Category Archives: Gestalt

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.

The “Genetic System” is far more open than is usually supposed

The genetic system not only contains and conveys information, but it also reacts to information from the physical and cultural worlds.

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In a way I hope to explain, then, the genetic system also reacts to those beliefs and events that are paramount in any given civilization. Events can trigger genetic activity — not simply through, say, chemical reactions, but through individual and mass beliefs about the safety or lack of it in the world at large.

There are also what I will call genetic dreams, which are inspired directly by genetic triggering. These help form and direct consciousness as it exists in any given individual from before birth.

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The fetus dreams. As its physical growth takes place in the womb, so the sleeping of its consciousness is also extended by genetic dreams. These particular fetus-oriented dreams are are most difficult to describe, for they are actually involved with forming the contours of the individual consciousness. Such dreams provide the subjective understanding from which thoughts are developed, and in those terms complete thoughts are possible before the brain itself is fully formed. It is the process of thinking that helps bring the brain into activity, and not the other way around.

Such thoughts are like, now, electrical patterns that form their own magnets. The ability to conceptualize is precise in the fetus, and the fetus does conceptualize. The precise orientation of that conceptualizing, and the precise orientation of the thinking patterns, wait for certain physical triggers received from the parents and the environment after birth, but the processes of conceptualization and of thought are already established. This establishment takes place in genetic dreams.

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Infants think long before they can speak. Thought must come before language. Language is thought’s handmaiden.

The ability to use language is also genetically built-in, through the precise orientation, again, with the physical triggering of the parents’ native language. Children learn such languages mentally long before they are physically capable of speaking them; but again, in genetically inspired dreams, children — or rather, infants — practice language. before such infants hear their parents speak, however, they are telepathic communication, and even in the fetus genetic dreams involve the coding and interpretation of language. Those dreams themselves inspire the physical formation necessary to bring about their own actualization.

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Genetic dreams of one kind or another continue throughout our lives, whether or not we are consciously aware of them. They were of prime importance in “man’s and woman’s evolution,” as we think of it. They were the source of dreams, mentioned in earlier blogs, that sent man and woman on migrations after food, that led him or her toward fertile land. Those dreams are most closely related to survival in physical existence, and whenever that survival seems threatened such dreams arise to consciousness whenever possible.

They are the dreams that warn of famines or of wars. Such dreams, however, can also be triggered often, as in our own times, when the conscious mind is convinced that the survival of the species is threatened — and in such cases the dreams then actually represent man’s and woman’s fears. Over-anxiety, then, can confuse the genetic system, and in a variety of ways. The existence of each of the species is dependent upon trust, indeed a biological optimism, in which each species feels the freedom to develop the potential of its members in relative safety, within the natural frameworks of existence.  Each species comes into being not merely feeling a natural built-in trust in its own validity, but is literally propelled by exuberance in its ability to cope with  its environment. It knows that it is uniquely suited to its place within life’s framework. The young of all species exhibit an unquenchable rambunctiousness. That rambunctiousness is built in.

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Animals know that their lives spell our life’s meaning. They feel their relationship with all other forms of life. They know that their relationship with all other forms of life. They know that their existences are vitally important in the framework of planetary existence. Beyond that, they identify themselves with the spirit of life within them so fully and so completely that to question its meaning would be inconceivable. Not inconceivable because such creatures cannot think, but because life’s meaning is so self-evident to them.

Whenever man or woman believes that life is meaningless, whenever he or she feels that value fulfillment is impossible, or indeed nonexistent, then he or she undermines his or her genetic heritage. He or she separates himself and herself from life’s meaning. He or she feels vacant inside. Man and woman for centuries attached faith, hope, and charity to the beliefs of established religions. Instead, these are genetic attributes, inspired and promoted by the inseparable unity of spirit in flesh. The animals are quite as familiar with faith, hope, and charity as we are, and often exemplify it in their own frameworks of existence to a better extent. Any philosophy that promotes the idea that life is meaningless is biologically dangerous. It promotes feelings of despair that directly hamper genetic activity. Such philosophies are extremely disadvantageous creatively, since they dampen the emotional spirits and exuberance, and sense of play, from which creativity itself emerges.

