The Man we call Christ was actually composed of three individuals who were the physical manifestations of the same nonphysical entity: John the Baptist, St. Paul, and a man historically known as Christ. None of these were crucified. Their roles became blended and distorted in history.
Or tours through psychic lands rather than physical ones. Such journeys “Take no time” in our terms.
We have a storm. Weathermen or weather women speak of local conditions and merging air currents. We are in a realm where consciousnesses merge. A constant state of growth, expansion, and development. We can travel to many great universities of the mind.
Much of this is difficult to explain, for information and knowledge is constantly transformed — almost completely reborn, so to speak, through characteristics that are inherently a part of thought itself. Knowledge is changed automatically through the auspices of each consciousness who perceives it. It is magnified and yet refined. It is a constant language, yet one that transforms itself. We can exchange with each other a more complicated system of reality than any computer could handle. We do not understand or perceive the ways in which our reality contributes to the foundation of the mass-world reality that we experience. Unconsciously, each individual participants in forming that world. The primary encounter must be a subjective inner one, and intersection of consciousnesses that is then physically experienced.
The encounters themselves occur in a Framed-mind-3 environment. That framework of course, again in terms of an analogy, exists another step away from our own Framed-mind-2. I do not want to get into a higher-or-lower hierarchy here, but the frameworks represent spheres of action. Our encounters initially take place, then, beyond the sphere that deals exclusively with either our physical world or the inner mental and psychic realm from which our present experience springs.
Like as motes of dust might be swept along with a brisk autumn wind from one area to another. We are carried above the land of our usual perception so that portions of us glimpse subjective states. These arouse our curiosity even when consciously we are not aware of perceiving them. That curiosity acts as impetus.
Our intents and concerns, our interests, our needs and desires, our characteristics and abilities, directly influence our material, for they lead us to it to begin with.
We want to make the material workable in our world — a natural and quite understandable desire. The proof is in the pudding, and so forth. Yet of course we are also participators in an immense drama in which the main actions occur outside of our world, in those realms from which our world originated — and we are, foremost, natives of those other realms, as each individual is; each being is.
Those realms are far from lonely, dark, and chaotic. They are also quite different from any concept of nirvana or nothingness. They are composed of ever-spiraling states of existence in which different kinds of consciousnesses meet and communicate. They are not impersonal realms, but are involved in the most highly intimate inter-actions. Those interactions exist about us all the while, and I would like us in our thoughts to aspire toward them, to try to stretch our perceptions enough so that we become at least somewhat aware of their existence.
These frameworks, while I speak of them separately, exist one within the other, and each one impinges upon the other. To some extent we are immersed in all realities.
If we could, try to sense this greater context in which we have our being. Our rewards will be astonishing. The emotional realization is what is important, of course, not simply an intellectual acceptance of the idea. Do not forget the vaster context. Which will trigger responses on our part, increasing still further the scope of knowledge that we can receive.
In our world knowledge must be translated into specifics, yet we also deal with emotional realities that cannot be so easily deciphered. In the atmosphere now, there are hints of those undecipherable yet powerful realities that will, in time, gradually be described in verbal terms that make sense to us.
According to our understanding, our own comprehensions and perceptions will bring other clues, either in the waking or the dream state. Keep our minds open for them, but without any preconceived ideas of how they might appear. Development triggers certain psychic activity that then triggers further growth.
To some extent Framed-mind-1 and 2 is of course an example of an entire idea, for we receive a good deal of information of physical life. Still they must be colored by our ideas of what physical lives are.
Even our concepts of creativity are necessarily influenced by Framed-mind-1 thinking, of course.
Acts of creativity best approach the workings of Framed-mind-2, for [those] acts always involve leaps of faith and inspiration, and the breaking of barriers.
When we are writing, we draw upon associations, memories, and events that are known to us and others, that perhaps we had forgotten but that suddenly spring to mind in answer to our intent and following our associations. When an artist is painting a landscape, he might unconsciously compare hundreds of landscapes viewed in the past in multitudinous, seemingly forgotten hues that splash upon the grass or trees, or as he seeks for a new creative combination. Art is his or her focus so that he draws from Framed-mind-2 all of those pertinent data that are necessary for his or her painting. Not just technique is concerned, but the entire visual experience of his or her life.
Framed-mind-2 involves a far vaster creative activity, in which our life is the art involved — and all [of the] ingredients for its success are there, available. When we are creating a product or a work of art, the results will have much to do with our idea of what the product is, or what the work of art is — so our ideas about our life, or life itself, will also have much to do with our experience of it as a living art.
If we believe in the laws of cause and effect, as accepted, or in the laws of polarity, as accepted, then we will be bound by those laws, for they will represent our artistic technique. We will believe that we must use them in order to, say, paint the living portrait of our life. We will therefore structure our experience, drawing to oneself from Framed-mind-2 only that which fits. We will not have the “technique” to attract other experience, and as long as we stick with one technique our life-pictures will more or less have a certain monotony.
Write and artist also bring more into his or her work than the simple ability to write or paint. In one way or another all of his or her experience is involved. When we pay attention to Framed-mind-1 primarily, It is as if we have learned to write simple sentences with one word neatly before the other. We have not really learned true expression. In our life we are writing sentences like “See Tommy run.” Our mind is not really dealing with concepts but with the simple perception of objects, so that little imagination is involved. We can express the location of objects in space, and we can communicate to others in similar fashion, confirming the physical obvious properties that others also perceive.
In those terms, using our analogy, the recognition of Framed-mind-2 would bring us from that point to the production of great art, where words served to express not only the seen but the unseen — not simply facts but feelings and emotions — and where the words themselves escaped their consecutive patterns, sending the emotions into realms that quite defied both space and time.
Now and then people have such moments, and yet each private reality has its existence in an eternal creativity from which, our world springs.
It is not as if that vaster reality were utterly closed to our perception, for it is not. To some extent it is everywhere apparent in each person’s private experience, and it is obviously stated in the very existence of our world itself. The religions, in one way or another, have always perceived it, although the attempt to interpret that reality in terms of the recognized facts of the world is bound to distort it.
Our world, then, is the result of a multidimensional creative venture, a work of art in terms almost impossible for us to presently understand, in which each person and creature, and each particle, plays a living part. Again, in Framed-mind-2 each event is known, form the falling of a leaf to the falling of a star, from the smallest insect’s experience on a summer day to the horrendous murder of an individual on a city street. Those events are not divorced from our reality, not thrust upon us, not apart from our experience. It often only seems to be because we so compartmentalize our own experience that we automatically separate ourselves from such knowledge.
