Tag Archives: Consciousness

Desire to create out of joy, not from a sense of responsibility

Many if the ideas in my blogs will be accepted by scientists most dubiously, though some, of course, will grasp what I will be saying. It is of course very difficult for the deepest truths cannot be physically proven. Science is used to asking quite specific questions, and it usually comes up with very specific answers — even if those answers are wrong.

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“Wrong” answers can fit together, however, to present a perfect picture, an excellent construct of its own — and why not? For any answers that do not fit the construct are simply thrown away and never appear. So in a fashion we are dealing with what science has thrown away. The picture we will end up presenting, will certainly not fit that of established science.

However, if objective proof of that nature is considered the priority for facts, then as we know science cannot prove its version of the universe’s origin either. It only sets up an hypothesis, which collects about it all data that agree, and again ignores what does not fit. Moreover, science’s thesis meets with no answering affirmation in the human heart — and in fact arouses the deepest antipathy, for in his or her heart man or woman well knows his/her own worth, and realizes that his/her own consciousness is no accident. The psyche, then, possesses within itself an inner affirmation, an affirmation that keeps man from being completely blinded by his/her own mental edifices.

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There is furthermore a deep, subjective, immaculately knowledgeable standard within man’s or woman’s consciousness by which he/she ultimately judges all of the theories and the beliefs of his/her time, and even if his/her intellect is momentarily swamped by ignoble doctrines, still that point of integrity knows. That is the portion of him/her, of course, that is born and grows to maturity even while the lungs or digestive processes do not read learned treatises on the body’s “machinery,” so in my blog we will hope to arouse within the reader, of whatever persuasion, a kind of subjective evidence, a resonance between ideas and being. Many people comment, saying that they feel as if somehow they have always been acquainted with our material — and of course they have, for it represents the inner knowing within each individual. In a fashion, creative play is our human version of far greater characteristics from which our universe itself was formed. There are all kinds of definite, even specific, subjective evidence for the nature of our own reality — evidence that is readily apparent once we really begin to look for it, particularly by comparing the world of our dreams with our daily life.

In other words, subjective play is the basis for all creativity, of course — but far more, it is responsible for the great inner play of subjective and objective reality.

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With all due respect, psychologists, with the best of intentions, are barking up the wrong psychological tree. He/she are very enthusiastic about his or her value tests, and his or her enthusiasm is what is important. The nature of the subjective mind, however, will never open itself to such tests, which represent, more than anything else, a kind of mechanical psychology, as if we could break down human values to a kind of logical alphabet of psychic atoms and molecules. A good try, but representative of psychology’s best attempt to make sense of a poor hypothesis.

We may do what we wish ourselves (about taking the tests), of course, but our main purpose is to drive beyond psychology’s boundaries, and not play pussyfoot among the current psychological lilies of the field.

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Our body’s are responding, so let us remember that creativity is playful, and that it always surfaces when we allow our mind to drop its worries.

Whenever a blog is translated, it is almost impossible, of course, to say the same thing in the same way. My blog will always be expressed through those invisible national characteristics that are so intimately involved with language — and obviously, were that not so, no blog could be understood by someone of a foreign language. There are bound to be distortions, but the distortions themselves are meaningful.

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Now, a number of the world’s leading scientists in the physical disciplines have publicly stated their beliefs that basically consciousness plays the primary role in our world and/or universe. For reasons too complicated to go into here, this attitude prevails even with some mathematicians who seek to penetrate to the core of our reality as they understand it.

However, for every scientist bold enough to think this way, there are scores of others who vehemently disagree. For most scientific materialists only physical matter is real. For them consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon, the passive by-product of the brain’s physiology and chemical events. They believe that physical death is the end of everything, that ultimately all if pointless. They derisively call their rebellious colleagues “animists” — those who believe that all life forms and natural phenomena have a spiritual origin independent of physical matter. (Such heretics are called “Vitalists,” a term related to animism, and one which also has a long history of scientific contempt behind it.)

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What can the materialistic scientists use other than mind — or consciousness, that poor epiphenomenon — to study and dissect matter? (Not to mention that innumerable experiments have proven that “physical matter” isn’t solid or objective at all, but “only” energy!) We have, then, the paradox of mind denying its own reality, let alone its importance. As far as we know, human beings are the only creatures on earth who would seriously engage in such learned futile behavior. It’s also very ironic, I think, that the materialists spend years acquiring their eclipsed education and prestige, both of which they then use to inform us of the ultimate futility of all of our endeavors (including their own, or course). But for the materialists, the mind-brain duality isn’t scientific in the orthodox sense. It isn’t falsifiable; that is, it cannot be stated under what precise conditions the mind-brain duality could be proven false. To which, understandably enough, those scientists who do accept the reality of mind reply that neither can the idea be falsified that only what is “physical” is real.

