Tag Archives: Mystics

The Origins of Our Dimension

We think of our universe as having certain dimensions, and we want an explanation based more or less upon the proposition that those dimension themselves made possible the origin — which must, however, have emerged from other larger dimensions of actuality than those contained in our universe itself. There terms of reality within our universe cannot hold or contain that vaster context in which such master events happen. Therefore, I must follow to some extent the traditional references that we use to define events to begin with.

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While I am doing that I am trying to introduce intuitively at least, to a larger framework, in which events straddle the reality that we know. Nevertheless, we will begin with issues in which it is very possible that contradictions may seem to occur, since our own definitions of an event are so simple that they ignore larger ramifications in an overall greater unity of structure and action. Our imaginations will be of high value here, for they can often perceive unities that are not evident to the intellect — which we have trained to deal specifically with the evidence of the here and now.

There are phases of relatedness, rhythms and harmonies of consciousness from whose infinite swells the molecular “music” of our universe is sounded. Our place in those rhythms is highly vital. We exist in a kind of original interval — though, if you can, think of the word “interval” without the connotations of continuing time. It is as if an infinite number of orchestras were playing simultaneously, and each note sounded was also played in all of its probable positions with each other note possible, and in combination with all of the probable versions of the entire piece being played.

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Between the notes sounded there would be intervals, and those unsounded interval would also be part of a nature unstated rhythm upon which the development of the entire sounded production was dependent. The unsounded intervals would also be events, of course, cues for action, triggers for response.

Our stated universe emerged out of that kind of interval, emerging from a master event whose true nature remains uncaptured by our definitions — so there will be places in my blogs where I may say that an event known to us is true and untrue at the same time, or that it is both myth and fact. And in so doing I hope to lead toward some psychic comprehension of a kind of event far too large for our usual categories of true and false. Perhaps, then, we will let our imaginations play upon the usual events of our world, and glimpse at least in part that greater brilliance that illuminates them, so that it leads us intuitively to a feeling for the source of events and the source of our world. The units of consciousness that I have blogged about. They are also in other terms entities, fragments of All That Is, if you prefer — divine fragments of power and majesty, containing all of the powers of consciousness as we think of it, concentrations without substance in our terms.

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There are many other universes besides our own, each following its own intervals, its own harmony. Our ideas of historic time impede my explanations. In those terms, our world’s reality stretches back far further than we imagine, and in those terms — we need the qualifications — our ancestors have visited other stars, as our planet has been visited by others. Some such encounters intersected in space and time, but some did not. There are endless versions of life. There are, then, other species like our own, and in the vast spectrums of existence that our reality cannot contain, there have been galactic civilizations that came together when the conditions were right.

Time’s framework does not exist as we think it does. Intervals of existence are obviously not the same. In ways impossible to explain, there are what I can only call inner passageways throughout the universe. We know how one association can suddenly in our minds connect us with a past event so clearly that it almost seems to occur in the present — and indeed, a strong-enough memory is like a ghost event. So there are processes that work like associations, that can provide passageways through the universe’s otherwise time-structured ways. These passageways are simply a part of the greater nature of events that we do not perceive.

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At times our species has traveled those passageways, and many of our myths represent ghost memories of those events. There is a rhythm, again, to all existence, and so in our terms our species returned to its home planet, to renew its roots, refresh its natural stock to nature, to find solace again amid the sweet ancient heritage of dusk and dawn.

The planet has seen many changes. It has appeared and disappeared many times. It flickers off and on — but because of the intervals of our attention, each “on” period seems to last for millions of years, of course, while at other levels the earth is like a firefly, flickering off and on.

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I do not mean by such a description to minimize the importance of physical life, for All That Is endows each portion of its own transformed reality with a unique existences that is duplicated nowhere else, and each spark of consciousness is endowed with a divine heritage that is never extinguished — a spark that is apparent in all other corners of the universe.

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In various branches of mathematics, from the works of Euclid (the Greek mathematician who flourished around 300 b.c.) to modern information theory, I have found many relationships with these ideas.

My tentative inquiries led me to the axioms of Euclidean geometry, as, are innately valid in describing the mind’s inner reaches, or whether, in ordinary terms, those propositions represent conscious acquired interpretations of our visual experience.

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.

What happened to all the Rembrandts?