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Such philosophies are also deadening on an intellectual basis, for they must of necessity close out man’s and woman’s great curiosity about the subjective matters that are his and her main concern. If life has no meaning, then nothing else really makes any difference, and intellectual curiosity itself also ends up withering on the vine.

The intellectual ideas of societies, therefore, also have a great effect upon which genetic systems are triggered, and which ones are not.

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We have genetic systems, then, carrying information that is literally incalculable. Now: through our technologies, through our physical experience, we are also surrounded by an immense array of communication and information of an exterior nature. We have our cell-phones, radios, computers, televisions, our earth satellites — all networks that process and convey data. Those inner biological systems and the exterior ones may seem quite separate. They are intimately connected, however. The information we receive from our culture, from our arts, sciences, fields of economics, is all translated, decoded, turned into cellular information. Certain genetic diseases, for example, may be activated or not activated according to the cultural climate at any given time, as the relative safety or lack of it in that climate is interpreted through private experience.

In one way or another, the living genetic system has an effect upon our cultural reality, and the reverse also applies. All of this is further complicated by the purposes and intents of the generations in any historical period, and the reincarnational influences.

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Value fulfillment always implies the search for excellence — not perfection, but excellence. Excellence in any given area — emotional, physical, intellectual, intuitional, scientific — is reflected in other areas, and by its mere existence serves as a model for achievement. This kind of excellence need not be structured, then, into any aspect of life, though it may appear in any aspect, and wherever it appears it is an echo of a spiritual and biological directive, so to speak. There are different historical periods, in our terms, where the species has showed what it can do — and what is possible in certain specific directions when the genetic and reincarnational triggers are touched and opened full blast, so that certain characteristics appear in their clearest, most spectacular light, to serve as individual models and as models for the species as a whole.

Again, such times are closely bound with reincarnational intents that direct the genetic triggering, and that meet in the culture the further stimulus that may be required. The time of the great masters in the fields of painting and sculpture is a case in point.

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Some people have built careers around negative beliefs– they may have spent their professional lives maintaining belief systems which after death they begin to understand are quite wrong. How do they react? Are those individuals even aware of their earlier beliefs? Do they care what they used to think? Are they shocked, do they have feelings of regret or embarrass what? Or is there such a variety of responses possible that we can’t answer the question simply? And how do such people react after death, they start to get glimmerings about the workings of reincarnation, for example?

Reincarnational patterns apply also. Some people, having live lives believing in one religious system or another, being completely immersed in them give themselves shock treatments of sorts, then, living lives in which they believe in nothing or at least freeing themselves from any beliefs — only to discover, of course, that a believing nothing is the most confining belief of all. That realization is that in such cases.

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There are those who upon religious beliefs, using them as crutches, and in later lives then, they might– such people — throw those crutches away overreacting to their new-found “freedom”; and through living lives as meaningless they then realize, after death, the meaningfulness of existence was after all not dependent upon any religious system. It was there all along, but they had not seen it.

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“If there is no life after life,

then what cosmic spendthrift formed

the universe,

for Chance alone can’t be

that prolific, or fake an order in which

an accident of such proportions

as the creation of a world

seems so inevitable,

each random element

falling pat, into place.,

and each consciousness promptly appearing

with body parts all neatly assembled —

only to be squandered,

falling apart, dissolving into nothingness

while Chance grinds out newer odds.

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If there is no life after life,

then what a lack

of cosmic economy,

for nature strings one molecule

on to another so craftily

that each seed can grow a tree,

and contains the properties

of an entire forest,

while multiplications

are hidden everywhere.”

If there were no Idiots, we would find Geniuses absent among us

Those human abilities that we consider to be characteristic of our species, are, again, dependent upon the existence of infinite numbers of variations that appear in the aggregate, to give us often obviously opposing states. What we think of then as the average intelligence is a condition that exists because of the activity of constant variables, minute variations that give us at one end of the scale the idiot, and at the other the genius.

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Both are necessary to maintain that larger “norm” of mental activity. I am using the word “norm” here for our convenience, though I disagree with the ways in which the term has been used, when it has been set up as a rule of measurement, psychologically speaking. The genetic system is not closed, therefore. The genes do not simply hold information without any reference to the body’s living system. It does not exist, then — the genetic structure — like some highly complicated mechanism already programmed, started and functioning “blindly,” so that once it is set into operation there is no chance for modification.

