Tag Archives: Healings

The Intellect As A Cultural Artifact

The intellect is far more socially oriented than is generally understood.

Some of this, again, is difficult to explain, but in a fashion the intellect is a cultural phenomenon. It is amazing resilient, in that according to the belief structures of any given historical period, it can orient itself along the lines of those beliefs, using all of its reasoning abilities to bring such a world picture into focus, collecting data that agree, and rejecting what does not.

Obviously, the mind can use its reasoning abilities, for example, to come to the conclusion that there is a single god behind the functioning of the world, that there are many gods, that divinity is a fantasy, and that the world itself springs from no reasonable source. Like statistics, the reasoning abilities can be used to come to almost any conclusion. This is done, again, by taking into consideration within any given system of reasoning only the evidence that agrees with the system’ premises.

This flexibility allows the species great variation overall in its psychological and cultural and political and religious activities. When any system of reasoning becomes too rigid, however, there are always adjustments made that will allow other information to intrude — otherwise, of course, our belief systems would never change.

Our species shares with the other species a feeling of kinship for its kind. There is a great give-and-take of ideas. We end up, then, with a consensus, generally speaking, as to what a reasonable picture of agreed-upon reality is. Our system has frowned upon many experiences, considering them eccentric behavior in an adverse fashion, since our belief systems have so regimented behavior, and so narrowly defined sanity. The intellect, I want to stress, is socially oriented. It is peculiarly suited, of course, to react to cultural information. It wants to see the world as it is seen by the minds of others. Through that kind of action it helps form our cultural environment, the civilization of which we are justly proud.

The intellect, then, helps our species translate its own natural purposes and intents — the purposes and intents of the natural person — into their “proper” cultural context, so that those abilities the natural person possesses can benefit the civilization of its time. Those purposes and intents literally change the world. The intellect’s expectations and intents spontaneously and automatically trigger  the proper bodily mechanisms to bring about the necessary environmental interactions, and our intent as expressed through our intellect directs our experience of the world.

I am speaking about the intellect here for our discussion, but remember it is everywhere cushioned also. There are backup systems, in other words. If the intellect believes that the world is a threat to existence, then that belief will alter its intents, of course, and therefore the body’s activities. The beliefs of the intellect operate then as powerful suggestions, particularly when the intellect identifies with those beliefs, so that there is little distance between the intellect and the beliefs that it holds as true.

I am doing my best to explain the very practical aspects of the intellect’s beliefs, and their strength in drawing experience to us. At one time I had difficulty with understanding some of these ideas. Our own relationship, our private beliefs about the sort of persons we want individually for mates, brought about incalculable actions that lead finally to our meeting — yet it all happened “quite naturally,” of course. Our beliefs bring us into correspondence with the elements likely to lead to their affirmation. They draw from Framed-mind-2 all of the necessary ingredients. They elicit from other people’s behavior that is in keeping with those beliefs.

Our own attitudes, for example — and beliefs — about foreigners, people’s stupidity and lack of integrity, put us in correspondence with those same beliefs on the part of others, resulting in a translation fiasco. An entirely different kind of behavior could have been elicited from those same people. Like attracts like in that regard. Those same people, for example, all have, as we do, beliefs in people’s trustworthiness, and so forth — but under those conditions, at that time, we each — or rather us all — are in correspondence at many levels. My blogs are published. They have helped many people, and that is because we are also in correspondence as far as many of our more positive beliefs are concerned, and those outweigh the others.

We get what we concentrate upon, and our beliefs are largely responsible for those areas in which we concentrate.

There are no magical methods, only natural ones that we use all of the time, although in some cases we use them for beliefs that we take for truths, when instead they are quite defective assumptions. A small example — one, incidentally, that I finally realized; but it is a beautiful instance of natural methods.

I heard the next day’s weather report, groaned, thought of a very uncomfortable 90-degree temperature tomorrow and imagined myself miserable with the heat. Indeed, I began to feel warmer. In a flash I remembered previous days of discomfort, and in the next moment I projected those into the weekend. I felt trapped. Midway through this process I tried to catch myself, but I believed that my body could not handle the heat — and that belief outweighed my intent to change my thoughts, so they kept returning for perhaps ten minutes.

I continued, however, to remind myself that I was not going to worry about tomorrow today, regardless. I told myself that the prediction might be wrong, and I began with my intellect to pile up evidence that could in one way or another bring about a different, more beneficial experience. I did this by recognizing the way I had earlier been building up the picture in the old manner, by collecting all the evidence that fitted it. I used the same process, only for a more beneficial picture, and the process works. We have only to become aware of it.

Our experience will follow our concentration and beliefs and expectation. The mind is a great discriminator. It can use its reasoning to bring about almost any possible experience within our framework.

Dreams are Symbolic Interpretation of The State of Mind

As the personality is changed by any action, so it is changed by its own dreams. As it is molded by the exterior environment, so it is molded by the dreams that it creates and which help form its interior world. To the whole self, there is little differentiation made between exterior or interior actions. The ego makes such distinctions. The core of the personality does not. As an individual changes his physical situation through reacting to it, so he or she changes his or her interior or psychic situation in the same way.

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In dreams, we give freedom to actions that cannot adequately be expressed within the confines of normal waking reality. If the personality handles his or her dream activities capably, then problem actions find release in dreams. When the ego is too rigid, it will even attempt to censor dreams, however, and freedom of actions is not entirely permitted, even in the dream condition.

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If this solution fails, the impeding action will then materialize as a physical illness or undesirable psychological condition. If an individual has strong feelings of dependency that cannot be expressed in daily life, he will express these in dreams. If he or she does not, then he or she may develop an illness that allows him or her to be dependent in physical life. If he or she is aware of difficulties, however, he or she may request dreams that will release this feeling.

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The individual would not necessarily remember such a dream. Psychologically, however, such an experience would be valid, and the dependency expressed. I cannot stress this too strongly: To the inner self, the dream experience is as real as any other experience.

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If follows that by using suggestion, various problems can be solved within the dream state. The inner ego of which we have spoken is the director of such unifying activities. It is the ‘I’ of our dreams, having somewhat the same position within the inner self as the ego has to the outer physical body.

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Upon proper suggestion, the personality then will work out specific problems in the dream state, but if the solution is not clear to the conscious ego, this does not necessarily mean that the solution was not found. There will be cases where it is not only unnecessary but undesirable that the ego be familiar with the solution. The suggestions will be followed by the sleeping self in its own fashion. The solutions may not appear to the conscious self in the way it expects. The conscious self may not even recognize it has been given a solution, and yet it may act upon it.

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Individual therapy, which tend to be available at centers like Arista Recovery (https://www.aristarecovery.com/), could prove useful to many suffering from psychological illnesses as well as an addiction problem. However, both psychological and physical illnesses could largely be avoided through dream therapy. Rather harmlessly, aggressive tendencies could also be given freedom in the dream condition. Through such therapy, actions would be allowed greater spontaneity. In the case of the release of aggressiveness, the individual involved would experience this within the dream state and hurt no one. Suggestions could also be given so that he or she learned to understand the aggressiveness through watching himself or herself while in the dream state.

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This is not as farfetched as it might seem. Much erratic anti-social behavior could be avoided in this way. Crimes could be prevented. The desired but feared actions would not build up to explosive pressure. If I may indulge in a fantasy, theoretically we could imagine a massive experiment in dream therapy, where wars were fought by sleeping, and not waking, nations.

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In practice, however, there are many considerations to be understood. If aggressiveness is the problem, for example, then the preliminary suggestion should include a statement that in the dream, the aggression will be harmlessly acted out and not directed against a particular individual. The subconscious is quite capable of handling the situation in this manner. This may seem like a double censor, but in all cases it is the aggressiveness itself that is important and not the person or persons against whom the individual may decide to vent his or her aggressiveness.

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When the aggressiveness is released through a dream, there will be no need for a victim. We do not want an individual to suggest a dream situation in which he or she is attacking another person. There are several reasons for this, both telepathic realities which we do not yet understand and guilt patterns which would be unavoidable.