Why isn’t there at least one artist in all of the world painting today whose ability equals Rembrandt’s, and who uses that great gift to evoke the depths of compassion for the human condition as Rembrandt did? For in my opinion there isn’t such a one around. By extension, why isn’t there a Rubens or a Velazquez or a Vermeer operating now? My choices are personally arbitrary, or course — yet why don’t we have a Rembrandt contributing to  our current reality? Just those four artists, whose lives spanned a period of only 98 years (from 1577 to 1675), explored human insight in powerful ways. To link the “great masters” with our species’ reincarnational intents and drives, opens up a new field for understanding my question, and a very large and intriguing one indeed.

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Our many excellent “modern” painters inevitably work within a different world ambience. Our species’ art is just no longer the same — a fact I both applaud and mourn. However, I do feel that in the course of ordinary time we have either lost certain qualities of art or no longer stree them.

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 emergence of action within a time scheme

The emergence of action within a time scheme is actually one of the most important developments connected with the beginning of our world.

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The Garden of Eden story in its basic refers to man’s and woman’s sudden realization that now he and she must act within time. His or her experiences must be neurologically structured. This immediately brought about the importance of choosing between one action and another, and made acts of decision highly important.

This time reference is perhaps the most important within earth experience, and the one that most influences all creatures. In experience or existence outside of time, there is no necessity to make certain kinds of judgements. In an our-of-time reference, theoretically speaking now, an infinite number of directions can be followed at once. Earth’s time reference, however, brought to experience a new brilliant focus — and in the press of time, again, certain activities would be relatively more necessary than others, relatively more pleasant or unpleasant than others. Among a larger variety of possible actions, man and woman were suddenly faced with a need to make choices, that within that context had not been made “before.”

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Speaking in terms of our time, early man and woman still had a greater neurological leeway. There were alternate neurological pathways that, practically speaking, were more available then than now. They still exist now, but they have become like ghostly signals in the background of neurological activity.

This is, again, difficult to explain, but free will operates in all units of consciousness, regardless of their degree — but it operates within the framework of that degree. Man and woman possesses free will, but that free will operates only within man’s and woman’s degree — that is, his or her free will is somewhat contained by the framework of time and space.

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He and she have free will to make any decisions that he or she are able to make. This means that his or her free will is contained, given meaning, focused, and framed by his or her neurological structure. He and she can only move, and he or she can only choose therefore to move, physically speaking, in certain directions in space and time. That time reference, however, gives his or her free will meaning and a context in which to operate. We are speaking now of conscious decisions as we think of them.

We can only make so many conscious decisions, or we would be swamped and caught in a constant dilemma of decision making. Time organizes the available choices that are to be made. The awakening mentioned earlier, then, found man rousing from his or her initial ” dreaming condition,” faced suddenly with the need for action in a world of space and time, a world in which choices became inevitable, a world in which he or she must choose among probable actions — and from an infinite variety of those choose which events he or she would physically actualize. This would be an almost impossible situation were the species — meaning each species — not given its own avenues of expression and activity, so that it is easier for certain species to behave in certain manners. And each species has its own  overall characteristics and propensities that further help it define the sphere of influence in which it will exert its ability to make choices.

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Each species is endowed also, by virtue of the units of consciousness that compose it, with an overall inner picture of the condition of each other species, and further characterized by basic impulses so that it is guided toward choices that best fulfill its own potentials for development while adding to the overall good of the entire world consciousness. This does not curtail free will any more than man’s and woman’s free will is curtailed because he or she must grow from a fetus into an adult instead of the other way around.

The differences among all species are caused by this kind of organization, so that areas of choice are clearly drawn, and areas of free activity clearly specified. The entire gestalt of probable actions, therefore, is already focused to some degree in the species’ differentiations. In the vast structure of probable activity, however, far more differentiation was still necessary, and this is provided for through the inner passageways of reincarnational existence.

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Each person, for example, is born with his or her uniquely individual set of characteristics and abilities, likes and dislikes. Those serve to organize individual action in a world where an infinite number of probable roads are open — and here again, private impulses are basically meant to guide each individual toward avenues of expression and probable activities suited best to his or her development. They are meant, therefore, as aids to help organize action, and to set free will more effectively into motion. Otherwise, free will would be almost inoperable in practical terms: Individuals would be faced by so many choices that any decisions would be nearly impossible. Essentially, the individual would have no particular leaning toward any one action over any other.