Particularly in our own species there is a great give-and-take between human genetic systems, the environment, and cultural events — and by cultural events I mean events having to do with our peculiarly unique field of activity that includes the worlds of politics, economics, and so forth.

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Genetic events are not not irrefutable in a deterministic fashion. They represent strong inclinations toward certain bodily or mental activity, certain biological preferences. They lead toward the activation of certain events over others, so that the probabilities are “loaded” in certain directions. Genetic events are then events, though at a different level of activity than we are used to thinking of.

We are speaking of chromosomal messages. These are not written within the chromosomes as words might be written upon paper, but the information and the chromosomes are a living unit. The information is alive. We are speaking about a kind of biological cuneiform, in which the structures, the very physical structures, of the cells contain all of the knowledge needed to form a physical body — to form themselves. This is indeed knowledge in biological form, and biologically making its clearest living statement.

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The cells with their genetic packages, like all cells, react  to stimuli. They act. They are aware of all of the body’s events biologically. In ways impossible to verbalize, they are also aware of the environment of the body as it is perceived at biological levels. I have said before that in one way or another each living cell is united with each other living cell through a system of inner communication. “Programed” genetic activity can be altered by conditions in the environment.

I am not simply saying that genetic activity can be changed, for example, through something like a nuclear accident, but that highly beneficial alterations can also take place in genetic behavior, as in our terms the genetic structure not only prepares the species for any contingency, but also prepares it by triggering those characteristics and abilities that are needed by the species at any given time, and also by making allowances for such future developments.

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Our genetic structure reacts to each thought that we have, to the state of our emotions, to our psychological climate. In our terms, it contains the physical history of the species in context with the probable future capabilities of the species. We choose our genetic structure so that it suits the challenges and capabilities of the species. We choose our genetic structure so that it suits the challenges and potentials that we have chosen. It represents our physical reference point, our bodily framework. It is our personal physical property. It is a portion of physical matter that we have identified, filled out with our own identity. It is like a splendid ship, the body, that we have chosen ahead of time for a splendid challenging adventure — a ship that we have personally appointed that is equipped to serve as much as possible as a physical manifestation of our personhood.

Some people, in beginning such a venture, will indeed insist upon an excellent vessel, with the most sophisticated mechanisms, equipped with grand couches and a banquet room. Others would want much more excitement, much more zest, and order then instead a less grand vessel, but one that went faster. Some would set goals for themselves that demanded that their powers of seamanship be tested. The analogy may be a simple one, yet each person chooses the living vessel of the body, with his or her own intents and purposes in mind.

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In physical reality, if you will forgive me, life is the name of the game — and the game is based upon value fulfillment. That means simply that each form of life seeks toward the fulfillment and unfolding of all of the capacities that it senses within its living framework, knowing that in that individual fulfillment each other species of life is also benefited.

In no way do I mean to demean the indisputable value of geniuses, or their great contributions to the quality of life — but the quality of life is, again, also benefited by the existence of idiots. Not only because both ends of the scale are necessary for genetic reasons, but also because idiots themselves are in no way considered failures or defects by nature. Those terms are human judgements. Idiots also serve their role by moderating the sometimes fierce hold that the reasoning mind can have upon human activity.

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The idiot is often able to experience in his or her own reality a freer, more generous, more faithful flow of emotional states, unhampered by reason’s sometimes stern dictates, and it is important that such a moderating tendency does operate genetically.

The reasoning mind, as we have used it thus far, roughly since the birth of Christianity, has used — instead of used, confined — has confined its reasoning abilities to a very narrow spectrum of reality. It has seen the value of life largely only as that life conforms to its own standards. That is, the reasoning mind, as we have used it, considers that only reasoning creatures are capable of understanding life’s values. Other forms of life have almost seemed beside the point, their value considered only insofar as they were of service to man and woman. But man’s and woman’s life is obviously dependent upon the existence of life’s other species, and with him and her those species share certain values. Life is sacred — all life — and again, all life seeks value fulfillment, not simply physical survival.

