Category Archives: HEALING

Inner Backbone of Perception

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

p23

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

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

m9

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

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

p0

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

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

p14

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

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

p15

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

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

p17

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

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

p19

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

p3

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

Time Overlays

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

f18

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

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

f9

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

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

f12

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

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

f35

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

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

f3

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

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

f29

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

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

f11

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

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

f26

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

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

f8

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

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

f16

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

f4

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

The 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.

au17

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.

au37

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.

a7

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.

au16

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.

g5

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.

e25

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.

g1

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.

ed32

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.

ag12

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.

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.

ac4

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.

ac12

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.

ac47

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.

ac42

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.

ac48

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.

ac53

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.

ac45

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.

ac30

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.

ac39

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.

For eons men and women where in the dreaming state

Men and women slept long hours, as did the animals — awakening, so to speak, to exercise their bodies, obtain sustenance, and later, to mate. It was indeed a dreamlike world, but a highly charming and vital one, in which dreaming imaginations played rambunctiously with all the probabilities entailed in this new venture: imagining the various forms of language and communication possible, spinning great dream tales of future civilizations replete with their own built-in histories — building, because they were now allied with time, mental edifices that automatically created pasts as well as futures.

de9

These ancient dreams were shared to some extent by each consciousness that was embarked upon the earthly venture, so that creatures and environment together formed great environmental realities. Valleys and mountains, and their inhabitants, together dreamed themselves into being and coexistence.

The species — from our viewpoint — lived at a much slower pace in those terms. The blood, for example, did not need to course so quickly through the veins and arteries, the heart did not need to beat as fast. And in an important fashion the coordination of the creature in its environment did not need to be as precise, since there was an elastic give-and-take of consciousness between the two.

In ways almost impossible to describe, the ground rules were not as firmly established. Gravity itself did not carry its all-pervasive sway, so that the air was more buoyant. Man and woman was aware of its support in a luxurious, intimate fashion. He/she was aware of himself or herself in a different way, so that, for example, his and her identification with the self did not stop where his or her skin stopped. He and she could follow it outward into the space about his or her form, and feel it merge with the atmosphere with a primal sense-experience that we have forgotten.

de24

During this period, incidentally, mental activity of the highest, most original variety was the strongest dream characteristic, and the knowledge man and woman gained was imprinted upon the physical brain: what is now completely unconscious activity involving the functions of the body, its relationship with the environment, its balance and temperature, its constant inner alterations. All of these highly intricate activities were learned and practiced in the dream state as the conscious units translated their inner knowledge through the state of dreaming into physical form.

Then in our terms man and woman began, with the other species, to waken more fully into the physical world, to develop the exterior senses, to intersect delicately and precisely with space and time. Yet man and woman still sleeps and dreams, and that state is still a firm connective with his or her own origins, and with the origins of the universe as he or she knows it as well.

de21

Man and woman dreamed his or her languages. He and she dreamed how to use his or her tongue to form the words. In his or her dreams he/she practiced stringing the words together to form their meanings, so that finally he or she could consciously begin a sentence without actually knowing how it was begun, yet in the faith that he/she could and would complete it.

All languages have as their basis the language that was spoken in dreams. The need for language arose, however, as man woman became less a dreamer and more immersed in the specifics of space and time, for in the dream state his/her communications with his or her fellows and other species was instantaneous. Language arose to take the place of that inner communication, then. There is a great underlying unity in all of man’s and woman’s so-called early cultures — cave drawings and religions — because they were all fed by that common source, as man and woman tired to transpose inner knowledge into physical actuality.

de8

The body learned to maintain its stability, its strength and agility, to achieve a state of balance in complementary response to the weather and elements, to dream computations that the conscious mind alone could not hold. The body learned to heal itself in sleep in its dreams — and at certain levels in that state even now each portion of consciousness contributes to the health and stability of all other portions. Far from the claw-and dagger universe, we have one whose very foundation is based upon the loving cooperation of all its parts. That is given — the gift of life brings along with it the actualization of that cooperation, for the body’s parts exist as a unit because of inner relationships of a cooperative nature: and those exist at our birth when we are innocent of any cultural beliefs that may be to the contrary.

