October 30, 2001
R: All right, now we’re getting back to our major questions here. This is a follow-up from last week. We were talking about what happens when we drop the body and move into your territory. You said a number of things I’d like to follow up on. One is, to quote you, “a scenario is being created and individuals dropping their body are being inserted into it.” And another quote, “we are all under an over-arching intelligence that creates the whole thing.” This suggests, certainly, a creator or a God or a plan developer of some kind —
F: Well, now, we would caution you on the first part. Remember, somewhere — probably “a long time ago” — we said that the scenario that you walk into when you drop your body is actually planned around you and for you and partly by you, by your larger being that you’re a part of. And the awareness or non-awareness of a larger being determines whether or not you think that scenario either came into being by itself or that you made it up – although you’re not likely to do think that you made it up outside the body. So your speculation is not necessarily wrong, but in that particular instance, you yourself –the larger you, the amoeba you – are crafting the conditions for your own future development.
R: All right. That makes sense. Now the “over-arching intelligence creates the whole thing.”
F: We can tell that there is that, but we don’t know any more than you know. We surmise. Something created this. We can’t believe in the thing that created itself. But maybe at some point we’ll be wise enough to know; at this point we don’t know. It’s clear to us that something intelligent devised it, and that’s as far as we’re going at the moment.
R: Do you have a preference for one term or another like creator, or God, or something rather than use all those words to talk about what we’re —
F: That’s a very good problem to bring up. You know how picky we are about language, and our concern is always to try to be sure that undesired nuances are not incidentally carried along. So really, our preference will probably change in the context, and in some contexts God might be perfectly acceptable, and in other contexts it might suggest attributes or other things that will warp the understanding. So, pick whatever you feel like at the moment, and if it’s carrying nuances that we want to correct, that after all may be useful. Trust your judgment.
R: One of the reasons I raise this is that Frank has said at one time or another that he doesn’t know if he believes in a God. That could be changing now. So I don’t like using that word I guess, because of the possibility of transmission difficulties.
F: Well, that’s his problem. [laughs] Don’t misunderstand that to mean that he feels like he’s an atheist, or that he has a resistance to it. He’s more or less where we are in that he knows there was some kind of creator, but doesn’t know beyond that. And so when people say “God,” what they mean by it is usually so vague, that’s more or less what he’s responding to. Well, we’ll go a little further. If we remember the conversation – and we guarantee you that he does not – [laughs] it was in the context of someone –
Frank: Now isn’t that funny?
R: Actually, he says it in his book.
Frank: Isn’t that funny? Popped right out of the altered state. Hang on a second.
F: [pause] Here’s the point that he’s going to be moving toward. Having the experience of dealing with us, he has seen that nearly everything that people have described as God may be their descriptions of us, depending on what kind of reporters they were. So therefore he doesn’t know if the evidence describes such a thing. Beyond that, he’s not probably willing to go.
R: All right. Do you have a sense of a number of layers between you and whatever or whoever is in charge?
F: No more than you do.
R: Well, we have a sense of layers.
F: How many? [they laugh]
R: Well, we’ve only communicated with one, but that’s to the point here. Is there some way we can get in touch with the next layer, if there is one, either by our words or anything else like a meditation process? To ask questions of another layer?
F: Well, here’s your problem. You’re already dealing in territory that you can scarcely see the outlines of, because you’re just beginning. And to go beyond this territory into something else, you’ll be even blinder than you are here. If you gain your sight here, as we are gaining our sight here — remember you yourself have made us aware that in fact there’s another level above us that we’re more in contact with than we thought, or its in contact with us — unless you’re dissatisfied with the service you’ve been receiving [they laugh] we don’t quite see why you’d want to do that.
R: We’re definitely not dissatisfied. Well, the question that would be behind that for me is, can you get in touch with the next layer?