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We are not attempting to substitute dream action for physical action, generally speaking. Here we are speaking of potentially dangerous situations in which an individual shows signs of being unable to cope with these psychological actions through ordinary methods of adoption. No one can deny that a war fought by dreaming men at specified times would be less harmful than a physical war — to return to my flight of fancy. There would be repercussions, however, that would be unavoidable, [for again, basically, the personality does not differentiate between sleeping and waking events].

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Again, if the personality is fairly well balanced, then his or her existence in dream reality will reinforce his or her physical existence. We are involved in a juggling of realities. It is necessary to see the personality as it operates within both, if we are interested in understanding its whole experience.

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Sometimes dreams that seemed nonsense contain one clear, important image that shortly — within a few days– would appear in a different context entirely. In several cases, two or more future events would be considered into one dream.

 

Illness and Action

Illnesses can be seen as impeding actions representing actual blockages of energy, action turned into channels that are not to the best interests of the personality. The energies appear concentrated and turned inward, affecting the whole system. They represent offshoots; not necessarily detrimental in themselves, except when viewed from the standpoint of other actions that form the personality framework.

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A certain portion of the energy practically available to the personality is spent in the maintenance of this impeding action of illness. It is obvious, then, that less energy is available for actions more beneficial to the personality system as a whole.

The situation can be serious in varying degrees, according to the impetus and intensity of the original cause behind the illness. If the impetus is powerful, then the impeding action will be of more serious nature, blocking huge reserves of energy for its own purposes. It obviously becomes part of the personality’s psychological structure, the physical, electrical and chemical structures, invading to some extent even the dream system.

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If illness is detrimental and we know it, then why does poor health linger at times?

At times, illness is momentarily accepted by the personality as a part of the self, and here lies its danger. It is not just symbolically accepted, and I am not speaking in symbolic terms. The illness is often quite literally accepted by the personality structure as a portion of the self. Once this occurs, a conflict instantly develops. The self does not want to give up a portion of itself, even if that part may be painful or disadvantageous.

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This has serious implications. Obviously the easiest time to cure an illness is before it is accepted as a part of the self-image. (I’ll go on to explain some of the other deeper reasons for the continuance of symptoms and our acceptance of them.)

For one thing, while pain is unpleasant, it is also a method of familiarizing the self against the edges of quickened consciousness. Any heightened sensation, pleasant or unpleasant, has a stimulating effect upon consciousness to some degree. It is a strong awareness of activity and life. Even when the stimulus may be extremely annoying or humiliatingly unpleasant, certain portions of the psychological framework accept it undiscriminatingly because it is a basic part of the nature of consciousness and a necessary one.

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Even a quick and automatic rejection or withdrawal from such a stimulus is, in itself, a way by which consciousness knows itself. The ego may attempt to escape such experiences, but the basic nature of action itself is the knowing of itself in all aspects. In a very deep manner, action does not differentiate between enjoyable and painful actions.

These differentiations come later, on another level of development. But because personality is composed of action, it contains within it all action’s characteristics.

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Here I will describe the ways in which various kinds of consciousness react to painful stimuli, ending up with a statement that at the deepest cellular levels, all sensations and stimuli are instantly, automatically and joyfully accepted, regardless of their nature. At this level, no knowledge of threat exists. The “I” differentiations is not definite enough to fear destruction.

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Here we have action knowing itself and realizing its basic indestructibility: It has no fear of destruction, for it is also a part of the destruction from which new actions will evolve.

The complicated organism of human personality with its physical structure has evolved a highly differentiated ‘I’ consciousness, whose very nature is such that it attempts to preserve the apparent boundaries of identity: To do so it must choose between actions.

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But beneath the sophisticated gestalt are the simpler foundations of its being and, indeed, the very acceptance of all stimuli without which identity would be impossible. Without this acquiescence, the physical structure would never maintain itself, for the atoms and molecules within it constantly accept painful stimuli and suffer even their own destruction. They are aware of their own separateness within action and of their reality within it.

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Now you should understand why even an impeding action can be literally accepted by the personality as a part of itself and why efforts must be made to coax the personality to give up a portion of itself, if progress is to be made.

We are also helped, however, by several characteristics of the personality, in that it is every-changing, and its flexibility will be of benefit. We merely want to change the direction in which some of its energy moves. It must be seen by the personality that an impeding action is a hardship on the whole structure and that this particular part of the self is not basic to the original personality. The longer the impending action is accepted, the more serious the problem.

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Can illness serve a good purpose? Yes.

The whole focus of a personality can change from constructive areas to a concentration of main energies in the area of the illness. Now in such a case, often the illness represents a new unifying system. If the old unifying system of personality has broken down, the illness, serving as a makeshift, temporary emergency measure may hold the integrity of the personality intact until a new constructive, unifying principle replaces the original.

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In this case, the illness could not be called an impeding action unless it persisted long after its purpose was served. Even then, without knowing all the facts we could not make a judgment, for the illness could still serve by giving the personality a sense of security, being kept on hand as an ever-present emergency device in case the new unifying principles should fail.

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Unifying principles are groups of actions about which the whole personality forms itself at any given time. These may change and do change in a relatively smooth fashion when action is allowed to flow unimpeded. When action is not allowed to follow the patterns of channels for its expression that have been evolved by the personality, then blockages of energy occur.

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These must be understood not as something apart from the personality, but as a part of the changing personality. Often, they point out the existence of inner problems. Often, they serve temporary functions, leading the personality from other more severe areas of difficulty. I am not saying here that illness is good. I am saying that it is a part of the action of which any personality is composed, and therefore, it is purposeful and cannot be considered as an alien force that attacks the individual from without.

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In this blog, I am describing illness as a part of action, but, as I make clear, this is not meant to imply any negation of psychological or psychic values. The nature of action, however, is important.

The personality is simultaneous action; it is composed of actions within actions. Portions of it are conscious of its awareness as a part of action, and portions try to stand aside from action. The attempt forms the ego, which is itself action.

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If illness were thrust upon action or upon the personality from the outside, then the individual would be at the mercy of outside agencies, but in a most basic manner, it chooses those actions which it will accept.

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An illness can be rejected. The habit of illness can be rejected. When action is allowed to flow freely, then neurotic rejections of action will not occur. An illness is almost always the result of another action that cannot be carried through. When the lines to the repressed action are released and the channels to it opened, such an illness will vanish. However, the thwarted actions may be one with disastrous consequences, which the illness may prevent.

Even calcium deposits are accumulations of repressed energy stored up in the body.

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Poor health is caused mainly by destructive mental and feeling patterns that directly affect the body because of the particular range within the electromagnetic system in which they fall. Bad health, for example, does not happen first, resulting in unhealthy thoughts. It is the other way around.

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Illness must be treated primarily by changing the basic mental habits. Unless this is done, the trouble will erupt again and again in different guises. The system has the ability to heal itself, however, and every opportunity should be given to allow it to do so.

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In most cases the stimuli [toward healing] come from deeper levels of the self, where they may be translated into terms that the personal subconscious can use. In such cases, these perceptions may find their way to the ego, appearing as inspirations or intuitive thought.

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Many such intuitions appear when the personality is dissociated or in a dream state. The effect of any thought is quite precise and definite and set into motion because of the nature of its own electromagnetic identity. The physical body operates within certain electromagnetic patterns and is adversely affected by others. These effects change the actual molecular structure of the cells, for better or worse, and because of the laws of attraction, habitual patterns will operate. A destructive thought, then, is dangerous not only to the present state of the organism but is also dangerous in terms of the ‘future.’

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Therapeutic dreams — have the ability to cure the body. I’ll explain how such dreams act upon the physical system.

We have not spoken about the inner senses in some time. By now, my blog readers, should realize that they have an electromagnetic reality also and that the mental enzymes act as sparks, setting off inner reactions. In the dream state, these reactions are easily triggered. This is the result of the lowering of egotistical guards, for the ego sets up controls that act as resistances to various inner channels [during the waking state].

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A destructive attitude of mind has been changed overnight in dream state to a constructive situation in many instances, and the whole electromagnetic balance has been changed. In such case, negative ions form an electrical framework in which healing is possible. Such healing dreams come most often when the self feels a sense of desperation and automatically opens up channels to deeper layers or personality.

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Often we find an almost instant regeneration, a seemingly instant cure, a point from which the organism almost miraculously begins to improve. The same happens in less startling cases where, for example, a merely annoying health condition suddenly disappears.