If it were not for this most basic, initial loving cooperation, that is a given quality in life itself, life would not have continued. Each individual of each species takes that initial zest and joy of life as its own yardstick. Each individual of whatever species, and each consciousness, whatever its degree, automatically seeks to enhance the quality of life itself — not only for itself but for all of reality as well.

de53

This is a given characteristic of life, regardless of the beliefs that may lead us to misinterpret the actions of nature, casting some of its creatures in a reprehensible light.

In a fashion those ancient dreamers, through their immense creativity, dreamed all of life’s creatures in all of their pasts, presents, and futures — that is, their dreams opened up the doors of space and time to entities that otherwise would not have been released into actualization, even as, for example, the units of consciousness were once released from the mind of All That Is.

de62

All possible entities that can ever be actualized always exist. They have always existed and they always will exist. All That Is must, by its characteristics, be all that it can ever be, and so there can be no end to existence — and, in those terms, no beginning. But in terms of our world the units of consciousness, acting both as forces and as psychological entities of massive power, planted the seeds of our world in a dimension of imaginative power that gave birth to physical form. In our terms those entities are our ancestors — and yet they are not ours alone, but the ancestors of all the consciousnesses that make up our world.

de65

It is easy to live — so easy that although we live, rest, create, respond, feel, touch, see, sleep and wake, we do not really have to try to do any of those things. From our viewpoint they are done for us.

They are done for us in Framed-Mind-2 — and further discussions of Framed-Mind-2, incidentally, will be inter-wound throughout my blogs. Our beliefs often tell us that life is hard, however, that living is difficult, that the universe, again, is unsafe, and that we must use all of our resources — not to meet life with anything like joyful abandon, or course, but to protect ourselves against its implied threats; threats that we have been taught to expect.

But our beliefs do not stop there. Because of both scientific and religious ones, in Western civilization we believe that there are threats from within also. As a result we forget our natural selves, and become involved in a secondary, largely imaginary culture: beliefs that are projected negatively into the future, individually and en masse. People respond with illnesses of one kind or another, or through exaggerated behavior.

Living is easy. It is safe and reliable because it is easy.

The blueprints for “ideal” development exist within the pool of genetic knowledge

The ideal blueprints provide the species with multitudinous avenues for fulfillment. Those blueprints exist mentally as ideals. They express themselves through the impetus and creativity of the species’ individual members.

op18

Our natural athletes, for example, show through their physical expertise certain ideal body conditions. They may personify great agility or strength or power: individual attributes, physical ideals which are held up to others for their appreciation, and which signify, to whatever extent, abilities inherent in the species itself.

I believe that man and woman runs the mile much quicker now than he or she did, say, thirty years ago. Has the body’s effective speed suddenly quickened? Hardly. Instead, mental beliefs about the body’s performance have changed, and increased physical speed resulted. The body can indeed run faster than the current record (of 3:39). I merely want to show effect of beliefs upon physical performance. All people do not want to be expert runners, however. Their creativity and their ideals may lie in quite different fields of endeavor, but individual performance always adds to the knowledge of the species. Good, better, best. Is it bad to be a poor runner? Of course not, unless running is your own particular avocation. And if it is , you improve with practice.

p32

Now our ideals, whatever they may be, initially emerge from our inner experience, and this applies to the species as a whole. Our ideas of society and cooperation arise from both a biological and spiritual knowledge given us at birth. Man and woman recognized the importance of groups after observing the animals’ cooperation. Our civilizations are our splendid, creative, exterior renditions of the inner social groupings of the cells of the body, and the cooperative processes of nature that give us physical life. This does not mean that the intellect is any less, but that it uses its abilities to help us form physical civilizations that are the reflections of mental, spiritual, and biological inner civilizations. We learn from nature always, and we are a part of it always.

Our searches toward understanding excellent performance in any area — our idealisms — are all spiritually and biologically ingrained. If many of the conditions we have mentioned are less than ideal in our society, then we can as an individual begin to change those situations. We do this by accepting the rightness of our own personhood. We do this by discarding ideas of unworthiness and powerlessness, no matter what their sources. We do this by beginning to observe our own impulses, by trusting our own direction. We start wherever we are, today.

p25

We do not dwell upon the unfortunate conditions in our environment, but do take steps in our own life to express our ideals in whatever way is given. Those ways are multitudinous.