” By the time” that the Garden of Eden tale reached our biblical stories, the entire picture had already been seen in the light of concepts about good and evil that actually appeared, in those terms, a long time later in man’s and woman’s development. The inner reincarnational structure of the human psyche is very important in man’s and woman’s physical survival. Children — change that to “infants” — dream of their past lives, remembering, for example, how to walk and talk. They are born with the knowledge of how to think, with the propensity for language. They are guided by memories that they later forget.

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In time’s reference, the private purposes of each individual appear also in the larger historical context, so that each person forms his corner of his civilization — and all individuals within a given time period have private and overall purposes, challenges that are set, probables actions that they will try to place within history’s context.

 

 

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.

Awakening Man and Woman experience some sense of separation from the dream body

In the beginning, awakening man and woman did experience, some sense of separation from his and her dream body, and from his and her own inner reality — the world of his and her dreams — but he/she were still far more aware of that subjective existence than we are now.

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The practical nature of his or her own dreams were also more apparent, for again, his or her dreams sent him and her precise visions as to where food might be located, for example, and for some centuries there were human migrations of a kind that now we see the geese make. All of those journeys followed literal paths that were given as information in the dream state. But more and more man and woman began to identity himself and herself with his and her exterior environment. He and she began to think of his and her inner ego almost as if it were a stranger to himself and herself. It became his or her version of the soul, and there seemed to be a duality — a self who acted in the physical universe, and a separate spirit-like soul that acted in an immaterial world.

This early man and woman regarded the snake as the most scared and basic, most secretive and most knowledgeable of all creatures. In that early experience it seemed, surely, that the snake was a lying portion of the earth, rising from the bowels of the earth, rising from the hidden source of all earth gods. Men and women watched snakes emerge from their holes with wonder. The snake was then — in our terms, now — both a feminine and masculine symbol. It seemed to come from the womb of the earth, and to possess the earth’s secret wisdom. Yet also, in its extended form particularly, it was the symbol of the penis. It was important also in that is shed its skin, as man and woman innately knew he and she shed his and her own bodies.

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All units of consciousness, whatever their degree, possess purpose and intent. They are endowed with the desire for creativity, and to increase the quality of existence.They have the capacity to respond to multitudinous cues. There is a great elasticity for action and mobility, so that, for example, in man and woman his or her conscious experience can actually be put together in an almost limitless number of ways.

The inner and outer egos do not have a cement-like relationship, but can interrelate with each other in almost infinite fashions, still preserving the reality of physical experience, but varying the accents put upon it by the inner areas of subjective life. Even the bare-seeming facts of history are experienced far differently according to the symbolic content within which they are inevitably immersed. A war, in our terms, can be practically experienced as a murderous disaster, a triumph of savagery — or as a sublime victory of the human spirit over evil.

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We will return to the subject of war in later blogs. I want to mention here, however, that man and woman are not basically endowed with “warlike characteristics.” He or she do not naturally murder. He or she do not naturally seek to destroy his or her own life or the lives of others. There is no battle for survival — but while we project such an idea upon natural reality, then we will read nature, and our own experiences with it, in the fashion.

Man and woman do have an instinct and a desire to live, and he and she has an instinct and a desire to die. The same applies to other creatures. In his and her life each man and woman are embarked upon a cooperative venture with his or her own species, and with the other species, and dying he or her also in that regard acts in a cooperative manner, returning his and her physical substance to the earth. Physically speaking, man’s and woman’s “purpose” are to help enrich the quality of existence in all of its dimensions. Spiritually speaking, his or her “purpose” are to understand the qualities of love and creativity, to intellectually and psychically understand the  sources of his or her being, and to lovingly create other dimensions of reality of which he and she are presently unaware. In his and her thinking, in the quality of his or her thoughts, in their motion, he or she are indeed experimenting with a unique and a new kind of reality, forming other subjective worlds which will in their turn grow into consciousness and song, which will in their turn flower from a dream dimension into other ones. Man and woman are learning to create new worlds. In order to do so he or she have taken on many challenges.

