Tag Archives: Creator

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.

 

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.

 

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?

Imagine a body with a fully operating body consciousness

A body not diseased or defective, but without the overriding ego-directed consciousness that we have. The sleepwalker’s physical abilities surpassed ours. They were as agile as animals, their purpose simply to be. Their main points of consciousness were elsewhere, their primary focuses scarcely aware of the bodies they had created. Yet they learned ‘through experience,’ and began to ‘awaken,’ to become aware of themselves, to discover time, or to create it.

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The sleepwalkers were not asleep to themselves, only from our viewpoint. There were several such races of human beings. To them the real was the dream life, which contained the highest stimuli. This is the other side of our own experience. Such races left the physical earth much as they found it. In what we would call the physical waking state, these individuals slept, yet they behaved with great natural physical grace. They did not saddle the body with negative beliefs of disease or limitation. They did not age to the extent that we do.

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.

Be a practicing idealist if you are to remain a true idealist for long

We must take small practical steps, often when we would prefer to take giant ones — but we must move in the direction of our ideals through action. Otherwise we will feel disillusioned, or powerless, or sure, that only drastic, highly unideal methods will ever bring about the achievement of a given state or situation.

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Life at all levels of activity is propelled to seek ideals, whether of a biological or mental nature. That pursuit automatically gives life its zest and natural sense of excitement and drama. Developing our own abilities, whatever they may be, exploring and expanding, our experience of selfhood, gives life a sense of purpose, meaning, and creative excitement — and also adds to the understanding and development of the society and the species.

It is not enough to meditate, or to imagine in our mind some desired goal being accomplished, if we are afraid to act upon the very impulses to which our meditations and imaginings give rise. When we do not take any steps toward an ideal position then our life does lack excitement. We become depressed. We might become an idealist in reverse, so that we find a certain excitement in contemplating the occurrence of natural disasters, such as earthquakes.

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We may begin to concentrate our attention on such activities. We may contemplate the end of the world instead, but in either case we are propelled by a sense of personal frustration, and perhaps by some degree of vengeance, seeing in our mind the destruction of a world that fell so far beneath our idealized expectations.

None of the unfortunate situations discussed in my blog, have any power over us, if we understand that events do not exist by themselves. All events and situations exist first within the mind. At the deepest levels of communication no news is secret, whether or not we receive it by way of our technological gadgets.

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Our thoughts and beliefs and desires form the events that we view on television. If we want to change our world, we must first change our thoughts, expectations, and beliefs. If every reader of this blog changed his or her attitudes, even though not one law was rewritten, tomorrow the world would have changed for the better. The new laws would follow.

Any new law always follows the change in belief. It is not the other way around.

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There is no civilization, no system of science, art, or philosophy, that did not originate in the mind. When we give lip service to ideas with which we do not agree, we are betraying our own ideals, harming oneself to some extent, and society as well, insofar as we are denying oneself and society that benefit of our own understanding. Each person is an idealist. I simply want to help us practice our idealism in the acts of our daily life.

Each person alive helps paint the living picture of civilization as it exists at any given time, in our terms. “Be your own best artist”. Our thoughts, feelings and expectations are like the living brush strokes with which we paint our corner of life’s landscape. If we do our best in our own life, then we are indeed helping to improve the quality of all life. Our thoughts are as real as snowflakes or raindrops or clouds. They mix and merge with the thoughts of others, to form man’s and woman’s livingscape, providing the vast mental elements from which physical events will be formed.

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As we learn to allow our impulses some freedom, we will discover their connection with our own idealized version of what life should be. We will begin to discover that those spontaneous urges are as basically good and life-giving as the physical elements of the earth that provide the impetus for all biological life.

Beyond that, however, those impulses, connect us with the original impulses from which all life emerges.

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We will discover the natural, cooperative of our impulses, and we will no longer believe that they exist as contradictory or disruptive influences. Our impulses are part of the great multi-action of being. At deeper levels, the impulse portion of the personality is aware of all actions upon the earth’s surface. We are involved in a cooperative venture, in which our slightest impulse has a greater meaning, and is intimately connected with all other actions. We have the power to change our life and the world for the better, but the methods that are worthy of them. Science and religion have each contributed much to man’s and woman’s development. They must also reevaluate their ideals and methods, however.

In larger terms, there are really only scientific and religious men and women, however, and fields of science and religion would be meaningless without those individuals who believe in their positions. As those men and women enlarge their definitions of reckless in pursuit of the ideal — reckless enough to insist that each step we take along the way is worthy of that ideal.

