Tag Archives: Healings

The American experiment with democracy is heroic, bold, and innovative

In historic terms as we understand them, this is the first time that all of the inhabitants of a country were to be legally considered equal citizens one with the other. That was to be, and is, the ideal. In practical terms, of course, there often are inequalities. Treatment in the marketplace, or in society, often shows great divergence from that stated national ideal. Yet the dream is a vital portion of American national life, and even those who are unscrupulous must pay it at least lip service, or cast their plans in its light.

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In the past, and in large areas of the world now, many important decisions are not made by the individual, but by the state, or religion, or society. In this century several issues came to the forefront of American culture: The exteriorization of organized religion, which became more of a social rather than a spiritual entity, and joining of science with technology and moneyed interests. William James’ books would be good background material here, particularly the sections dealing with democracy and spiritualism. In any case, on the one hand each individual was to be equal with each other person. Marriages, for example, were no longer arranged. A man no longer need follow his father’s vocational footsteps. Young adults found themselves faced with a multitudinous number of personal decisions that in other cultures were made more or less automatically. The development of transportation opened up the country, so that an individual was no longer bound to his or her native town or region. All of this meant that man’s and woman’s conscious mind was about to expand its strengths, its abilities, and its reach. The country was — and still is — brimming with idealism.

That idealism, however, ran smack into the dark clouds of Freudian and Darwinian thought. How could a country be governed effectively by individuals who were after all chemicals run amok in images, with neuroticism built-in from childhood — children of a tainted species, thrown adrift by a meaningless cosmos in which no meaning could be found?

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Organized religion felt threatened; and if it could not prove that man/woman had a soul, it could at least see to it that the needs of the body were taken care of through suitable social work, and so it abandoned many of the principles that might have added to its strength. Instead it settled for platitudes that equated cleanliness with virtue — hence, or course, our deodorant advertisements, and many other aspects of the marketplace.

In public mind, it made little difference whether the devil or tainted genes condemned the individual to a life in which it seemed he/she could have little control. He or she began to feel powerless. He/she began to feel that social action itself was of little value, for if man’s or woman’s evil were built-in, for whatever reasons, then where was there any hope?

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There was some hope, at least, in looking for better living conditions personally. There was some hope in forgetting one’s doubts in whatever exterior distractions could be found. Idealism is tough, and it is enduring, and no matter how many times its is seemingly slain, it comes back in a different form. So those who felt that religion had failed them looked anew to science, which promised — promised to — provide the closest approximation to heaven on earth: Mass production of goods, two cars in every garage, potions for every ailment, solutions for every problem. And it seems in the beginning that science delivered, for the world was changed from candlelight to electric light to neon in the flicker of an eye, and man and woman could travel in hours distances that to his father or grandfather took days on end.

And while science provided newer and newer comforts and conveniences, few questions were asked. There was, however, no doubt about it: Exterior conditions had improved, yet the individual did not seem any happier. By this time it was apparent that the discoveries of science could also have a darker side. Life’s exterior conveniences would hardly matter if science’s knowledge was used to undermine the very foundations of life itself.

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The various potions taken faithfully by the public were now often found to have very unfortunate side effects. The chemicals used to protect agriculture had harmful effects upon people. Such situations bothered the individual far more than the threat of nuclear disaster, for they involved his contact with daily life: The products that he/she bought, the medicines that he/she took.

Some people looked, and are looking, for some authority — any authority — to make their decisions for them, for the world seems increasingly dangerous, and they, because of their beliefs, feel increasingly powerless. They yearn toward old ways, when the decisions of marriage were made for them, when they could safely follow in their father’s or mother’s footsteps, when they were unaware of the lure of different places, and forced to remain at home. They have become caught between science and religion. Their idealism finds no particular outlet. Their dreams seem betrayed.

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Those people look to cults of various kinds, where decisions are made for them, where they are relieved of the burden of an individuality that has been robbed of its sense of power by conflicting beliefs. At one time the males might have been drafted into the army, and, secretly exultant, gone looking for the period before full adulthood — where decisions would be made for them, where they could mark time, and where those who were not fully committed to life could leave it with a sense of honor and dignity.

In the past also, even in our country, there were convents and monasteries for those who did not want to live in the world as other people did. They might pursue other goals, but the decisions of where to live, what to do, where to go, how to live, would be made for them. Usually such people were joined by common interests, a sense of honor, and there was no retaliation to be feared in this century.

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Cults, however, deal primarily with fear, using it as a stimulus. They further erode the power of the individual, so that he is frightened to leave. The group has power. The individual has none, except that the power of the group is vested in its leader. Those who died in Guyana, for example, were suicidal inclined. They had no cause to live for, because their idealism became so separated from any particular actualization that they were left only with its ashes.

The leader of Jonestown was at heart an idealist. When does an idealist turn into a fanatic? When can the search for the good have catastrophic results, and how can the idealism of science be equated with the near-disaster at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, and with the potential disasters that in our terms exist in the storage of nuclear wastes, or in the production of nuclear bombs?

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People who live in tornado country carry the reality of a tornado in their minds and hearts as a psychological background.

To one extent or another, all of the vents of their lives happen punctuated or accented by the possibility of disaster. They feel that at any time they might be caused to face the greatest challenge, to rely upon their strongest resources, their greatest forbearance, and faced by a test of endurance. They use — or they often use — such a psychological and physical backdrop to keep those qualities alive within themselves, for they are the kind of people who like to feel pitted against a challenge. Often the existence of probabilities and their acceptance does provide a kind of exterior crisis situation that individually and en masse is a symbol of independence and inner crisis. The crisis is met in the exterior situation, and as the people deal with that situation they symbolically deal with their own inner crises. In a way those people trust such exterior confrontations, and even count upon a series of them, of varying degrees of severity, that can be used throughout a lifetime for such purposes.

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Those who survive feel that they have been given a new lease on life, regardless of their circumstances: They could have been killed and were not. Others use the same circumstances as excuses for no longer hanging on to a wish for life, and so it seems that while saving face they fall prey to the exterior circumstances.

Psychological objects

Objects just originate in man’s and woman’s imagination, there’s always a strong connection between objects and man’s and woman’s dreams. They act as symbols of inner reality, so it’s only natural that whether he/she is aware of it or not, man/woman perceives objects in such a fashion that they also stand for symbols that first originate in his/her dreams.

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This also has to do with large events, that we might for convenience’s sake think of for now as psychological objects — that is, events seen and recognized by large numbers of people in the same way that objects are.