Generally speaking, for example, If you are seriously worried about a physical condition, go to a doctor, because your own beliefs may over frighten you otherwise. Begin with innocuous but annoying physical conditions, however, and try to work those out for yourself. Try to discover why you are bothered. When you have a headache or a simple stomach upset, or if you have a chronic, annoying but not serious condition, such as trouble with you sinuses, of if you have hay fever — in those situations, remind yourself that your body does indeed have the capacities to heal itself.

q4

Do these exercises to discover what conditions of a mental nature, or psychological origin, are causing distress. instead of taking an aspirin for a headache, sit down, breathe quietly, and remind yourself that you are an integral part of the universe. Allow yourself to feel a sense of belonging with nature. Such an exercise can often relieve a headache in no time. But each such experience will allow us to build up a sense of trust in our own body’s processes.

Examine the literature that you read, the television programs that you watch, and tell yourself to ignore those indications given of the body’s weaknesses. Tell yourself to ignore literature or programs that speak authoritatively about the species’ “killer instincts.” Make an effort to free your intellect of such hampering beliefs. Take a chance on your own abilities. If we learn to trust our basic integrity as a person, then we will be able to assess our abilities clearly, neither exaggerating them or under assessing them.

p22

We will not feel the need, say, to “justify our existence” by exaggerating a particular gift, setting up the performance of one particular feat or art as a rigid ideal, when in fact we may be pleasantly gifted but not greatly enough endowed with a certain ability to give us the outstanding praise we think we might deserve.

On the other hand, there are many highly gifted people who continually put down their abilities, and are afraid to take one small step toward their expression. If we accept the rightness of our life in the universe, then our ideals will be those in keeping with our nature. They will be fairly easily given expression, so that they add to our own fulfillment and to the development of the society as well.

p45

Our impulses are our closest communication with our inner self, because in the waking state they are the spontaneous urgings toward action, rising from that deep inner knowledge of oneself that we have in dreams. We were born because we had the impulse to be. The universe exists because it had the impulse to be. There was no exterior cosmic Pied Piper, singing magical notes or playing a magical tune, urging the universe into being. The urge to be came from within, and that urge is repeated to some extent in each impulse, each urge toward action on the part of man and woman or molecule. If we do not trust the nature of our impulses, then we do not trust the nature of our life, the nature of the universe, or the nature of our own being.

Any animal knows better than to distrust the nature of its own life, and so does any infant. Nature exists by virtue of faith. The squirrels gather nuts in the faith that they will have provisions, in the faith that the next season will come, and that spring will follow winter. Our impulses are immersed in the quality called faith, for they urge us into action in the faith that the moment for action exists. Our beliefs must interact with our impulses, however, and often they can erode that great natural beneficial spontaneity that impulses can provide.

p41

When I speak of impulses, many of you will automatically think of impulses that appear contradictory or dangerous or “evil” — and that is because we are so convinced of the basic unworthiness of our being. We have every right to question our impulses, to choose among them, to assess them, but we must be aware of them, acknowledge their existence, for they will lead us to our own true nature. this may involve a lengthy journey for some of us, with our belief systems for many of our impulses now are the result of the pressure caused by perfectly normal unacknowledged ones in the past. But our impulses reflect the basic impulse of our life. Even if they appear contradictory at any given time, overall they will be seen to form constructive patterns toward action that point more clearly towards our own clear path for fulfillment and development.

Natural attributes show themselves quite clearly in early childhood, for example, when we are allowed greater freedom to do what we want to do. As children, some people love to work with words, some with images, some with objects. Some show great ability in dealing with their contemporaries, while others naturally lean toward solitude and private meditations. Look back toward the impulsive behavior of your childhood, toward those activities that mostly pleased you.

p14

If you painted pictures, this does not mean that you necessarily should be an artist. Only we the strength of those impulses — but if they are intense and consistent, then pursue them. If you end up simply painting as a hobby, that will still enrich your life and understanding. If your impulses lead you toward relationships with others, then do not let fears of unworthiness stand in your way. It is very important that we express our idealism actively, to whatever extent we can, for this increases our sense of worth and power.