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I read an article about the development of a strain of mice without thymus [glands]. Since the thymus is very important in the necessary process of maintaining bodily resistance to disease, these particular mice have little resistance. They are bred and sold for experimental purposes. The intent of such procedures is to promote the quality of human life, to study the nature of diseases, and hopefully apply what is learned to some of the lives of human beings. Mice are not considered human. They are not. So like any animal, they are thought of as dispensable, sacrificed to a fine humanitarian end.

Perhaps at first that prejudice of the reasoning mind might escape us, since after all mice are far divorced from our own species. There were Jews sacrificed to the same end not too long ago, and the reasoning was largely the same, though in that case we were dealing with our own species.

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Jews were considered almost not human, however, and whenever such atrocities against our own species are concerned, we indulge in the same kind of twisted reasoning. Because the Jews were considered less than human — or, at best, human defects — they were thought of as justifiable sacrifices on the altar of “the genetic betterment of mankind and womankind.” We cannot improve the quality of our own lives by destroying the quality of any other kind of life. There is no genetic master race. The very classification of the species into races to begin with is based upon distinctions that are ridiculously minute in the overall picture of the similarities.

Such procedures involve a biological immortality. I usually avoid terms like “morality” or “immorality,” since their definition vary according to the individual. The proceedings, however, do involve a biological violation, a going against nature’s flow and intent, a process in which a form of life is made to go against its own value fulfillment, and it is because of such attitudes involving other kinds of life that the horrors of the Jewish war camps were made possible.

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Using animals in the laboratory is imposing human goals and values upon other life forms, even though the modern scientific method is supposed to be value-free. For such research is carried out in the name of progress and the practical common good, of course — and that progress applies also in the remedial treatment of other animals, let us remember. We think that every reader of this blog has benefited, and still does, from animal experimentation, some of it most cruel, in ways that he or she can hardly suspect, let alone specify: even benefiting from the use of animals in the study of medical and chemical, beauty and recreational products that can be found in practically every home in the country. I see the passive, thinking and unthinking tolerance of animal experimentation as a classical case of a society using ends to justify means — yet in the United States, at least, we carefully teach each generation of our species that such rationalization aren’t morally acceptable. 

I also believe, however, that generally speaking science still views our genetic systems in mechanical, deterministic, and reductionistic terms, and will continue to do so for a long time. So that evidence is being accumulated to support that overall view that at this time science has no need to seek for other, larger, and more unsettling frames of reference encompassing consciousness, intent, and genetics. Indeed, I seldom see consciousness mentioned in connection with genetics, except as its quality may relate to genetic “defects” like mental retardation, say.

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Nor do I think that establishment science will soon be interested in ideas that exchanges take place involving our genetic systems, the environment, and cultural events like politics and economics; of that our genetic systems react to our thoughts and emotions — let alone that there’s any genetic planning for future probabilities! I do not know whether, or how, any of those factors could be measured and/or manipulated in the laboratory. Science could grant ideas their own realities outside of the scientific framework, or course, and thus be free of them.

But granted or not, the idea of any sort of genetic preparation for future contingencies collides with the very powerful theory of evolution, which holds that evolutionary, genetic changes take place only through natural selection and chance mutations (although random of chance mutations are generally regarded as mistakes on nature’s part). There are many unsolved challenges here. Another version of old, discredited Lamarckian theories. (jean Baptiste de Monet de Lamarck [1744-1829] was a French naturalist who advocated that certain modifications of an organism’s structure and function could develop in response to environmental factors, and that these “acquired characters” could be inherited. Lamarck’s work has been widely misunderstood, however. It still has value, and recently has been employed in some remarkable scholarly studies that show how, in scientific teams, evolution can take place through means other than natural selection and chance mutations.

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Some would agree that consciousness obviously contains an unlimited number of viewpoints, regardless of which ones we humans may choose to call “true” at any particular time. Consciousness is just as amenable to having some of its physical manifestations scientifically studied, its parts manipulated through “genetic engineering.” All of our  species’ actions represent our keen and creative interests in studying ourselves in the finest details possible. That the scientific approach has limitations is obvious. So do all others in this physical realm. A discipline, of whatever nature and motivation, can erect barriers to “outside” influences — and those barriers are often artifacts growing almost automatically out of the very nature of the belief system in question

The Gifted and the Handicapped

Our species as a species includes the idiot and the genius, the stupid and the wise, the athletic, the deformed, the beautiful and the ugly, and all variations in between. There are genetic cultures operating, then, of literally infinite variety, and they each have their place and their reason, and they each fit into the overall picture — not only of man’s and woman’s reality but of the planet’s  reality, including all of nature.