The Christ drama is a case in point, where private and mass dreams were then projected outward into the historical context of time, and then reacted to in such a way that various people became exterior participants — but in a far larger mass dream that was then interpreted in the most literal of physical terms. Even while it was, it also got the message across, though the inner drama itself was not recalled; and as the dream merged with historical events, and it was interpreted by so many, its message also became distorted — or rather, it mixed and merged with other such dreams, whose messages were far different.

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Look at our nuclear-reactor troubles at the plant by Fukushima (Japan). The entire idea of nuclear power was first a dream — an act of the imagination of the part of private individuals — and then through fiction and the arts, a dream on the part of many people. Instantly, probabilities spun out from that dream in all directions, vast potential and dangers.

It was hardly a coincidence that this particular situation arrived in the social climate first of all portrayed in a movie.

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Nuclear power stands for power, plain and simple. Is it good or bad? It stands in man’s and woman’s dreams as belonging to God: the power of the universe. Man and woman has always considered oneself, in our terms as set apart from nature, so he/she must feel set apart from nature’s power — and there must be a great division in his/her dreams between the two. Nuclear energy in fact, then, comes as a dream symbol, and emerges into the world as something to be dealt with.

Fundamentalists think of nuclear power as a force that God might use, say, to destroy the world. That event in Japan means one thing to them. Some of the scientists equate nuclear power with man’s and woman’s great curiosity, and feel that they wrest this great energy from nature, smarter than their fellow men — so they read those events in their own way. The probabilities are still surging, of course, and in private and mass dreams people try out all kinds of endings for that particular story.

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All in all, millions of people are involved, who will be affected of course to one extent or another.

There is a tie-in, and it’s that the Christ drama happened as a result of man’s and woman’s dream, at least, of achieving brotherhood — a quiet, secure sense of consciousness, and a morality that would sustain him/her in the physical world.

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The Christ drama did splash over into historical reality. Man’s and woman’s fears of not achieving brotherhood, or not achieving a secure state of consciousness, or a workable morality, result in his/her dreams of destruction, however they are expressed. And indeed, the present physical event as it exists now at the energy plant Fukushima can easily be likened to — and is — a warning dream to change man’s and woman’s actions.

We could not live without viruses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Organized religion has committed many important blunders

Yet for centuries Christianity provided a context accepted by large portions of the known world, in which experience could be judged against very definite “rules” — experience once focused, chiseled, and yet allowed some rich expression as long it stayed within the boundaries set by religious dogma.

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If a man or woman was sinner, still there was a way of redemption, and the immortality of the soul went largely unquestioned, of course. There were set rules for almost all kinds of social encounters and religious experiences. There were set ceremonies accepted by nearly all for death and birth, and the important stages in between. Church was the authority, and the individual lived out his or her life almost automatically structuring personal experience so that it fit within the accepted norm.

Within those boundaries, certain kinds of experience flourished, and of course others did not. In our society there is no such overall authority. The individual must make his or her own way through a barrage of different value systems, making decisions that were largely un-thought of when a son/daughter followed his or her father’s trade automatically, for example, or when marriages were made largely for economic reasons.

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So our present experience is quite different than that of those forefathers who lived in the medieval world, say, and we cannot appreciate the differences in our [present] subjective attitudes, and in the quality, as well as the kind of, social intercourse that exists now. For all its many errors, at its best Christianity proclaimed the ultimate meaning for each person’s life. There was no question but that life had meaning, whether or not we might agree as to the particular meaning assigned to it.

Men’s and women’s dreams were also different in those times, filled far more with metaphysical images, for example, more alive with saints and demons — but overall one framework of belief existed, and all experience was judged in its light. Now, we have far more decisions to make, and in a world of conflicting beliefs, brought into our living room through internet, newspapers and television, we must try to find the meaning of our life, or the meaning of life.

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We can think in terms of experiments. We may try this or that. We may run from one religion to another, or from religion to science, or vice versa. This is true in a way that was impossible for the masses of the people in medieval times. The improved methods of communication alone mean that we are everywhere surrounded by varying theories, cultures, cults, and schools, In some important areas this means that the mechanics of experience are actually becoming more apparent, for they are no longer hidden beneath one belief system.

Our subjective options are far greater, and yet so of course is the necessity to place that subjective experience into meaningful terms. If we believe that we do indeed form our own reality, then we instantly come up against a whole new group of questions. If we actually construct our own experience, individually and en-masse, why does so much of it seem negative? We create our own reality, or it is created for us. It is an accidental universe, or it is not.

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Now in medieval times organized religion, or organized Christianity, presented each individual with a screen of beliefs through which the personal self was perceived. Portions of the self that were not perceivable through that screen were almost invisible to the private person. Problems were sent by God as punishment or warning. The mechanics of experience were hidden behind that screen.

The belief of [Charles] Darwin and of [Sigmund] Freud alike have formed together to give us a different screen. Experience is accepted and perceived only as it is sieved through that screen. If Christendom saw man and woman as blighted by original sin, Darwinian and Freudian views see them as part of a flawed species in which individual life rests precariously, ever at the beck and call of the species’ needs, and with survival as the prime goal — a survival, however, without meaning. The psyche’s grandeur is ignored, the individual’s sense of belonging with nature eroded, for it is at nature’s expense, it seems, that he or she must survive. One’s greatest dreams and worst fears alike become the result of glandular imbalance, or of neuroses from childhood traumas.

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Yet in the midst of these beliefs each individual seeks to find a context in which his or her life has meaning, a purpose which will rouse the self to action, a drama in whose theme private actions will have significance.

There are intellectual values and emotional ones, and sometimes there are needs of an emotional nature that must be met regardless of intellectual judgments. The church provided a cosmic drama in which even the life of the sinner had value, even if only to show God’s compassion. In our society, however, the sterile psychic environment often leads to rebellion: People take steps to bring meaning and drama into their lives, even if intellectually they refuse to make the connection.

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When God went out the window for large masses of people, fate took His(or her) place, and volition also became eroded.

A person could neither be proud of personal achievement nor blamed for failure, since in large measure his or her characteristics, potentials, and lacks were seen as the result of chance, heredity, and of unconscious mechanisms over which the or she seemingly had little control. The devil went underground, figuratively speaking, so that many of his or her mischievous qualities and devious characteristics were assigned to the unconscious. Man and woman was seen as divided against oneself — a conscious figurehead, resting uneasily above the mighty haunches of unconscious beastliness. He or she believed oneself to be programmed by his or her heredity and early environment, so that it seemed he must be forever unaware of his own true motives.