Such action serves as a safeguard so that we do not overemphasize the gaps that may exist in oneself or in society, between the reality and the ideal condition. Many people want to change the world for the better, but that ideal seems so awe-inspiring that they think they can male no headway unless they perform some great acts of daring or heroism, or envision themselves in some political or religious place of power, or promote an uprising or rebellion. The ideal seems so remote and unreachable that, again, sometimes any means, however, reprehensible, eventually can seem justified. To change the world for the better, we must begin by changing our own life. There is no other way.

p34

We begin by accepting our own worth as a part of the universe, and by granting every other being that same recognition. We begin by honoring life in all of its forms. We begin by changing our thoughts toward life in all of its forms. We begin by changing our thoughts toward our contemporaries, our country, our family, our working companions. If the ideal of loving our neighbor like oneself seems remote, we will at least absolutely refrain from killing our neighbor — and our neighbor is any person on the face of the planet.

We cannot love our neighbor, in fact, until we love oneself, and if we believe that it is wrong to love oneself, then we are indeed unable to love anyone else.

p36

For a start we will acknowledge our existence in the framework of nature, and to do that we must recognize the vast cooperative processes that connect each species with each other one. If we truly use our prerogatives as an individual in our country, then we can exert far more power in normal daily living than we do now. Every time we affirm the rightness of our own existence, we help others. Our mental states are part of the planet’s psychic’s atmosphere.

p23

A note: Our exterior civilizations do indeed mirror and reflect the great cellular civilizations, so that we try to exteriorize that kind of order and creativity.

Many of our technological advances — all of them, for that matter — are rather interpretations of the inner mechanisms of nature: sonar, radar, and so forth, as we attempt to physically or objectively reproduce the inner realities of nature. It is sometimes almost impossible to verbally describe civilizations of scent, civilizations built upon temperature variations, alphabets of color, pressure gradations — all of these highly intimate and organized, but quite outside of verbal representation.

In our lives, anything we want is possible within the contours of our natures, if only we understand that this is so.

 

Combine the idea of a disease with the idea of creativity

Both disease and creativity are related.

c27

Compare the analogy of the landscape of physical experience to the painter’s landscape — which may be dark, gloomy, filled with portents of disaster, and yet still be a work of art. In that regard, every person paints his or her own portrait in living color — a portrait that does not simply sit in a tranquil pose at a table, but one that has the full capacity for action. Those of us now living, say, are in the same life class. We look about to see how our contemporaries are getting along with their portraits, and we find multitudinous varieties: tragic self-portraits, heroic self-portraits, comic self-portraits. And all of these portraits are alive and interacting, and as they interact they form the planetary, mass social and political events of our world.

These portraits obviously have a biological reality. In a manner or speaking, now, each person dips into the same supplies of paint, and so forth — which are the elements out of which our likenesses emerge. There must be great creative leeway allowed for such portraits. Each one interacting with each other one helps form the psychological and physical reality of the species, so we are somehow involved in the formation of a multitudinous number of portraits. I simply want you to keep that analogy in the background.

c488

These portraits, however, are the result of creativity so inborn and miraculous that they are created automatically — an automatic art. At certain levels the species is always creatively embarked upon alternative versions of itself. The overall patterns will remain. Biological integrity is everywhere sustained. What we think of as diseases, however, are quite creative elements working at different levels, and at many levels at once.

c575

Many viruses are vital to physical existence, and in our terms there are gradations of activity, so that only under certain conditions do viruses turn into, say, what we think of as deadly ones. The healthiest body contains within it many so-called deadly viruses in what we may call an inactive form — inactive from our viewpoint, in that they are not causing disease. They are, however, helping to maintain the body’s overall balance. In a way in each body, the species settles upon a known status quo, and yet experiments creatively at many levels with cellular alterations, chromosomal variations, so that of course each body is unique. There are kinds of gradations, say, in the lines and kinds of disease. Certain diseases can actually strengthen the body from a prior weaker state, by calling upon the body’s full defenses. Under certain conditions, some so-called disease states could insure the species’ survival.

In a way, some disease states help to insure the survival of the species — not by weeding out the sickly but by introducing into large numbers of individuals the conditions needed to stabilize other strains within the species that need to be checked, or to “naturally inoculate” the species against a sensed greater danger.

c7

At the minute levels — microscopic levels — there are always some biological experiments being carried out, in a creative effort to give the species as much leeway as possible for effective action. Our body is changed biologically by our thoughts.