F: Well, now, don’t let spatial analogy get in your way too much here. You know, it sneaks into everything. So, you might think of it more as, —
Well, let’s take out the word “levels” if we can. Let’s say there are aspects of The Great Everything that are closer to you where you are. And the best way to find the other ones is to change what you are rather than to stretch to them. Do you see what we’re saying? You’re stretching a bit to see us, and we’re stretching a bit to see you, to communicate. And that’s fine, that’s not only appropriate, that’s the best use you can make right now. But to try to reach beyond us at this point would be the equivalent of your trying to reach us had you been at a lower level. (The “level” sneaks right back in again.)
Do you see what we’re saying? The thing nearest to hand is always the thing that’s most productive to do. You may be reaching a little too far. But on the other hand, maybe you’ll try it and something will happen.
Now, having said all that, let’s put one little caveat in here. People have direct experiences of God. Now, they don’t have to go through us to God, and they don’t have to go through God to us [laughs] for that matter. And we don’t know what that experience is, necessarily, and they don’t necessarily know, but if it helps people recognize something that’s real—Do you see?
R: Yes, I see that you’re saying that. Now, I didn’t want my last question to get lost, which was, can you get in touch with the next layer or aspect or whatever is next? And I don’t know why we should ask that of you, because if you don’t want to do it, then —
F: Well, no, we didn’t say any more about it because we thought we’d answered it. You already have put us on that track. It is by us following our guidance that we will, to the degree that we can, reach that way.
R: Okay., so you’re already doing whatever you’re going to do about that.
F: Well, let’s say the concept’s in the mind, anyway. And we don’t know but that the other layer may have given you the idea to give to us. Things do work that way. In other words, different fragments suggest things to each other, which is a way for any given fragment to become more conscious. You see it in your own life all the time: Someone will say something to you, which has impact. Well, that saying may sometimes have been suggested to them, and run right through them without their thinking about it. That’s all. You may be serving the same function with us, occasionally, is what we’re saying.
R: Another thing came up in the last session, the idea that not every individual leads what we were calling a successful life, so that when they drop the body there may be no advantage to having that individual continue. And I question it. Would we have any idea on this side what would constitute a successful life worth continuing?
F: Well let’s quarrel with your definition. It is because they don’t become sufficiently individual that it’s not worth continuing. So to call them an individual brings in nuances through the back door that you probably don’t mean, but that will come. So what we would regard as an unsuccessful life – or a, not necessarily unsuccessful so much as not worth continuing – is one that’s not very individual, not very — [pause] (Searching for an analogy, here)
If you had a solution and you were trying to crystallize the solution, you might seed it correctly and come up with a wonderful crystal. Or, another time, another solution, nothing particular might happen, you know. And you just throw it out and start again. [chuckles] That seems a little harsh, but —
R: Yeah, it did seem a little harsh, but then as I thought about it and you pointed out, nothing’s lost.
F: Pour the water back in the same pan.
R: Okay, so then the question that came out of that was, would we have any idea on this side what would constitute a life worth continuing?
F: Well, that’s actually several questions, because if you keep changing the definition of “we,” for instance, and many of the other words in there, every one could be different. But the best way to say it is, many of your religious and philosophical traditions are devoted specifically toward helping you to become an individual. Gurdjieff in particular is concerned with helping people to crystallize their individuality, which will be preserved on the other side. Which is not saying that’s the only way to do that, of course, but it’s saying that there is that train of thought. You won’t nearly so likely notice the failures as you’ll notice the occasional spectacular successes. They will have an aura, so to speak.
R: Mmm. You see, I’m getting a very different idea about this tonight than I had last week, because you’re talking in terms of becoming more an individual.
F: Well, remember we say “you’re here to choose and choose and choose,” and all that choosing is what makes you an individual. It sets the flower that you become.
R: But the notion I had going into it before was that the consequence of those choices is somehow increasingly different from others.
F: Can’t help it. That’s what happens. But if you make fewer choices, if you are in a situation that doesn’t call for meaningful choices, you might wind up with 400,000 flowers that are more or less identical, and you only have a market for 200,000 of them. [they chuckle] It’s not that simple, but that’s the best we’re going to do at the moment; maybe we’ll come back to it.
R: Okay, well there’s some thoughts in that one. [pause] We’ve been using the concept vibratory level a number of times, and I found I don’t really know what that meant.
