are many experiences open to us now — if we can be free enough to allow them — that will give us glimpses of those other intervals in which we have a reality.

I will deal with some such exercises later in future blogs. All such methods, however, are useless if our beliefs hold us back, and so the main thrust of all of my blogs is to increase your own areas of thought and speculation.

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In material like this, but in general you end up with information that does indeed come from outside of time in certain important fashions.

Probabilities intersect at each point with our time, and those probabilities are psychologically directed so that, in our terms once again, he and she are at an excellent intersection point, where the prognosis is excellent. And we all are responsible, for all of our lives merge in their fashions.

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Ordinarily we think of mass as meaning the bulk and/or weight of an object. In classical physics, the amount of matter in a given object is measured according to its relation to inertia, which in turn is the tendency of matter to keep moving in the same direction, if moving, or to stay at rest if at rest. An object’s mass is arrived at through dividing its weight by the acceleration caused by gravity.

Between each ticking of the clock

Long centuries pass

In universes hidden from our own.

Subjective reality of Cells

Our established fields of knowledge do not grant any subjective reality to cells.

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Cells, however, possess an inner knowledge of their own shapes, and of any other shapes in their immediate environment — this apart from the communication system that operates on biological levels between all cells.

To some important degree, cells possess curiosity, an impetus toward action, a sense of their own balance, and sense of being individual while being, for example, a part of a tissue or an organ. The cell’s identification biologically is highly connected with this very precise knowledge of its own shape, or sometimes shapes. Cells, then, know their own forms.

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In highly complicated cellular structures like ourselves, with our unique mental properties, we end up with a vital inborn sense of shape and form. The ability to draw is a natural outgrowth of this sensing of shape, this curiosity of form. On a quite unconscious level we possess a biological self-image that is quite  different from the self that we see in a mirror. It is a knowledge of bodily form from the inside out, so to speak, composed of cellular shapes and organizations, operating at the maximum. The simple cell, again, has a curiosity about its environment, and on our much more advance cellular level our own curiosity is unbounded. It is primarily felt as a curiosity about shapes: the urge to touch, to explore, to feel edges and smooth places.

There is particularly a fascination with space itself, in which, so to speak, there is nothing to touch, no shapes to perceive. We are born, then, with a leaning toward the exploration of form and shape inparticular.

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Remember that cells have consciousness, so while I say these leanings are biologically entwined, they are also mental properties. Drawing in its simplest form is, again, an extension of those inclinations, and in a fashion serves two purposes. Particularly on the part of children, it allows them to express forms and shapes that they see mentally first of all. When they draw circles or squares, they are trying to reproduce those inner shapes, transposing those images outward into the environment — a creative act, highly significant, for it gives children experience in translating inner perceived events of a personal nature into a shared physical reality apparent to all.

When children draw objects they are successfully, then, turning the shapes of the exterior world into their personal mental experiences — possessing them mentally, so to speak, through physically rendering the forms. The art of drawing or painting to one extent or another involves those two processes. An astute understanding of inner energy and outer energy is required, and for great art an intensification and magnification of both elements.

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The species chooses the best conditions in which to display and develop such to the utmost, taking into consideration all its other needs and purposes. The particular, brilliant, intensified flowering of painting and sculpture that took place, say, in the time of Michelangelo (1475-1564) could not, in our probability, have occurred after the birth of technology, for example, and certainly not in our own era, where images are flashed constantly before our eyes on computers, television and in the movies, where they are rambunctiously present in our magazines and advertisements. We are everywhere surrounded by photography of all kinds, but in those days images outside of those provided by nature’s objects were highly rare.

People could physically only see what was presently before their eyes — no postcards with pictures of the Alps, or far places. Visual data consisted of what the eye could see — and that was indeed a different kind of world, a world in which a sketched object was of considerable value. Portraits were possessed only by the priests and nobility. We must remember also that the art of the great masters was largely unknown to the poor peasants of Europe, much less to the world at large. Art was for those who could enjoy it — who could afford it. There were no prints to be passed around, so art, politics, and religion were all connected. Poor people saw lesser versions of religious paintings in their own simple churches, done by local artists of far lesser merit than those who painted for the popes.

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The main issue, however, in that particular era, was a shared belief system, a system that consisted of, among other things, implied images that were neither here nor there — neither entirely earthly nor entirely divine — a mythology of God, angels, demons, and entire host of Biblical characters that were images in man’s and woman’s imagination, images to be physically portrayed. Those images were like an entire artistic language. Using them, the artist automatically commented upon the world, the times, God, man, woman, and officialdom.

Those mythological images and their belief system were shared by all — peasants and the wealthy — to a large degree. They were, then highly charged emotionally. Whether an artist painted saints or apostles as heroic figures, as ideas embodied in flesh, or natural men, he commented on the relationship between the natural and the divine.

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In a fashion, those stylized figures that stood for the images of God, apostles, saints, and so forth, were like a kind of formalized abstract form, into which the artist painted all of his or her emotions and all of his or her beliefs, all of his or her hopes and dissatisfactions. Let no one make God the Father look like a mere human, for example! He must be seen in heroic dimensions, while Christ could be shown in divine and human attributes also. The point is that the images the artists were trying to portray were initially mental and emotional ones, and the paintings were supposed to represent not only themselves but the great drama of divine and human interrelationship, and the tension between the two. The paintings themselves seemed to make the heavenly horde come alive. If no one had seen Christ, there were pictures of him.