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I think is most risky at this stage in history for anyone — scientist or not — to dogmatically state that life has no meaning, of is a farce, or that attributes of our reality of which we can only mentally conceive at this time do not really exist. Discoveries in the “future” are quite apt to prove such limited viewpoints wrong. The history of science itself contains many examples of theories and “facts” gone awry. Moreover, why would our species want to depend upon as fragile a conception as epiphenomenalism through which to comprehend our reality? Or better yet, why does it in large part? Truly, our individual and collective ignorance of just our own probable reality is most profound at this time in our linear history (in those terms). I would be surprised is ultimately, as a result of mankind’s or womankind’s restless search for meaning, we didn’t end up returning in a new official way to our ancient concepts of spirit within everything, animate and inanimate. Such an updated animistic/vitalistic view would take into account discoveries ranging from sub-nuclear events to the largest imaginable astronomical processes in our observable universe. Human beings do know their own worth.

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There is no doubt that we need to believe that life has meaning. That belief may well be biological imperative. If we were as science maintains — only creatures formed by elements combining mindlessly in a universe itself created by chance, surrounded everywhere by chaos — then how could we even conceive of the idea of meaning or order?

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Science would say that the idea of meaning itself is simply a reflection of the state of the brain, as is the illusion of our consciousness. But a science that disregards consciousness must necessarily end up creating its own illusion. It ignores the reality of experience, the evidence of being, and in so doing it denies rather than reinforces life’s values.

 

Atoms are “processes” rather than things

The classical conception of the typical atom as being composed of a neat nucleus of indivisible protons and neutrons circled by electrons is largely passe, although for convenience sake we may still describe the atom that way. (In those terms, the one exception is the hydrogen atom, which evidently consist of but one proton and one electron cloud, or “smear.”) For the simple purposes of this blog, then, I’m leaving out considerations involving quantum mechanics, which concept repudiates the idea of “particles” to begin with. (And surely that notion involves more than a little of the psychic, or “irrational.” What a heretical thought from the scientific viewpoint!) But each atom of whatever element is an amazingly complicated, finely balanced assemblage of forces and particles woven together in exquisite detail — one of the more basic examples of the unending and stupendous creativity, order, and design of nature, or consciousness, or All That IS.

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Through their work with particle accelerators, or “atom smashers,” physicists have discovered that protons and neutrons themselves are composed of forces and particles that in turn are almost certainly composed of forces and particles, and so on, in an ever-descending scale of smaller and smaller entities and concepts. Over 100 subatomic particles have been identified so far, and no one doubts now that many more will found. The existence of a number of still-undiscovered specific particles has been predicted.

Our scientists can count elements. That is, they will create more and discover more until they are ready to go out of their minds, because they will always create physical ‘camouflages’ of the real nonphysical thing. And while they create instruments to deal with smaller and smaller particles, they will actually see smaller and smaller particles, seemingly without end.

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As their instruments reach farther into the universe they will ‘see’ farther and farther, but they will automatically transform what they apparently ‘see’ into the camouflage patterns with which they are familiar. They are and they will be the prisoners of their own tools.

Instruments calculated to measure the vibrations with which scientists are familiar will be designed and redesigned. All sorts finally of seemingly impossible phenomena will be discovered with these instruments, until the scientists realize that something is desperately wrong. The instruments will be planned to catch certain camouflages, and since they will be expertly thought out they will perform their function. I do not want to get too involved. However, by certain means the instruments themselves will transform data from terms that we cannot understand into.

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Some of the “particles’ the theoretical physicists have discovered — and/or created — in their gigantic particle accelerators have unbelievably short life-spans in our terms, vanishing, it seems, almost before they’re born. I like to think of such research from the particle’s point of view, though, a consideration I haven’t seen mentioned in the few scientific journals I have read. The merest particle is basically conscious in its own way. Mesons are classes of particles produced from the collisions of protons. Did a meson, for example, choose to participate in an atom-smashing experiment in order to merely peek in on our gross physical reality for much less than the billionth of a second if exists with that identity, before it decays into electrons and photons? From its viewpoint, our reality might be an incomprehensible to it as its reality is to us — yet the two inevitably go together.

In it way the meson may have all of the “time” it needs, or wants. It may look upon our world as one frozen or motionless, upon other subatomic particles as very slow-moving indeed, or even faster than it is. (As far as “time” goes, some particles live for far less than a trillionth of a second.”) I’m quite sure, however, that the meson, or any short-lived particle, searches out its own kind of value fulfillment while here with us. Probable realities, which I haven’t even mentioned, must be deeply involved also.

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And of course there are all sorts of motion, some of them very stable, if still incomprehensible to us. But whereas the meson vanishes from our view after its exceedingly brief existence, the electron has an “infinite” life-span. Think of the unending varieties of value fulfillment it explores in just our world alone! Talk about motion: The average electron orbits its atomic nucleus about a million times each billionth of a second (or nanosecond).

Electromagnetic energy units (or units of consciousness), these nonphysical entities — and many others of a like nature — are emanations of consciousness, or All That Is, and in “size” rank far below the tiniest particles ever observed in atom smasher. Each unit of consciousness contains within itself innately infinitely infinite properties of expansion, development and organization; yet within itself always maintains the kernel of its own individuality. It is aware energy, not personified but awarized.