F: Well, good! [they laugh] Good. It’s only an analogy. Remember, we tried several. We tried vibratory level, we tried specific gravity, we tried pH. They’re all inadequate analogies. They are necessarily inadequate analogies, because if there were an adequate analogy, we could discard it as an analogy and just use it. [pause] As a person develops their own force, their own being – as they crystallize, let’s put it that way for the moment – they raise levels, so to speak. It’s an increase in self-awareness and an increase in self-command. That is, not only does the flashlight have a good battery in it, but the person more and more knows where to shine the flashlight.
It depends on how you want to look at it. If you want to look at it as a light analogy, you could say it is the flashlight getting more and more intensity and a wider scope, so that the person’s consciousness, in all aspects of the word consciousness — not just awareness — spreads to a larger part of itself and therefore becomes, effectively, larger. It was always larger potentially, but now effectively it becomes larger. Or if you wanted a different analogy, you could say the person lives at a more intense level and therefore crystallizes around its own seriousness, its own being. It becomes more fully and thoroughly what it potentially is. It’s really the same statement two ways.
It’s only an analogy, but when we say a higher vibratory level, typically we will mean the person is functioning at a more intense and a more self-aware level.
R: One thing that gets connected with this in the Monroe programs is the concept of using certain kinds of tapes with certain kinds of vibratory levels built into the tape, and then increasing vibratory rates as one goes into certain kinds of tapes, and so on. It seems as though this is trying to help us increase our vibratory level. Is there any relationship there?
F: Well, not the relationship they’re implying, because it is only an analogy. And we’ll be perfectly willing to use a different analogy if you wish to suggest one. One of the problems with the Monroe system is that again the spatial analogy sneaks in through the back door. The assumption is, the higher numbers are a higher, more intense state, whereas from our viewpoint the higher numbers are just a little farther away from normality. That doesn’t necessarily mean more intense. It may mean different. So, to imply that going to focus 21 is more intense than going to focus 12 is totally misleading, and in fact, it’s false. It may be more intense, it may not be more intense. It depends on the intensity of the person at the moment when they’re in one of those states. You could have a state of intensity in C1 that would far exceed anything in focus 21, if it happened to be that way. The thing is, when they’re doing Monroe tapes, or when they’re concentrating themselves on the exercises, whether they’re using tapes or not, they tend to be more concentrated, because they have their mind on it. But that’s all that’s going on there.
Now, to the degree a person is more mindful, more self-aware, more intent on becoming more completely oneself, that person is going to be at a higher level of consciousness, regardless whether they use the tapes or ever hear the word Monroe. That is part of the mystical core of religious systems, throughout the world. One of the goals.
R: Could you say a bit more about that?
F: We thought it was obvious.
R: [laughs] Well, you suddenly brought in another dimension.
F: All right. Well, every religion has an esoteric and an exoteric segment. Ignoring for the moment distortions caused by ambition or political considerations, pretending that it’s pure, the exoteric trappings of a religion are designed to provide a society that will support development in certain directions among people who depend upon their environment; that is, those who do not develop themselves. The esoteric core of the religion is designed for those who do, and this provides them with internal and external supports, goals, laid-out paths – really, it’s basically a mystery school. So that in this case, the Monroe system is an esoteric core of a belief system that has no exoteric core yet, although it’s forming.
R: [Doubtfully] Mmm.
F: We’ll be glad to say more. Tell us what you want.
R: Well, if we were to take Jim Marion’s developmental system, he describes in a book called Putting On the Mind of Christ a developmental path that has nine or ten or eleven stages. That’s an example of a religious perspective, I guess. Would you call that the increasing individualizing?
F: Certainly you could. That’s one way to look at it.
R: I think I’ve said enough about that right now.
F: We’ll be glad to go more on this at any time. There are some things that are so obvious to us that we forget they may not be obvious from your point of view, and this may be one of them. May not. Just as the same for you. For you, it’s obvious that you’re right here, right now, but we have to sometimes look for you. [they laugh]
R: Okay. [pause] I’m still involved in some follow up here. And this may be a meaningless question —
F: [ironic cough]
R: — but we talked last time about intermediaries on your side needed to bring about interactions between those of different vibratory levels. Still on the vibratory level analogy.