Creativity does not deal with compartments. It throws aside barriers. Even most people who are involved in creative work often apply their additional insights and knowledge only to their art, however — not to their lives. They fall back to cause and effect.
Framed-mind-1 life is, again, based on the idea that we have only so much energy, that we will wear out, and that a certain expenditure of energy will produce a given amount of work — in other words, that applied effort of a certain kind will produce the best results. In the same way, it is believed that the energy of the universe will die out. All of this presupposes “the fact” that no energy is inserted into the world. The source of the world would therefore seem no longer to exist, having worn itself out in the effort to produce physical phenomena. In the light of such thinking, Framed-mind-2 would be an impossibility.
Instead, the energy of life is inserted constantly into our world, in a way that has nothing to do with our so-called physical laws. The universe expands as an idea does. The greater life of each creature exist in the framework that “originally” gave it birth, and in a greater manner of speaking each creature, regardless of its age, is indeed being constantly reborn. Couched in our terms of our world’s known reality, which deal with local properties of Framed-mind-2 as they have impact in our experience.
Events do not exist in the concrete, done-and finished versions about which we have been taught, then memory must also be a different story. Remember the creativity and the open-ended nature of events.
The original happening is experienced from a different perspective on the a part of each person involved, of course, so that the event’s implications and basic meanings may differ according to the focus of each participant. That given event, in our terms happening for the first time, say, begins to “work upon” the participants. Each one brings to it his or her own background, temperament, and literally a thousand different colorations — so that the event, while shared by others, is still primarily original to each person.
The moment it occurs, it begins to change as it is filtered through all of those ingredients, and it is minutely altered furthermore by each succeeding event. The memory of an event, then, is shaped as much by the present as it is by the past. Association triggers memories, of course, and organizes memory events. It also helps color and form such events.
We are used to a time structure, so that we remember something that happened at a particular time in the past. Usually we can place events in that fashion. There are neurological pockets, so to speak, so that biologically the body can place events as it perceives activity. Those neurological pulses are geared to the biological world we know.
In those terms, past or future-life memories usually remain like ghost images by contrast. Overall, this is necessary so that immediate body response can be focused in the time period we recognize. Other life memories are carried along, so to speak, beneath those other pulses — never, in certain terms, coming to rest so that they can be examined, but forming, say, the undercurrents upon which the memories of our current life ride.
When such other-life memories do come to the surface, they are of course colored by it, and their rhythm is not synchronized. They are not tied into our nervous system as precisely as our regular memories. Our present gains its feelings of depth because of our past as we understand it. In certain terms, however, the future represents, say, another kind of depth that belongs to events. A root goes out in all directions. Events do also. But the roots of events go through our past, present, and future.
Often by purposefully trying to slow down our thought processes, or playfully trying to speed them up, we can become aware of memories from other lives — past or future. To some extent we allow other neurological impulses to make themselves known. There may often be a feeling of vagueness, because we have no ready-made scheme of time or place with which to structure such memories. Such exercises also involve us with the facts of the events of our own life, for we automatically are following probabilities from the point of our own focus.
It would be most difficult to operate within our sphere of reality without the pretension of concrete, finished events. We form our past lives now in this life as surely as we form our future ones now also.
Simultaneously, each of our past and future selves dwell in their own way now, and for them the last sentence also applies. It is theoretically possible to understand much of this through an examination-in-depth of the events of our own life. Throwing away many taken-for-granted concepts, we can pick a memory. But try not to structure it — a most difficult task — for such structuring is by now almost automatic.
The memory, left alone, not structured, will shimmer, shake, take other forms, and transform itself before our [mental] eyes, so that its shape will seem like a psychological kaleidoscope through whose focus the other events of our life will also shimmer and change. Such a memory exercise can also serve to bring in other-life memories. Edges, corners, and reflections will appear, however, perhaps superimposed upon memories that we recognize as belonging to this life.
Our memories serve to organize our experience and again, follow recognized neurological sequences. Other-life memories from the future and past often bounce off of these with a motion too quick for us to follow.
In a quiet moment, off guard, we might remember an event from this life, but there may be a strange feeling to it, as if something about it, some sensation, does not fit into the time slot in which the event belongs. In such cases that [present-life] memory is often tinged by another, so that a future or past life memory shreds it cast upon the recalled event. There is a floating quality about one portion of the memory.
This happens more often than is recognized, because usually we simply discount the feeling of strangeness, and drop the part of the memory that does not fit. Such instances involve definite bleed-throughs, however. By being alert and catching such feelings, we can learn to use the floating part of the otherwise-recognizable memory as a focus. Through association that focus can then trigger further past or future recall. Clues also appear in the dreaming state, with greater frequency, because then we are already accustomed to that kind of floating sensation in which events can seem to happen in their own relatively independent context.
Dreams in which past and present are both involved are an example; also dreams in which the future and the past merge, and dreams in which time seems to be a changing ingredient.
In certain terms the past , present, and future [of our present life] are all compressed in any given moment of our experience.
Any such moment is therefore a gateway into all of our existence. The events that we recognize as happening now are simply specific and objective, but the most minute elements in any given moment’s experience is also symbolic of other events and other times. Each moment is then like a mosaic, only in our current life history we follow but one color or pattern, and ignore the others. As I have mentions [in other blogs], we can indeed change the present to some extent by purposefully altering a memory event. That kind of synthesis can be used in many instances with many people.
Such an exercise is not some theoretical, esoteric, impractical method, but a very precise, volatile, and dynamic way of helping the present self by calming the fears of a past self. That past self is not hypothetical, either, but still exists, capable of being reached and of changing its reactions. We do not need a time machine to alter the past or future.
Such a technique is highly valuable. Not only are memories not “dead,” they are themselves ever-changing. Many alter themselves almost completely without our notice. While the bare facts more or less the same, the entire meaning and interpretation of each version differs so drastically that those differences far out-weigh the similarities.
In most cases, however, people are not aware that memory changes in such a fashion, or that the events they think they recall are so different.
The point is that past events grow. They are not finished. With that in mind, we can see that future lives are very difficult to explain from within our framework. A completed life in our terms is no more completed or done than any event. There is simply a cutoff point in our focus our framework, but it is as artificial as, basically, perspective is applied to painting.
It is not that the inner self is not aware of all of this, but it has already chosen a framework, or a given frame of existence, that emphasizes certain kinds of experiences over others.
Not one idea will be discovered residing in the brain cells. We can try to convey an idea, we can feel its effects, but we cannot see it as we can the chair. Only a fool would say that ideas were non-existent, however, or deny their importance.