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Our religious ideas have often told us that deformities at birth were the result of the parents’ sins cast upon the children, or that another kind of punishment was involved in terms of “karma.” In terms of biology, people talk about coming from good stock or bad stock, and even those designations imply moral judgments.

The entire idea of reincarnation has been highly distorted by other religious concepts. It is not a psychological arena composed of crime and punishment. Again, we have free will in the conditions of life, given the characteristics that are our own. The great facility and adaptability of the human species are dependent upon an amazing interplay between genetic preciseness and genetic freedom. The very characteristic attributes of species, its dependability and integrity, are dependent upon constant checks and balances, the existence of divergent characteristics against which the species can measure itself.

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The species is also always in the process of keeping within its genetic bank millions of characteristics that might be needed in various contingencies, and in that regard there is a connection, of course, between, say, viruses of many strains and the health not only of man and woman but of other species.

The possibility of creative change must always be present to insure the species’ resiliency, and that resiliency can show in many ways — in conditions that we consider deformities, disabilities from birth, or in any physical variation for a hypothetical physical norm. We all look quite alike, with one head, to arms and legs, and so forth, as a rule. Such differences or variations are very noticeable at a certain level, if we have more fingers that we are supposed to or less, or two thumbs to a hand, or any other condition that is considered an abnormality.

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There are mental conditions also: the so-called retarded people who do not use their reasoning minds as others do. There are also, again, highly gifted people, physically or mentally, people who seem to be at times as far from the ordinary person on the gifted scale as an idiot might be on the other. So as we progress in my blogs, I hope to show where all of these situations fit in with the development of the individual and the species.

At a smaller level of activity such variances of course escape our notice. We do not know if we have any errant genes unless their effects show themselves. At microscopic levels, in fact, no one fits any norm, and there is no way to predict with complete certainty the development of any genetic element. We can make group predictions, and overall make certain judgments, but other elements are involved, so that any particular genetic element cannot be pinned down in terms of its development. This is because its activity is also involved with relationships that do not show in any of our calculations.

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Our thoughts, feelings, desires and intents, our reincarnational knowledge as well, modify that structure, bring certain latent characteristics into actualization, minimize others, as through the experience of our life we use our free will and constantly make new decisions.

Out-of-body is the result of a change in attitude, and makes possible also because of the body’s relaxation. Exercising the consciousness, allowing it greater freedom. a certain portion of our mind drifting at this time.

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Now people may wiggle their feet, or doodle, or tap a desk while they are concentrating on other things. They also exercise their consciousnesses in the same fashion — doodle with their minds, relaxing themselves in such a fashion, wandering off to refresh themselves .

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Only the physical body is in the same place. This is like a mental doodle, the colors are not complete, the picture is not filled in.

Human’s first encounter with physical reality in life, is with the state of one’s own consciousness

He or she is aware of a different kind of being. He or she encounters his and her consciousness first, and then he and she encounters the world — so I am saying, of course, that each person has an identity that is larger than the framework of consciousness with which we are usually familiar in life.

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When we are born, we understand that we have a new consciousness. We explore its ramifications. It is our primary evidence that we exist in flesh. basically, each person must confront the experience of reality through a direct encounter with it. this encounter takes place through the use of the physical senses, of course, as they are used to perceive and interpret physical data. the very utilization of those senses, however, is dependent upon the nature of our consciousness itself, and that consciousness is aware of its power and action through the exercise of its own properties.

Those “properties” are the faculties of the imagination, creativity, telepathy, clairvoyance, and dreaming, as well as the functions of logic and reason. We know that we dream. We know that we think. Those are direct experiences. Anytime we use instruments to probe into the nature of reality, we are looking at a kind of secondary evidence, no matter how excellent the instruments may be. The subjective evidence of dreaming, for example, is far more “convincing” and irrefutable than is the evidence for an expanding universe, black holes, or even atoms and molecules themselves. Although instruments can indeed be most advantageous in many ways, they still present us with secondary rather than primary tools of investigation — and they distort the nature of reality far more than the subjective attributes of thoughts, feelings, and intuitions do.