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Through self-suggestion, these therapeutic dreams can be brought about with practice. The suggestion (being action) has its own electromagnetic effect and already begins to set certain healing processes into action, while sparking the formation of others.

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Such inner therapeutics may occur at various other levels of consciousness, where they may be sparked by exterior stimuli of an aesthetic or pleasing nature. Other exterior conditions also have an effect. To involve oneself in large groups, for example, is often beneficial not simply to take attention away from the self for a change, but because of the larger range of electromagnetic ranges readily available.

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The overall health of the individual is important, as it is the delicate balance of electromagnetic properties. When the organism is set deeply in destructive patterns, then this is sometimes felt in the dream state, so that destructive dreams then add to the entire situation. For this reason, the use of self-suggestion in bringing about constructive dreams is of great benefit.

In the dream one’s ability is as much a part of oneself as breath and can’t be turned off and on at will. There many aspects or reincarnational data in the dream, all reinforcing healthy elements.

The Midplane

The midplane is an excellent description of the semi-plane some people now inhabit. It is a waiting plane for personalities at certain stages of development.

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The midplane contains a conglomeration of fragments, who have not attained sufficient knowledge or manipulability to progress further at this point. They may be at various stages of development, but, usually, they have attained only a fair level of achievement. They have not excelled, neither have they ‘failed.’ They are working out problems of their own. They are not as yet committed to the next plane of their advancement.

They can be of benefit along certain lines. The validity of their information may be excellent. On the other hand, it may be less than trustworthy at times, simply because their achievement level is not high. If they err, they do so through ignorance.

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The ego is the tool by which the hidden self manipulates in the physical universe. In our case, it enables us to focus our ability along lines necessary to make it effective on our plane. However, when the ego becomes involved with fears, it ceases to be an effective tool and becomes instead a hammer hitting us incessantly over the head.

When the ego becomes overly concerned, it becomes overly conditioned to negative responses. The creative energies build up their thickly-dimensioned pseudo-realities of pain. For a certain amount of time, according to our condition, they automatically create the patterns of fear that belong to the ego.

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These fears do not belong to what we think of as the subconscious. Then these materializations of panic and pain, play about the physical body, projected by the ego, and steal the powers of the subconscious mind from their natural constructive tasks. In other words, the ego become a tool to disrupt rather than to create.

Our own subconscious is the fountain of our individuality and personality; from it springs our talent. When the ego becomes too concerned with daily matters, with worry, then it becomes far less effective. The freely working subconscious — or the inner you — is completely capable of taking care of all practical considerations and will use the ego as a tool to do so.

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Dissociation puts the power back where it belongs. Daily methods of dissociation are extremely practical. You will notice within a few weeks’ time an added energy. So-called impulses on our part are often blocked because we do not consider them practical. But the subconscious knows its own meat and its own sauce and the best means for its nourishment.

Begin yoga exercises and follow them faithfully. A few experiments with auto-suggestion upon falling asleep will  be ego-bound. Think of this in terms of muscle-bound, and you will see what I mean. Be in a drowsy state and suggest, suggest, suggest.Do not attempt to bully or command the subconscious.

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My affection for my blog readers is strong. If I speak heavy-handedly, it is because i want you to have a light touch. Dissociation brings about a strong unity with the creative aspects of personality. It puts us back, or it puts our creative talents back, in the driver’s seat.

Animals catch our emotional contagion and according to their own abilities, translate it for themselves.

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The viruses and infections are, of course, present. They always are. They are themselves fragments, struggling small fragments, without intention of harm. We have general immunity, believe it or not, to all such viruses. Ideally, we can inhabit a plane with them without fear. It is only when we give tacit agreement that harm is inflicted. To some degree, household pets are dependent upon our psychic strength. They have their own, it is true, but, unknowingly, we reinforce their energy and health.

When our own personalities are more or less in balance, we have no trouble at all looking out for these creatures and actually reinforcing their existence with residues of our creative and sympathetic powers. In times of psychological stress — or in periods of crises — quite unwittingly we often withhold this strong reinforcement.

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I would like to make it clear that animals do have energy to maintain their own health, but this is reinforced as a rule by the vitality of the human beings to whom they may be emotionally attached.

At times, the ego can hold us in a tight vice, which the dissociation breaks. This is what happens after dissociation exercises. Allowing ourselves psychic freedom. However, conscious fears cause the ego to tighten its grasp, and some effects of this nature startup.

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The fact that the fearful ego begins to tighten explains our reactions to dissociation exercises. The ego can build up around the inner self like a glacier, and the dissociation exercises help melt it away. Even the prickles in our neck are like tiny picks chipping away at icy fears. You release so quickly as a result of the exercises that you don’t know what had happened.

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Often when we think we are dealing with a matter or a person in a dissociated manner, we might be instead exhibiting a cold, conscious detachment. This is a pose of the ego and is not to be confused with the lithe subconscious detachment which is actually warm, flexible and expanse.

When the leaders of Iraq order an invasion

They proclaimed that the war had really begun over 1,300 years ago, at the battle of Quaddisiya in A.D. 637, when Muslim Arabs drove the Persians, who are Indo-European, from Iraq. (Iraq was called Mesopotamia then, and until 1935 Persia was the name for Iran.)

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In a passionate, bloody series of events later in the seventh century, a split occurred in which the Muslim religion was divided into two main branches, the Shiite and the Sunni. Now Iran is ruled by the Shiites, and is religiously oriented; Iraq is ruled by the Sunnis, and is more secular and socialistic. Iranian leaders emphasize the religious aspects of the war. Iraq the ethnic. The rulers of each country have urged the citizens of the other to revolt against their leaders. There is much disillusionment in Iran over the excesses of the Shiite clergy. In Iran martyrdom is encouraged — at home, in the war, and in terroristic activity abroad. Iraq has been accused of using chemical warfare (courtesy of the Russians) against its enemy. The Muslim world, then, is hardly a monolithic entity; as within Iran itself, the myriad consciousness making up the whole framework are much too varied for the to be true.

At least partially because of their brutal history. Iranians — Persians — are strongly self-centered; preservation of the self is given an overriding impetus. The world is seen as being full of peril. Causality, the interrelation of cause and effect, is often ignored or misunderstood in the Iranian quest for immediate advantage. Influence counts for much more than obligation; the concepts of long-term mutual trust is seen as basically adversarial; goodwill means little. Yet, such egocentric characteristics often are sublimated into the seemingly contradictory practice of martyrdom — the two are united within the Iranian interpretation of Muslim theology. In a land ruled by a body of theocratic law the needs of the country must ultimately prevail, as in the case of attack from without, say. There is no area in which Islamic precepts do not apply.

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Rather ironically, not all Muslims want the Americans to leave the Middle East, as the terrorists have announced they must do. And the government of Iran, in spite of its great hatred for our country, is pragmatic enough to join it in a very efficient exchange of large sums of money; these transactions, in part to settle business claims against Iran, are a portion of the arrangements made to free the American hostages.

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Attend to what is before us, for it is there for a reason. In each person’s life, and in our own, at each and every point of our existence. The solutions to our problems, or the means of achieving those solutions to our problems, or the means of achieving those solutions, are always as apparent — or rather as present — within our days as is any given problems itself. What I mean is quite simple: The solutions already exist in our lives. We may not have put them together yet, or organized them in the necessary ways. The solutions lie in all areas with which we are normally concerned — mail, blogs, news, our abilities. When we attend to what is there with the proper magical attitude of mind, then the altered organizations can take place.

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A belief in a ‘god who provides,’ by whatever name, is indeed a psychological requirement for the good health of the body and mind. Unfortunately, in our society we need every good suggestion we can get, to offset fears and negative conditioning.

Man and Woman explored the World in the Dreaming State long before they explored it Physically

Such dreams gave him and her the assurance that other lands existed outside of his and her own, and spurred him and her onward into those physical expeditions in which the species has always taken a particular delight.

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A man or woman might be while dreaming suddenly in strange territory, looking at the sky from a different viewpoint, with say, a familiar river nowhere in sight, and with a mountain where ordinarily a plain might be. This was in a way as startling an experience as it would be to us to find ourselves on some distant planet. (We do, for that matter, explore space in the same fashion, and on at least some occasions our own “visitors from outer space” are dream travelers from other dimensions of reality.)