We cannot find any given dream location, either, within the brain itself. The solid matter of our world is the result of the play of our senses upon an inner dimension of activity that exists as legitimately, and yet as tantalizing hidden, as an idea or a dream location.
It is easy for us to see that seeds bring forth the fruit of the earth, each [of] their own kind. No seed is identical to any other, yet generally speaking there are species that serve to unite them. We do not mistake an orange for a grape. In the same way ideas or thoughts form general patterns, bringing forth in our world certain kinds of events. In this respect our thoughts and feelings “seed” physical reality, bringing forth materializations.
We operate quite nicely politically, living in villages, townships, countries, states, and so forth, each with certain customs and local ordinances. These in no way affect the land itself. They are designations for practical purposes, and they imply organization of intent or affiliation at one level. They are political patterns, invisible but highly effective. There are, however, far more vigorous invisible mental patterns, into which the thoughts and feelings of humankind are organized — or, naturally, organize themselves.
Each person’s thoughts flow into formation, forming part of the earth’s psychic atmosphere. From that atmosphere flows the natural earthly patterns from which our seasons emerge with all of their variety and effects. We are never victims of natural disasters, though it may seem that we are, for we have our hand in forming them. We are creatively involved in the earth’s cycles. No one can be born for oneself, or die for oneself, and yet no birth or death is really an isolated event, but one in which the entire planet participates. In personal terms, again, each species is concerned not only with survival but with the quality of its life and experience.
In those terms, natural disasters ultimately end up righting a condition that earlier blighted the desired quality of life, so that adjustments were made.
The “victims” choose to participate in those conditions at spiritual, psychological, and biological levels. Many of those who are counted among the fatalities might otherwise die of extended illnesses, for example. At cellular levels such knowledge is available, and in one way or another imparted, often in dreams, to the individual. Consciousness comprehension need not follow, for many people know such things, and pretend not to know them at the same time.
Others have finished with their challenges; they want to die and are looking for an excuse — a face-saving device. However, those who choose such deaths want to die in terms of drama, in the middle of their activities, and are in a strange way filled with the exultant inner knowledge of life’s strength even at the point of death. At the last they identify with the power of nature that seemingly destroyed them.
That identification often brings about in death — but not always — an added acceleration of consciousness, and involves such individuals in a kind of “group death experience,” where all of the victims more or less embark into another level of reality “at the same time.”
Those people were aware just beneath consciousness of the possibilities of such an event long before the disaster occurred, and could until the last moment choose to avoid the encounter. Animals know of weather conditions ahead of time, as old tales say. This perception is a biological part of our heritage also. The body is prepared, though consciously it seems we are ignorant.
There are innumerable relationships that exist between the interior environment of the body and the weather patterns. The ancient feelings of identification with storms are quite valid, and in that respect the “realism” of feelings is far superior to the realism of logic. When a person feels a part of a storm, those feelings speak a literal truth. Logic deals with exterior conditions, with cause-and-effect relationships. Intuitions deal with immediate experience of the most intimate nature, with subjective motions and activities that in our terms move far quicker than the speed of light, and with simultaneous events that our cause-and-effect level is far too slow to perceive.
In that regard also, the activities of the inner environment are too fast for us to follow intellectually. Our intuitions, however, can give us clues to such behavior. A country is responsible for its own droughts, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes — and for its own harvests and rich display of products, its industry and cultural achievements, and each of these elements is related to each other one.
If the quality of life that is considered spiritually and biologically necessary fails, then adjustments occur. A political problem might be altered by a natural disaster if political means fail. On the other hand, the rousing creative energies of the people will emerge.
Excellence will show itself through the arts, cultural creatively, technological or sociological accomplishments. The species tries to fulfill its great capacities. Each physical body in its own way is like the world. It has its own defenses and abilities, and each portion of it strives for a quality of existence that will bring to the smallest parts of it the spiritual and biological fulfillment of its own nature.
The self out grows the flesh.
Environmental questions are being raised about human’s effects upon the world in which he or she lives. There is, however, an inner environment that connects all consciousnesses that dwell upon our planet, in whatever form. This mental or psychic — or in any case nonphysical — environment is ever in a state of flux and motion. That activity provides us with all exterior phenomena.
Our sense perception, physically speaking, is a result of behavior on the part of organs that seem to us to have no reality outside on their relationship with us. Those organs are themselves composed of atoms and molecules with their own consciousnesses. They have, then, their own states of sensation and cognition. They work for us, allowing us to perceive physical reality.
Our ears certainly seem to be permanent appendages, and do our eyes. We say: “My eyes are blue,” or “My eyes are small.” The physical matter of those sense organs changes constantly, however, with us none the wiser. While our body appears quite dependable, solid, [and] steady, we are not aware of the constant interchanges that occur between it and the physical environment. It does not bother us one whit that the physical substance of our body is made up of completely different atoms and molecules than it was composed of seven years ago, [say], or that our familiar hands are actually innocent of any smallest smidgen of matter that composed them [even in recent times past].
We perceive our body as solid. The very senses that make such a deduction are the result of the behavior of atoms and molecules literally coming together to form the organs, filling a pattern of flesh. All other objects that we perceive are formed in their own way in the same fashion.
The physical world that we recognize is made up of invisible patterns. These patterns are “plastic,” in that while they exist, their final form is a matter or probabilities directed by consciousness. Our senses perceive these patterns in their own ways. The patterns themselves can be “activated” in innumerable fashions. There is something out there to observe.
Our sense apparatus determines what form that something will take, however. The mass world rises up before our eyes, but our eyes are part of that mass world. We cannot see our thoughts, so we do not realize that they have shape and form, even as, say, clouds do. There are currents of thoughts as there are currents of air, and the mental patterns of man’s and women’s feelings and thoughts rise up like flames from a fire, or steam from hot water, to fall like ashes or like rain.
All elements of the interior invisible environment work together, and they form the temporal weather patterns that are exteriorized mental states, presenting us locally and en masse, then with a physical version of man’s emotional states.
The physical planet is obviously also ever-changing while it is operational or realistically or pragmatically relatively stable. The physical matter of the planet is also composed of literally infinite hoarders of consciousnesses — each experiencing its own reality while adding to the overall cooperative venture.
Natural disasters represent an understandably prejudiced concept, in which the vast creative and rejuvenating elements important to planetary life, and therefore to humankind, are ignored. The stability of the planet rests upon such changes and alterations, even as the body’s stability is dependent upon, say, the birth and death of the cells.