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The varieties of consciousness — the inner psychological particles, the equivalent, say, of the atom or molecule, or proton, neutron or quark — those nonphysical, ‘charmed,’ ‘strange,’ forms of consciousness that make experience go up or down, and all around and around — are never of course dealt with by science.

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If physical form is made up of such multitudinous, invisible particles, how much more highly organized must be the inner components of consciousness, without whose perceptions matter itself would be meaningless. The alliances of consciousness, then, are far more vast than those of particles in any form.

The Now Beginning

In terms of our equations, energy and consciousness and matter are one. And in those terms (the qualifications are necessary) — consciousness is the agent that directs the transformation of energy into form and if form into energy. All possible visible or invisible particles that we discover or imagine — meaning hypothesized particles — possess consciousness. They are energized consciousness.

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There are certain characteristics inherent in energy itself, quite aside from any that we ascribe to it, since of course to date we do not consider energy conscious.

Energy is above all things infinitely creative, innovative, original. Energy is imaginative. (Any scientists who might be reading this blog may as well stop here.) I am not assigning human traits to energy. Instead, our human traits are the result of energy’s characteristics — a rather important difference. Space as we think of it is, in our terms, filled with invisible particles. They are the unstated portion of physical reality, the un-manifest medium in which our world exists. In that regard, however, atoms and molecules are stated, though we cannot see them with our [ unaided ] eye. The smaller particles that make them up become “smaller and smaller,” finally disappearing from the examination of any kind of physical instrument, and these help bridge the gap between un-manifest and manifest reality.

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For the terms of this discussion of the beginning of our world, I will deal with known qualities for now — the atoms and molecules. In the beginning they imagined the myriad of forms that were physically possible. They imagined the numberless cells that could arise from their own cooperative creation. Energy is boundless. It is exuberant. It knows no limits. In those terms, the atoms dreamed the cells into physical being — and from that new threshold of physical activity cellular consciousness dreamed of the myriad organizations that could emerge from this indescribable venture.

Again, in actuality all of this took place at once, yet the depth of psychological experience contained therein can never be measured, for it involved a kind of value fulfillment with which each consciousness is involved. That characteristic of value fulfillment is perhaps the most important element in the being of All That Is, and it it a part of the heritage of all species.

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Value fulfillment itself is most difficult to describe, for it combines the nature of a loving presence — a presence with the innate knowledge of its own divine complexity — with a creative ability of infinite proportions that seeks to bring to fulfillment even the slightest, most distant portion of its own inverted complexity. Translated into simpler terms, each portion of energy is endowed with an inbuilt reach of creativity that seeks to fulfill its own potentials in all variations — and in such a way that such a development also furthers the creative potentials of each other portion of reality.

In those terms, then, there was in the beginning an almost unimaginable time in which energized consciousness, using its own creative abilities, its own imagination, experimented with triumphant rambunctiousness, trying out one form after another. In those terms we are used to thinking of, nothing was stable. Consciousness as we think of it turned into matter, and then into pure energy and back again.

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Subjectivity still largely ruled. Like an adolescent leaving home for the first time, individualized consciousness was also somewhat homesick, and returned often to the family homestead — but gradually gained confidence and left finally to form a universe.

Now because All That IS contains within itself such omnipotent, fertile, divine creative characteristics, all portions of its subjective experience attained dimensions of actuality impossible to describe. The thoughts, for example, of All That Is were not simply thoughts as we might have, but multidimensional mental events of superlative nature. Those events soon found that a transformation must occur, if they were to journey into objectivity — for no objectivity of itself could contain the entire reality of subjective events that existed within divine subjectivity. Only in that context could their relative perfection be maintained. Yet they had yearned before the beginning for other experiences, and even for fulfillment of a different nature. They sensed a kind of value fulfillment that required of them the utilization of their own creative abilities. They yearned to create as they had been created, and All That Is, in a kind of divine perplexity, nevertheless realized that his had always been its own intent.

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All That IS realized that such a separation would also allow us to bring about a different kind of divine art, in which the creators themselves created, and their creations created, bringing into actuality existences that were possible precisely because there would seem to be a difference between the creator and the creations. All That Is is, therefore, within each smallest portion of consciousness.

Yet each smallest portion of consciousness can uniquely create, bring into being, eccentric versions of All That Is, that in certain terms All That Is, without that separation, could not otherwise create. The loving support, the loving encouragement of the slightest probable consciousness and manifestation — that is the intent of All That Is.

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All That Is knows that even this purpose is a portion of a larger purpose. In terms of time, the realization of that purpose will emerge with another momentous explosion of subjective inspiration into objectivity, or into another form. In deeper terms, however, that purpose is also known now, and to one extent or another the entire universe dreams of it, as once cellular consciousness dreamed of the organs that it might “form.”

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I want to stress that I am speaking here not so much about a kind of spiritual evolution as I am about an expansion. We will for now, however, confine ourselves to discussion of consciousness in the beginning of the world, stressing that the first basis of physical life was largely subjective, and that the state of dreaming not only helped shape the consciousness of our species, but also in those terms served to provide a steady source of information to man and woman about his/her physical environment, and served as an inner web of communication among all species.