Not only was he or she set against oneself, but he or she saw oneself as a part of an uncaring mechanistic universe, devoid of purpose, intent, and certainly a universe that cared not a whit for the individual, but only for the species. Indeed, a strange world.

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It was in many respects a new world, for it was the first one in which large portions of humanity believed that they were isolated from nature and God, and in which no grandeur was acknowledged as a characteristic of the soul. Indeed, for many people the idea of the soul itself became unfashionable, embarrassing, and out of date. Here I use the words “soul” and “psyche” synonymously That psyche has been emerging more and more in whatever guise it is allowed to as it seeks its vitality, its purpose and exuberance, and as it seeks out new contexts in which to express a subjective reality that finally spills over the edges of sterile beliefs.

The psyche expresses itself through action, of course, but it carries behind it the individual — and it automatically attempts to produce a social climate or civilization that is productive and creative. It projects its desires outward onto the physical world, seeking through private experience and social contact to actualize its potentials, and in such a way that the potentials of others are also encouraged. It seeks to flesh out its dreams, and when these find no response in social life, it will nevertheless take personal expression in a kind of private religion of its own.

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Basically, religion is an activity through which man and woman attempts to see the meaning of his or her life. It is a construction based on deep psychic knowledge. No matter what the name it might go by, it represents man’s and woman’s connection with the universe.

Resurrection and then…

According to ordinary teaching Christ’s resurrection from the dead took place on Easter Sunday, the third day following his crucifixion (on Friday), while his ascension into heaven transpired at an indefinite time — up to 40 days later, as stated in the writings of St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles (AA 1:10). Christ’s resurrection and ascension took place of the same day is contrary to popular belief.

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Telescope the two events into one or refer to them together, as if the distinction didn’t exist . Implying that the ascension was the main issue in the Christ story, rather than the resurrection, or telling us that the two events are so intertwined thematically as to be treated as one.

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Of the four Gospels (according to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John), some scholars believe that Luke and John can be read as stating that Christ’s resurrection and ascension took place on the same day. Yet in Acts, Luke postulates the 40-day interval between the two events. (Originally Luke composed his Gospel and Acts as one treatise; the two were separated early in the second century.) Out of such contradictions as those implied in Luke’s case, however, confusion and opposing opinions reign when one studies the Gospels and related material. Christ himself left no written records, nor are there any eyewitness or contemporary accounts of his life. Most authorities still believe that the Gospels were written between A.D. 65 and 110. Since Christ was presumably crucified around A.D. 30, this means that some 35-40 years passed before the advent of Mark’s account. There are many consistencies in the Gospels, but also according to Matthew and John are now being questioned. A study of the New Testament books alone can quickly lead one into a maze of questions: Why isn’t the resurrection itself described? Why are there so few references to the ascension? Matthew doesn’t mention it at all in his Gospel, for example; and Paul alludes to it only once (1 Timothy 3:16) in his writings. Is the Gospel according to Luke merely schematic, rather than chronological? If time (as much as 40 days) did elapse between Christ’s resurrection and ascension, where was he physically during all of that period, other than on the few occasions cited in the Gospel and in Acts, when on various occasions he revealed himself to the women who discovered his empty tomb, to the apostles, and to some others? Sometimes Christ appeared as an apparition — “We could not have a world in which the newly risen dead mixed with the living. An existence in a spiritual realm had to follow such a resurrection.”

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In my opinion, I am not saying that Christ did rise from the dead or ascend into heaven, but I am referring to Christianity’s interpretation of its own creative Christ story. I maintain that Christ wasn’t crucified to begin with, in the facts of history, there was no crucifixion, resurrection, or ascension. In terms of history, there was no biblical Christ. In the terms of the biblical drama, however, Christ was crucified.

It was the Jewish tradition that nourished the new religion in its early stages. Christ, as we know, was a common name, so when I say that there was a man named Christ involved in those events, I do not mean to say that he was the biblical Christ. His life was one of those that were finally used to compose the composite image of the biblical Christ.

Getting acquainted with other living members of the family, who are still in time

Many individuals do this, psychologically becoming aware of relatives still living, even though in life they may never meet.

We may feel alone in life if all of our relatives are dead, for example. This might make us want to look here and there in newspapers, death records or online obituaries for clues about past relatives to uncover about our own lives. In the same way, entering life, we often assure ourselves that past friends or relatives are there before us, maybe even watching over us.

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A potpourri, it is indeed. Heredity plays far less a part in the so-called formation of character than is generally supposed

For that matter,[the same is true of] environment, as it is usually understood. Our cultural beliefs predispose us to interpret experience in terms of heredity and environment, however, so that we focus primarily upon them as prime causes of behavior. We do not concentrate upon the exceptions — the children who do not seem to fit the patterns of their families or environments, so of course no attempts are made to view those kinds of unofficial behavior.

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Because of this, large organized patterns behind human activity often escape our notice almost completely. We read constantly of people who seem to have been most affected by fictional characters, for example, or by personalities from the past, or by complete strangers, more than they have been affected by their own families. Such situations are considered oddities.

The human personality is far more open to all kinds of stimuli than is supposed. If information is thought to come to the self only through physical means, then of course heredity and environment must be seen behind human motivation. When we realize that the personality can and does have access to other kinds of information than physical, then you must begin to wonder what effects those data have on the formation of character at birth, and the entire probable intent of their lives exists then as surely as does the probable plan for the adult body they will alter possess.

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Consciousness forms the genes, and not the other way around, and the about-to-be-born infant is the agency that adds new material through the chromosomal structure. The child is from birth far more aware of all kinds of physical events than is realized also. But beside that, the child uses the early years to explore — particularly in the dream state — other kinds of material that suit its own fancies and intents, and it constantly receives a stream of information that is not at all dependent upon its heredity or environment.

On these other levels the child knows, for example, of its contemporaries born at about the same time. Each person’s “individual” life plan fits in somewhere with that of his or her contemporaries. Those plans are communicated one to the other, and probabilities instantly are set into motion in Conscious-mind-2. To some degree or another calculations are made so that, for instance, individual A will meet individual B at a marketplace 30 years later — if this fits with the intents of both parties. There will be certain cornerstone encounters in each person’s life that are set up as strong probabilities, or as plans to be grown into.