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We all have physical parents. Some of us have physical children as well — but we will all “one day” also be the mental parents of dream children who also waken in a new world, and look about then for the first time, feeling isolated and frightened and triumphant all at once. All worlds have an inner beginning. All of our dreams somewhere waken, but when they do they waken with the desire for creativity themselves, and they are born of an innocent new intent. that which is in harmony with the universe, with All That Is, has a natural inborn impetus that will dissolve all impediments. It is easier, therefore, for nature to flourish than not.

We are aware of such activities now as automatic speaking and automatic writing, and of sleepwalking. These all give signs in modern times of some very important evidence is man’s and woman’s early relationship with the world and with himself and herself.

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Sleepwalking was once, in that beginning, a very common experience — far more so than now — in which the inner self actually taught the physical body to walk, and hence presented the newly emerged physically oriented intellect from getting in its own way, asking too many questions that might otherwise impede the body’s smooth spontaneous motion.

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In the same fashion man and woman are born with an inbuilt propensity for language, and for the communication of symbols through pictures and writing. He and she spoke first in an automatic fashion that began in his and her dreams. In fashion, we could almost say that he and she used language before he or she consciously understood it. It is not just that he and she learned by doing, but that the doing did the teaching. Again, lest there be a sharply inquiring intellect, wondering overmuch about how the words were formed or what motions were necessary, his or her drawing was in the same way automatic. We might almost say — almost — that he and she used the language “despite himself or herself.” therefore, it possessed an almost magical quality, and the “word” was seen as coming directly from God.

 

Life’s conditions need no justification

Our beliefs close us off from much otherwise quite-available knowledge concerning man’s and woman’s psychology — knowledge that would serve to answer many questions usually asked about the reasons for suffering. Other questions, it is true, are more difficult to answer. Men and women are born, however, with curiosity about all sensations, and about all possible  life experiences. They are thirsty for experience of all kinds. Their curiosity is not limited to the pretty or the mundane.

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Men and women are born with a desire to push beyond the limits : to “explore where no man or woman has ever gone before” — a bastard version of the introduction [to a famous television program], I believe men and women are born with a sense of drama, a need of excitement. Life itself is excitement. The quietest mood rides the thrust of spectacular molecular activity.

We forget many of our quite natural inclinations, feelings, and inner fantasies as we mature into adults, because they do not fit into the picture of the kind of people, or experience, or species we have been taught to believe we are. As a result, many of the events of our lives that are the natural extensions of those feelings appear alien, against our deepest wishes, or thrust upon us, either by outside agencies or by a mischievous subconscious.

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The thoughts of children give excellent clues as to mankind’s and womankind’s nature, but many adults do not remember any childhood thoughts except those that fit, or seem to fit, in with their beliefs about childhood.

Children play at getting killed. They try to imagine what death is like. They imagine what it would be like to fall from a wall like Humpty-Dumpty, or to break their necks. They imagine tragic roles with as much creative abandon as they imagine roles of which adults might approve. They are often quite aware of “willing” themselves sick to get out of difficult situations — and of willing themselves well again.

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As i said, there are all ranges of suffering. In times past in particular, though the custom is not dead, men and women purged themselves or otherwise deprived themselves. They suffered, in other words, for religion’s sake. It was not just that they believed suffering was good for the soul — a statement which can or cannot be true, incidentally, and I will go into that later — but they understood something else: The body will only take so much suffering when it releases consciousness. So they hoped to achieve religious ecstasy.

Religious ecstasy does not need physical suffering as a stimulus, and such a means in the overall will work against religious understanding. Those episodes, however, represent one of the ways in which man and woman can actively seek suffering as a means to another end, and it is beside the point to say that such activity is not natural, since it exists within nature’s framework.

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Discipline is a form of applied suffering, as discipline is usually used. People are not taught to understand the great dimensions of their own capacity for experience. It is natural for a child to be curious about suffering, to want to know what it is, to see it — and by doing so he or she learns to avoid the suffering he or she does not want, to help others avoid suffering that they do not want, and to understand, more importantly, the gradations of emotion and sensation that are his and her heritage. As an adult he or she will not inflict pain upon others if he or she understands this, for he or she will allow himself or herself to feel the validity of his or her own emotions.

If we deny ourselves the direct experience of our own emotions, but muffle them, say, through too-strict discipline, then we can hurt others much more easily, for we project our deadened emotional state upon them — as in the Nazi war camps, men and women followed orders, torturing other people — and we do that first of all by deadening our own sensitivity to pain, and by repressing our emotions.