In such a fashion man and woman learned the location of the oceans upon the earth — or at least was given the  assurance that such large bodies of water existed, along with clues as to their locations, and the placement of the stars overhead.

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Also in the same manner dreams were an aid in navigation, so that they served to let sailors know when land was near before it could be physically perceived — and there is no human activity to which dreams and group dreams have not contributed.

They were of great aid, of course, in human politics, so that through dreams  the intents of tribal leaders, say, were known to the others. Some people within the tribe specialized in such dreams, and again, dream content was and is directed by the individual intents, purposes and interests of the dreamer. In a certain manner dreaming, then, helped sharpen such individual tendencies while still directing them toward the public value fulfillment. The person interested most in herbs and plant life would also find that nightly dream excursions might find the dreamer examining strange herbs in another location than the native one. Or he or she might be given knowledge as to how the herbs could best be used for healing purposes. People are natural mimics, as are some animals and birds, so when tribal members related their dreams, they did not just tell them but acted them out with great mobility, carefully mimicking whatever animals or people or elements of land they may have encountered.

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The origins of drama began in just that fashion. Tribal leaders were usually chosen only after long “dream investigations,” in which the new leader’s name cropped up, say, time and time again in the people’s dreams. They expected to receive counsel from their dreams, such information was then aired and shared, studied and examined along with ll physical considerations that applied, before important decisions were made.

We do still continue such activity, again, although we have turned conscious minds away from those directions. Most of it does not become conscious because we do not want it to. In some areas, however, with the acceleration of physical travel, certain kinds of dreams have become more highly pertinent. Families in our society are often broken up, parents and children living quite apart in other portions of the country or in different countries entirely, so dreams that connect us with such relatives have risen to the fore, so to speak. People often keep track of changes in hometowns that they may not have visited for twenty years except in the dream state, when they familiarize themselves with the alterations that have happened, visit beloved streets and houses, or view old classmates.

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Very few people make any attempt to check out such information in physical terms. There is an entire global dream network, in other words, that goes quite unrecognized — one of spectacular organization in which exchanges of information occur that give us the basis for the formation of recognized physical events.

If small families kept track of their own family dreams, for example, they could discover unsuspected correlations and sense the interplay of subjective and objective drama with which they are always psychologically involved. Notice what kind of information you seek out from the internet, for example. Do you read the headline page and ignore sports, or vice versa? Do you read gossip column? The obituary? Do you seek out stories of lurid crime, or look for future incidents of political chicanery? The answers will show us the kind of material we look for most often. We will to some extent specialize in the same kind of information when we dream. We will organize the contents of our mind and the information available to us according to our own intents and purposes.

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One person’s dreams, therefore, while his or her own, will still fit into an important notch in the dreams of a given family. One person might, because of his or her own interests, seek largely from dreams warnings of difficulty or trouble, and therefore be the family’s dream watchguard — the one who has, say, the nightmares for everyone else. That person will also serve a somewhat similar role in the waking state, as a member of a family. The question in such instances is the reason for such a person’s over-concern and alarm in the first place — why the intense interest in such possible catastrophes, or in crime or whatever? — and the answer lies in an examination of the person’s feelings and beliefs about the nature of existence itself.

As far as group dreaming is concerned, however, there are still some people who have served as watchdogs in that regard, while others even in the dream state operate as healers or teachers or explorers or whatever. There is no craft that was not first conceived of by an individual dreamer, who later transferred it to the social world or activity.

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In the dreaming state, then the needs and desires of families, communities and countries are well known. The dream state serves as a rich source for the world’s knowledge, and is also therefore responsible for the outgrowth of its technology. This is a highly important point, for “the technological world out there” was at one time the world of dreams. The discoveries and inventions that made the industrial world possible were always latent in man’s and woman’s mind, and represented an inner glittering landscape of probability that he and she brought into actualization through the use of dreams — the intuitive an the conscious manipulation of material that was at one time latent.

Value fulfillment will always provide inner directions that remind man and woman constantly of the best ways in which such technology can be used. The need to possess such knowledge in uppermost in men’s and women’s mind now, and so it also becomes a vital dream topic or subject. In the dream state, then, to one extent or another man and woman seeks solutions to the problems of his and her age.

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The entire idea of the magical approach, is of itself sustaining.

It should remind us of the true effortlessness that is in a fashion responsible for our very existence. When you become overly concerned or worried in any area, remember that we are thinking those thoughts while the process of thinking is utterly effortless. That realization alone can further remind us that the conscious mind does not have to have all the information required. It only needs to have the faith that means are available — even if those are beyond its own scope of activity.

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There is an entire global dream network, in other words, that goes quite unrecognized — one of spectacular organization in which exchange of information occur that give us the basis for the formation of recognized physical events.

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People could be helped to consciously realize their participation in this worldwide dream organization. Why, I wonder, couldn’t the nations of the world set up cooperative studies to verify its existence? I think that science and religion would be violently opposed to the idea, at least in the beginning, for it would challenge many rigid beliefs held by each of those disciplines. In the deepest terms of course, such a study would actually validate the sources of science and religion. The experiment has the potential for significantly broadening our conscious understanding of the world we’re creating.

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Setting up such a global organization to study dreams, would probably require a decade of arguing among nations. Would governments gather the information, or independent agencies? How would all of this be paid for, administered and analyzed? How long would it take to acquire statistically significant data? Would the peoples of the world cooperate? I say they most enthusiastically would, for the dream research would have a sound intuitive basis: It would uncover and reinforce many deeper aspects of our individual and collective beings — and I know of few things more important than that consciously we understand ourselves as well as we can in order to meet the great challenges we’re creating.  But, imagine trying to win the cooperation of the nations of the world for such an undertaking! Actually, it would be quite an advance of we could even agree to begin talking about such a study.

Communications appear between telepathy, automatic writing, speaking, and the hearing of voices

The supposedly telepathic messages can be attributed to contemporaries — enemies, gods, devils, or what have you. Space People are a recent addition. In most cases, what we have here are expressions of strong portions of the self that are more or less purposefully kept in isolation. They may appear or disappear, psychologically speaking. They present a kind of chain of command — one that is not usually permanent for any long period, however.

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Particularly when the voices or communications give orders to be obeyed, they represent powerful, otherwise repressed, images and desires, strong enough to form about themselves their own personifications. Some may seem relatively genuine in terms of presenting a fairly well-rounded representation of a normal personality. That is a fairly rare occurrence however. Usually we are presented with, say, semi-personalities, or even with lesser versions — fragmentary expressions of impulses and desires that are dramatically presented only in snatches heard by the person as a voice, or perceived as a presence.

In many situations, the main personifications are instead of a ritual nature, taking advantage of psychological patterns already present in the culture’s art of religion or science. We end up with Christs, spacemen and spacewomen, various saints or spirits, or other personality fabrications whose characteristics and abilities are already known.

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We have schizophrenic models, in other words, and the particular model chosen in any case, at any given time — for the model change — gives indications quite clearly of the person’s basic problems and dilemmas. Such cultural models are present in society to begin with, because in one way or another they express in an exaggerated form certain portions of man’s and woman’s psychological reality that he or she does not as yet understand. This applies to the “good” schizophrenic models and to the “bad” ones — that is, to the gods as well as to the demons.

Such “communications” with the gods or demons, St. Pauls or Hitlers, represent in such instances dramatized, exaggerated personifications of the portion of the personality that is at the head of the chain of command at the moment.

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In the first place, reality is primarily a mental phenomenon, in which the perceptions of the senses are organized and put together in ways that perfectly “mimic” in physical terms a primary non-physical experience. This is tricky to express, because the application of a psychological awareness through the auspices of the flesh automatically makes certain transformations of data necessary.

Devils and demons have no objective existence. They have always represented, again, portions of mankind’s and womankind’s own psychological reality that to some extent he and she had not assimilated — but in a schizophrenic kind of expression, projected instead outward from himself or herself. Therefore, it does not seem he or she must be held accountable for acts that he or she considers debasing, or cruel. He or she isolates himself or herself from that responsibility by imagining the existence of other forces — the devils or demons of the nether world.