Our culture has its biological effect upon the species. I am not speaking of obvious connections in a derogatory manner, such as pollution and so forth. If we were thinking in old terms of evolution, then I would be saying that our cultures and civilizations actually alter the chromosomal messages. Our thoughts affect our cells, again, and they can change what are thought of as hereditary factors. Our imaginations are intimately connected with our diseases, just as our imaginations are so important in all other areas of our lives. We form our being by imaginatively considering such-and-such a possibility, and our thoughts affect our body in that regard. In a way, illness is a tool used on behalf of life, for people have given it social, economic, psychological, and religious connotations. It becomes another area of activity and of expression.

c41

At microscopic level there is no rigid self-structure like our own. There is identity. A cell does not fear its own death. Its identity has traveled back and forth from physical to nonphysical reality too often as a matter of course.

It “sings” with the quality of its own life. It cooperates with other cells. It affiliates itself with the body of which it is part, but in way it lends itself to that formation. The dreams of the species are highly important to its survival — not just because dreaming is a biological necessity, but because in dreams the species is immersed in deeper levels of creativity, so that those actions, inventions, ideas that will be needed in the future will appear in their proper times and places. In the old terms of evolution. I am saying that man’s and woman’s evolutionary progress was also dependent upon his or her dreams.

c12

Now many of the characteristics we consider human — in fact, most of them — appear to one extent or another in all other species. It was the nature of man’s and woman’s dreams, however, that was largely responsible for what we like to think of as the evolution of our species. We learned to dream differently than other creatures.

We dreamed we spoke languages before their physical invention, of course. It was the nature of our dreams, and our dreams’ creativity, that made us what we are, for otherwise we would have developed a mechanical-like language — had we developed one at all — that named designations, locations, and dealt with the most simple, objective reality: “I walked there. He walks there. The sun is hot.” We would not have had any way of conceiving of objects that did not already exist. We would not have had any way of imagining ourselves in novel situations. We would not have any overall picture of the seasons, for dreaming educated the memory and lengthened man’s and woman’s attention span. It reinforced the lessons of daily life, and was highly important in man’s and woman’s progress.

c0

Using the intellect alone, man and woman did not simply learn through daily experience over the generations, say, that one season followed the other. He or she lived too much in the moment for that. In one season he or she dreamed of the others, however, and in dreams he or she saw himself or herself spreading the seeds of fruits as he or she had seen the wind do in daily life.

His or her dreams reminded him or her that a cold season had come, and would come again. Most of our inventions cane in dreams, and again, it is the nature of our dreams that makes us so different from other species.

c37

The creativity of the species is also the result of our particular kind of dream specialization. It amounts to — a unique state of existence by itself, in which we combine the elements of physical and nonphysical reality. It is almost a threshold between the two realities, and we learned to hold our physical intent long enough at that threshold so that we have a kind of brief attention span there, and use it to draw from nonphysical reality precisely those creative elements that we need.

Animals, as a rule are less physically-oriented in their dreaming states. They do dream of physical reality, but much more briefly than us. Otherwise, they immerse themselves in dreams in different kinds of dreaming consciousness.

c46

When ancient man and woman had a series of mass dreams in which he and she learned how to speak. The dreams were like glossolalia — speaking in unintelligible speech sounds — yet the made sense, and man and woman began to speak.

c44

Also when man and and woman were with other men and women in the physical world, he and she could point to stuff to share descriptions with others, but that he or she learned to speak when he and she tried to describe dreams. It was the only way — speech — by which he or she could share data that couldn’t be seen. He or she could point to a tree and grunt, but there wasn’t anything in a dream he or she could point to. He or she had to have a method of expression to describe invisible things. Inventions could have come about when he or she tried to tell others what he or she saw in his or her dreams, too.

Natural Law

When I speak of natural law, I am not referring to the scientists’ laws of nature, such as the law of gravity, for example — which is not a law at all, but a manifestation appearing from the viewpoint of a certain level of consciousness as a result of perceptive apparatus. Our “prejudiced perception” is also built into our instruments in that regard.

s17

I am speaking of the inner laws of nature, that pervade existence. What we call nature refers of course to our particular experience with reality, but quite different kinds of manifestations are also “natural” outside of that context. The laws of nature that I am in the process of explaining underlie all realities, then, and form a firm basis for multitudinous kinds of “natures.” I will put these in terms of reference, however.