It is quite obvious that people must die — not only because we would overpopulate our world into extinction but because the nature of consciousness requires new experience, challenge, and accomplishment. This is everywhere apparent in nature itself. If there were no death, we would have to invent it — for the context of the self-hood would be as limited as the experience of a great sculptor given but one hunk of stone.
The sculptor’s creation is pragmatically realistic, in that it exists as an object, and can be quite legitimately perceived as can our world. The sculptor’s statue, however, comes from the inner environment, the patterns of probabilities. These patterns are not them selves inactive. They are possessed by the desire to be-actualized. Behind all realities there are mental states. These always seek form, though again there are other forms than those we recognize.
A chair is a chair for our purposes. As you read this blog you most probably lounge on a chair or couch or bench — all quite sturdy and real. The atoms and molecules within those chairs and couches are quite alert, though we do not grant them the quality of life. When children play ring-around-the-rosy, they form living circles in the air. In the game they enjoy the motion of their bodies, but they do not identify with those swirling circles. The atoms and molecules that make up a chair play a different kind of ring-around-the-rosy, and are involved in constant motion, forming a certain pattern that we perceive as a chair.
The difference in motion are so divergent that to us the chair, like our body, appears permanent. The atoms and molecules, like the children, enjoy their motion — solidly sketched in space from our perspective, however, with no “idea” that we consider that motion a chair, or so use it.
We perceive the atoms’ activity in that fashion. [Nevertheless] the agreement takes place at mental levels, and is never completely “set,” though it appears to be. No one perceives the same chair [all the time], though perhaps a given chair will seem to be “the same one” seen from different angles.
The dance of the atoms and molecules is continuous in our area. In greater terms, any given chair is never the same chair. All of this must be taken into consideration when we discuss mass events.
We live in a physical community, but we live first in a community of thoughts and feelings. There trigger our physical actions. They directly affect the behavior of our body. The experience of the animals is different, yet in their own ways animals have both individual intent and purpose. Their feelings are certainly as pertinent as ours. They dream, and in their way they reason.
They do not “worry.” They do not anticipate disaster when no signs of it are apparent in their immediate environment. On their own they do not need preventative medicine. Pet animals are inoculated against diseases, however. In our society this almost becomes a necessity. In a “purely natural” setting we would not have as many living puppies or kittens. There are stages of physical existence, and in those terms nature knows what it is doing. When a species over-produces, the incidences of, say, epidemics grow. This applies to human populations as well as to the animals.
The quality of life is important above all. Newborn animals either die quickly and naturally, painlessly, before their consciousnesses are fully focused here, or are killed by their mothers — not because they are weak or unfit to survive, but because the [physical] conditions are not those that will produce the quality of life that makes survival “worthwhile.”
The consciousness that became so briefly physical is not annihilated, however, but in our terms waits for better conditions.
There are also “trail runs” in human and animal species alike, in which peeks are taken, or glimpses, of physical life, and that is all. Epidemics sweeping through animal populations are also biological and psychic statements, then, in which each individual knows that only its own greatest fulfillment can satisfy the quality of life on an individual basis, and thus contribute to the mass survival of the species.
Suffering is not necessarily good for the soul at all, and left alone natural creatures do not seek it. There is a natural compassion, a biological knowledge, so that the mother of an animal knows whether or not existing conditions will support the new offspring. Animals instinctively realize their relationship with the great forces of life. They will instinctively starve an offspring while its consciousness is still unfocused, rather than send it loose under adverse conditions
In a natural state, many children would die stillborn for the same reasons, or would be naturally aborted. There is a give-and-take between all elements of nature, so that such individuals often choose mothers, for example, who perhaps wanted the experience of pregnancy but not of birth — where they choose the experience of the fetus but not necessarily [that] of the child. Often in such cases these are “fragmented personalities,” wanting to taste physical reality, but not being ready to deal with it. Each case is individual, however, so these are general statements.
Many children, who, it seems, should have died of disease, of “children epidemics,” nevertheless survive because of their different intents. The world of thought and feeling may be invisible, and yet it activates all physical systems with which we are acquainted.
Animals as well as men can indeed make social statements, that appear in a biological context. Animals as well as men can indeed make social statements, that appear in a biological context. Animals stricken by kitten and puppy diseases, for example, choose to die, pointing out the fact that the quality of their lives individually and en masses is vastly lacking. Their relationships with their own species is no longer in balance. They cannot use their full abilities or powers, nor are many of them given compensating elements in terms of a beneficial psychic relationship with man and woman — but instead are shunted aside, unwanted and unloved. An unloved animal does not want to live.
Love involves self-respect. The trust in individual biological zest and integrity. To that extent, in their way animal epidemics have the same causes as human ones.
Animals can indeed commit suicide. So can a race or a species. The dignity of a spirited life demands that a certain quality of experience be maintained.
The infamous “Black Death,” were (and still are) spread to man by fleas carrying a bacterium from infected rats. Other forms of affliction are carried by other rodents. The complicated interactions and communications involving all forms of life, man’s and woman’s deep dissatisfactions would have periodically helped trigger the resurgence of scourges like the plagues: In 3rd-century Rome, for instance, several thousand people were said to have died each day; estimates are that over a 20-year period in the 14th century three-quarters of the population of Europe and Asia perished; there was the great plague of London in 1665, and so forth.
Many can thankfully praise a given doctor for discovering a disease condition ‘in time.’ so that effective countering measures were taken and the disease was eliminated. We cannot know for sure, of course, what would have happened otherwise. To those people who wanted to die. If they did not die of the disease, they may have ‘fallen prey’ to an accident, or died in a war, or in a natural disaster.
They may have been ‘cured’ whether or not they had treatment, and gone on to lead productive lives. We do not know. A man or woman who is ready to die, if saved from one disease will promptly get another, or find a way of fulfilling that desire. Our problem there rests with the will to live, and with the mechanisms of the psyche.
The English naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), maintained in his theory of organic evolution that all plants and animals develop from their own previous forms by inheriting minute variations through succeeding generations, with those forms best fitted to the environment being the ones most likely to survive.
Amazingly, another English naturalist, Alfred Wallace (1823-1882), independently developed a similar theory, and the two men had their work presented to science in the same paper in 1858. The next year Darwin published his The Origin of Species.
Not only for the individual, but to insure the continued vitality of the species. Dying is spiritual and psychological necessity, for after a while the exuberant, ever-renewed energies of the spirit can no longer be translated into flesh.