 

The year 2020, and the idea of time and of dates seems to be indelibly mixed into everyone’s psychology

We can remember last year, and to some extent recall the past years of our lives. It appears to us that our present consciousness wanders backward into the past, until finally we can remember no longer — and on a conscious level, at least, we must take the very event of our birth under secondhand evidence. Few people have conscious memory of it.

For the purpose of our discussion, I must necessarily couch this blog to some degree in the framework of time. I must honor our specifics. Otherwise my blog readers would not understand what I am trying to say.

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Even though this blog is being written within time’s tradition, therefore, I must remind you that basically that tradition is not mine — and more, basically, it is not yours either.

In the deepest of terms, and in ways that quite scandalize the intellect when it tries to operate alone, the beginning is now. That critical explosion of divine subjective into objectivity is always happening, and we are being given life “in each moment” because of the simultaneous nature of that divine subjectivity.

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I hope that in other portions of my blogs certain mental exercises will allow us to leap over the tradition of time’s framework and sense with the united intellect and intuitions our own individual part in a spacious present that is large enough to contain all of time’s segments.

Assuming that the big-bang origin of the universe was a hot event

Theoretical physicists have charted how the first explosion may have ” evolved” from one with temperature well in excess of 100,00 million degrees Kelvin into a cooler one of “only” a few thousand degrees Kelvin around 500,000 years later, so that atoms could begin to form.

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One less prominent theory The “inflationary model,” which may become much better known. It incorporates many of the features of the big-bang theory, and actually may answer certain questions in a better scientific fashion. One of the big differences between the two is that in the big-bang theory all of matter in the universe was already present, though existing in an extremely dense state which then began to expand; the inflationary model suggests that the universe was created out of nothing, or out of just about nothing — meaning that through unforeseeable rhythms sub-atomic particles spontaneously came into being as matter. A fantastic, inflationary expansion then began. Yet this creation of matter out of nothing, so to speak, violates at least some of the laws of conservation — laws that are indeed among the most basic and chemical tenets of physics.

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I don’t necessarily believe in either the big-bang or inflationary models of the creation of the universe, even though material in my blogs may be evocative of portions of both theories. In physics, we’re asked to believe that this “extremely dense state” which began to expand was in actuality many billions of times smaller than a proton. (Protons are subatomic components of the nuclei of atoms.) Matter is a form of energy. Even so, I have trouble conceptualizing the idea that all matter in our universe, out to the farthest-away galaxy of billions of stars, grew from this unimaginably small and dense, unimaginably hot “original” state or area of being. I can see how such a concept can be postulated mathematically — but could it ever have really happened in ordinary terms?

The creationists put down other species, as the evolutionist

I’d say that both the creation and evolution models suffer from logical and emotional sloppiness, and that neither one presents a reasonable view of man’s or woman’s origins. Both concepts seem equally implausible when we think of them with any objectivity, and neither can be proven, of course. They ultimately rest upon the faith of the believer.

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We cannot prove scientifically that our world was created by a god who set in into motion, but remained outside of its dominion. Nor can we prove scientifically that the creation of the world was the result of a chance occurrence — so we will not be able to prove what I am going to tell you either. Not in usual terms.

I hope however to present, along with my explanations, certain hints and clues that will try to arouse within our own consciousnesses memories of events with which our own inner psyches were intimately involved as the world was formed — and though these may appear to be past events, they are even now occurring.

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Before the beginning of the universe, we will postulate the existence of an omnipotent, creative source. We will hope to show that this divine subjectivity is as present in the universe. I refer to this original subjectivity as All That Is. I am making an attempt to verbalize concepts that almost defy the edges of the intellect, unless that intellect is thoroughly reinforced by the intuition’s strength. So you will need to use your mind and your own intuitions as you read this blog.

All that is, before the beginning contained within itself the infinite thrust of all possible creations. All That Is possessed creativity of such magnificence that its slightest imaginings, dreams, thoughts, feelings or moods attained a kind of reality, a vividness, an intensity, that almost demanded freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? Freedom to be what?

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The experience, the subjective universe, the “mind” of All That Is, was so brilliant, so distinct, that All That Is almost became lost, mentally wandering within this ever-flourishing, ever-growing interior landscape. Each thought, feeling, dream, or mood was itself indelibly marked with all of the attributes of this infinite subjectivity. Each glowed and quivered with its own creativity, its own desire to create as it had been created.

Before the beginning there existed an interior universe that had no beginning or ending, for I am using the term “before the beginning” to make matters easier for the reader to assimilate. The same infinite interior universe exists now, for example.

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All That Is contained within itself the knowledge of all existences, with their infinite probabilities, and “as soon as” All That Is imagined those numberless circumstances, they existed in what I will call divine fact.