This was an entirely different kind of art than we have now. It was an attempt to objectify inner reality as it was perceived through a certain belief system. Whether the artist disagreed with certain issues or not, the belief system was there as an invisible framework. That intense focus that united belief systems, that tension between a sensed subjective world and the physical one, and the rarity of images to be found elsewhere, brought art into that great flowering.

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Later, as man and woman insisted upon more objectivity of a certain kind, he and she determined that images of men and women should look like men and women — human beings, with weaknesses and strengths. The heroic mold began to vanish. Artists decided to stick to portraying the natural world as they saw it with their natural eyes, and to cast aside the vast field of inner imagery. Some of Da Vinci’s sketches already show that tendency, and he is fascinating because with is undeniable artistic tendencies he also began to show those tendencies that would lead toward the birth of modern science.

His notebooks, for example, dealt with minute observations made upon aspects of nature itself. He combined the forces of highly original, strong imagination with very calculated preciseness, a kind of preciseness that would lead to detailed sketches of flowers, trees, the action of water — all of nature’s phenomena.

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Now: Drawing of that nature flourishes in our times in an different fashion, divorced to some extent from its beginnings — in, for example, the highly complicated plans of engineers; the unity of, say, precise sketching and mathematics, necessary in certain sciences, with the sketching being required for all of the inventions that are now a part of our world. In our world, technology is our art. It is through the use of technology and science that we have sought to understand our relationship with the universe.

Science has until recently provided us with a unified belief system that is only now eroding — and if you forgive me, our space voyages have simply been physical attempts to  probe into that same unknown that other peoples in other times have tried to explore through other means. Technology has been responsible for the fact so many people have been able to see the great paintings of the world, either directly or through reproductions — and more people are familiar with the works of the great masters than ever were in their lifetimes.

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The species uses those conditions, however, so that the paintings of the great masters can serve as models and impetuses, not simply for the extraordinary artwork involved, but to re-arouse within man and woman those emotions that brought the paintings into being.

Man and woman always does best, or his and her best, when he or she sees himself or herself in heroic terms. While the Roman Catholic Church gave him and her a powerful, cohesive belief system, for many reasons those beliefs shifted so that the division between man and woman and God became too great. Man and woman the sinner took over from man and woman the “child of God”. As a result, one we see in art particularly, man and woman become a heroic figure, then a natural one. The curiosity that had been directed toward divinity became directed toward nature. man’s and woman’s sense of inquiry led him and her, then, to begin to paint more natural portraits and images. He and she turned to landscapes also. This was an inevitable process. As it occurred, however, man and woman began to make great distinctions between the world of the imagination and the world of nature, until finally he or she became convinced that the physical world was real and the imaginative world was not. So his or her paintings became more and more realistic.

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Art became wedded, then, to phenomena directly before the eyes. Therefore, in a way it could present man and woman with no more data than he or she had before. Imaginative interpretations seemed like pretensions. Art largely ended up — in those terms, now — as the handmaiden of technology: engineering plans, mathematical diagrams, and so forth. What we call abstract art tried to reverse that process, but even the abstract painters did not believe in the world of the imagination, in which there were any heroic dimensions, and the phase is largely transitory.

I did mean to mention that man’s and woman’s use of perspective in painting was a turning point (early in the 15th century) in that it foreshadowed the turning of art away from its imaginative colorations toward a more specific physical rendering — that is, to a large degree after that the play of the imagination would not be allowed to “distort” the physical frame of reference.

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All of this involved the triggering of innate abilities at certain points in time by the the species at large, and on the parts of certain individuals, as their purposes and those of the species merged.

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Woodcuts and wood blocks were used for a variety of purposes by the ancient Chinese and Egyptians, for example, and even by the Romans. Many of the early prints created in Europe illustrate religious subjects. One of the first dated European woodcuts, showing a religious figure, appeared in 1423; a book bearing woodcut illustrations was produced circa 1460; the first Roman book containing woodcuts was made in 1467; Bibles were illustrated with woodcuts in the late 15th century. The earliest known engravings, printed on paper, date from around 1450; pictorial engravings and etching were evidently developed in Germany in the early 1500s. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) experimented with his own method of copper engraving. But all of these efforts were beginnings: There couldn’t have been any mass circulation of printed material in those days.

What happened to all the Rembrandts?

Why isn’t there at least one artist in all of the world painting today whose ability equals Rembrandt’s, and who uses that great gift to evoke the depths of compassion for the human condition as Rembrandt did? For in my opinion there isn’t such a one around. By extension, why isn’t there a Rubens or a Velazquez or a Vermeer operating now? My choices are personally arbitrary, or course — yet why don’t we have a Rembrandt contributing to  our current reality? Just those four artists, whose lives spanned a period of only 98 years (from 1577 to 1675), explored human insight in powerful ways. To link the “great masters” with our species’ reincarnational intents and drives, opens up a new field for understanding my question, and a very large and intriguing one indeed.

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Our many excellent “modern” painters inevitably work within a different world ambience. Our species’ art is just no longer the same — a fact I both applaud and mourn. However, I do feel that in the course of ordinary time we have either lost certain qualities of art or no longer stree them.