Each being experiences life as if it were at life’s center. This applies to a spider in a closet as well as to any man or woman. This principle applies to each atom as well. Each manifestation of consciousness comes into being feeling secure at life’s center — experiencing life through itself, aware of life through its own nature. It comes into being with an inner impetus toward value fulfillment. It is equipped with a feeling of safety, of security within its own environment with which it is fit to deal. It given the impetus toward growth and action, and filled with the desire to impress its world.

s3345

The term “value fulfillment” is very difficult to explain but it is very important. Obviously it deals with the development of values — not moral values, however, but values for which we really have no adequate words. Quite simply, these values have to do with increasing the quality of whatever life the being feels at its center. The quality of that life is not simply to be handed down or experienced, for example, but is to be creatively added to, multiplied, in a way that has nothing to do with quantity.

In those terms, animals have values, and if the quality of life of their lives disintegrates beyond a certain point, the species dwindles. We are not speaking of survival of the fittest, but the survival of life with meaning. Life is meaning for animals. The two are indistinguishable.

s8

We say little, for example, if we note that spiders make webs instinctively because spiders must eat insects, and that the best web-maker will be the fittest kind of spider to survive. It is very difficult for me to escape the sticky web of our beliefs. The web, however, in its way represents an actualized ideal on the spider’s part — and if you will forgive the term, an artistic one as well. It amazes the spiders that flies so kindly fall into those webs. We might say that the spider wonders that art can be so practical.

What about the poor unsuspecting fly? Is it then so enamored of the spider’s web that it loses all sense of caution? For surely lies are the victims of such nefarious webby splendors. We are into sticky stuff indeed.

s38

For one thing, we are dealing with different kinds of consciousness that our own. They are focused consciousnesses, surely, each one feeling itself at life’s center. While this is the case, however, these other forms of consciousness also identify then with the source of nature from which they emerge. In a way impossible to explain, the fly and the spider are connected, and aware of the connection. Not as hunter and prey, but as individual participants in deeper processes. Together they work toward a joint kind of value fulfillment, in which both are fulfilled.

There are communions of consciousness of which we are unaware. While we believe in theories like the survival of the fittest, however, and the grand fantasies of evolution, then we put together our perceptions of the world so that they seem to bear out those theories. We will see no value in the life of a mouse sacrificed in the laboratory, for example, and we will project claw-and-fang battles in nature, completely missing the great cooperative venture that is involved.

s53

Men and women can become deranged if they believe life has no meaning. Religion has made gross errors. At least it held out an afterlife, a hope of salvation, and preserved — sometimes despite itself — the tradition of the heroic soul. Science, including psychology, by what it has said, and by what it has neglected to say, has come close to a declaration that life itself is meaningless. This is a direct contradiction of deep biological knowledge, to say nothing of spiritual truth. It denies the meaning of biological integrity. It denies man and woman the practical use of those very elements that he or she needs as a biological creature: the feeling that he or she is at life’s center, that he/she can act safely in his or her environment, that he or she can trust himself or herself, and that his or her being and his/her actions have meaning.

Impulses provide life’s guide to action. If we are taught that we cannot trust our impulses, then we are set against our very physical integrity. If we believe that our life has no meaning, then we will do anything to provide meaning, all the while acting like a mouse in one of science’s mazes — for our prime directive, so to speak, has been tampered with.

s78

I am trying to temper my statements here, but our psychology of the past 100 years has helped create insanities by trying to reduce the great individual thrust of life that lie within each person, to a generalized mass chaotic impulses and chemicals — a mixture, of Freudian and Darwinian thought misapplied.

The most private agonies of the soul were assigned a more or less common source in man’s and woman’s primitive “unconscious” drives. The private unequalled thrust toward creativity were seen as the unbalanced conglomeration of chemicals within a person’s most private being — a twist of perversity. Genius was seen as a mistake of chromosomes, or the fortunate result of a man’ or woman’s hatred for his or her father. The meaning of life was reduced to the accidental nature of genes. Science thought in terms of averages and statics, and each person was supposed to fit within those realms.

s91

To some extent, this also applies to religion in the same time period. Churches wanted sinners galore, but shied away from saints, or any extravagant behavior that did not speak of man’s and woman’s duplicity. Suddenly people with paranoid characteristics, as well as schizophrenics, emerged from the wallpaper of this slickly styled civilization. The characteristics of each were duly noted. A person who feels that life has no meaning, and that his or her life in particular has no meaning, would rather be pursued than ignored. Even the weight of guilt is better than no feeling at all. If the paranoid might feel that he or she is pursued, by the government or “ungodly powers,” then at least he or she feels that his or her life must be important: otherwise, why would others seek to destroy it? If voices tell him or her he or she is to be destroyed, then these at least are comforting voices, for they convince him or her that his or her life must have value.