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The human consciousness has not, therefore, developed the best and most proper “tool” with which to examine the nature of reality. It is because we have used other methods that much evidence escapes us — evidence that would show that the physical universe exists in quite different terms than is supposed.

We are taught not to trust our subjective experience, which means that we are told not to trust our initial and primary connection with reality.

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Evidence for reincarnation is quite available. there are enough instances of it, known and tabulated, to make an excellent case; and beside this there is evidence that remains psychologically invisible in our private lives, because we have been taught not to concentrate in that direction.

There is enough evidence to build an excellent case for life after death. All of this involves direct experience — episodes, encountered by individuals, that are highly suggestive of the after death hypothesis; but the hypothesis is never taken seriously by our established sciences. There is far more evidence for reincarnation and life after death than is, for example, for the existence of black holes. Few people have seen a black hole, to make the most generous statement possible, while countless people have had private reincarnational experiences, or encounters that suggest the survival of the personality beyond death.

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Those experiences are usual. They have been reported by people of all kinds and in all ages, and they represent a common-sense kind of knowledge that is frowned upon by the men and women of learned universities. Throughout my blogs we will often be talking about experiences that are encountered in one way or another by most people, but are not given credence to on the part of the established fields of knowledge. Therefore, dreams will be considered throughout the blogs in various capacities as they are related through genetics, reincarnation, culture, and private life. We will also be considering the matter of free will and its role in individual value fulfillment.

The reasoning mind represents human mental activity in a space and time context

The reasoning mind is involved with the trial-and-error method. It sets up hypothesis, and its very existence is dependent upon a lack of available knowledge — knowledge that it seeks to discover.

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In the dreaming state the characteristics of the reasoning mind become altered, and from a waking viewpoint it might seem distorted in its activity. What actually happens, however, is that in the dreaming state we are presented with certain kinds of immediate knowledge. It often appears out of context in usual terms. It is not organized according to the frameworks understood by the reasoning portions of our mind, and so to some extent in dreams we encounter large amounts of information that we cannot categorize.

The information may not fit into our recognizable time or space slots. There are, in fact, many important issues connected with the dreaming state that can involve genetic activation of certain kinds: information processing on the part of the species, the insertion or reinsertion of civilizing elements — and all of these are also connected with the reincarnational aspects of dreaming.

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I have not touched upon some of these subjects before, since I wanted to present them in that larger context of man’s and woman’s origins and historic appearance as a species. I also wanted to make certain points, stressing the importance of dreams as they impinge upon and help form cultural environments. Dreams also sometimes help in showing the pathways that can be taken to advantage by an individual, by a group of individuals, and therefore help clarify the ways in which free will might most advantageously be directed. So I hope to cover all of these subjects.

Let us first of all return momentarily to the subject of the reasoning mind, its uses and characteristics. It seems to the reasoning mind that it must look outside of itself for information, for it operates in concert with the physical senses, which present it with only a limited amount of information about the environment at any given time. The physical eyes cannot see today the dawn that will come in the morning. The legs today cannot walk down tomorrow’s street, so if the mind wants to know what is going to happen tomorrow, or what is happening now, outside of the physical senses’ domain, then it must try through reason to deduce the information that it wants from the available information that it has. It must rely upon observation to make its deductions accordingly. In a fashion, it must divide to conquer. It must try to deduce the nature of the whole it cannot perceive from the portions that are physically available.

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Children begin to count by counting on their fingers. Later, fingers are dispensed with but the idea of counting remains. There have been people throughout history who mentally performed mathematical feats that appear most astounding, and almost in a matter of moments. Some, had they lived in our century, would have been able to outperform computers (just as some are outperforming computers these days!). In most cases where such accomplishments show themselves, they do so in a child far too young to have learned scientific mathematical procedures to begin with, and often such feats are displayed by people who are otherwise classified as idiots (idiot savants), and who are incapable of intellectual reasoning.

