So You Think Your Life Was Wasted (3)

As I said last week, most people find it hard to formulate a believable vision of the afterlife. As the minds that I call The Guys Upstairs once said (via writing),  “It is from lack of a plausible model more than from any other single thing that the division between seen and unseen world has come to seem so absolute.”

Over the course of several days in the  summer of 2007, they talked to me about the nature of the soul. I put the entire 5,000-word discussion (and two diagrams) onto this blog, as “A Working Model Of Minds On The Other Side,” and provided the gist of the material in an article for The Meta Arts. That material provides us with our jumping-off place for further consideration of the question of the meaning or meaninglessness of our lives.

It started with a stray thought that I put on the blog. I used to think that what a person learned, the connections he made, etc., were lost when he died. It made life seem pointless. Realizing that the pattern of mind created by that effort survives and is there to be used recasts it in a different light entirely. So I asked for help in spelling out. They started by having me draw a diagram, and letter the circles arbitrarily, not implying hierarchy.

From top down: Minds on the other side, the arbitrary non-existent line between 3-D and non-3-D (“the veil between worlds”) and minds in 3-D. The lines are links of affiliation, temperament, etc. that organize the entire field.

This is radically simplified. It takes no account of the multiple overlapping layers of relationship that become more obvious as you look more deeply in time and space. Nonetheless you can see that things connect not simply and uniformly like single-cell organisms, but complexly like the physical body.

Suppose A knows chemistry, B psychology, F practical politics, and J is an artist. Perhaps A connects to G because one is parent and the other is child. Perhaps G in turn connects to C, D and L by profession, affection, and kinship respectively. (And here you see the tip of the iceberg of complexity: if G is kin to A and L, L is in some way kin to A as well as G.)

Now if 1, say, inquires about chemistry, he may need to talk to A. If they are not close enough in wavelength that it may be done directly, then silently and unobserved by 1 or openly and described to 1 (as a “control,” say), whoever 1 can reach links to A for him. So it may be that 1 can link to I, a good networker. The chain may have to go like this: 1 = I -> B -> E -> H -> D -> G -> A and back! But once 1 and A have linked up, the they will by the process of information transfer have established a direct link. In a future exchange, 1 could then perhaps go by way of A (silently or explicitly) to reach G and any that connect via G by a shorter or more direct route. Thus the network is ever changing.

(Remember, explanations are analogies. Only that which does not need to be explained can be presented as itself, everything else is made to be “like” the nearest similar thing. You can say that the color orange is “like” red, and also “like” yellow, but the statement is incomprehensible to anyone who has experienced red and yellow but not orange. Explanations always mislead to some extent, regardless the best efforts of the explainers. You know, or you do not yet know, and there can be no third position. Explanation is a bridge between the two that sometimes connects and sometimes collapses.)

Now, realize that each circle is not a unit but is in itself a complex meeting-point, all parts of which may come into play in different circumstances. Let’s work this from the familiar to the less familiar.

We start off with 1A and 1S, your physical and nonphysical heredity. You add 1R for those nonphysical beings with whom you share resonance (thus bypassing questions of reincarnation) and 1F for physical beings with whom you share resonance, F for a friend.

So we begin the other drawings. Looking at 1A we find: genetic inheritance of characteristics, genetic and habit-formation inheritance through the family, and the overall influence of the culture one is born into. These all affect the individual every day but usually mostly below the threshold of consciousness.

Look next at 1S for your nonphysical heredity: developed tendencies of thought and inclination, and skills and knacks developed over repeated lifetimes. Also past associates of the blood or otherwise, which differs from 1R because while you are on the same wavelength with those you resonate with (by definition), any given life will shovel you into relationship with people you don’t resonate with. You have some point in common, or you could not meet — but you are not naturally in instinctive sympathy. Nonetheless the shared experience provides a link that otherwise would not be there. Finally we could add that which you have loved or valued. If you reread Moby-Dick seven times, or read the Bible every year like Cayce, or if you were an admirer of Napoleon or of Wellington, or if you haunted the opera or the theater, or if you were bonded to animals or trees or loved to play cards or — anything — that old connection survives, perhaps unsuspected or experienced but inexplicable to you.

Of the presence in your psyche of 1F, friends and lovers, there should be no need to say much. The tie between friends or between lovers may be more mysterious or complex than is commonly experienced; nonetheless no mammal can live alone without shivering.

As to your nonphysical associates (1R) – if you as a conscious creature in time-space contain all these elements, think how complex is your energy signature! Think how many, many different ways-lengths you may resonate to. Again, it is in physical matter that the universe as we know it gains so many possibilities of self-referencing incremental complexity.

Now, remember that “the physical” does not mean humans, or humans and animals, or humans and animals and vegetables and minerals, and it doesn’t mean all the earth or even all the galaxy. It means all of the part of creation that exists within sequential time and what that implies (time-slices, delayed consequences) and separation by space and what that implies (a seemingly absolute division rather than division into units only provisionally or, shall we say, “somewhat”). Everything that exists in 3-D space is part of the physical aspect of creation.

You see, the interaction we are painting is not a matter of humans on one side and us on the other side. It is not even a matter of Earth life on one side. It is all physical matter anywhere, even if Earth never hears of it. How else could it be? Could you have a local part of the universe in connection with the other side, and not all?

Now consider what we are saying. You Downstairs, on your side, connect with us Upstairs, or on our side. We in turn connect with others on your side.

Some of those others may live on Alpha Centuri, or in far galaxies of which you will never get a glimpse or have an inkling. Do you think they are any farther from us (where space is not local, nor time) than you are? And since both you and they may connect to us, obviously one potential for your communication as it improves is that you can communicate through us, and ultimately without us.

Welcome to the universe.

And there is more than that. Since you by your decisions affect us and they by their decisions affect us, and we reciprocally affect you and them — in essence to greater or lesser degree, more consciously or less, you affect each other. Really, you each affect reality, which affects you, but it comes to the same thing.

You see, physical matter with its delayed consequences and its ability to form ever more complex relationships among its inhabitants, is central to the universe (to physical and nonphysical reality considered as one).

Do you still feel like insignificant inhabitants of a third rate planet circling a sixth-grade star at the edge of the universe, or does that view begin to look a bit myopic?

And still the picture is not even nearly complete. You may contact all the past, all the future, anyone and everyone in the physical or nonphysical part of the world. So just what can’t you reach?

The key is to redefine yourselves, redefine the world, so as to disable the thought systems that disable you by persuading you that it is not possible. It is that simple, that easy, that overwhelmingly powerful. But it is harder to do as individuals than as part of the herd. It is harder to do what hasn’t been done.

Anyone reading this and listening to that inner voice saying “yes, that’s the way it is; this actually can be done, though it is going to require work and practice” — just listening to the voice helps break the logjam. Making your own attempts helps more. Overcoming your own skepticism and making the effort to not negate results by declaring that you made it all up helps even more. Working with friends is another step. Coming out into the open about your experiments and your experiences adds vastly to the effect. And so it goes, as each one pioneers as best he or she can. Every attempt — even if made in silence in a darkened room on an island without telephones, so to speak — adds its weight to the scales.