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On an individual basis, the schizophrenic carries through those cultural patterns. The contrasts between, say, the superior self or the idealized self, and the debased self, may vary. They may be brilliant apparent or somewhat blurred. In many such instances there will also be at least a short spurt of intense but scrambled, perhaps garbled, creative activity, in which the individual tries to recognize these various elements, as mankind and womankind has attempted many times in the creative, sometimes garbled creation of his or her own religions.

Here we can have  anything from banal rubbish to the most excellent creative product, but in the schizophrenic framework it will be of brief duration, experience outside of the framework of usual day-to-day living, concentrated.

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The Christ image is often used because it so perfectly represents the combination of the grandiose self, as per the all-knowing son of God, and the martyred victim who is crucified precisely because of his lofty position.

The Christ figure represents the exaggerated, idealized version of the inner self that the individual feels incapable of living up to. He or she is being crucified by his or her own abilities. He may — or of course she may — on other occasions receive messages from the devil, or demons, which on their part represent the person’s feelings about the physical self the seems to be so evil and contradictory in contrast to the idealistic image. Again, there is great variety of behavior here.

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Such people, however, in their fashion refuse to accept standardized versions of reality. Even though they are so uncertain of themselves that their psychological patterns do follow those of culture, religion, science, or whatever, they try to use those patterns in their own personalities together long after most people have settled upon one official version or another — so their behavior gives glimpses of the ever-changing give-and-take among the various elements of human personality.

Most of the declared instances of telepathy or clairvoyance that happen in schizophrenic situations are instead the individual’s attempts to prove to himself or herself that the idealized qualities of omnipotence or power are indeed within grasp — this, of course, to compensate for the basic feeling of powerlessness in more ordinary endeavors. In some situations, however, there are definite, quite valid instance of telepathy or clairvoyance, vivid out-of-body experiences, and other excursions beyond the officially accepted realm of reality.

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These are often complicated, however, since the individual’s belief patterns are of such an exaggerated blend to begin with, so that such episodes are usually accompanied by phantom figures from religion or mythology. The individuals may feel forced to have such experiences, simply because, again, they do not want to face responsibility for action, for the reasons given earlier.

In our terms of time, man and woman have always projected unassimilated psychological elements of his own personality outward, but in much earlier times he or she did this using a multitudinous variety of images, personifications, gods, goddesses, demons and devils, good spirits and bad. Before the Roman gods were fully formalized, there was a spectacular range of good and bad detities, with all gradations among them, that more or less “democratically” represented the unknown but sensed, splendid and tumultuous characteristics of the human soul, and have stood for those sensed but unknown glimpses of his own that man was in one way or another determined to explore.

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It was understood that all of these “forces” had their parts to play in human events. Some stood for forces of nature that could very well be at times advantageous, and at times disadvantageous — as, for example, the god of storms might be very welcome to one time, in periods of drought, while his or her powers might be quite dreaded if he or she overly satisfied his or her people. There was no chasm of polarity between the “good gods and the bad ones.”

Jehovah and the Christian version of God brought about a direct conflict between the so-called forces of good and the so-called forces of evil by largely cutting out all of the intermediary gods, and therefore destroying the subtle psychological give-and-take that occurred between them — among them — and polarizing man’s and woman’s own view of his or her inner psychological reality.

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There were no schizophrenics in the time of the pagans, for the belief systems did not support that kind of interpretation. This does not mean that certain behavior did not occur that we would now call schizophrenic. It means that generally speaking such behavior fit within the psychological picture of reality. It did so because many of the behavior patterns associated, now, with schizophrenia, are “distorted and debased” remnants of behavior patterns that are part and parcel of man’s and woman’s heritage, and that harken back to activities and abilities that at one time had precise social meaning, and served definite purposes.

These include man’s and woman’s ability to identify with the forces of nature, to project portions of his own psychological reality outward from himself and herself, and then to perceive those portions in a revitalized transformation — a transformation that then indeed can alter physical reality.

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The next natural step would be to re-assimilate those portions of the self, to acknowledge their ancient origins and abilities, to return them so that they form a new coating, as it were, or a new version of selfhood. It is as if man and woman could not understand his or her own potentials unless he or she projected them outward into a godhead, where he or she could see them in a kind of isolated pure form, recognize them for what they are, and then accept them — the potentials — as a part of his or her own psychological reality. As a species, however, we have not taken the last step. Our ideas of the devil represents the same kind of process, except that it stands for our idea of evil or darkness, or abilities that we are afraid of. They also stand for elements of our own potential. I am not speaking of evil possibilities, but that man and woman must realize that he and she are responsible for his and he acts, whether they are called good or evil.

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We make our own reality, Man’s and Woman’s “evil” exists because of his or her misunderstanding of his or her own ideals, because of the gap that seems to exist between the ideal and its actualization. Evil actions, in other words, are the result of ignorance and misunderstanding. Evil is not a force in itself.

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Trust the body when it is undergoing  many changes, for the changes are all for the better.

Units of consciousness are not neutral, mathematical or mechanistic

They are the smallest imaginable “packages” of consciousness that we can imagine, and despite any ideas to the contrary, basically consciousness has nothing to do with size. If that were the case, it would take more than a world-sized globe to contain the consciousness of simply one cell.

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So our physical life is the result of a spectacular spontaneous order — the order of the body spontaneously formed by the units of consciousness. Our experience of the world is largely determined by our imaginations and our reasoning abilities. These did not develop through time, as per usual evolutionary beliefs. Both imagination and reason belonged to the species from the beginning, but the species has used these qualities in different ways throughout what we think of as historic time. There is great leeway in that direction, so that the two can be combined in many many alternate fashions, each particular combination giving us its own unique picture of reality, and determining our experience in the world.

Our many civilizations, historically speaking, each with its own fields of activity, its own sciences, religions, politics and art — these all represent various ways that man has used imagination and reason to form a framework through which a more or less cohesive reality is experienced.

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Man and woman, then, has sometimes stressed the power of the imagination and let its great dramatic light illuminate the physical events about him or her, so that they were largely seen through its cast. Exterior events in those circumstances become magnets attracting the dramatic force of the imagination. Inner events are stressed over exterior ones. The objects of the world then become important not only for what they are but because of their standing in an inner world of meaning. In such cases, of course, it becomes quite possible to go so far in that direction that the events of nature almost seem to disappear amid the weight of their symbolic content.

In recent times the trend has been in the opposite direction, so that the abilities of the imagination were considered highly suspect, while exterior events were considered the only aspects of reality. We ended up with a true-or-false kind of world, in which it seemed that the answers to the deepest questions about life could be answered quite correctly and adequately by some multiple-choice test. Man’s and woman’s imagination seemed then to be allied with falsehood, unless its products could be turned to advantage in the materialistic existence. In that context, the imagination was tolerated at all only because it sometimes offered new technological inventions.

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I have taken two contrasting examples of the many ways in which the powers of the imagination and those of the reasoning abilities can be used. There are endless varieties, however — each subjectively and genetically possible, and many, of course, that we have yet developed as a species.

Why would an individual form the reality of schizophrenic behavior?

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On the question of “mental disorders,” it is highly important that individual integrity be stressed, rather than the blanket definitions that are usually accorded to any group of symptoms. In many such circumstances, however, such individuals are combining the imagination and the reasoning abilities in ways that are not in keeping with their historic periods. It would not be entirely out of keeping, though somewhat exaggerated a statement, to claim that men and women who stockpile nuclear weapons in order to preserve peace are insane. In our society, such activities are, in a way that completely escapes me, somehow under the label of humanitarianism!

Such plans are not considered insane ones — though in the deepest meaning of that word, they are indeed. There are many reasons for such actions, but an overemphasis upon what we think of as the reasoning abilities, as opposed to what we think of as imaginative abilities, is at least partially to blame.

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In the schizophrenic case, we have a mixture of those characteristics in which interior events — the events of the imagination — cast too strong a light upon physical events as far as the socially accepted blend is concerned. Again, I am not speaking about all cases of mental disorder here. I do however, want to make the point that our prized psychological norm as a species means that we must also be allowed a great leeway in the use of the imagination and the intellect. Otherwise, we could become locked into a rigid conscious stance, one in which both the imagination and the intellect could advance no  further. It is vitally important that we realize the great psychological diversity that is present within our psychological behavior — and those varieties of psychological experience are necessary. They give us vital psychological feedback, and they exercise the reaches of our abilities in ways that are overall most advantageous.