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There are bodies of events, then, that in a certain fashion we will materialize almost in the same way that we will materialize our own adult body from the structure of the fetus. In those terms the body works with physical properties — though again these properties, as discussed often, have their own consciousness and realities.

Our mental life deals with psychological events, obviously, but beneath so-called normal awareness the child grows toward the mental body of events that will compose his or her life. Those unique intents that characterize each individual exist in Conscious-mind-2, then — and with birth, those intents immediately begin to impress the physical world of Conscious-mind-1.

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Each child’s birth changes the world, obviously, for it sets up an instant psychological momentum that begins to affect action in Conscious-mind-1 and Conscious-mind-2 alike.

A child many be born with a strong talent for music, for example. Say the child is unusually gifted. Before he or she is old enough to begin any kind of training, he will know on other levels the probable direction that music will take during his lifetime. He or she will be acquainted in the dream state with other young budding musicians, though they are infants also. Again, probabilities will be set into motion, so that each child’s intent reaches out. There is great flexibility, however, and according to individual purposes many such children will also be acquainted with music of the past. To one extent or another this applies to every field of endeavor as each person adds to the world scene, and as the intents of each individual, added to those of each other person alive, multiply — so that the fulfillment of the individual results in the accomplishments of our world. And the lack of fulfillment of course produces those lacks that are also so apparent.

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Some readers have brothers or sisters, or both. Others are only children. Our Ideas of individuality hamper us to a large extent. To one extent or another, again, each portion of consciousness, while itself, contains [the] potentials of all consciousness. Our private information about the world is not nearly as private as we suppose, therefore, for behind the experience of any one event, each of us possesses information pertaining to other dimensions of that event that we do not ordinarily perceive.

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If we are involved in any kind of mass happening, from a concert to an avalanche, we are aware on other levels of all of the actions leading to that specific participation. If buildings are constructed of bricks quite visible, so mass events are formed by many small invisible happenings — each, however, fitting together quite precisely in a kind of psychological masonry in which each of us has a mental hand. This applies to mass conversions and to natural disasters alike.

 

The myth of creation of the universe, and the creation of public and private events.

The Cinderella fairy tale. According to the definition, this fairy tale is a myth. Surely it may seem that such a children’s tale has little to do with any serious discussion concerning anything so profound as the creations of the known world. And most certainly, it may appear, no scientifically pertinent data about the nature of events can possibly be uncovered from such a source.

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For one thing, [the] Cinderella [tale] has a happy ending, of course, and is therefore highly unrealistic, according to many educators, since it does not properly prepare children for life’s necessary disappointments. Fairy godmothers are are definitely a thing of the storyteller’s imagination, and many serious, earnest adults will tell that daydreaming or wishing will get us nowhere.

In the Cinderella story, however, the heroine, though poor and of low estate, manages to attain a spectacular ball, and meet the prince, initiates a series of magical events, none following the dictates of logic. The fairy godmother, suddenly appearing, uses the normal objects of everyday life so that they are suddenly transformed, and we have a chariot from a pumpkin, and other transformations of like nature.

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The tale has always appealed to children because they recognize the validity behind it. The fairy godmother is a creative personification of the personalized elements in the Conscious-mind-2 — a personification therefore of the inner ego, that rises to the aid of the mortal self to grant its desires, even when the intents of the mortal self may not seem to fit into the practical framework of normal life. When the inner ego responds in such a fashion, even the commonplace, ordinary, seemingly innocuous circumstances suddenly become charged with a new vitality, and appear to “work for” the individual involved. If you are reading this blog you are already too old to clearly remember the constant fantasies of our early childhood. Children however know quite well, automatically, that they have a strong hand in the creation of events that then seem to happen to them.

They experiment very often, and quite secretly, since their elders are at the same time trying to make the children conform to a given concrete reality that is more or less already mass-produced for them.

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Children experiment with the creation of joyful and frightening events, trying to ascertain for themselves the nature of their control over their own experience. They imagine joyful and terrifying experiences. They are in fact fascinated by the effects that their thoughts, feelings, and purposes. If they create “bogeymen or bogeywomen,” then they can cause them to disappear also. If their thoughts can cause them to become ill, then there is no real reason for them to fear illness, for it if their own creation. Their learning process is nipped in the bud, however. By the time we are adults, its certainly seems that we are a subjective being in an objective universe, at the mercy of others, and with only the most superficial control over the events of our lives.

The tale of Cinderella becomes a fantasy, a delusion, or even a story about sexual awakening, in Freudian terms. The disappointments we have faced indeed make such a tale seem to be a direct contradiction to life’s realities. To some extent or another, however, the child in us remembers a certain sense of mastery only half realized, of power nearly grasped, then seemingly lost forever — and a dimension of existence in which dreams quite literally came true. The child in us sensed more, of course: It sensed its own greater reality in another framework entirely, from which it had only lately emerged — yet with which it was intimately connected. It felt itself surround, then by the greater realities of Conascious-mind-2.

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The child knew “that it came from somewhere else — not by chance but by design. The child knew that in one way or another its most intimate thoughts, dreams, and gestures were as connected with the natural world as blades of grass are to a field. The child knew it was unique and utterly original event or being that on the one hand was its own focus, and that on the other hand belonged to its own time and and season. In fact, children let little escape them, so that, again, they experiment constantly in an effort to discover not only the effect of their thoughts and intents and wishes upon others, but the degree to which others influence their own behavior. To that extent, they deal rather directly with probabilities in a way quite foreign to adults behavior.

In a fashion, they make quicker deductions than adults, and often truer ones, because they are not conditioned by a past of structured memory. Their subjective experience then brings them in rather direct contact with the methods by which events are formed.

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Children understand the importance of symbols, and they use them constantly to protect themselves — not from their own reality but from the adult world. They constantly pretend, and they quickly learn that persistent in any one area will result in a physically-experienced version of the imagined activity. They also realize that they do not possess full freedom, either, for certain pretended situations will later happen in less faithful versions than the imagined ones. Others will seem almost entirely blocked, and never materialize.

Before children are acquainted with conventional ideas of guilt and punishment, they realize that it is easier to bring about good events, through wishing, than it is to bring about unhappy ones. The child carries with him or her the impetus and supporting energy provided him or her at birth from Conscious-mind-2, and he or she knows intuitively that desires conducive to his development “happen” easier than those that are not. His or her natural impulses naturally lead him or her toward the development of his body and mind, and he is aware of a cushioning effect and support as he acts in accordance with those inner impulses. The child is innately honest. When he gets sick he or she intuitively knows the reason why, and he or she knows quite well that he or she brought about the illness.