All that is knew of itself only. It was engrossed with its own subjective experiences, even divinely astonished as its own thoughts and imaginings attained their own vitality, and inherited the creativity of their subjective creator. Those [thoughts and imaginings] began to have a dialogue with their “Maker”

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Thoughts of such magnificent vigor began to think their own thoughts — and their thoughts thought thoughts. As if in divine astonishment and surprise, All That Is began to listen, and began to respond to these “generations” of thoughts and dreams, for thoughts and dreams related to each other also. There was no time, so all of this “was happening” simultaneously. The order of events is being simplified. In the meantime, then in our terms. All That Is spontaneously thought new thoughts and dreamed new dreams, and became involved in new imaginings of interweaving and interrelating thoughts and dreams that “already” existed.

So beside this spontaneous creation, this simultaneous “stream” of divine rousing. All That Is began to watch the interactions that occurred among his own subjective progeny. He listened, began to respond and to answer a thought or a dream. He began to purposefully bring about those mental conditions that were requested by these generations of mental progeny. If he had been lonely before, he was no longer.

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Our language cause some difficulty here, so please accept the pronoun “he” as innocuously as possible. “It” sounds too neutral for my purpose, and I want to reserve the pronoun “she” for later differentiations. In basic terms, of course, All That Is is quite beyond any designations having to do with anyone species or sex. All That Is, then, began to feel a growing sense of pressure as it realized that its own ever-multiplying thoughts and dreams themselves yearned to enjoy those greater gifts of creativity with which they were innately endowed.

It is very difficult to try to assign anything like human motivation to All That Is. I can only say that it is possessed by “the need” to lovingly create from its own being; to lovingly transform its own reality in such a way that each most slight probable consciousness can come to be; and with the need to see that any and all possible orchestrations of consciousness have the chance to emerge, to perceive and to love.

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We will later in future blogs discuss fuller connotations of the word “love” as it is meant here, but this blog is a kind of outline of other material to come.

All That Is, then, became aware of a kind of creative tumult as each of its superlative thoughts and dreams, moods and feelings, strained at the very edges of their beings, looking for some then-unknown, undiscovered, as of then unthought-of release. I am saying that this mental progeny included all of the consciousnesses that have ever appeared or will appear upon our earth — all tenderly couched: the first human being, the first insect — each with an inner knowledge of the possibilities of its development. All That Is, loving its own progeny, sought within itself the answer to this divine dilemma.

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When that answer came, it involved previously unimaginable leaps of divine inspiration, and it occurred thusly: All that Is searched through the truly infinite assortment of its incredible progeny to see what conditions were needed for this even more magnificent dream, this dream of a freedom of objectivity. What door could open to let physical reality emerge from such an inner realm? When All That Is, in our terms, put all of those conditions together it saw, of course, in a flash, the mental creation of those objective worlds that would be needed — and as it imagined those worlds, in our terms, they were physically created.

All That Is did not separate itself from those worlds, however, for they were created from its thoughts, and each one has divine content. The worlds are all created by that divine content, so that while they are on the one hand exterior, they are on the other also made of divine stuff, and each hypothetical point in our universe is in direct contact with All That Is in the most basic terms. The knowledge of the whole is within all of its parts — and yet All That Is is more than its parts.

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Divine subjectivity is indeed infinite. It can never be entirely objectified. When the worlds, ours and others, were thus created, there was indeed an explosion of unimaginable proportions, as the divine spark of inspiration exploded into objectivity.

The first “object” was an almost unendurable mass, though it has no weight, and it exploded, instantaneously beginning processes that formed the universe — but no time was involved. the process that we might imagine took up eons occurred in the twinkling of an eye, and the initial objective materialization of the massive thought of All That Is burst into reality. In our terms this was a physical explosion — but in the terms of the consciousnesses involved in that breakthrough, this was experienced as a triumphant “first” inspirational frenzy, a breakthrough into another kind of being.

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The earth then appeared as consciousness transformed itself into the many facets of nature. The atoms and molecules were alive, aware — they were no longer simply a part of a divine syntax, but they spoke themselves through the very nature of their being. They became the living, aware vowels and syllables through which consciousness could form matter.

But in our terms this was still largely a dream world, though it was fully fashioned. It had, generally speaking, all of the species that we now know. These all correlated with the multitudinous kinds of consciousnesses that had clamored for release, and those consciousnesses were spontaneously endowed by All That Is with those forms that fir their requirements. We had the birth of individualized consciousness as we think of it into physical context. Those consciousnesses were individualized before the beginning, but not manifest. But individualized consciousness was not quite all that bold. It did not attach itself completely to its earthly forms at the start, but rested often within its “ancient” divine heritage. In our terms, its is as if the earth and all of its creatures were partially dreaming, and not as focused within physical reality as they are now.

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For one thing, while individualized consciousness was within the massive subjectivity of All That IS, it enjoyed, beside its own uniqueness, a feeling of supporting unity, a comforting knowledge that it was its source. So in the beginning of our world, consciousness fluctuated greatly, focusing gently at the start, but not quite as willing to be as fully independent as its first intent might seem.

We had the sleepwalkers, early members of our species, whose main concentration was still veiled in that earlier subjectivity, and they were our true ancestors, in those terms.

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For one thing, early man and woman needed to rely upon his or her inner knowledge.

