The earth has structure. In those terms so does the psyche. We live in one particular area on the face of our planet, and we can only see so much of it at any given time–yet we take it for granted that the ocean exists even when we cannot feel its spray or see the tides.

And even if we live in a desert, we take it on faith that there are indeed great cultivated fields and torrents of rain. It is true that some of our faith is based on knowledge. Others have traveled where we have not, and television provides us with images. Despite this, however, our senses present us with only a picture of our immediate environment, unless they are cultivated in certain particular manners that are relatively unusual.

We take it for granted that the earth has a history. In those terms, our own psyche has a history also. We have taught ourselves to look outward into physical reality, but the inward validity of our being cannot be found there– only its effects. We can turn on television and see a drama, but the inward mobility and experience of our psyche is mysteriously enfolded within all of those exterior gestures that allow us to turn on the television switch to begin with, and to make sense of the images presented. So the motion of our own psyche usually escapes us.

Where is the television drama before it appears on our channel–and where does it go afterwards? How can it exist one moment and be finished the next, and yet be replayed when the conditions are correct? If we understood the mechanics, we would know that the program obviously does not go anywhere. It simply is, while the proper conditions activate it for our attention. In the same way, we are alive whether or not we are playing on an earth “program.” We are, whether we are in time or out or it. Getting in touch with our own being as it exists outside of the context in which we are used to viewing it.

As we dwell in one particular city or town or village, we presently “live” in one small area of the psyche’s inner planet. We identify that area as our home, as our “I.” Mankind has learned to explore the physical environment, but has barely begun the greater inner journeys that will be embarked upon as the inner lands of the psyche are joyously and bravely explored. In those terms, there is a land of the psyche. However, this virgin territory is the heritage of each individual, and no domain is quite like any other. Yet there is indeed an inner commerce that occurs, and as the exterior continents rise from the inner commerce that occurs, and as the exterior continents rise from the inner structure of the earth, so the lands of the psyche emerge from an even greater invisible source.