Inherently, each individual knows that he or she must die physically in order to survive spiritually and psychically. As humans, this may not be an easy thought to have, but it is one that we all acknowledge. That is why we take out life insurance to cover ourselves, as we are aware that one day we will indeed die. The self outgrows the flesh. Particularly since the advent of Charles Darwin’s theories, the acceptance of the fact of death has come to imply a certain kind of weakness, for is it not said that only the strong survive?
To some degree, epidemics and recognized illnesses serve the sociological purpose of providing an acceptable reason for death — a face-saving device for those who have already decided to die. This does not mean that such individuals make a conscious decision to die, in our terms: But such decisions are often semi-conscious. It might be that those Individuals feel they have fulfilled their purposes — but such decisions may also be built upon a different kind of desire for survival than those understood in Darwinian terms.
It is not understood that before life an individual decides to live. A self is not simply the accidental personification of the body’s biological mechanism. Each person born desires to be born. He or she dies when that desire no longer operates. No epidemic or illness or natural disaster — or stray bullet from a murderer’s gun — will kill a person who does not want to die.
The desire for life has been most flaunted, yet human psychology has seldom dealt with the quite active desire for death. In its natural form this is not a morbid, frightened, neurotic, or cowardly attempt to escape life, but a definite, positive, “healthy” acceleration of the desire for survival, in which the individual strongly wants to leave physical life as once the child wanted to leave the parent’s home.
I am not speaking here of the desire for suicide, which involves a definite killing of the body by self-deliberate means — often of a violent nature. Ideally this desire for death, however, would simply involve the slowing of the body’s processes, the gradual disentanglement of psyche from flesh; or in other instances, according to individual characteristics, a sudden, natural stopping of the body’s processes.
Left alone, the self and the body are so entwined that the separation would be smooth. The body would automatically follow the wishes of the inner self. In the case of suicide, for example, the self is to some extent acting out of context with the body, which still has its own will to live.
I do not mean to imply guilt on the part of a person who takes his or her own life. In many cases, a more natural death would have ensued in any event as the result of “diseases.” Often for example, a person wanting to die originally intended to experience only a portion of earth life, say childhood. This purpose would be entwined with the parents intent. Such a son or daughter might be born, for instance, through a woman who wanted to experience childbirth but who did not necessarily want to encounter the years of child-raising, for her own reasons.
Such a mother would attract a consciousness who desired, perhaps, to re-experience childhood but not adulthood, or who might teach the mother lessons sorely needed. Such a child might naturally die at 10 or 12, or earlier. Yet the ministrations of science might keep the child alive far longer, until such a person [begins] encountering an adulthood thrust upon him or her, so to speak.
An automobile accident, suicide, or another kind of accident might result in death. The person might fall prey to an epidemic, but the smoothness of biological motion or psychological motion has been lost. I am not here condoning suicide, for too often in our society it is the unfortunate result of conflicting beliefs — and yet it is true to say that all deaths are suicide, and all births deliberate on the part of child and parent. To that extent, we cannot separate issues like a population explosion on the part of certain portions of the world, from epidemics, earthquakes, and other disasters.
However, deaths and injuries like say, an automobile accident as mentioned above, might happen to someone due to reasons like negligence of the automobile driver, or other unforeseen events. In such cases, the injured could decide to seek justice and use the Keating Law Firm or their likes in filing for compensation for the injury and trauma that they might have endured. It is always a trying time for a family to witness their loved ones in pain, and to seek any kind of remedy that they feel could somehow alleviate the same, is an option they can explore.
But that said, while we agree that death is a natural process that will come knocking on our door once our time on earth ends, it does not mean that the ones we leave behind in this world should be in pain. Opting for life insurance could be a way to ease their burden, at least financially. Be it for seniors, or the young ones, choosing insurance could be a plausible option to consider. One of the best things a person can do is secure life insurance so their next of kin is prepared for any type of unforeseen circumstance like an accident or health issue that may arise. Burying or cremating costs (in case of a death) could also be covered by Final Expense insurance, which is another possible option.
In wars, people automatically reproduce their kind to make up for those are killed, and when the race overproduces there will be automatic controls set upon the population. Yet these will in all ways fit the intents and purposes of the individuals involved.
People will die when they are ready to, following inner dictates and dynamics. A person ready to die will, despite any medication. A person who wants to live will seize upon the tiniest hope, and respond. The dynamics of health have nothing to do with inoculations. They reside in the consciousness of each being.
The individual will grow outward toward the world, encountering and forming a practical experience, traveling outward from his center in almost vine-like fashion, forming from the fabric of physical reality a conglomeration of pleasant or aesthetic, and unpleasant or prickly events.
The vine of experience in this analogy is formed in quite a natural fashion from “psychic” elements that are as necessary to psychological experience as sun, air, and water are to plants. But as the individual’s personal experience must be seen in the light of all of these issues, so mass events cannot be understood unless they are considered in a far greater context that unusual.
The question of epidemics, for example, cannot be answered from a biological standpoint alone. It involves great sweeping psychological attitudes on the part of many, and meets the needs and desires of those involved — needs which, in our terms, arise in a framework of religious, psychological and cultural realities that cannot be isolated from biological results.
I have thus far stayed clear of many important and vital subjects, involving mass realities, because first of all the importance of the individual is to be stressed, and his or her power to form this or her private events. Only when the private nature of reality was emphasized sufficiently would show how the magnification of individual reality combines and enlarges to form vast mass reactions — such as, say, the initiation of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow or governments; the birth of a new religion that sweeps all others before it; mass conversions; mass murders in the form of wars; the sudden sweep of deadly epidemics; the scourge of earthquakes, flood, or other disasters; the inexplicable appearance of periods of great art or architecture or technology.
There are no closed systems. This also means that in world terms, events spin like electrons, affecting all psychological and psychic systems as well as biological ones. It is true to say that each individual dies alone, for no one else can die that death. It is also true that part of the species dies with each death, and is reborn with each birth, and that each private death takes place within the greater context of the existence of the entire species. The death serves a purpose species-wise while it also serves the purposes of the individual, for no death comes unbidden.
An epidemic, for example, serves the purposes of each individual who is involved, while it also serves its own functions in the greater species framework.
When we consider epidemics to be the result of viruses, and emphasize their biological stances, then it seems that the solutions are very obvious: We learn the nature of each virus and develop an inoculation, giving [each member of] the populace a small dose of the disease so that a man’s or woman’s own body will combat it, and he or she will become immune.
The shortsightedness of such procedures is generally overlooked because of the definite short-term advantages. As a rule, for example, people inoculated against polio do not develop that disease. Using such procedures, tuberculosis has been largely conquered.