The schizophrenic man or woman wants to live largely in his or her own world. He or she hurts no one. He and she supports himself or herself a good deal of the time. His or her view of reality is eccentric from most viewpoints. He or she adds a flavor to the world that would be missing otherwise, and through his or she very eccentricity, to some extent he and she shows other people that their rigid views of reality may indeed have chinks in them here and there.

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I do not mean to idealize the schizophrenic either, or others of his or her kind, but to point out that we can use our imaginations and intellect in other fashions than we do. In fact, such fashions are not only genetically possible, but genetically probable — a matter I will discuss in later blogs. The imagination, of course, deals with the implied universe, those vast areas of reality that are not physically manifest, while reason usually deals with the evidence of the world that is before it. That statement is generally true, but specifically, of course, any act of the imagination involves reasoning, and any act of reason involves the imagination.

The Genetic system is an inner, biological, “Universal” language

In our terms that language speaks the flesh — and it speaks the flesh equally in all races of mankind. There are no inferior or superior races. Now dreams also provide us with another universal kind of language, one that unites all peoples to one extent or another, regardless of their physical circumstances or nationalities or alliances. The cataloging of separate races simply involves us in organizations of variances played upon a common theme — variances that we have used for various purposes. Often those purposes led us to over exaggerate the differences between groups, and to minimize man’s and woman’s biological unity.

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The most important aspects of individuality are those subjective characteristics that on the one hand distinguish each person from the other, and that on the one hand are each like sparkling psychological mosaics, giving separate, exquisite individual versions of that larger pattern from which mankind and womankind emerges. The security, the integrity, and the brilliance of each individuality rises in these terms from that universal genetic language, and also from the inner subjective universal language of dreams. There are great connections between the two, and both are spoken together.

Let us become more practical, and see how these issues merge in our reality. Some of this requires a great honesty on our own parts, as we try to recall some feelings and daydreams that we have tried to put away or forget of disown. Why are some people, then, born with conditions that are certainly experienced as genetically defective, granting even the overall value of such variances on the part of the species? For, again, I must stress the fact that in its way nature makes no such judgments, regardless of the beliefs of our science or religions.

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Science seems to be of the opinion that the individual is important only insofar as he or she serves the purposes of the species’ survival — and I am not saying that. I am saying that the existence of each individual is important to the value fulfillment of the species. And moreover, I am stating that the value fulfillment of the individual and the species go hand in hand.

I am also stating that the species is itself aware of those conditions that lead to its own value fulfillment, and that of its members. No species basically biologically considers its own existence with other species except in a cooperative manner — that is, there is no basic competition between species. When we think that there is, we are reading nature wrong. whatever man’s and woman’s conscious beliefs, on a biological level his or her genetic structure is intimately related to the genetic structure of all other species.

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In man and woman, the probabilities of development are literally numberless. No computer could count the combinations of characteristics possible. It is highly important, then, that the species retain flexibility, and not become locked into any one pattern, however advantageous — and I am referring to physical or mental patterns. Within the framework of established species-hood, there must be every kind of leeway — leeways that are biologically activated, so that variances are constantly active. Those genetic variances may appear as defective or eccentric. They may appear as the handicapped. They may appear as superior characteristics of one kind or another, but they must be biologically stated as the variations from the genetic norm.

By themselves, whether they appear as superior or defective conditions, they necessitate a different kind of adaptability, a change of subjective or physical focus, the intensification of other abilities that perhaps have been under-stressed. Yet granting all this, why, again, would some individuals choose situations that would be experienced as defective conditions? For this, we need to examine some human feelings that are often forgotten.

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Now I have often said in my blogs that suffering of itself is not “good for the soul.” It is not a virtue, yet certainly many individuals seem to seek suffering. Suffering cannot be dismissed from human experience as a freak matter of distorted emotions or beliefs.

Suffering is a human condition that is sought for various reasons. There are gradations of suffering, of course, and each person will have his or her definitions of what suffering is. Many people do indeed equate a certain kind of suffering with excitement. Sportsmen and sportswomen, race-car drivers, mountain climbers — all seek suffering to one extent or another, and find the very intensity of certain kinds of pain pleasurable. We might say that they like to live dangerously.

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Some sects have believed that spiritual understanding came as the result of bodily agony, and their self-inflicted pain became their versions of pleasure. It is usually said that animals, and also man and woman, avoid pain and seek pleasure — and so any courting of pain, except under certain conditions, is seen as unnatural behavior.

It is not unnatural. It is an eccentric behavior pattern. Many children daydreams not only of being kings or queens, or given great honors, they also daydream about being tragic figures. They daydream of cruel deaths. They glory in stories of wicked stepmothers. They imagine, in fact, every situation that they can involving human experience. To an extent adults do the same thing. They are drawn to cinema or television dramas that involve tragedies, sorrows, great dramatic struggles. This is because we are alive as the result of our great curiosity for human experience. We are alive because we want to participate in human drama.

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While I admit that many people will not agree with me, I know from experience that most individuals do not choose one “happy” life after another, always ensconced in a capable body, endowed by nature or heritage with all of the gifts most people seem to think they desire.

Each person seeks value fulfillment, and that means that they choose various lives in such a fashion that all of their abilities and capacities can be best developed, and in such a way that their world is also enriched. Some people will choose “defective” bodies purposely in order to focus more intensely in other areas. They want a different kind of focus. They want to sift their characteristics through a certain cast. Such a choice demands an intensification. It is made on the part of the individual and on the parents of the parents as well, so that a certain group of people will relate to the world in a highly characteristic way. In almost all such cases, such people will be embarked upon subjective issues and questions also that might not be considered otherwise. They will ask questions on their own parts that need to be raised, not only for themselves but for the society at large.

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Those questions help bring out psychological maturities and insights about the nature of the species in general. Many such conditions also serve to keep man’s and woman’s sympathies alive. I make a distinction between sympathy and pity, for a lively sympathy leads toward construction, toward the utilization of abilities, even to social discourse, while pity can be deadening.

Our over-reliance upon physical norms, and our distorted concepts concerning survival of the fittest, help exaggerate the existence of any genetic defects, of course. Many religious dogmas consider such conditions, again, the result of a god’s punishment. The survival of the species is far more dependent upon our subjective activities than our physical ones — for it is our subjective behavior that is responsible for our physical acts. Science of  course looks at it the other way around, as if our physical acts are the result of a robot’s mechanical, formalized behavior — a robot miraculously programmed by the blind elements of an accidental universe formed by chance. The robot is programmed only to survive at anyone’s or anything’s expense. It has no real consciousness of its own. Its thoughts are merely mental mirages, so if one of its parts is defective then obviously it is in deep trouble. But man and woman are no robots, and each so-called genetic defect has an internal part to play in the entire picture of genetic reality. The principle of uncertainty must operate genetically, or we would have been locked into over-specializations as a species.

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There are states of consciousness, one within the other, and yet each connected, of course, so that genetic systems are really systems of consciousness. They are intertwined with reincarnational systems of consciousness. These are further entwined with the consciousness that we recognize. The present is the point of power. Given the genetic makeup that we now have, our conscious intents and purposes act as the triggers that activate whatever genetic or reincarnational aspects that we need.

The state of dreaming provides the connecting links between these systems of consciousness.

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The idea today is to love and protect and cherish, and express the body that we have. The human species has an “amazing interplay between genetic preciseness and genetic freedom,” and that our genetic structure reacts to each thought that we have, to the state of our emotions, to our psychological climate. Choices and probabilities apply. Thus do we avoid genetic rigidity.

Free will and determinism lead to questions concerning the reasoning mind

Any real discussion of genetic heritage must all bring up questions involving free will and determinism, and to some extent those issues must also lead to questions concerning the nature of the reasoning mind itself.

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Reasoning, as we are familiar with it, is the result of mental or psychic processes functioning in a space-time context, and in a particular fashion. To some extent, then, reasoning — again, as we are familiar with it — is the result of a lack of available knowledge. We try to “reason things out,” because the answer is not in front of us. If it were, we would “know,” and hence have no need to question.