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Parents and physicians believe, instead, that the child is a victim, ill for no personal reason, but indisposed because of elements attacking him or her — either the outside environment, or [something] working against him or her from within. The child may be told: “You have a cold because you got your feet wet.” Or: “You caught the cold from Johnny or Buffy.” He may be told that he has a virus, so that it seems his or her body itself was invaded despite his or her will. He or she learns that such beliefs are acceptable. It is easier to go along than to be honest, particularly when honesty would often involve a kind of communication his parents might frown upon, or the expression of emotions that are quite unacceptable.

Mother’s little man or brave little girl can then stay at home, for example, courageously bearing up under an illness is the result of feelings that the parents would consider quite cowardly, or otherwise involves emotional realities that the parents simply would not understand. Gradually it becomes easier for the child to accept the parents’ assessment of the situation. Little by little the feelings and bodily reality, erode.

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The child who gets the mumps with a large number of his classmates, however, knows he or she has his or her private reasons for jointing into such a mass biological reality, and usually the adults who “fall prey” to a flu epidemic has little conscious awareness of his or her own reason for such a situation. He or she doesn’t understand the mass suggestions involved, or his or her own reasons for accepting them. He or she is usually convinced instead that his or her body has been invaded by a virus despite his or her own personal approval or disapproval — despite his or her own personal approval or disapproval. He is therefore a victim, and his sense of personal power is eroded.

When a person recovers from such an ordeal, he or she usually grants his or her recovery to be the result of the medication he has been given. Or he or she may think that he was simply lucky — but he or she does not grant himself or herself to have any real power in such an affair. The recovery seems to occur to him or her, as the illness seemed to happen to him or her. Usually the patient cannot see that he or she brought about his or her own recovery, and was responsible for it, because he or she cannot admit that his or her own intents were responsible for his or her own illness. He or she cannot learn from his or her own experience, then, and each bout of illness will appear largely incomprehensible.

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The individual some how could perceive the nature of reality on his or her own by virtue of innate capacities that belonged to the individual by right — capacities that were a part of man’s and woman’s heritage. In other words, there is a slim chance of opening doors of knowledge that had been closed, and we can decide to take that chance.

We can see that each person have chosen the events of his or her life in; one way or another, and the each person was not the victim but the creator of those events that were privately experienced or jointly encountered with others.

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The physical senses do not so much perceive concrete phenomena, but actually had a hand in the creation of events that were then perceived as actual.

Growing from an infant to a full adult…

Was probably one of the most difficult, and yet the most easy of feats that we will ever accomplish in a life. As a child we identified with our own nature. We intuitively realized that our being was immersed in and a part of the process of growth.

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No amount of intellectual information, no accumulation of facts however vast, could give you the inner knowledge necessary to accomplish the physical events involved in that growth process. We learn to read, but the seeing itself is an accomplishment of far greater magnitude — one that seemingly happens all by itself. It happens because each of us is again, indeed a part of nature and of nature’s source.

In various ways our religions have always implied our relationship with nature’s source, even though they often divorced nature herself from any upon or another quite valid perception, but then distorted it, excluding anything else that did not seem to fit. “We are children of the universe.” This is an often-heard sentence — and yet the main point of the Christ story was not Christ’s death, but his birth, and the often-stated proposition that each person was indeed “a child of the father.”

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There are many later-appended references in the Bible, such as the fig tree story, in which nature is played down. Christ’s “father” was, however, the God who was indeed aware of every sparrow that fell, who knew of every creature’s existence, whatever its species or kind. The story of the shepherds and flocks comes much closer to Christ’s intent, where each creature looked out for the others.

The officials of the Roman Catholic Church altered many records — cleansing them, in their terms, of anything that might suggest pagan practices, or nature worship as they thought of it. In terms of our civilization, nature and spirit became divided so that we encounter the events of our lives largely in that context. To some degree or another, we must feel divorced from our bodies and from the events of nature. The great sweeps of emotional identification with nature itself do not sustain us, therefore. We study those processes as if we somehow stood apart from them.

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To some extent our society’s beliefs allow us enough freedom so that most of us trust our bodies while they are growing toward adulthood. Then, however, many of us no longer rely often upon the processes of life with us. Certain scientific treatises often make us believe that the attainment of our adulthood has little purpose, except to insure the further existence of the species through parenthood — when nature is then quite willing to dispense with our services. We are quite simply told that we have no other purpose. The species itself must then appear to have no reason except a mindless determination to exist. The religions do insist that man has a purpose, yet in their own confusion they often speak as if that purpose must be achieved by denying the physical body in which man and woman have his or her life’s existence, or by “rising above” “gross, blunted,” earthly characteristics. In both cases man’s and woman’s nature, and nature in general, take short shrift.

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Such tales are myths. They do indeed have power and strength. In those terms they represent the darker side of myths, however — yet through their casts we presently view our world. We will interpret the private events of our lives, and the spectacular range of history, in the light of those assumptions about reality. They not only color our experience, but we create those events that more or less conform to those assumptions.

Those who “lose” their lives in natural disasters become victims of nature. We see in such stories examples of meaningless deaths, and further proof of nature’s indifference to man and woman. We may, on the other hand, see the vengeful hand of an angry God in such instances, where the deity once again use nature to bring man and woman to his or her knees. Man’s and woman’s nature is to live and to die. Death is not an affront to life, but means it continuation — not only inside the framework of nature as we understand it, but in terms of nature’s source. It is, of course, natural then to die.

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The natural contours of our psyche are quite aware of the inner sweep and flow of our life, and its relationship with every other creature alive. Intuitively, each person is born with the knowledge that he or she is not only worthwhile, but fits into the context of the universe in the most precise and beautiful of fashions. The most elegant timing in involved in each individual’s birth and death. The exquisite play of our own inner nature in general — and that identification leads us into deeper knowledge of our own part in nature’s source.
The myths upon which we base our lives so program our existence that often we verbally deny what we inwardly know. when people are hurt in a natural disaster, for example, they will often profess to have no idea at all for such involvement. They will ignore or deny the inner feelings that alone would give the event any meaning in their lives. The reasons for such involvement would be endless, or course — all valid, yet in each and every case, man/woman and nature in those terms would meet in an encounter that had meaning, from the largest global effects to the smallest, most private aspects of the individuals involved. We have made certain divisions because of our myths, or course, that make this kind of explanation extremely important and difficult. We think of rain or earthquakes as natural events, for example, while we do not consider thoughts or emotions as natural events in the same terms. Therefore it is difficult for us to see how there can be any valid interactions between, say, emotional states and physical ones.