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Man’s and woman’s vulnerability to pain helps sympathize with others, and therefore helps him or her to more actively alleviate whatever unnecessary causes of pain exist in society.

Each person’s experience of a painful nature is also registered on the part of what we will call the world’s mind. Each, say, failure, or disappointment, or unresolved problem that results in suffering, becomes a part of the world’s experience: This way or that way does not work, or this way or that way has been tried, with poor results. So in that way even weaknesses of failures of suffering are resolved, or rather redeemed as adjustments are made in the light of those data.

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In that regard, each person lives his or her life privately, and yet for all of humanity. Each person tries out new challenges, new circumstances, new achievements from a unique viewpoint, for himself or herself, and for the entire mass of humanity as well.

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The idea that in their play children “try to imagine what death is like” certainly adds an intuitive dimension to my own activities as a child. “Cowboys and Indians” was our gang’s favorite game, and we roamed the nearby fields all of us made believe we killed our enemies and/ or were killed ourselves. We had great fun, and used to play such games to the point of exhaustion.

Children “are often quite aware of willing themselves sick to get out of difficult situations.” I remember very well doing that on certain occasions — usually to avoid some school activity — and that even then I was surprised because my parents didn’t catch on to what I was up to. ( Getting well after the danger period had passed was no problem!)

For eons men and women where in the dreaming state

Men and women slept long hours, as did the animals — awakening, so to speak, to exercise their bodies, obtain sustenance, and later, to mate. It was indeed a dreamlike world, but a highly charming and vital one, in which dreaming imaginations played rambunctiously with all the probabilities entailed in this new venture: imagining the various forms of language and communication possible, spinning great dream tales of future civilizations replete with their own built-in histories — building, because they were now allied with time, mental edifices that automatically created pasts as well as futures.

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These ancient dreams were shared to some extent by each consciousness that was embarked upon the earthly venture, so that creatures and environment together formed great environmental realities. Valleys and mountains, and their inhabitants, together dreamed themselves into being and coexistence.

The species — from our viewpoint — lived at a much slower pace in those terms. The blood, for example, did not need to course so quickly through the veins and arteries, the heart did not need to beat as fast. And in an important fashion the coordination of the creature in its environment did not need to be as precise, since there was an elastic give-and-take of consciousness between the two.

In ways almost impossible to describe, the ground rules were not as firmly established. Gravity itself did not carry its all-pervasive sway, so that the air was more buoyant. Man and woman was aware of its support in a luxurious, intimate fashion. He/she was aware of himself or herself in a different way, so that, for example, his and her identification with the self did not stop where his or her skin stopped. He and she could follow it outward into the space about his or her form, and feel it merge with the atmosphere with a primal sense-experience that we have forgotten.

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During this period, incidentally, mental activity of the highest, most original variety was the strongest dream characteristic, and the knowledge man and woman gained was imprinted upon the physical brain: what is now completely unconscious activity involving the functions of the body, its relationship with the environment, its balance and temperature, its constant inner alterations. All of these highly intricate activities were learned and practiced in the dream state as the conscious units translated their inner knowledge through the state of dreaming into physical form.

Then in our terms man and woman began, with the other species, to waken more fully into the physical world, to develop the exterior senses, to intersect delicately and precisely with space and time. Yet man and woman still sleeps and dreams, and that state is still a firm connective with his or her own origins, and with the origins of the universe as he or she knows it as well.

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Man and woman dreamed his or her languages. He and she dreamed how to use his or her tongue to form the words. In his or her dreams he/she practiced stringing the words together to form their meanings, so that finally he or she could consciously begin a sentence without actually knowing how it was begun, yet in the faith that he/she could and would complete it.

All languages have as their basis the language that was spoken in dreams. The need for language arose, however, as man woman became less a dreamer and more immersed in the specifics of space and time, for in the dream state his/her communications with his or her fellows and other species was instantaneous. Language arose to take the place of that inner communication, then. There is a great underlying unity in all of man’s and woman’s so-called early cultures — cave drawings and religions — because they were all fed by that common source, as man and woman tired to transpose inner knowledge into physical actuality.