In the first place, the causes are not biological. Biology is simply the carrier of a “deadly intent.” In the second place, there is a difference between a virus produced in the laboratory and that inhabiting the body — a difference recognized by the body but not by our laboratory instruments.
In a way the body produces antibodies, and sets up natural immunization as a result of say, inoculation. But the body’s chemistry is also confused, for it “knows it is reacting to a disease that is not “a true disease,” but a biologically counterfeit intrusion.
To that extent — the body’s biological integrity is contaminated. It may at the same time produce antibodies also, for example, to other “similar” diseases, and so overextend its defenses that the individual later comes down with another disease.
No person becomes ill unless that illness serves a psychic or psychological reason, so many people escape such complications. In the meantime, however, scientists and medical men and women find more and more viruses against which the population “must ” be inoculated. Each one is considered singly. There is a rush to develop a new inoculation against the newest virus. Much of this is on predictive basis: The scientists “predict” how many people might be “attacked” by, say, a virus that has caused a given number of deaths. Then as a preventative measure the populace is invited to the new inoculation.
Many people who would not get the disease in any case are then religiously inoculated with it. The body is exerted to use its immune system to the utmost, and sometimes, according to the inoculation, overextended [under such] conditions. Those individuals who have psychologically decided upon death will die in any case, of that disease or another, or of the side effects of the inoculation.
Inner reality and private experience give birth to all mass events. Man and woman cannot disentangle himself or herself from the natural context of his or her physical life. His or her culture, his or her religion, his or her psychologies, and his or her psychological nature together form the context within which both private and mass events occur. My discussions will be devoted to the nature of the great sweeping emotional, religious, or biological events that often seem to engulf the individual, or to lift him or her willy-nilly in their power.
What is the relationship between the individual and the gigantic mass motions of nature, of government, or even of religion? What about mass conversions? Mass hysteria? Mass healings, mass murder, and the individual?
That reality contributes to the experience of others. Only when we operate from our own stance can we help others to the best of our ability. To anticipate danger, or to imaginatively take on the troubles of others robs us of the very energy with which we could help them. I am not saying, therefore, to turn our eyes from the unfortunate conditions of the world. Practical help is needed in all areas of the human life. Yet it is far better, and more practical ultimately, to concentrate upon the beneficial elements of civilization — far better to organize our thoughts in areas of accomplishment than to make lists of man’s or woman’s deficiencies and lacks.
Such a practice leads to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, in which effective action seems impossible. Life possesses an exuberance. If this is cherished, nurtured, encouraged, then additional energy is generated that is not needed for the purposes of daily private life — a superabundance, that can be effectively directed in those areas of the world where help is most needed.
The strength, vitality, and effectiveness of thought is seldom considered. Though, we may say will not stop war — yet what do we think started such a war? Throughout history the downtrodden have often risen into power, using force, rebelling against their oppressors; and yet, learning little from that experience, they turn and become the new elite, the new power-holders. Their physical conditions may be completely changed, Now theirs, the offices of government, the wealth. Gone are the conditions that, it would seem, caused the uprising. Yet in retaliation they strike out, forming a new class of downtrodden who must in their turn rise and retaliate.
Despite all appearances, conditions of an exterior nature do not cause wars, or poverty, or disease, or any of the unfortunate circumstances apparent in the world. Our beliefs form our reality. Our thoughts generate practical experience. When these change, conditions will change. To add our own energy, focus, and concentration of dire circumstances in other portions of the world does not help, but adds to, such situations.
To close our eyes to them in an ignorant fashion, to wash our hands of them, so to speak, is equally shortsighted. To pretend such situations do not exist, out of fear of them, will only bring the feared reality closer. It is far better to situate oneself firmly in our own reality, acknowledge it as our own, encourage our strength and creativity, and from that vantage point view those areas of the world or of our own society that need constructive help. Purposefully in our own life, in our daily dialogues with others, in our relationships through our groups or clubs, reinforce as well as we can the strength and abilities of others.
That reinforcement will add to the personal power of all other individuals with whom those people come in contact. Find the beliefs responsible for the unfortunate conditions. Each individual should be able to assess his or her own reality realistically. There would be no need to arm a nation in advance against another nation’s anticipated — but imaginary — attack.
Personal grudges would not build up, so that men or women so fear further hurts that they attempt to hide from life or relationships, or shy away from contact with others. It is not virtuous to count our failings. Self-conscious righteousness can be a very narrow road. If each of us understood and perceived the graceful integrity of our own individuality, just as we try to perceive the beauty of all other natural creatures, then we would allow our own creativity greater reign. There is order in all elements of nature, and we are part of it.
The greater sweep of the seasons represents the reaches of our soul. We will not attain spirituality by turning our eyes away from nature, or by trying to disentangle oneself from it. We will not “glimpse eternal life” by attempting to deny the life that we have now — for that life is our own unique path, and provides its own clues for us to follow.
All That Is vibrates with desire. The denial of desire will bring us only listlessness. Those who deny desire are the most smitten by it. Each of our lives are miniature and yet gigantic episodes, mortal and immortal at once, providing experiences that we form meaningfully, opening up dimensions of reality available to no one else, for no one can view existence from our standpoint. No one can be you but you. There are communications at other levels, but our experience of existence is completely original, to be treasured.
No one from any psychological threshold, however vast, can write a book that defines the psyche, but only present hints and clues, words and symbols. The words and ideas stand for inner realities — that is, they are like piano keys striking other chords; chords that, hopefully, will be activated within the psyche of each person.
Each or us is couched now in the natural world, and world is couched in a reality from which nature emerges. The psyche’s roots are secure, nourishing it like a tree from the ground of being. The source of the psyche’s strength is within each individual, the invisible fabric of the person’s existence.
Nature is luxurious and abundant in its expressions. The greater reality from which nature springs is evens more abundant, and within that multidimensional experience no individual is ignored, forgotten, dismissed, lost, or forsaken. A tree does not have to ask for nourishment for the ground or the sun, and so everything that we need is available to us in our practical experience. If we believe we are not worthy of nourishment, if we believe that life itself is dangerous, then our own beliefs make it impossible for us to fully utilize that available help. In large measure, since we are still alive, we are of course nourished. We cannot close out the vitality of our own being easily, and the vitality “squandered” on deeper bouts of depression is often greater than the energy used in creative pursuits. We are a portion of All That Is; therefore the universe leans in our direction. It gives. It rings with vitality. Then forsake beliefs that tell us otherwise. Seek within oneself — each of us — those feelings of exuberance that we have, even if they are only occasional, and encourage those events or thoughts that bring them about.