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We might say: “Of course, I realize that the weather affects my mood,” yet it will occur to very few of us that our moods have any effect upon the weather. We have so concentrated upon the categorization, delineation, and exploration of the objective world that it surely seems to be “the only real one.” It seems to exert force or pressure against us, or to impinge upon us, or at least almost to happen by itself, so that we sometimes feel powerless against it. Our myths have given great energy to the outsideness of things.
In exasperation some of us see nature as good and enduring, filled with an innocence and joy, while on the other hand we envision man and woman as a bastard species, a blight upon the face of the earth, a creature bound to do everything wrong regardless of any strong good intent. Therefore we do not trust man’s or woman’s nature either.

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This myth finds great value in the larger processes of nature in general, and yet sees man alone as the villain of an otherwise edifying tale. A true identification with nature, however, would show glimpses of man’s and woman’s place in the context of his or her physical planet, and would bring to the forefront accomplishments that he/she has achieved almost without his/her knowing. I would like to mention some other issues, involving the individual’s connection either with natural disasters or with epidemics of one kind or another, that by definition concern large groups of people,


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We form our reality. The statement applies to the most minute and the most important of the events that we experience. Some people believe that they must be punished, and so they seek [out] unfortunate circumstances. They [go] to one event after another in which they meet retribution. They may seek out areas of the country in which natural disasters are frequent, or their behavior may be such that they attract from other people reactions of an explosive kind. Often, however, individuals use disasters quite for their own purposes, as an exteriorized force that brings their lives into clear focus. Some may be flirting with the idea of death, and choose their minds at the last moment.


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Those involved in such disasters — the survivors — often use such “larger-than-life” circumstances in order to participate in affairs that seem to have greater import than those possessed by previous humdrum existences. They seek the excitement, whatever its consequences. They become a part of history to whatever extent. For once their private lives are identified with a greater source — and from it many derive new strength and vitality. Social barriers are dropped, economic positions forgotten. The range of private emotions is given greater, fuller, sweep.
To some extent or another man’s and woman’s desires and emotions merge with the physical aspects of nature as we understand it, so that such storms or disasters as as much the result of psychological activity as they are of weather conditions.
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Obviously — whatever the appearances — storms, earthquakes, floods, are quite necessary to the well-being of the earth. Both man’s and woman’s and nature’s purposes are served, then, though generally speaking man’s and woman’s myths make him blind to those interactions. People’s thoughts and emotions always give clear clues whenever illness is involved, yet most people ignore such information. They censor their own thoughts. Many therefore “fall prey” to epidemics of one kind or another because they want to, though they might deny this quite vigorously.
I am speaking particularly of epidemics that are less than deadly, though danger is involved. In our times, hospitals, we must realize, are important parts of the community. They provide a social as well as a medical service. Many people are simply lonely, or overworked. Some are rebelling against commonly held ideas of competition. Flu epidemics become social excuses for much needed rest, therefore, and serve as face-saving devices so that the individuals can hide from themselves their inner difficulties. In a way, such epidemics provide their own kind of fellowship — giving common meeting grounds for those of disparate circumstances. The [epidemics] serve as accepted states of illness, in which people are given as excuse for the rest or quiet self-examination they desperately need but do not feel entitled to otherwise.

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I do not mean to assign any hint of accusation against those so involved, but mainly to state some of the reasons for such behavior. If we do not trust our nature, then any illness or indisposition will be interpreted as an onslaught against health. Our body faithfully reflects our inner psychological reality. The nature of our emotions means that in the course of a lifetime we will experience the full range of feelings. Our subjective state has variety. Sometimes sad or depressing thoughts provide a refreshing change of pace, leading us to periods of quiet reflection, and to a quieting of the body so that it rests.
Fears, sometimes even seemingly irrational ones, can serve to rouse the body if we have been too lethargic, or have been in a rut psychologically or physically. If we trusted our nature we would be able to trust such feelings, and following their own rhythms and routes they would change into others. Ideally even illnesses are a part of the body’s health, representing needed adjustments, and also following the needs of the subjective person at any given time. They are a part of the interplay between the body and mind, or spirit.

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The majority of my readers have come down with one or another disease usually considered very dangerous, and without ever knowing it, because the body healed itself normally and naturally. The disease was not labeled. It was not given recognition as a condition. Worries or fears were not aroused, yet the disease came and vanished.

In such instances natural healing processes occurred, for which the body is seldom given credit. Such healings do not just involve changes in the body, for example, for a physical healing can take place because of events that seem utterly disconnected.

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Some portions of each individual is in direct contact with the very source of its own existence. Each individual is innately aware that help is available in every situation, and that information does not need to come through the physical senses alone. Many illnesses are cured, then, through quite natural methods that not only involve physical healings, but bring into play other events –events that have great bearing on the psychological elements that may be involved behind the scenes. For those interactions we will have to look to Frame-mind-2.

Men’s and Women’s private roles in the nature of mass events

We must first look into the medium in which events appear concrete and real. The great sweep of the events of nature can be understood only by looking into a portion of their reality that is not apparent to us. We want to examine, therefore, the inner power of natural occurrences.

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A scientist examining nature studies its exterior, observing the outsideness of nature. Even investigative work involving atoms and molecules, or [theoretical] faster-than-light particles, concern the particle nature of reality. The scientist does not usually look for nature’s heart. He or she certainly does not pursue the study of its soul.

All being is manifestation of energy — an emotional manifestation of energy. Man or woman can interpret the weather in terms of air pressure and wind currents. He or she can look to fault lines in an effort to understand earthquakes. All of this works at a certain level, to a certain degree. Man’s or woman’s psyche, however, is emotionally not only a part of his or her physical environment, but intimately connected with all of nature’s manifestations. Using the terms Framed-mind 2, man’s or woman’s identification with nature is a strongly-felt reality in Framed-mind 2. And there we must look for the answers regarding man’s or woman’s relationship with nature. There in Frame-mind 2 the nature of the psyche appears quite clearly, so that its sweeps and rhythms can be understood. The manifestations of physical energy follow emotional rhythms that cannot be ascertained with gadgets or instruments, however fine.