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We will understand, if we are a practicing idealist, that we cannot kill in the name of peace, for if we do so our methods will automatically undermine our ideal. The sacredness of life and spirit are one and the same. We cannot condemn the body without ultimately condemning the soul. We cannot condemn the soul without ultimately condemning the body.

I would like each of my Blog readers to be practicing idealist, and if you are then you will automatically be tolerant of the beliefs of others. You will not be unkind in the pursuit of your own ideals. You will look upon the world with a sane compassion, with some humor, and you will look for man’s and woman’s basic good intent. You will find it. It has always been there. You will discover your own basic good intent, and see that it has always been behind all of your actions — even in those least fitted to the pursuit of your private ideals.

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The end does not justify the means. If we learn that lesson, then our good intent will allow us to act effectively and creatively in our private experience, and in our relationships with others. Our changed beliefs will affect the mental atmosphere of our nation and the world.

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We must encounter the selves that we are now. Acknowledge our impulses. Explore their meanings. Rely upon ourselves. We will find far greater power, achievement, and virtue than we suppose.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

Very few people really act from an evil intent

Any unfortunate situations in the fields of medicine, science, or religion result not from any determined effort to sabotage the “idea,”” but instead happen because men and women often believe that any means is justified in the pursuit of the ideal.

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When science seems to betray us, in our society, it does so because its methods are unworthy of its intent — so unworthy and so out of line with science’s prime purpose that the methods themselves almost amount to an insidious anti-scientific attitude that goes all unrecognized. The same applies to medicine, of course, when in its worthy purpose to save life, its methods often lead to quite unworthy experimentation, so that life is destroyed for the sake of saving, say, a greater number of lives. On the surface level, such methods appear sometimes regrettable but necessary, but the deeper implications far outdo any temporary benefits, for through such methods men and women lose sight of life’s sacredness, and begin to treat it contemptuously.

We will often condone quite reprehensible acts if we think they were committed for the sake of a greater good. We have a tendency to look for outright evil, to think in terms of “the powers of good and evil,” and I am quite sure that many are convinced of evil’s force. Evil does not exist in those terms, and that is why so many seemingly idealistic people can be partners in quite reprehensible actions, while telling themselves that such acts are justified, since they are methods toward a good end.

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That is why fanatics feel justified in their actions. When we indulge in such black-and-white thinking, we treat our ideals shabbily. Each act that is not keeping with that ideal begins to unravel the ideal at its very core. If we feel unworthy, or powerless to act, and if we are idealistic, we may begin to feel that the ideal exists so far in the future that it is necessary to take steps we might not otherwise take to achieve it. And when this happens, the ideal is always eroded. If we want to be a true practicing idealist, then each step that we take along the way must be worthy of our goal.

In our country, the free enterprise system is immersed in strange origins. It is based upon the democratic belief in each individual’s right to pursue a worthy and equitable life. But that also became bound up, with Darwinian ideas of the survival of the fittest, and with the belief, then, that each individual must seek his or her own good at the expense of others, and by the quite erroneous conception that all of the members of a given species are in competition with each other, and that each species is in further competition with each other species.

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The “laws” of supply and demand are misconceptions based upon a quite uncomplimentary belief in man’s and woman’s basic greedy nature. In the past we treated the land in our country as if our species being the “fittest,” had the right to survive at the expense of all other species, and at the expense of the land itself. The ideal of the country was and is an excellent one: the right of each individual to pursue an equitable, worthy existence, with dignity. The means, however, have helped erode that ideal, and the public interpretation of Darwin’s principles was, quite unfortunately, transferred to the economic area, and to the image of man and woman as a political animal.

Religion and science alike denied other species any real consciousness. When man and woman spoke of the sacredness of life — in his or her more expansive moods — he or she she referred to human life alone. We are not in competition with other species, nor are we in any natural competition with ourselves. Nor in the natural world in any way the result of competitiveness among species. If that were the case we would have no world at all.

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Individually, we exist physically because of the unsurpassed cooperation that exists just biologically between our species and all others, and on deeper levels because of the cellular affiliations that exist among the cells of all species. Value fulfillment is a psychological and physical propensity that exists in each unit of consciousness, propelling it toward its own greatest fulfillment in such a way that its individual fulfillment also adds to best possible development on the part of each other such unit of consciousness. This propensity operates below and within the framework of matter. It operates above as well, but I am here concerned with the cooperative nature with which value fulfillment endows all units of consciousness within our physical world.