The reasoning mind is a uniquely human and physical phenomenon. It depends upon conscious thinking, problem-solving methods, and it is a natural human blossoming, a spectacular mental development in its own framework of activity.

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Our technology is one of the results of that reasoning mind. That “reasoning” is necessary, however, because of the lack of a larger, immediate field of knowledge. Thoughts are mental activity, scaled to time and space terms so that they are like mental edifices built to certain dimensions only. Our thoughts make us human.

Other creatures have their own kinds of mental activity, however. They also have different kinds of immediate perceptions of reality. All species are united by their participation in emotional states, however. It is not just that all species of life have feeling, but that all participate in dimensions of emotional reality. It has been said that only men and women have a moral sense, that only men and women have free will — if indeed free will is possible at all. The word “moral” has endless connotations, of course. Yet animals have their own “morality,” their own codes of honor, their own impeccable senses of balance with all other creatures. They have loving emotional relationships, complicated societies, and in a certain sense at least — an important one — they also have their arts and sciences. But those “arts and sciences” are not based upon reasoning, as we understand it.

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Animals also possess independent volition, and while I am emphasizing animals here, the same applies to any creature, large or small: insect, bird, fish, or worm; to plant life; to cells, atoms, or electrons. They possess free will in relationship to the conditions of their existence.

The conditions of existence are largely determined by genetic structure. Free will must then of course function in accordance with genetic integrity. Genetic structure makes possible physical organisms through which life is to be experienced, and to a large extent that structure must determine the kind of action possible in the world, and the way or ways in which volition can be effectively expressed.

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The beaver is not free to make a spider web. In human beings the genetic structure largely determines physical characteristics such as height, color of eyes, color of hair, color of skin — and, of course, more importantly, the number of fingers and toes, and the other specific physical attributes alone, a man or woman cannot use his or her free will to fly like a bird, or to perform physical acts for which the human body is not equipped.

The body is equipped to perform far better, in a variety of ways, than we give it credit for, however — but the fact remains that the genetic structure focuses volition. The genetic apparatus and the chromosomal messages actually contain far more information than is ever used. that genetic information can, for example, be put together in an infinite number of ways. The species cares for itself in the event of any possible circumstance, so that the genetic messages also carry an endless number of triggers that will change genetic combinations if this becomes necessary.

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Beyond that, however, genetic messages are coded in such a way that there is a constant give-and-take between those messages and the present experience of any given individual. That is, no genetic event is inevitable.

Now besides this physical genetic structure, there is an inner bank of psychic information that in our terms would contain the “past” history — the reincarnational history — of the individual. This provides an overall reservoir of psychic characteristics, leanings, abilities, knowledge, that is as much a part of the individual’s heritage as the genetic structure is a part of the  physical heritage.

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A person of great intelligence may be born from a family of idiots, for example, because of that reincarnational structure. Musical ability may thus appear complete, with great technical facility, regardless of family background, genetically speaking, and again, the reincarnational bank of characteristics accounts for such events. That inner reincarnational psychic structure is also responsible for triggering certain genetic messages while ignoring others, of for triggering certain combinations of genetic messages. In actuality, of course — say that I smile — all time is simultaneous, and so all reincarnational lives occur at once.

Perhaps an analogy will help. An actor throwing himself or herself into a role, even momentarily lost in the part, is still alive and functioning as himself or herself in a context that is larger than the play. The character in the play is seemingly alive ( creatively) for the play’s duration, perception being limited to that framework, yet to play that role the actor or actress draws upon the experience of his or her own life. he or she brings to bear his or her own understanding, compassion, artistry, and is he is a good actor, or if she is, then when the play is over the actor is a better person for having played the role.

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Now in the greater framework of reincarnational existences we choose our roles, or our lives, but the lines that we speak, the situations that we meet, are not predetermined. “You” live or exist in a larger framework of activity even while we live our life, and there is a rambunctious interplay between the yous in time and the you outside of time.

The you inside of time adopts a reasoning mind. It is a kind of creative psychological face that we use for the purposes of our life’s drama. This psychological face of our analogy has certain formal, ceremonial features, so that we mentally and psychologically tend to perceive only those data that are available within the play’s formal structure. We cannot see into the future, for example, or into the past.

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We reason out our position. Otherwise our free will would have no meaning in a physical framework, for the number of choices available would be so multitudinous that we could not make up our mind to act within time: With all the opportunities of creativity, and with our own greater knowledge instantly available, we could be swamped by so many stimuli that we literally could not physically respond, and so our particular kinds of civilization and science and art could not have been accomplished — and regardless of their flaws they are magnificent accomplishments, unique products of the reasoning mind.

Without the reasoning mind the artist would have no need to paint, for the immediacy of his or her mental vision would be so instant and blinding, so mentally accomplished, that there would be no need to try any physical rendition of it. So nowhere do I ever mean to demean the qualities or excellence of the reasoning mind as we understand it.

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We have, however, become so specialized in its use, so prejudiced in its favor, that our tendency is to examine all other kinds of consciousness using the reasoning mind as the only yardstick by which to judge intelligent life. We are surrounded everywhere by other kinds of consciousness whose validity we have largely ignored, whose psychic brotherhood we have dismissed — kinds of consciousness in the animal kingdom particularly, that deal with a different kind of knowing, but who share with us the reality of keen emotional experience, and who are innately aware of biological and psychic values, but in ways that have escaped our prejudiced examination.

To some extent that emotional reality is also expressed at other levels — as our own is — in periods of dreaming, in which animals, like men, participate in a vast cooperative venture that helps to form the psychological atmosphere in which our lives must first of all exist.

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All creatures of whatever degree have their own appreciation of esthetics. many such creatures merge their arts so perfectly into their lives that it is impossible to separate the two: the spider’s web, for example, or the beaver’s dam — and there are endless other examples. This is not “blind instinctive behavior’ at all, but the result of well-ordered spontaneous artistry.

Art is not a specifically human endeavor, though man and woman likes to believe that this is so. Art is above all a natural characteristic. I try to straddle our definitions — but flowers, for example, in a fashion see themselves as their own artistic creations. They have an esthetic appreciation of their own colors. But nature seeks to outdo itself in terms that are most basically artistic, even while those terms may also include quite utilitarian purposes. The natural man and woman, then, are a natural artist. In a sense, painting is man’s and woman’s natural attempt to create an original but coherent, mental yet physical interpretation of his or her own reality — and by extension to create a new version of reality for his or her species.

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We are still learning. Our work is still developing. How truly unfortunate we would be if that were not the case. There is always a kind of artistic dissatisfaction that any true artist feels with work that is completed, for he or she are always aware of the tug and pull, and the tension, between the sensed ideal and its manifestation. In a certain fashion the artist is looking for a creative solution to a sensed but never clearly stated problem or challenge, and it is an adventure that is literally unending. It must be one that has no clearly stated destination, in usual terms. In the most basic of ways, the artist cannot say where he or she is going, for is he or she knows ahead of time he or she is not creating but copying.

The true artist is involved with the inner workings of himself or herself with the universe — a choice, I remind you, that he or she has made, and so often the artist does indeed forsake the recognized roads of recognition. And more, seeing that, he or she often does not know how to assess his or her progress, since his or her journey has no recognizable creative destination. By its nature art basically is meant to put each artist of whatever kind into harmony with the universe, for the artist draws upon the same creative energy from which birth emerges.

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Free will is the philosophical doctrine that the individual has the freedom to choose, without coercion, some actions consistent with his or her particular morals and ideals. Determinism is the opposing doctrine that everything, even the individual’s course of action, is determined by conditions outside one’s will.

Through the centuries philosophical and religious thinkers have created numerous complicated variations of ideas involving free will and determinism, so that neither thesis is as simple as it first appears to be. Man and woman related the concept of free will long age to the question of whether he or she could deliberately choose evil, for example. He or she still does. And he or she still struggles with questions about his or her freedom before God’s omnipotence and foreknowledge, and whether those qualities cause events, or can cause them, and whether they involve predestination. Opposing determinism is the idea that man or woman has always fought for his or her personal responsibility — that instead of being controlled entirely by his or her heritage, he’s or she’s capable of forming new synthesis of thought and action based upon the complicated patterns of his or her own history.