F: Well, again, it’s a good analogy. We’ll use it unless it gets in your way. We were only saying that while you’re in the body, you have the ability to mingle with others of very vastly different vibratory levels, and we do not.
R: So intermediaries are needed on your side. Who are the intermediaries?
F: Well, it depends on who you’re trying to deal with. If we’re on level 30 and we want to talk to somebody at level 60, we need somebody between 30 and 60 who can reach in both directions. That’s all that means. But if we’re trying to talk to level 15, we need somebody who is between those levels. Sort of like passing a message down the line, in a sense.
R: Why would a person be formed for the first time and sent into a body? At whose initiation would that –?
F: [pause] We don’t see any real way to answer that question. Remember, the person doesn’t exist until it’s formed, so you can’t say the person did it. The person is formed out of certain elements that are part of a common mind, so to speak. Oh, your question probably means do we do it or does a higher level do it?
R: Well, or is this part of the activity of the amoeba? I’m just really clueless as to that process. One hears all sorts of things like, “well, they’re standing in line in heaven to try to get a body,” and obviously there are all sorts of things wrong with that statement.
F: Oh but we thought you said one starting from the beginning.
R: Yeah. That’s what I did.
F: Let’s take a little detour here. If the amoeba already exists, then the forming of another sojourn, the putting together of elements to go into another lifetime, is done more or less by the amoeba in connection with the elements around it that are closest to it in sympathy. But if you’re talking about forming an amoeba from the beginning, to make its first foray, that’s what we thought you meant, and we haven’t the slightest idea.
R: Okay, well let me either add to the confusion or whatever, but —
F: It’ll be worthwhile [they laugh]
R: –are you saying that every amoeba has had experiences here?
F: Well, no. We’re saying that every amoeba that has a body in the physical has had the experiences, but we didn’t think you would be talking about the ones who hadn’t, because they wouldn’t come into it.
R: Well they would come into it in the fact that they had never had a body.
F: Well, but you were asking specifically about a new body being formed in the physical. So to us the other ones wouldn’t come into the equation at all.
Let’s look at this again. We have 100 amoebae altogether in the whole works, okay? And of those hundred, maybe 15 have part of themselves – have lifetimes – in the physical, on earth at whatever time, it doesn’t matter what time. The other 85 have no earth experience. They have no physical life experience. And so to us when we’re talking about something in the physical, we wouldn’t talk about the 85; they’re not – Unless you want to just note that in fact the vast majority don’t have expression in the physical.
R: That’s including elsewhere as well as here?
F: Correct. Remember how we say we often use “earth” meaning ‘in the physical”? Even though it might be Alpha Centuri or somewhere? Yes, that’s the sense in which we mean it. So – of those who do have one or more lives in the physical, when they want to go in again, as we say, the elements are mixed and something goes in. Well— We’ll think about this a minute. How to say this.
We haven’t looked at this before, but bear in mind, each of the amoebae could be looked at in the same way that you look at each of you as individuals. They’re all comprising the same materials, but all in a somewhat unique way. Just as you all have the same number of limbs and organs, but your faces are radically different and your general demeanor and your energy signature is different, so with the amoebae. There is the equivalent. The analogy is good enough, all right?
R: Mm-hmm.
F: So, an amoeba [pause] choosing to enter into physical life again can do it in one of two ways. It can funnel through lives that have already been through the physical –
(This is going to be very confusing for the moment. This will take us a while, probably – and not tonight – but it will probably take a while to untangle this, but it will be worthwhile.)
It can choose to go through lives that have come before – before in its soul growth, not necessarily chronologically – and in that case you get people with a strong sense of reincarnation, because it’s feeding through. They can also pull together a little of their mix and put it in to the physical without feeding through the ones who’ve already been through, and there you get people with a sense of not necessarily having reincarnation. Okay?