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While we believed in competition, then competition became not only a reality but an ideal. Children are taught to compete against each other. The child naturally “competes” against herself or himself in an urge to outdo old performance with new. Competition, however, has been promoted as the ideal at all levels of activity. It is as if we must look at others to see how we are doing — and when we are taught not to trust our own abilities, then of course we need the opinions of others overmuch. I am not speaking of any playful competition, obviously, but of a determined, rigorous, desperate, sometimes almost deadly competition, in which a person’s value is determined according to the number of individuals he or she has shunted aside.

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This is carried through in economics, politics, medicine, the sciences, and even the religions. So I would like to reinforce the fact that life is indeed a cooperative venture, and that all the steps taken toward the ideal must of themselves be life-promoting.

People often respond to the seasons in individualistic fashion, of course, using certain elements to spur them on or hold them back. No season is itself only. It exists in relationship to all the people within its boundaries.

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.

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.

True psychology

We have been taught to believe that impulses are wrong generally speaking, or at best that they represent messages from a nefarious subconscious, giving voice to dark moods and desires.

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For example: Many of us believe in the basis of Freudian psychology — that the son naturally wants to displace the father in his mother’s attentions, and that beneath the son’s love for his father, there rages the murderous intent to kill. Ridiculous idiocy!

The self, so spectacularly alive, seemed equipped with reason to understand the great import of its own certain extinction. Such a tragedy to project upon the living personality.

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We cannot begin to have a true psychology, again, unless we see the living self in a greater context, with greater motives, purposes and meanings that we now assign to it, of for that matter than we assign to nature and its creatures. We have denied many impulses, or programmed others so that they are allowed expression in only certain forms of action. I any of us do still believe in the Freudian or Darwinian selves, then we will be leery about impulses to examine our own consciousness, afraid of what murderous debris might be uncovered. I am not speaking merely in hypothetical terms. For example, a well-intentioned woman: She worries about her overweight condition, and depressed at what she thinks of as her lack of discipline in following diets. In her dismay, she visits a psychologist, who tells her that her marriage might somehow be part of the problem. The woman never went back. It’s hard to say why though. The psychologist that she visited was bound to have had many years of training, after finding inspiration from somewhere like a up-skilled, counsellors-psychologists-working-in-community-services, to build a successful career in helping people who may be in the same situation as this woman. Did she think that the psychologist was wrong? No. She was afraid that she might discover within herself the buried impulse to kill her husband, or to break up the marriage, but she was sure that her overweight condition hid some unfortunate impulse.

Actually the woman’s condition hid her primary impulse: to communicate better with her husband, to ask him for definite expression of love. Why does he not love her as much as she loved him? She could say it was because she was overweight, after all, for he was always remarking adversely about her fleshy opulence — though he did not use such a sympathetic phrase.

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He could not express his love for her in the terms she wished for be believed that women would, if allowed to, destroy the man’s freedom, and he interpreted the natural need for love as an unfortunate emotional demand. Both of them believed that women were inferior, and quite unknowingly they followed a Freudian dogma.

The ideas we have been speaking of, then, are intimately connected with our lives. The man just mentioned denies his personal impulses often. Sometimes he is not even aware of them as far as they involve the expression of affection or love to his wife.

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In those areas where we cut down on our impulses, upon their very recognition, we close down probabilities, and prevent new beneficial acts that of themselves would lead us out of our difficulty. We prevent change. But many people fear that any change is detrimental, since they have been taught, after all, that left alone their bodies or their minds of their relationships are bound to deteriorate. Often, therefore, people react to events as if they themselves possessed no impetus to alter them. They live their lives as if they are indeed limited in experience not only to a brief lifetime, but a lifetime in which they are the victims of their chemistry — accidental members of a blighted species that is murderous to it very core.

Another example: A woman found a small sore spot on her breast. Remembering well the barrage of negative suggestions that passes for preventative medicine — the public service announcements about cancer — she was filled with foreboding. She went to the doctor, who told her he did not believe there was anything wrong. He suggested X-rays, however, “just to be on the safe side,” and so he body was treated to a basically unnecessary dose of radiation in the name of preventative medicine.

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I am not suggesting that we do not visit doctors under such situations, because the weight of our negative beliefs about our bodies usually makes it too difficult for us to bear such uncertainties alone. Nevertheless, such actions speak only too loudly of our mass beliefs involving the vulnerability of the self and its flesh.