At the same time, the paranoid person can use his or her creative abilities in fantasies that seemingly boggle the minds of the sane — and those creative abilities have a meaning, for the fantasies, again, serve to reassure the paranoid of his or her worth. If in our terms he or she were sane, he or she could not use his or her creative abilities, for they are always connected with life’s meaning; and sane, the paranoid is convinced that life is meaningless. It did little good in the past for Freudian psychologists to listen to a person’s associations while maintaining an objective air, or pretending that values did not exist. Often the person labeled schizophrenic is so frightened of his or her own energy, impulses, and feelings that these are fragmented, objectified, and seen to come from outside rather than from within.

s2wd

Ideas of good and evil are exaggerated, cut off from each other. Yet here again the creative abilities are allowed some expression. The person does not feel able to express them otherwise. Such people are afraid of the brunt of their own personalities. They have been taught that energy is wrong, that power is disastrous, and that the impulses of the self are to be feared.

What protection, then, but to effectively project these outside of the self — impulses of good as well as evil — and hence effectively block organized action?

s657h

The term schizophrenia, with the authority of psychology, becomes a mass coverall in which the integrity of personal meaning is given a mass, generalized explanation. Those who are paranoid are, unfortunately, those who most firmly believe the worst idiocies of science and religion. The paranoid and the schizophrenic are trying to find meaning in a world they have been taught is meaningless, and their tendencies appear in lesser form throughout society.

Creativity is an in-built impetus in man and woman, far more important than, say, what science calls the satisfaction of basic needs. In those terms, creativity is the most basic need of all. I am not speaking here of any obsessive need to find order — in which case, for example, a person might narrow his or her mental and physical environment — but of a powerful driver within the species for creativity, and for the fulfillment of values that are emotional and spiritual. And if man or woman does not find these, then the so-called basic drives toward food or shelter will not sustain him or her.

s55

I am not simply saying that man or woman does not live for bread alone. I am saying that if man or woman does not find meaning in life he or she will not live, bread or no. He or she will not have the energy to seek bread, nor trust his or her impulse to do so.

s76

There are natural laws, then, that guide all kinds of life, and all realities — laws of love and cooperation — and those are the basic needs of which I am speaking.

The people of Jonestown died of an epidemic of beliefs

The case was startling, because of the obvious suicidal acts. The poison was after all, left as evidence. Had the same number of people been found dead of a vicious disease — aids or whatever– the virus involved would have been the villain.

v2

We think of viruses as physical, and of thoughts as mental. We should know that thoughts also have their physical aspects in the body, and that viruses have their mental aspects in the body. At times we ask why an ailing body does not simply assert itself and use its healing abilities, throwing off the negative influence of a given set of beliefs and thoughts.

When we think of thoughts as mental and viruses as physical, the question is understandable. It is not just that thoughts influence the body, as of course they do; but each one of them represents a triggering stimulus, bringing about hormonal changes and altering the entire physical situation at any given time.

pa13

Our physical body is, as an entity, the fleshed-out version –the physically alive version — of the body of our thoughts. It is not that our thoughts have a chemical reality besides their recognizable mental aspects. I will use an analogy. It is not the best, but I hope it will get the point across: It is as if our thoughts turned into the various appendages of our body. They have an invisible existence within our body as surely as viruses do. Our body is composed not only of the stuff within it that, say, X-rays or autopsies can reveal, but it also involves profound relationships, alliances and affiliations that nowhere physically show. Our thoughts are as physically pertinent to our body as viruses are, as alive and self-propagating, and they themselves form inner affiliations. Their vitality automatically triggers all of the body’s inner responses. When we think thoughts they are conscious. We think in sentences, or paragraphs, or perhaps in images. Those thoughts, as clearly as I can explain this, rise from inner components of which we are unaware.