The universe began tomorrow

The universe will begin yesterday. The universe began tomorrow. Both of these statements are quite meaningless. The tenses are wrong, and perhaps our time sense is completely outraged. Yet the statement: “The universe began in some distant past, ” is, in basic terms, just as meaningless.

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In fact, the first two statements, while making no logical sense, do indeed hint of phenomena that show time itself to be no more than a creative construct. Time and space are in a fashion part of the furniture of our universe.

The very experience of passing moments belongs to our psychological rooms in the same way that clocks are attached to our walls. Whenever science or religion seeks the origin of the universe, they search for it in the past. The universe is being created now. Creation occurs in each moment, in our terms. The illusion of time is being created now. It is therefore somewhat futile to look for the origins of the universe by using a time scheme that is in itself, at the very least, highly relative.

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Our now, or present moment, is a psychological platform. It seems that the universe began with an initial burst of energy of some kind. Evolutionists cannot account for its cause. Many religious people believe that a god exists in a larger dimension of reality, and that he or she created the universe while being himself or herself outside of it. He or she set it into motion. Many individuals, following either persuasion, believe that regardless of its source, the universe must run out of energy. Established science is quite certain that no energy can now be created or destroyed, but only transformed (as stated in the first laws of thermodynamics). Science sees energy and matter as being basically the same thing, appearing differently under varying circumstances.

In certain terms, science and religion are both dealing with the idea of an objectively created universe. Either God “made it,” or physical matter, in some unexplained manner, was formed after an initial explosion of energy, and consciousness emerged from that initially dead matter in a way yet to be explained.

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Instead, consciousness formed matter. Each atom and molecule has its own consciousness. Consciousness and matter and energy are one, but consciousness initiates the transformation of energy into matter. In those terms, the “beginning” of our universe was a triumph in the expansion of consciousness, as it learned to translate itself into physical form. The universe emerged into actuality in the same way, but to a different degree, that any idea emerges from what we think of as subjectivity into physical expression.

The consciousness of each reader of this blog existed before the universe was formed: — but that consciousness was un-manifest. Our closest approximation — and its is an approximation only — of the state of being that existed before the universe was formed is the dream state. In that state before the beginning, our consciousness existed free of space and time, aware of immense probabilities. This is extremely difficult to verbalize, yet it is very important that such an attempt be made. Our consciousness is a part of an infinitely original creative process.

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I will purposely avoid the word “God” because of the connotations placed upon it by conventional religion. I will make an attempt to explain the characteristics of this divine process throughout this blog. I call the process “All That Is.” All That Is is so much a part of its creations,” for each creation also carries indelibly within it the characteristics of its source.

If we have thought that the universe followed a mechanistic model, then we would have to say that each portion of this “cosmic machine” created itself, knowing its position in the entire “future construction.” We would have to say further that each portion came gladly out of its own source individually, neatly tailored to its position, while at the same time that individual source was also as intimately the source of each other individual portion.

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I am not saying that the universe is the result of some “psychological machine,” either, but that each portion of consciousness is a part of All That Is, and that the universe falls together in a spontaneous, divine order — and that each portion of consciousness carries within it indelibly the knowledge of the whole.

The birth of the world represented a divine psychological awakening. Each consciousness that take a part in the physical universe dreamed of such a physical existence, in our terms before the earth was formed. In greater terms than ours, it is quite true to say that the universe is not formed yet, or that the universe has vanished. In still vaster terms, however, the fact is that in one state or another of the universe has always existed.

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Our closest approximation of the purpose of the universe can be found in those loving emotions that we have toward the development of our children, in our intent to have them develop their fullest capacities.

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Our finest aspirations can give us some dim clue as to the great creative thrust that is behind our own smallest act, for our own smallest act is possible only because our body has already been provided for in the physical world. Our life is given. In each moment it is renewed. So smoothly and effortlessly do we ride that thrust of life’s energy that we are sometimes scarcely aware of it. We are not equipped with a certain amount of energy that then wears out and dies. Instead we are, again, newly created in each moment.

Physically death gives life

All biological organisms know that physical life depends upon a constant transformation of consciousness and form. This biological knowledge is intimately acknowledged at microscopic levels. Even our cells know that their deaths are necessary for the continuation of our physical form.

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The entire orientation is strange or alien only to our conscious belief systems. in one way or another, most people are aware of a desire for death before they die — a desire they usually do not consciously acknowledge. To a large measure, the sensations of pain are also the results of our beliefs, so that even diseases that are indeed accompanied, now, by great pain, need not be. Obviously, I am saying that “deadly” viruses do not “think of themselves” as killers, and more than a cat does when it devours a mouse. The mouse may die, and a cell might die as a result of the virus, but the connotations applied to such events are also the result of beliefs. In the greater sphere of spiritual and biological activity, the viruses are protecting life at their level, and in the capacity given them.

In one way or another, they are always invited in response to that greater rhythm of existence in which physical life is dependent upon constant transformation of consciousness and form.