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Why is one killed and not another? Why does an earthquake disrupt an entire area? What is the relationship between the individual and such mass events of nature?

Before we can begin to consider such questions, we must take another look at our world, and ascertain its source, for surely its source and nature’s are the same. We make some distinctions between events and our interpretation of them.

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It certainly seems that our world is concrete, factual, definite, and that its daily life rests upon known events and facts. We make a clear distinction between fact and fantasy. We take it for granted as a rule that our current knowledge as a people rests upon scientific data, at least, that are unassailable. Certainly technological development appears to have been built most securely upon a body of concrete ideas.

The world’s ideas, fantasies, or myths may seem far divorced from current experience — yet all that we know or experience has its origin in that creative dimension of existence that I am terming Framed-mind 2. In a manner of speaking our factual world rises on a bed of fantasy, myth, an imagination, from which all of our detailed paraphernalia emerge. What then is myth, and what do I mean by the term?

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Myth is not a distortion of fact, but the womb through which fact must come. Myth involves an intrinsic understanding of the nature of reality, couched in imaginative terms, carrying power as strong as nature itself. Myth-making is a natural psychic characteristic, a psychic element that combines with other such elements to form a mythical representation of inner reality. That representation is then used as a model upon which our civilizations are organized, and also as a perceptual tool through whose lens we interpret the private events of our life in their historical context. For instance, while some might dismiss the story of primitive men and women separating from each other and living individually due to their emotional conflicts as a myth, they forget that this mere myth is something that might have laid the foundation for divorces in the modern world. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be professionals like a family lawyer bradford or institutions like courts or terms like “divorce” in the civilized world.

Remember that when we accept myths, we call them facts, or course, for they become so a part of our lives, of societies and our professions, that their basis seems self-apparent. Myths are vast psychic dramas, more truthful than facts. They provide an ever-enduring theater of reality. It must be clearly understood, then, that myths imply the nature of psychic events whose enduring reality exists in Framed-mind 2, and forms the patterns that are then interpreted in our world.

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If someone is caught in a natural disaster, the following questions might be asked: “Am I being punished by God, and for what reason? Is the disaster the result of God’s vengeance?” A scientist might ask instead: “With better technology and information, could we somehow have predicted the disaster, and saved many lives?” He or she might try to dissociate himself or herself from emotion, and to see the disaster simply as the result of a non personal nature that did not know or care what lay in its path.

In all cases, however, such situations instantly bring to mind questions of man’s or woman’s reality and course, his or her connections with God, his or her planet, and the universe. He interprets those questions according to his or her own beliefs.

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Myths are natural phenomena, rising from the psyche of man or woman as surely as giant mountain ranges emerge from the physical planet. Their deeper reality exists, whoever, in Framed-mind 2 as source material for the world that we know.

In those terms, the great religions of our civilizations rise from myths that change their characters through the centuries, even as mountain ranges rise and fall. We can see mountain ranges. It would be ridiculous to ignore their reality. We see our myths somewhat less directly, yet are apparent within all of our activities, and they form the inner structures of all or our civilizations with their multitudinous parts.

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In those terms, then, Christianity and our other religions are myths, rising in response to an inner knowledge that is too vast to be clothed by facts alone. In those terms also, our science is also quite mythical in nature. This may be more difficult for some or us to perceive since it appears to work so well. Others will be willing enough to see science in its mythical characteristics, but will be most reluctant to see religion as we know it in the same light. To some extent or another, however, all of these ideas program our interpretation of events.

In this discussion, we are more or less dealing with the events of nature as we understand it. It will seem obvious to some, that a natural disaster is caused by God’s vengeance, or is at least a divine reminder to repent, while others will take it for granted that such a catastrophe is completely neutral in character, impersonal and [quite] divorced from man’s and woman’s own emotional reality. The Christian scientist is caught in between. Because we divorce ourselves from nature, we are not able to understand its manifestations. Often myths get in the way. When myths become standardized, and too literal, when we begin to tie them too tightly to the world of facts, then we misread them entirely. When myths become most factual they are already becoming less real. Their power becomes constrained.

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Most people interpret the realities of their lives, their triumphs and failures, their health or illness, their fortune or misfortune, then, in the light of a mythical reality that is not understood as such. What is behind these myths, and what is their source of power?

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Facts are a very handy but weak brew of reality. They immediately consign certain kinds of experiences as real and others as not. The psyche, however, will not be so limited. It exists in a medium of reality, a realm of being in which all possibilities exist. It creates myths the way the ocean creates spray. Myths are originally psychic fabrications of such power and strength that whole civilizations can rise from their source. They involve symbols and know emotional validities that are then connected to the physical world, so that that world is never the same again. They cast their light over historical events because they are responsible for those events. They mix and merge the inner, unseen but felt, eternal psychic experience of man with the temporal events of his or her physical days, and form a combination that structures thoughts and beliefs from civilization to civilization. In Framed-mind 2 the interior power of nature is ever-changing. The dreams, hopes, aspirations and fears of man and woman interact in a constant motion that then forms the events of our world. That interaction includes not only man, of course, but the emotional reality of all earthly consciousnesses as well, from a microbe to a scholar, from a frog to a star. We interpret the phenomena of our world according to the mythic characteristics that we have accepted. We organize physical reality, then, through ideas validity. The physical body itself is quite capable of putting the world together in different fashions than the one that is familiar to us.

We divorce ourselves from nature and nature’s intents far more than the animals do. Nature in its stormy manifestations seems like an adversary. We must either look for reasons outside of ourselves to explain what seems to be nature’s ill intent at such times, or its utter lack of concern.

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Science often says that nature care little for the individual, only for the species, so then we must often see ourselves as victims in a larger struggle for survival, in which our own intents do not carry even the puniest sway.

Medical commercial are equally disease-promoting

Many, meaning to offer us relief through a product, instead actually promote the condition through suggestion, thereby generating a need for the product itself.

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Headache remedies are a case in point here. Nowhere do any medically-oriented commercial or public service announcements mention the body’s natural defenses, its integrity, vitality, or strength. Nowhere is our television or radio matter is any emphasis put upon the healthy are not carried out.

More and more foods, drugs, and natural environmental conditions are being added to the list of disease-causing elements. Different reports place dairy products, red meats, coffee, tea, eggs, and fats on the list. Generations before us managed to subsist on many such foods, and they were in fat promoted as additive to health. Indeed, man and woman almost seems to be allergic to his or her own natural environments, a prey to the weather itself.