We cannot find our psyche by thinking of it as a separate thing, like a fine jewel in an eternal closet. We can only experience its strength and vitality by exploring the subjective reality that is our own, for it will lead us unerringly to that greater source of being that transcends both space and time.
The overall stance of the species is largely maintained by the waking-sleeping patterns. In such a fashion, one large portion of the species focuses in physical reality while the other large portion holds a secure foothold in inner reality.
In inner reality we are working on the interior patterns that will form the next day’s realities, and providing probable previews of the future events. Waking and sleeping reality is therefore balanced in the world mind — not the world brain.
However, the sleeping portion of the species represents the brain’s unconscious activities in the body — particularly when we think of the motion of all of the species’ action en masse in a given day. Those conscious motions have an unconscious basis. If we think of a mass world brain — one entity — then it must wake and sleep in patterns. If we think of mass daily action as performed by one gigantic being, then all of those conscious actions have unconscious counterparts, and a great intercommunication of an inner nervous system must take place.
Part of such brain would have to be awake all of the time, and part engaged in unconscious activity. This is what happens.
Diverse cultures are thus able to communicate as the cultural knowledge of various parts of the world is given to the sleeping portion of the entire organism. When they sleep, the waking nations add the day’s events to the world memory, and work out future probabilities.
Looking at our own species we are often less kindly, less compassionate, less understanding. It is easy to condemn our own kind.
It may be difficult sometimes for us to understand, but our species means well. We understand that the tiger exists in a certain environment, and reacts according to his nature. So does man and woman. Even his or her atrocities are committed in a distorted attempt to reach what we consider good goals. He and she fails often to achieve the goals, or even to understand how his or her very methods prevent their attainment.
He and she as indeed as blessed as the animals, however, and his or her failures are the results of his or her lack of understanding. He or she is directly faced with a far more complex conscious world than the other animals are, dealing particularly with symbols and ideas that are then projected out ward into reality, where they are to be tested. If they could be tested mentally in our context, there would be no need for physical human existence.
Too many complicated issues are connected here, so that I must at best simplify. It is as if man and woman said: “Now what about this idea? What can we do with it? What will happen if we toss it out into reality, physically? How far can we go with any of the great social, scientific, religious ideas that are so peculiarly the offshoots of man’s and woman’s mind?”
If such issues could all be mentally worked out on some non-physical drawing board, again, the great challenge of physical existence would be neither necessary nor meaningful. How far, say, can nationalism be carried? To what extent can the world be treated as if it were external to man and woman, as an object? What can man or woman learn by treating the body as if it were a machine? As if it were a mirage? As if it were driven by blind instinct? As if it were possessed by a soul?
To some extent, these are all unique and creative ponderings that on the part of the animals alone would be considered the most curious and enlightening intellectual achievements. The animals must relate to the earth, and so must man and woman. As the animal must play, mate, hunt his prey or eat his berries within the physical context of sun, ground, trees, snow, hail and wind, so in a different way man and woman must pursue his/her ideas by clothing them in the elemental realities of earth, by perceiving them as events.
When he or she is destructive, man or woman does not seek to be destructive per se; but in a desire to achieve that which he or she thinks of as particular goal that to him or her is good, he or she forgets to examine the goodness of his or her methods.
One animal chasing and killing its prey serves the greater purpose of preserving the balance of nature, whether or not the animal is aware of this — and again, the animal’s intent is not evil. Man and woman consumes ideas. In so doing he or she contributes to a different kind of balance, of which he or she is usually unaware. But no man or woman truly acts out of pure intent to do wrong, or to be vicious. Storms rend the summer sky, sending forth thunder and lightening. Earthquakes may ravage the countryside. We may deeply regret the havoc worked, knowing that neither the storm nor the earthquake is evil. Not only did they have no wrong intent, but the overall conditions corrected the earth’s balance.
This requires some unique understanding. The destructive storms worked by mankind ultimately cannot be said to be any more evil than the earthquake. While man’s and woman’s works may often certainly appear destructive, we must not blame man’s or woman’s intent, nor must we ever make the error of confusing man and woman with their works. For many well-intentioned artists, with the best of intentions, produce at times shoddy works of art, all the more disappointing and deplorable to them because of the initial goodness of their intent.
Their lack of knowledge and techniques and methods then become quite plain. By concentrating too deeply upon the world of newspapers and the negative reports of man’s and woman’s actions, it is truly easy to lose sight of each man’s and each woman’s basic good intent.
That intent may be confused, poorly executed, tangled amid conflicts of beliefs, strangled by the bloody hands of murders and wars — and yet no man or woman ever loses it. That represents the hope of the species, and it has ever remained lit, like a bright light within each member of the species; and that good intents is handed down through the generations. It is far more potent, that illumination, then any hates or national grudges that may also be passed along.
It is imperative, for any peace of mind, that we believe in that existence of man’s or woman’s innate good intent.
It is shared by all of the other animals. Each animal knows that under certain conditions the other may fight or posture aggressively, or defend its nest. Each animal knows that in time of hunger it might be hunted by another. Except for those situations, however, the animals are not afraid of each other. They know that each other animal is of good intent.
We should grant our own species the same. We can collect books of man’s and woman’s failures. Why would anyone collect the worst works of any artist, and get pleasure in ripping them apart? Man and woman has produced some fine works: The high level of verbal communication, the multitudinous varieties of emotional interactions and of cultural exchange, the facility with exteriorization of ideas and concepts, the reaches of the imagination — all of these, and many others, are unique in the universe.
To identify man or woman with their poorest works is to purposefully seek out the mars, the mistakes, of fine artist, and then to condemn him or her. To do this is to condemn ourselves personally. If a scientist says consciousness is the result of chance, or Darwin’s theories say that basically man and woman is a triumphant son and daughter of murderers, many people object. If we say, however, that men and women are idiots, or that they are not worth the ground they walk upon, we are saying the same thing. For we must be concerned with this reality as we know it; in those terms, to condemn man or woman is to condemn the species as we know it, and the practical terms of our world.
To say that people can escape to another probability is pragmatically a cop-out — this is apart from the reality of probabilities, for I am speaking from our emotional viewpoint.
Physically our body has a stance in space and time. Speaking of primary and secondary experience. Let us call primary experience that which exists immediately in sense terms in our moment of time — the contact of body with environment. Creating certain divisions there to make our discussion easier. Therefore, I will call secondary experience that information that comes to us through, say, reading, television, discussion with others, letters, and so forth.