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The phase of death is, then, a part of life’s cycle. I have mentioned evolutionary experiments, as we think of evolution. There is a disease that I have read about recently, where the skin turns leathery after intense itching — a fascinating development in which the human body tries to form a leathery-like skin that would, if the experiment continued, be flexible enough for, say, seat pose and normal locomotion, yet tough enough to protect itself in jungle environments from the bites of many “still more dangerous” insects and snakes. Many such experiments appear in certain stages as diseases, since the conditions are obviously not normal physical ones. To some extent, cancer also represents a kind of evolutionary experiment. But all such instances escape us because we think of so-called evolution as finished.

Some varieties of our own species were considered by the animals as diseased animal species, so I want to broaden our concepts there. In the entire natural scheme, and at all levels — even social or economic ones — disease always has its own creative basis. Abnormalities of any kind in birth always represent probable versions itself — and they are kept in the gene pool to provide a never-ending bank of alternates.

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There are all kinds of interrelationships. So-called Mongoloid children, for example, are reminders of man’s and woman’s purely emotional heritage, as separate from his or her intellectual achievements. They often appear more numerously in industrialized civilizations for that reason

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The disease I referred to is Onchocerciasis, which is caused by a filarial parasite spread by the bite of the blackfly. Beside producing the gruesome leathery skin, Onchocerciasis can cause blindness — hence its common name, river blindness. This most serious affliction appears to be centered in West Africa, and infects many millions of people there. Four centuries ago, it was carried to the Western Hemisphere by slaves, and is now found in certain areas of Mexico, south to Brazil.

Onchocerciasis doesn’t kill, and the percentage of victims who lose their sight varies according to location. Perhaps in this biological experiment, the blindness represents an evolutionary dead end, in those terms.

Combine the idea of a disease with the idea of creativity

Both disease and creativity are related.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Every species is endowed with emotional feelings

Each species is immersed in an interior system of value fulfillment. Each species, then, is not only concerned with physical survival and the multiplication of its members, but with an intensification and fulfillment of those particular qualities that are characteristic of it.

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As far as this discussion is concerned, there are biological ideals, imprinted within the chromosomes, but there are also in-built ideals much more difficult to define, that exist as, say, mental blueprints for the development of other kinds of interior mental life, as opposed to the physical characteristics of plants or animals with which we are familiar. Our official views effectively close us off from the true evidence we might perceive of the cooperation that exists among the species, for example. Nor an I speaking of an enforced cooperation — the result of “instinct” that somehow arranges the social habits of the animals; for their habits are indeed social and cooperative.

I have read that orthodox science still does not grant man or woman with volition. According to its tenets, any such feeling of conscious choice is instead the reflection of the brain’s attitude at any given time. Yet I am saying that man has free will within the framework of his existence, and that all other species do also within the framework of his or her existence, and that all other species do also within the framework of their existences.

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The chicken cannot read a book. It cannot choose to read. The plant cannot choose to walk down the street. The chicken and the plant can choose to live or die, however — rather important issues in the existence of any entity. They can choose to like or dislike their environment, and to change it according to their individual circumstances. It is fashionable to say that some scientific laws can be proven at microscopic levels, where, for example, small particles can be accelerated far beyond their usual states. But we quite studiously ignore that feeling exists on microscopic levels, that there can be psychological particles, much less come to the conclusion that all particles are psychological particles, with their own impetuses for development and value fulfillment. That is why atoms join together to form matter. They seek the fulfillment of themselves through form. They cooperatively choose the forms that they take.

If the simplest particle is so endowed with impetus, with hidden ideals that seek fulfillment, then what about the human being? We have the propensity to search for meaning, for love, for cooperative ventures. We have the propensity to form dazzling mental and psychological creations, such as our arts and sciences and religions and civilizations. Whatever errors that we have made, or gross distortions, even those exist because of our need to find meaning in our private existences and in life itself.

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Any scientist who believes that life has no meaning has simply provided himself with what he thinks of as an unfailing support against life’s vicissitudes. If he or she says: “life has no meaning, “he or she cannot be disappointed if such is the case, for he or she is ensconced in a self-created cocoon that has meaning, because it provides a cushion against his or her deepest fears.

When a civilization does not support creativity it beings to falter. When it distrust its gifted people, rather than encouraging them, a nation is at least in trouble. Our psychologies, stressing “the norm,” made people frightened of their individual characteristics and abilities, because psychology’s norm did not fit the contours of any one human being. It did not touch the heights of the depths of human experience. People became afraid of their own individuality.

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Gifted children do not fit psychology’s picture. Gifted children do not fit the portrait of children that is sold to parents. The fact is that for many reasons gifted children merely show the latent quickness, mental agility, and curiosity and learning capacity, that is inherent in the species. They are not eccentric versions of humanity at all, but instead provide a hint of mankind’s and womankind’s true capacities.

Our brains are not empty, but well-oiled machines ready to whirl into activity at our births. They are provided with a propensity to learn — and the rudiments of knowledge as we understand it exist within the brain. In those terms, now, the brain thinks before birth. It does not simply react. Each individual has its own unique abilities. Some that involve relationships with others, we do not even have words for. Parents, however, often half-disapprove of their children if they show unusual gifts. They are afraid their children will not get along with others. They are upset because the children do not fit the norm — but no child ever fits “the norm.”