When the thought, is thought, it is, say, broken down again to those components. Our thoughts have an emotional basis, also. The smallest cell within our body contributes to that emotional reality, and reacts instantly to our thoughts.

pa61

In those terms, thoughts move far quicker of course than viruses. The action of the virus follows the thought. Each thought is registered biologically. Basically, when we have an immunity to a disease we have a mental immunity.

We think of viruses as evil, spreading perhaps from country to country, to “invade” scores of physical mechanisms. Now thoughts are “contagious.” We have natural immunity against all thoughts that do not fit in with our own purposes and beliefs, and naturally, we are “inoculated” with a wholesome trust and belief in our own thoughts above others. The old ideas of Voodooism recognized some of these concepts, but complicated and distorted them with fears of evil, psychic invasion, psychic killing, and so forth. We cannot divide, say, mental and physical health, nor can we divide a person’s philosophy from his bodily condition.

t6

While I say all of this about thoughts and viruses, remember the context of the discussion, for new information and insights are always available to an individual from sub-conscious and the body does indeed send its own signals.

j4

The people who died at Jonestown believed that they must die. They wanted to die. How could their thoughts allow them to bring about their [bodily deaths]? The question makes sense only if we do not realize that our thoughts are as physically a part of our body as viruses are.

We could not live without viruses

Nor could our biological reality as we know it exist without viruses.

v17

Viruses appear to be “the bad guys,” and as a rule we think of them separately, as for example the smallpox virus. There are overall affiliations in which viruses take part, however, in which delicate balances are maintained biologically. Each body contains countless viruses that could be deadly at any given time and under certain conditions. These — and I am putting it as simply as possible — take turns being active or inactive within the body, in accordance with the body’s overall condition. Viruses that are “deadly in certain stages are not in others, and in those later stages they react biologically in quite beneficial ways, adding to the body’s stability by bringing about necessary changes, say, in cellular activities that are helpful at given rates of action. These in turn trigger other cellular changes, again of a beneficial nature.

As an example from another field, consider poisons. Belladona can be quite deadly, yet small doses of it were known to aid the body in disease conditions.

v1

The viruses in the body have a social, cooperative existence. Their effects become deadly only under certain conditions. The viruses must be triggered into destructive activity, and this happens only at a certain point, when the individual involved is actively seeking either death or a crisis situation biologically.

The initial contagion in such cases is always emotional and mental. Social conditions are usually involved, so that an individual is, say, at the lower end of a poor social environment, a seeming victim of it, or in a situation where his individual values as a social member is severely weakened.

t3

In the same way that a member of such a society can go [askew], blow his stack, go overboard, commit antisocial acts, so in the same fashion such a person can instead trigger the viruses, wreck their biological social order, so that some of them suddenly become deadly, or run [amok]. So of course the resulting diseases are infectious. To that degree they are social diseases. It is not so much that a virus, say, suddenly turns destructive — though it does — as it is that the entire cooperative structure within which all the viruses are involved becomes insecure and threatened.

Viruses mutate. Such is often the case. It seems quite scientific to believe in inoculations against such dangerous diseases — and certainly, scientifically, inoculations seem to work. People in our time right now are not plagued by smallpox, for example. Some cultures have believed that illnesses were caused by demons. Medicine men, through certain ceremonies, would try to rid the body of the demons — and those methods worked also. The belief system was tight and accepted, and it only began to fail when societies encountered “civilized views.”

v82

If we call the demons “negative beliefs,” however, then we have taken strides forward. People continue to die of diseases. Many of our scientific procedures, including inoculations, of themselves “cause” new diseases. It does not help a patient inoculated against smallpox and polio if [eventually] he/she dies as a result of his negative beliefs.

What I have said about viruses applies to all biological life. Viruses are “highly intelligent” — meaning that they react quickly to stimuli. They are responsive to emotional states. They are social and usually spread through person-to-person contact. This is why many people try to limit their exposure to these viruses by wearing things like a surgical-mask,” for example. By wearing face masks, and other things similar, people can reduce their chances of getting the virus and spreading it on to others. Their spread determines their scale of life. This usually varies considerably, and some can be inactive for centuries, and revive. They have extensive memory patterns, biologically imprinted. Some can multiply in the tens of thousands within seconds. They are in many ways the basis of biological life, but we are aware of them only when they show “a deadly face.”

v8

We are not aware of the inner army of viruses within the body that protect it constantly. Host and virus both need each other, and both are part of the same life cycle.