To me, it it almost inconceivable that, from our position, any of us seriously consider that the existence of our exquisite consciousness can possibly be the result of a conglomeration of chemicals and elements thrown together by a universe accidentally formed, and soon to vanish. So much more evidence is available to us: the order of nature; the creative drama of our dreams, that project our consciousness into other times and places; the very precision with which we spontaneously grow, without knowing how, from fetus into an adult; the existence of heroic themes and quests and ideas that pervade the life of even the worst scoundrel — these all give evidence of the greater context in which we have our being.

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If the universe existed as we have been told it does, then there would be no psychological avenues to connect worlds. There would be no extensions of the self that would allow us to travel such a psychological distance to those thresholds of reality that forms our mental environment. If the universe were structured as we have been told, the probability of the mass world would not be formed as the result of individual impulses. They meet and merge, and form platforms for action.

We live surrounded by impulses. We must make innumerable decisions in our lives — most choose careers, mates, cities of residence. Experience can help us make decisions, but we make decision long before we have years of experience behind us.

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Overall, whether or not we are conscious of it — for some of us are, and some of us are not — our lives do have a certain psychological shape. That shape is formed by our decisions. We make decisions as the result of feeling impulses to do this or that, to perform in one manner or another, in response to both private considerations and in regard to demands seemingly placed upon us by others. In the vast arena of those numberless probabilities open to us, we do of course have some guidelines. Otherwise we would always be in a state of indecision. Our personal impulses provide those guidelines by showing us how best to use probabilities so that we fulfill our own potential to greatest advantage — and in so doing, provide constructive help to the society at large.

When we are taught not to trust our impulses we begin to lose our powers of decision, and to whatever extent involved in the circumstances, we begin to lose our sense of power because we are afraid to act.

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Many people are in a quandary of indecision. Some might lament, for example: “I do not know what to do, or what direction to follow. I think that I could make music my career. I am musically gifted. On the other hand, I feel a leaning toward psychology. I have not attended music lately. However, music is usually one of those skills that a person never forgets. If they’re talented enough, they will be able to make a career out of it. It’s a lot easier to make it professional as a music artist these days, especially with the help of music streaming sites, such as Spotify. Aspiring musicians only have to purchase some spotify-plays to get themselves started, and then they should be able to kick off their career. If an individual believes they’re talented enough to make music a career, they should follow that dream. However, if there’s something that an individual might be better at, it could be worth looking into that. For example, sometimes I think I could be a teacher. In the meantime I Am meditating and hoping that the answer will come.” Such a person is afraid to trust anyone impulse enough to act upon it. All remain equally probable activities. Meditation must be followed by action — and true meditation is action. Such people are afraid of making decisions because they are afraid of their own impulses — and some of them can use meditation to dull their impulses, and actually prevent constructive action. As long as you pick something that resonates with you, you should do well on your path. Don’t forget to tap into the resources made available for you, from crafting a resume using https://www.arcresumes.com/, to taking on volunteer work to feed your soul and find a new pathway. The universe will help guide you along the way.

Impulses arise in a natural, spontaneous, constructive response to the abilities, potentials, and needs of the personality. They are meant as directing forces. Luckily, the child usually walks before it is old enough to be taught that impulses are wrong, and luckily the child’s natural impulses toward exploration, growth, fulfillment, action and power are strong enough to give it the necessary springboard before our belief systems begin to erode its confidence. We have physical adult bodies. The pattern for each adult body existed in the fetus — which again, “luckily,” impulsively, followed its own direction.

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No one told it that it was impossible to grow from a tiny cell — change that to a tiny organism instead of a cell — to a complicated adult structure. What tiny, spindly, threadlike, weak legs we all once had in our mother’s wombs! Those tiny, spindly legs now climb mountains, stride gigantic boulevards, because they followed their own impulsive shapes. Even the atoms and molecules within them sought out their own most favorable probabilities. And in terms that we do not understand, even those atoms and molecules made their own decisions as the result of recognizing and following those impulsive sparks toward action that are inherent in all consciousness, whatever their statues in our terms.

Consciousness attempts to grow toward its own ideal development, which also promotes the ideal development of all organizations in which it takes part.

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We are back, then, to the matter of the ideal and its actualization. When and how do our impulses affect the world? Again, what is the ideal, the good impulse, and why does it seem that our experience is so far from that ideal that it appears to be evil?