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The body learned to maintain its stability, its strength and agility, to achieve a state of balance in complementary response to the weather and elements, to dream computations that the conscious mind alone could not hold. The body learned to heal itself in sleep in its dreams — and at certain levels in that state even now each portion of consciousness contributes to the health and stability of all other portions. Far from the claw-and dagger universe, we have one whose very foundation is based upon the loving cooperation of all its parts. That is given — the gift of life brings along with it the actualization of that cooperation, for the body’s parts exist as a unit because of inner relationships of a cooperative nature: and those exist at our birth when we are innocent of any cultural beliefs that may be to the contrary.

If it were not for this most basic, initial loving cooperation, that is a given quality in life itself, life would not have continued. Each individual of each species takes that initial zest and joy of life as its own yardstick. Each individual of whatever species, and each consciousness, whatever its degree, automatically seeks to enhance the quality of life itself — not only for itself but for all of reality as well.

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This is a given characteristic of life, regardless of the beliefs that may lead us to misinterpret the actions of nature, casting some of its creatures in a reprehensible light.

In a fashion those ancient dreamers, through their immense creativity, dreamed all of life’s creatures in all of their pasts, presents, and futures — that is, their dreams opened up the doors of space and time to entities that otherwise would not have been released into actualization, even as, for example, the units of consciousness were once released from the mind of All That Is.

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All possible entities that can ever be actualized always exist. They have always existed and they always will exist. All That Is must, by its characteristics, be all that it can ever be, and so there can be no end to existence — and, in those terms, no beginning. But in terms of our world the units of consciousness, acting both as forces and as psychological entities of massive power, planted the seeds of our world in a dimension of imaginative power that gave birth to physical form. In our terms those entities are our ancestors — and yet they are not ours alone, but the ancestors of all the consciousnesses that make up our world.

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It is easy to live — so easy that although we live, rest, create, respond, feel, touch, see, sleep and wake, we do not really have to try to do any of those things. From our viewpoint they are done for us.

They are done for us in Framed-Mind-2 — and further discussions of Framed-Mind-2, incidentally, will be inter-wound throughout my blogs. Our beliefs often tell us that life is hard, however, that living is difficult, that the universe, again, is unsafe, and that we must use all of our resources — not to meet life with anything like joyful abandon, or course, but to protect ourselves against its implied threats; threats that we have been taught to expect.

But our beliefs do not stop there. Because of both scientific and religious ones, in Western civilization we believe that there are threats from within also. As a result we forget our natural selves, and become involved in a secondary, largely imaginary culture: beliefs that are projected negatively into the future, individually and en masse. People respond with illnesses of one kind or another, or through exaggerated behavior.

Living is easy. It is safe and reliable because it is easy.

We were each present at the beginning of the world

Though we may be present in the world now in a somewhat different fashion. Remember that each unit of consciousness is a fragment of All That Is, a divine portion. Then perhaps what I am about to explain will make sense.

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For some time, in our terms, the sleepwalkers remained more or less at that level of activity, and for many centuries they used the surface of the earth as a kind of background for other activity. Their real life was what we would now call the dreaming one. They worked mentally while asleep, constructing in their individual minds and in their joint mental endeavors all of the dazzling images that would later become a mental reservoir from which men and women could draw. In that multidimensional array, consciousness mentally learned to form itself into electromagnetic energy units, atoms and molecules, electrons and chromosomes. It mentally formed the patterns through which all physical life could flow. The world then came into physical existence. Those units of consciousness are indestructible and vitalized, regardless of the forms they take, and while men’s and women’s forms were dream images, consciousness spun forms into physical material.

Consciousness possesses the most unimaginable agility without ever losing any potency. Those units of consciousness, for example, can mix and combine with others to form a million different sequences of memory and desire, of neutral achievement and recognition, of structure and design.

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We read our own consciousness now in a kind of vertical fashion, identifying only with certain portions of it, and it seems to us that any other organization of perception, and other recognition of identity, would quite necessarily negate our own or render it inoperable. In the beginning of the world there were numberless groupings, however, and affiliations of consciousness, many other organizations of identity that were recognized, as well as the kind of psychological orientation we have now — but our kind of orientation was not the paramount one. While, generally speaking, earth’s species existed from the beginning in the forms by which we now know them, consciousness of species was quite different, and all species were much more intimately related through various kinds of identification that have since gone into the underground of awareness.