The secondary kind of experience is largely symbolic. This should be clear. Reading about a war in the middle of a quiet sunny afternoon is not the same thing as being in the war, however vivid the description. Reading about the energy shortage is not the same as sitting in a cold house. Reading about the possible annihilation of man-womankind through nuclear destruction or other stupidities, while we are sitting calmly enough in our living room, is obviously far divorced from the actuality described in an article.
At the levels with which we are concerned, the body must primarily react to present, immediate, primary existence in space and time. At other levels it is equipped to handle many kinds of data, i.e. The precognition of cells. But the body depend on the conscious mind to give it a clear assessment of precise conditions of the space and time it occupies. It depends upon that knowledge.
Here we must part company with treasured objectivity, and enter instead a mental domain, in which it is seen that contradictions are not errors; an inner domain, in which it is seen that contradictions at one level, for at another level they are seen to be no contradictions at all.
In science as it stands, it is necessary that self-contradictions do not arise. If a hypothesis is “proven true,” then it cannot be proven false — or, of course, it was never true to begin with.
In those terms, therefore, the universe either had “a Creator,” or it had none; or it came into being as stated in the Big Bang theory, and is either constantly expanding or it is not. Evolution exists or it does not. As a rule such theories are proven “true’ by the simple process of excluding anything else that seems contradictory, and so generally our scientific theories carry the weight of strong validity within their own frameworks.
In those frameworks we have made certain classifications that now appear quite obvious. Common sense upholds them, and it seems impossible to consider reality otherwise. Yet by their nature such categories structure our experience of reality itself to such an extent that any alternate ways of perceiving life seem not only untrustworthy, but completely impossible.
Our classifications of various species appear to us as the only logical kinds of divisions that could be made among living things. Quite the contrary is the case, however. That particular overall method of separation leads to such questions as: Which species came first, and which came later, and how did the various species merge — one from the other? Those questions are further brought about by our time classifications, without which they would be meaningless.
Our classifications in such respects set up exterior divisions. Now these serve as quite handy reference points, but basically speaking they in no way affect the natural experience of those various living creatures that we refer to as “other species.”
Our specializations work as long as we stay within the framework, though then we must wrestle with the questions that such divisions automatically entail. It is perhaps difficult for us to realize that these are written and verbalized categories that in no real manner tell us anything about the actual experience of other creatures — but only note habits, tendencies, and separations of the most exterior nature.
If our purpose is to comprehend what other living creatures perceive, then the methods we are using are at the best short-sighted, and at the worst they completely defeat our purpose. For example: No matter what information or data we receive as the result of animal experimentation or dissection for scientific purposes, and no matter how valuable the results appear to be, the consequences of such methods are so distorted that we comprehend less of life than we did before.
Our present methods will simply bring us pat, manufactured results and answers. They will satisfy neither the intellect nor the soul. Since our universe springs from an inner one, and since that inner one pervades each nook and cranny of our own existence, we must look where we have not before — into reality of our own minds and emotions. We must look to the natural universe that we know. We must look with our intuitions and creative instincts at the creatures about us, seeing them not as other species with certain habits, not as inferior properties of the earth, to be dissected, but as living examples of the nature of the universe, in constant being and transformation.
We must study the quality of life, dare to follow the patterns of our own thoughts and emotions, and to ride that mobility, for in that mobility there are hints of the origin of the universe and of the psyche. The poet’s view of the universe and of nature is more scientific, then, than the scientist’s, for more of nature is comprehended.
The child, laughing with joy and awe at the sight of the first violet, understands far more in the deepest terms than a botanist who has long since forgotten the experience of perceiving one violet, though he has at his mental fingertips the names and classifications of all the world’s flowers. Information is not necessarily knowledge or comprehension.
Thoughts spring into out mind as the objective universe swims into reality — that is, in the same fashion. Diagramming sentences tells us little about the spoken language, and nothing about those miraculous physical and mental performances that allow us to speak — an so diagramming the species of the world is, in the same way, quite divorced from any true understanding.
The subjective feeling of our being, our intimate experience from moment-to-moment — these possess the same mysterious quality that it seems to us the universe possesses. We are mortal, and everywhere encounter evidence of that mortality, and yet within its framework our feelings and thoughts have a reality to us personally that transcends all such classifications. We know that physically we will die, yet each person at one time or another is secretly sure that he or she will not meet such a fate, and that life is somehow eternal.
Through such feelings the psyche breaks through all misconceptions, hinting at the nature of self and of the universe, and at that level there are no contradictions. There is no beginning or end to the psyche, either. We may say: “Granted” yet persist, saying: “In our terms, however, when did the world begin, and in what manner?” Yet the very attempt to place such an origin in time makes almost any answer distorted.
The truth is that the answers lie in our own experience. They are implied in our own spontaneous behavior — that is, in the wondrous activity of our bodies and minds.
We walk well without having at our fingertips any conscious knowledge of the inner mechanism’s activity. We may have been told, or we may have read about the body’s anatomy, and the interaction of its parts. Yet whether or not we have such information, we walk quite well. Such data therefore do not help our walking performance any.
For that matter, an athlete may have a great zest for motion and an impatience with reading, caring not what within the body makes it move as long as its performance is superb — within an invalid with great book knowledge about all of the body’s parts is quite unable to physically perform in a normal manner.
Our body knows how to walk. The knowledge is built-in and acted upon. The body knows how to heal itself, how to use its nourishment, how to replace its tissues, yet in our terms the body itself has no access to the kind of information the mind possesses. Being so ignorant, how does it perform so well?
If it were scientifically inclined, the body would know that such spontaneous performance was impossible, for science cannot explain the reality of life itself in its present form, much less its origins.
Consciousness within the body knows that its existence is within the body’s context, and apart from it at the same time. In ordinary life during the day consciousness often takes a recess, so to speak — it daydreams, or otherwise experiences itself as somewhat apart from the body’s reality. At night, in sleep, the self’s consciousness takes longer, freer recesses from physical reality, and does this as spontaneously as the body itself walks. These experiences are not hypothetical. They happen to each person. On such occasions, each person is to some extent aware of a kind of comprehension that is not dependent upon the accumulation of data, but of a deeper kind if experience and direct encounter with the reality from which the world emerges.
This is the kind of wordless knowledge the body possesses, that brings forth our physical motion and results in the spectacular preciseness of bodily response. It is, then, highly practical. In our terms, the same force that formed the world forms our subjective reality now, and is a source of the natural universe.
Exploring those realities lovingly will bring us into direct contact with inner dimensions of our being, providing intuitive understandings that are of great import.
The motion of the universe appears in the motion of our own intimate experience, and in that seemingly most nebulous area the answers will be found.