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Many adults, sensing their own abilities in one field or another, deliberately play down those abilities because they are afraid of standing out from “the masses” — or they are afraid they will be attacked by their peers. They have been taught by religion and science alike that any kind of greatness is suspect. Yet each person alive contains an elements of greatness; and more, a desire to fulfill those inner abilities.

I am not speaking of greatness in terms of fame, or in terms of usually understood artistic or intellectual abilities alone, but also of people whose lives have the capacity for great emotional content. I am speaking also of others natural abilities — that of dread communication, the conscious utilization of dreams and creativity in daily life. There are dimensions of human sentiment and psychological experience, that remain latent simply because we focus our attention so closely within the idea of “the norm.” Ay unofficial experience must then remain bizarre, eccentric, outside of our main concerns, and ignored by our sciences.

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Many children, for that matter, who are regarded as retarded by their teachers, are instead highly gifted. The same also applies to disruptive children, who are overactive and out on drugs. Their rebellion is quite natural. Autistic children, in many cases, now, are those who have picked up the idea that the world is so unsafe that it is better not to communicate with it at all, as long as their demands or needs are being met. When the child is fed and clothed and cared for, then it continues its behavior, and the behavior itself does serve its needs.

The child feels that it is not safe to interact with the world, however. No one is going to deprive a child of food, and yet food can be used in such cases, in terms perhaps of treats, if the child must ask for them, or in some way indicate a choice. Autistic children are afraid of making choices. Some of this is often picked up from parents, so that the child expresses their own unacknowledged fears. The autistic child can be highly intelligent, however.

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To some extent, such child symbolizes what happens when an individual believes that he or she is unworthy, that he or she cannot trust impulses, that choices present more problems than advantages. That it is safer to hide abilities than it is to use them. Life is expression.

When a sperm carrying cancer enters a woman’s uterus, and if she has no intentions of getting the disease, her body’s own system would make the cancer completely ineffective.

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I will explain as best I can, though some of what I say will certainly seem contradictory to scientific knowledge.

Though scientists might find “cancer cells,” and though it might seem that cancer is caused by a virus, cancer instead involves a relationship, say, between what we might think of as a host and parasite, in those terms — and to some extent the same applies to any disease, including smallpox, though the diseases themselves may appear to have different causes completely. A host cell, say, is not simply attacked. It invites attack, though I am not pleased at all with the connotations of the word “attack.” I am trying to use words familiar to us to start.

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It is not simply that a cell suddenly “relaxes its defenses” against disease. As easily as I an, I will try to explain. A cell mirrors a psychological state. A cell exists by itself, as its own entity, but also in context with all of the other cells in the body. There are literally uncountable psychological states mixing and interchanging constantly, with the overall psychological stance being one of biological integrity: The organism holds together, maintains its functions, and so forth.

Our body is the physical mirror of our psychological state. It is powered by the energy of the universe. It actually springs into being in each moment. Our mind and our body come from the same source, from universal energy. We are powered with vitality. We must seek meaning in our lives. When we lose the sense of life’s meaning, for whatever reason, this is reflected in our body. It is very difficult to separate all of this from many connotations placed about disease, and I do not want the material to be misread. Cancer, for example, has become the symbol for the body’s vulnerability, in current years — the proof of man’s and woman’s susceptibility to the body. It is a disease that people have when they want to die — when they are ashamed to admit that they want to die, because death seems to fly against sane behavior. If the species struggles to survive, then how can individuals want to die?

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Many people have had cancer and recovered without knowing it. In our belief system, however, it is almost imperative to see a doctor in such circumstances, for many fears are unsubstantiated, and the fear alone, found groundless, gives the person new life symbolically and physically.

In the case of my example, a woman’s cells would already have had to prepare themselves for the guest — granted the guest was cancerous, and was a sperm. There is not an attack. There is an acceptance, and a preparation for certain changes.

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A life crisis is formed. The “parasite,” or virus, plays its part in setting up such a psychologically-desired position. It is an emotionally-charged position, an imminent crisis. I am aware of the tormenting questions involved in such issues, and also of the gap between my explanations and daily experiences of many people. The fact is that when death comes it is wanted; it has been chosen.

The fact is that death in its way is the culmination of life, leading toward a new birth and new experience. The cells know this. So does the heart. People cannot admit that they want to die at certain times. If they could accept the fact of their own wishes, some could even change their minds, many do: The psychological condition changes for the better, and the body cells are no longer amiable to the cancerous condition.

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Women whose husband have had vasectomies have themselves often resolved sexual problems that have bothered them. Fear is reduced in that area. Cervical cancer can involve, distortions of the growth process itself, because of the complicated distortions of belief on the woman’s part. In a way the very pain of cancer — of some cancers — often acts through its intensity as a reflection of the person’s belief that life is painful, tormenting. At the same time, the pain is a reminder of feeling and sensation.

 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.