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It is true that our food contains chemicals it did not in years past. Yet within reason man is biologically capable of assimilating such material, and using them to his or her advantage. When man feels powerless, however, and in a state of generalized fear, he can even turn the most natural earthly ingredients against himself or herself. Our television, and our arts and sciences as well, add up to mass mediations. In our culture, at least, the educated in the literary arts provide us with novels featuring anti-heroes, and often portray an individual existence [as being] without meaning, in which no action is sufficient to mitigate, the private puzzlement or anguish.

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Many — not all — plotless novels or movies are the result of this belief in man and woman’s powerlessness. In that context no action is heroic, and man and woman is everywhere the victim of an alien universe. On the other hand our common, unlettered, violent television drama do indeed provide a service, for they imaginatively specify a generalized fear in a given situation, which is then resolved through drama. Individual action counts. The plots may be stereotyped or the acting horrendous, but in the most conventional terms the “good” man/woman wins. Such programs do indeed pick up the generalized fears of the nation, but they also present folk dramas — disdained by the intelligentsia — in which the common man or woman can portray heroic capabilities, act concisely toward a desired end, and triumph.

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Those programs often portray our cultural world in exaggerated terms, and most resolution is indeed through violence. Yet our more educated beliefs lead us to an even more pessimistic picture, in which even the violent action of men and women who are driven to the extreme serves no purpose. The individual must feel that his/her actions count. He/she is driven to violent action only as a last resort — and illness often is the last resort.

Our television dramas, the cops-and-robbers shows, the spy productions, are simplistic, yet they relieve tension in a way that our public health announcements cannot do. The viewer can say: “Of course I feel panicky, unsafe, and frightened, because I live in such a violent world.” The generalized fear can find a reason [for its existence]. But the programs at least provide a resolution dramatically set, while the public health announcements continue to generate unease. Those mass meditations therefore reinforce negative conditions.

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In the overall, then, violent shows provide a service, in that they usually promote the sense of a man’s or woman’s individual power over a given set of circumstances. At best the public service announcements introduce the doctor as we take our car to a garage, to have its parts serviced. Our body is seen as a vehicle out of control, that needs constant scrutiny.

The doctor is like a biological mechanic, who knows our body far better than us. Now these medical beliefs are intertwined with our economic and cultural structures, so we cannot lay the blame upon medical men or women or their profession alone. Our economic well-being is also a part of our personal reality. Many dedicated doctors use medical technology with spiritual understanding, and they are themselves the victims of beliefs they hold.

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If we do not buy headache potions, our uncle or our neighbor may be out of business and not able to support his family, and therefore lack the means to buy our wares. We cannot disconnect one area of life from another. En masse, our private beliefs form our cultural reality. Our society is not a thing in itself apart from us, but the result of the individual beliefs of each person in it. There is no stratum of society that we do not in one way or another affect. Our religions stress sin. Our medical professions stresses disease. Our orderly sciences stress the chaotic and accidental theories of creation. Our psychologies stress men and women as victims of their backgrounds. Our most advanced thinkers emphasize man’s and woman’s rape of the planet, or focus upon the future disaster that will overtake the world, or see men and women once again as victims of the stars. Many of our resurrected occult schools speak of a recommended death of desire, the annihilation of the ego, for the transmutation of physical elements to finer levels. In all such cases the clear spiritual and biological integrity of the individual suffers, and the precious immediacy of our moments is largely lost.

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Earth life is seen as murky, a dim translation of greater existence, rather than portrayed as the unique, creative, living experience that is should be. The body becomes disoriented, sabotaged. The clear lines of communication between spirit and body become cluttered. Individually and en masses, diseases and conditions result that are meant to lead us into other realizations.

Unfortunate areas of private and mass experience

Suggestions for effective solutions? “We get what we concentrate upon.” Our mental images bring about their own fulfillment. These are ancient dictums, but we must understand the ways in which our mass communication systems amplify both the “positive and the negative” issues.

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Individually, and as a civilization, we have undermined our own feelings of safety; yet methods to reinforce those necessarily feelings of biological integrity and spiritual comprehension that can vastly increase our spiritual and physical existence.

Our beliefs have generated feelings of unworth. Having artificially separated ourselves from nature, we do not trust it, nut often experience it as as adversary. Our religions granted man a soul, while denying any to other species. Our bodies then were relegated to nature and our souls to god, who stood immaculately apart from His or Her creations.

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Our scientific beliefs tell us that our entire world happened accidentally. Our religions tell us that man and woman are sinful: The body is not to be trusted; the senses can lead us astray. In this maze of beliefs we have largely lost a sense of our own worth and purpose. A generalized fear and suspicion is generated, and life too often becomes stripped of any heroic qualities. The body cannot react to generalized fear and suspicion is generated, and life too often becomes stripped of any heroic qualities. The body cannot react to generalized threats. It is, therefore, put under constant strain in such circumstances, and seeks to specify the danger. It is geared to act in our protection. It builds up strong stresses, therefore, so that on many occasions a specific disease or threat situation is “manufactured” to rid the body of tension grown too strong to bear.

Many are familiar with private meditation, when concentration is focused in one particular area. There are many methods and schools of thought here, but a highly suggestive state of mind results, in which spiritual, mental, and physical goals are sought. It is impossible to mediate without a goal, for that intent is itself a purpose. Unfortunately, many of our public health programs, and commercial statements through the various media, provide us with mass meditations of a most deplorable kind. I refer to those in which the specific symptoms of various diseases are given, in which the individual is further told examine the body with those symptoms in mind. I also refer to those statements that just as unfortunately specify diseases for which the individual may experience no symptoms of an observable kind, but is cautioned that these disastrous physical events may be happening despite his or her feelings of good health. Here the generalized fears fostered by religious, scientific, and cultural beliefs are often given as blueprints of diseases in which a person can find a specific focus — the individual can say: “Of course, I feel listless, or panicky, or unsafe since I have such-and-such a disease.”

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The breast cancer suggestions associated with self-examinations have caused more cancers than any treatments have cured. They involve intense meditations of the body, and adverse imagery that itself affects the bodily cells. Public health announcements about high blood pressure themselves raise the blood pressure of millions of television viewers.

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Our current ideas of preventive medicine, therefore, generate he very kind of fear that causes disease. They all undermine the individual’s sense of bodily security and increase stress while offering the body a specific, detailed disease plan. But most of all, they operate to increase the individual sense of alienation from the body, and to promote a sense of powerlessness and duality.