Initially, then, the world was a dream, and what we think of as waking consciousness was the dreaming consciousness. In that regard the earth’s entire environment was built mentally, atom by conscious atom — each atom, again, being initially formed by units of consciousness. I said that these units could operate as entities, and as forces, so we are not speaking of a mental mechanics but of entities in the true meaning of the word: entities of unimaginable creative and psyche properties purposeful fragments propelled from the infinite mind as that mind was filled with the inspiration that gave light to the world. Those entities, in our terms so ancient, left fragments of themselves in trance, so to speak, that form the rocks and hills, the mountains, the air and the water, and all of the elements that exist on the face of the earth.

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Those entities are in trance, in those terms, but their potency is not diminished, and there is constant communication among them always.

There is also constant communication between them and us at other levels than those we recognize, so that there is an unending interplay between each species and its environment.

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There is no place where consciousness stops and the environment begins, or vice versa. Each form or life is created along with each other form — environment and organism in those terms creating each other. After forms were fully physical, however, all species operated as sleepwalkers for many centuries, though on the scale that existed then the passage of time was not considered in the same fashion. During that period the work of wedding nonphysical consciousness to matter was accomplished. Effects of gravity, for example, were stabilized. The seasons took on the rhythms best suited to the creatures in various locations. The environment and the creatures accommodated each other.

Up until then, the main communications had followed the characteristic patterns of units of consciousness, each unit knowing its relationship to all others upon the planet. Creatures relied upon inner senses while learning to operate the new, highly specific physical ones that pinpointed perception in time and place. This pinpointing of perception was of vital importance, for with the full arousal of consciousness in flesh, intersections with space and time had to be impeccable.

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Dream bodies became physical, and through the use of the senses tuned to physical frequencies — frequencies of such power and allure that they would reach all creatures of every kind, from microbe to elephant, holding them together in a cohesive web of space-and-time alignment.

In the beginning, man’s and woman’s dreams were in certain terms of immediate physical survival. They gave man and woman information — a kind that of necessity the new physical senses could not contain. Those senses could only perceive the immediate environment, but man’s and woman’s dreams compensated for that lack, and filled out his and her consciousness by giving it the benefit of that larger generalized information to which it had once had an easy access. When he or she was asleep man and woman could take advantage of the information banks contained in the units of consciousness that composed his or her very flesh.

b14

Now: When he or she dreamed — man and woman returned to a state prior to waking, from which his or her physical life itself had emerged — only now he or she was a new creature, a new kind of consciousness, and so were all of the other species. In dreams all of the species familiarized themselves with their old affiliations, and they read their own identities in different fashions. “They remembered how it was.” They remembered that they formed each other.

This tale, I admit, is far more difficult to understand than a simple story of God’s creation of the world, or its actual production in a meaningless universe through the slippery hands of chance — and yet my story is more magnificent because elements of its truth will find resonance in the minds and hearts of those open enough to listen. For men’s and women’s minds themselves are alive with the desire to read properly, and they are aware of their own vast heritage. It is not simply that man and woman has a soul that is somehow blessed while the rest of him or her is not, but that in those terms everything he or she knows, regardless of size or degree, is made of “soul stuff.” Each portion has its own identity and validity — and no portion is ever annihilated or destroyed. The form may change.

b12

I must of necessity tell this story in serial terms, but the world and all of its creatures actually come together like some spontaneously composed, ever-playing musical composition in which the notes themselves are alive and play themselves, so that the musicians and the notes are one and the same, the purpose and the performance being one, with each note played continuing to strike all of its own probable versions, forming all of its own probable compositions while at the same time taking part in all of the themes, melodies, and notes of the other compositions — so that each note, striking, defines itself, and yet also exists by virtue of its position in the composition as a whole.

The conscious mind cannot handle that kind of multidimensional creativity, yet it can expand into a kind of new recognition when it is carried along, still being itself, by its own theme.

b22

In a way, our world follows its own theme in creativity’s composition. We want to know where we came into the musical production, so to speak. I use a musical analogy here, if a simple one, to point out that we are also dealing with frequencies of perception. We are tuned into earth’s orchestration [we might say], and our perception of time is simply the result of habits — habits of perception that we had to learn in the beginning of the world. And we learned those habits as our physical senses gradually became more alert and specific.

b3

We “timed” ourselves — but greater perceptions always appeared in the background of our consciousness and in the dream state. It is the great activity of the dream state that allows us, as psychological and physical creatures, to recognize and inhabit the world that we know.