Indeed, when a child is involved, the keener his or her use of the reasoning mind becomes the dimmer his or her mathematical abilities grow. Others, children [or adults] who would be classified as mentally deficient, can tell, or have been able to tell, the day of the week that any given date, past or present, would fall upon. Others have been able, while performing various tasks, to keep a precise count of the moments from any given point in time. There have been children, again, with highly accomplished musical abilities, and great facility with music’s technical aspects — all such accomplishments before the assistance of any kind of advanced education.

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Now, some of these children went on to become great musicians, while others lost their abilities along the way, so what are we dealing with in such cases? We are dealing with direct knowing. We are dealing with the natural perceptions of the psyche, at least when we are speaking in human terms. We are dealing with natural, direct cognition as it exists before and after man’s and woman’s experience with the reasoning mind.

Some of those abilities show themselves in those classified as mentally deficient simply because all of the powers of the reasoning mind are not activated. In children under such conditions, the reasoning mind has not yet developed in all of its aspects sufficiently, so that in a certain area direct cognition shines through with its brilliant capacity.

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Direct cognition is an inner sense. In physical terms we might call it remote sensing. Our physical body, and our physical existence, are based upon certain kinds of direct cognition, and it is responsible for the very functioning of the reasoning mind itself. Scientists like to say that animals operate through simple instinctive behavior, without will or volition: It is no accomplishment for a spider to make its web, a beaver its dam, a bird its nest, because according to such reasoning, such creatures cannot perform otherwise. The spider must spin his web. If he or she chooses not to, he or she will not survive. But by that same reasoning — to which, of course, I do not subscribe — we should also add that man and woman can take no credit either for his or her intellect, since man and woman must think, and cannot help doing so.

Some pessimistic scientist would say: “Of course,” for man and woman and animal alike are driven by their instincts, and man’s and woman’s claim to free will is no more than an illusion.

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Man’s and woman’s reasoning mind, however, with its fascinating capacity for logic and education, and for observation, rests upon a direct cognition — a direct cognition that powers his or her thoughts, that makes thinking itself possible. He or she thinks because he or she knows how to think by thinking, even though the true processes of thought are enigmas to the reasoning mind.

In dreams the reasoning mind loosens its hold upon perception. From our standpoint we are almost faced with too much data. The reasoning mind attempts to catch what it can as it reassembles its abilities toward waking, but the net of its reasoning simply cannot hold that assemblage of information. Instead it is processed at other levels of the psyche. Dreams also involve a kind of psychological perspective with which we have no physical equivalent — and therefore such issues are most difficult to discuss.

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The reasoning mind is highly necessary, effective, and suitable for physical existence, and for the utilization of free will, which is very dependent upon perception of clearly distinguishable actions. In the larger framework of existence, however, it is simply one of innumerable methods of organizing data. A psychological filing system, if you prefer.

Our dreaming self possesses psychological dimensions that escape us, and they serve to connect genetic and reincarnational systems. We must, again, realize that the self that we know is only a part of our larger identity — an identity that is also historically actualized in other times than our own. We must also understand that mental activity is of the utmost potency. We experience our dreams from our own perspective, as a rule. I am simply trying to give a picture of one kind of dream occurrence, or show one picture of dream activity of which we are not usually aware.

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If we are having a dream as oneself from our own perspective, another reincarnational self may be having the same dream from its perspective — in which, of course, we play a minor role. In our dream, that reincarnational self may appear as a minor character, quite on the periphery of our attention, and if the dream were to include an idea, say, for a play or an invention, then that play or invention might appear as a physical event in both historic times, to whatever degree it would be possible for the two individuals living in time to interpret that information. But culture throughout the ages was spread by more than physical means. Abilities and inventions were not dependent upon human migrations, but those migrations themselves were the result of information given in dreams, telling tribes of men and women the directions in which better homelands could be found.

Direct cognition: You know what you know.

ac13

Our knowledge knows how to flow through the techniques we have learned, to use them and become part of them, so that a painting emerges with a spontaneous wisdom. That is what we are learning. That is what the painting shows. That is where we are.

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To some extent each vision, each subject matter, will itself make minute alterations in technique of we allow it to. Our impulses have shadings as our colors do. They should mix and merge with our brushstrokes, so that the idea of our subject matter is almost magically contained in each spot of paint, and that is what we are learning. Or rather, we are learning to take advantage of our direct cognition.