Now, as far as we know we have never talked about this, and Frank’s never seen anybody talk about it (as far as we’ve dredged the old data banks) because people keep thinking in terms of individuals on this side, rather than seeing the difference in the way things are. But one amoeba may have – say there are six lives that are chained. And so the awareness of one comes through the awareness of another, comes through the awareness of another, all right? As in his case with John Cotton, and Smallwood, and Katrina and others that he’s sort of plucked out of the air.
But the same amoeba not only can but almost always will have others that are either chained in different ways or not at all. They’re just individuals, and he may not have any inkling of connection with them until he gets to another level at which he sees the broader connections, and at that level you get people who really begin to understand that all humanity is one family. They understand it at a visceral, emotional level.
So those are three possible results, psychologically, on your end, of the process that comes from our end. This is really more or less of a diversion from the question, but —
R: My question really was about the other 85 percent.
F: It wasn’t originally. [laughs]
R: I’ll read you the original question.
F: Originally you said coming in the first time.
R: Yes. Why would an amoeba decide to send a part of itself – whatever one thinks about that – for the first time into a body?
F: All right, let’s just be clear here. You are not, then, talking about an amoeba being formed for the first time.
R: I want to ask that too. [they laugh] I realize there are two questions.
F: That’s the one we said we don’t know. The second one, “why,” well, there as many motives as you would have as an individual in doing something new. There could be curiosity – in fact, would be. Do you remember the report that Monroe made in his second book – Frank can find it for you quite easily – about going into the physical? The tourist, AA or BB or whichever one it was?
He was getting ready to go into the physical for the first time. And Monroe very carefully put four different reasons why people went into the physical. And if you’ll look at it closely, it will be very illustrative. For instance, one said, going back for retraining. And another one said, “don’t come back until you’re well.” [they chuckle] One said he was doing an academic experiment, something like that. Frank can find that without any trouble at all, and that will shed light on this. [Far Journeys, chapter 10, “Newfound Friend,” pp. 137-140 in the Doubleday paperback edition.] But, having said that, there are as many reasons for doing it as there are for you doing anything.
R: Well there’s apparently some lore on your side that says how great it is to be a human.
F: Well, the major lure to us – the major benefit – if twofold. One, you do have the ability to mingle with those of other levels, which is very productive, and you have the law of delayed consequences, where, being enmeshed in time-slices and space-slices, you make choices and watch them go forward. That is to say, it’s slowed down enough that you experience them. Those are very powerful lures. That’s why this was created, because it’s a compressed learning system. And although we’ve said repeatedly that it’s not a school, there is learning involved in the sense of forcing a flower in a hothouse. Perhaps you don’t want to be a gladiola today.
R: [chuckles] Daisy, please.
F: A daisy, you can be a daisy. However, it’s also known to be extremely challenging, so there are some people who just like to join the Marines.
R: Okay, so what about this notion that there are many souls that are looking to be in a body, and have to stand in line for that, or something like that. Does that compute in any way?
F: Well, it conveys the sense that being in the physical is in a way a tremendous privilege. It perhaps is a bleed-through of human terms into the idea, because they may be thinking that people want to be born into 21st century America, which is to say, one of the richest people in the world. There’s more of a waiting line for that than there is to be born a peasant in India –unless those are the particular choices that you want to be faced with. So it’s —
R: And at some point there are presumably going to be a limitation on the number of bodies to be supported on this earth.
F: Although we almost always deal in probabilities and choices rather than predictions, we will say that we don’t see any significant number of realities in which the population continues to grow and grow and grow, or even to maintain itself at your present unsustainable level. It could be done, and occasionally is done, but mostly not. No chance. Not even desirable. However, it was desirable to bring you up to this level as you know. The Cosmic Brain. When you succeed in getting to the next level of complexity so that you are actually interacting with us all the time, as we told you is the next level up, then there’ll not only not be a need for so many people here, but so many people here would actually be in the way, and being on the other side will actually be beneficial to them and the earth. And there’ll be lots of people dying, and everybody will say what a tragedy it is.
R: Mmm. Yes, it’s hard for us not to think of it that way, but —
F: Get used to it.
R: — yeah, but I hear you. [pause]
[continued in tomorrow’s post]