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In a strange way, determinism has always seemed lacking as a concept — for if it means what it’s supposed to mean, then surely human beings setup the parameters within which determinism is said to operate. I see this as a contradiction of the notion that the individual is entirely at the mercy of his or her history and of nature. How can we be if through the ages we’ve created that history and nature against which we react? In other words, on joint and individual scales, vast though they may be, we do create our joint and individual realities.

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Even in modern terms, our psychological and medical knowledge of mind and brian have added more complications to the doctrine of free will, yet it survives and grows. I feel strong connections involving free will, determinism, and probable realities — connections largely unexpressed and unexplored in our world’s societies.

The so-called miracles are simply the result of nature unimpeded

We all present ourselves with a prime example of the abilities of the natural person. We are presented now, in the world, with a certain picture of a body and its activities, and that picture seems very evidential. It seems to speak for itself.

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Instead we are presented, of course, with a picture of man’s and woman’s body as it reflects, and are affected by, man’s and woman’s beliefs. Doctors expect vision to begin to fail, for example, after the age of 30, and there are countless patient records that “prove” that such disintegration is indeed a biological fact.

Our beliefs tell us, again, that the body is primarily a mechanism — a most amazing machine, but a machine, without its own purpose, without any intent, a mindless assembly plant of assorted parts that simply happened to grow together in a certain prescribed fashion. Science says that there is no will, yet it assigns to nature the will to survive — or rather, a wiliness instinct to survive. To that extent it does admit that the machine of the body “intends” to insure its own survival — but a survival which has no meaning beyond itself. And because the body is a machine, it is expected to decay after so much usage.

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In that picture consciousness has little part to play. In man’s and woman’s very early history, however, and in our terms for centuries after the “awakening,” as described in my blogs, people lived in good health for much longer periods of time — and in certain cases they lived for several centuries. No one had yet told them that this was impossible, for one thing. Their sense of wonder in the world, their sense of curiosity, creativity, and the vast areas of fresh mental and physical exploration, kept them alive and strong. For another thing, however, elders were highly necessary and respected for the information they had acquired about the world. They were needed. they taught the other generations.

In those times great age was a position of honor that brought along with it new responsibility and activity. The senses did not fade in their effectiveness, and it is quite possible biologically for all kinds of regenerations of that nature to occur.

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Some statesmen and stateswomen who are not young at all, and men and women who do not only achieve, but who open new horizons in their later years. They do so because of their private capacities, and also because they are answering the world’s needs, and in ways that in many cases a younger person could not.

In our society age has almost been considered a dishonorable state. Beliefs about the dishonor of age often cause people to make the decision — sometimes quite consciously — to bring their own lives to an end before the so-called threshold is reached. Whenever, however, the species needs the accumulated experience of its own older members, that situation is almost instantly reversed and people live longer.

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Some in our society feel that the young are kept out of life’s mainstream also, denied purposeful work, their adolescence prolonged unnecessarily. As a consequence some young people die for the same reason: They believe that the state of youth is somehow dishonorable. They are cajoled, petted, treated like amusing pets sometimes, diverted with technology’s offerings but not allowed to use their energy. There were many unfortunate misuses of the old system of having a son follow in his father’s footsteps, yet the son at a young age was given meaningful work to do, and felt a part of life’s mainstream. He was needed.

The so-called youth culture, for all of its seeming exaggerations of youth’s beauty and accomplishments, actually ended up putting down youth, for few could live up to that picture. Often, then, both the young and the old felt left out of our culture. Both share also the possibility  of accelerated creative vitality — activity that the elder great artists, or the elder great statesmen, have always picked up and used to magnify their own abilities. there comes a time when the experiences of the person in the world click together and form a new clearer focus, provide a new psychological framework from which his or her greatest capacities can emerge to form a new synthesis. But in our society many people never reach that point — or those who do are not recognized for their achievements in the proper way, or for the proper reasons.

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Man’s and woman’s will to survive includes a sense of meaning and purpose, and a feeling for the quality of life. We are indeed presented with an evidential picture that seems to suggest most vividly the “fact” of man’s and woman’s steady deterioration, and yet we are also presented with evidence to the contrary, even in our world, if we look for it.

Our Olympics, on television, present us with evidence of the great capacity of the young human body. That contrast between the activity of those athletes, however, and the activity of the normal young person is drastic. We believe that the greatest training and discipline must be used to bring about such activity — but that seemingly extraordinary physical ability simply represents the inherent capacities of the human body. In those cases, the athletes through training are finally able to give a glimpse of the body’s spontaneous abilities. The training is necessary because it is believe necessary.

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Again, in our blog on suffering, I mentioned that illness serves purposes — that it has a face-saving quality in our society — so here I am speaking of the body’s own abilities. In that light, the senses do not fade. Age alone never brought about any loss of physical agility, or of mental ability, or of desire. Death must come to every living person, yet the time and the means are basically up to each individual. Meaningful work is important at any age. We cannot content the aged entirely with hobbies any more than we can the young, but meaningful work means work that also has the exuberance of play, and it is that playful quality that contains within itself great propensities of a healing and creative nature.

In a fashion, now, our eyes improved their capacities, practically speaking, in a physical manner. The senses want to exceed themselves. They also learn “through experience.” If we have been painting more, our eyes become more involved to that extent. Our eyes enjoy their part in that activity as the ears, say, enjoy hearing. It is their purpose. Our own desire to paint may be joined with and reinforced our eyes natural desire to see.

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When most of us think of physical symptoms, of course, we regard our body with a deadly seriousness that to some extent impedes inner spontaneity. We lay our limiting beliefs upon the natural person.

Our dream’s fits in here in its own fashion, for we see that the ship of life, so to speak, rides very swiftly and beautifully also beneath the conscious surface, traveling through the waters of the psyche. We are progressing very well at under-the-surface levels. There are few impediments. We have clear sailing, so to speak, and the dreams are meant as an inner vision of our progress.

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One has only to read Chapter 5 of genesis to learn what great ages are given to Adam and nine of his descendants up to Noah, or the time of the Flood. Did Adam really live for 930 years, or Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, for 912? (Why isn’t Eve’s age given in the Bible?) Enoch, the fifth elder listed after Seth, lived for a mere 365 years, but sired Methuselah, who at 969 years is the oldest individual recorded in the Bible. Methuselah was the father of Lamech (777 years), who was the father of Noah (950 years).

In Genesis 11, the listing of Abraham’s ancestors begins after the Flood with the oldest son of Noah, Shem, living some 600 years. Generally, Abraham’s forebears didn’t live as long as Adam’s descendants had, although after Shem their ages still ranged from 148 years to 460. Abraham himself was “only” 175 years old at his death.

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During the little time we’d spent thinking about such matter, I have considered the Biblical accounts of such great ages to be simply wrong, badly distorted, or perhaps epochal– that is. Abraham’s ancestors may be listed in the correct genealogical sequence, but with many gaps among the individuals named. Also, a given father-son relationship may have actually been one between a father and a great-great-grandson, for example. There are other epochal lists in the Bible.

In those early days men and women did live to ages that would amaze us today — many living to be several hundred years old. This was indeed due to the fact that their knowledge was desperately needed, and their experience. They were held in veneration, and they cast their knowledge into songs and stories that were memorized throughout the years. Beside this, however, their energy was utilized in a different fashion than ours is: They alternated between the waking and dream states, and while asleep they did not age as quickly. Their bodily processes slowed. Although this was true, their dreaming mental processes did not slow down. There was a much greater communication in the dream state, so that some lessons were taught during dreams, while others were taught in the waking condition. There was a greater and greater body of knowledge to be transmitted as physical existence continued, for they did not transmit private knowledge only, but the entire body knowledge that belonged to the group as a whole.

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The bible is a conglomeration of parables and stories, intermixed with some unclear memories of much earlier times. The Bible that we recognize — or that is recognized — is not the first, however, but was compiled from several earlier ones as man and woman tired to look back, so to speak, recount his and her past and predict his or her future. Such Bibles existed, not written down but carried orally, as mentioned some time ago in my earlier blogs, by the Speakers. It was only much later that this information was written down, and by then of course much had been forgotten. This is apart from the fact of tampering, or downright misinformation, as various factions used the material for their own ends.