Thursday, September 2, 2010
5:45 AM. Did some everyday-life chores yesterday, after our brief conversation about how to structure my workshop on robots. The day off really does help, even though I spend it entirely differently than I expect to.
The new Sphere And Hologram arrived yesterday afternoon, and the three Robert Clarke books. They now sit on my shelves saying, “when are you going to do the promotion and selling?” and I can’t quite answer them.
All right, to begin. And I might remark here that I realize now why it goes better when I have at least looked over the previous material, or made notes of my questions. It is the same old story: More focused questions get better answers, and they come only by my having a question in mind (except I notice that sometimes you continue like a house afire regardless).
That’s a side-trail at the moment, but suffice it to say that there are quanta that exist on their own, and, interrupted, call for their own completion.
I know I have to rephrase that one! You’re saying that if a session ends while you’re in the middle of something, you naturally want to finish your thought when we resume.
Yes. But if we have finished the one thought — the quantum of information, the comprehensible unit — then we may or may not know the best way to proceed. It isn’t as if what we want to convey is linear, and is merely a matter of proceeding from A to B and so on until the end. It is a world-view, and every concept leads to every other concept, and in many cases it doesn’t matter what order they are presented in. What matters is your receptivity at the given moment, and the potential that the Law Of Chance has provided by the circumstances of that moment.
All right, I understand that. Well, I have a couple points to pursue from the end of our previous session, unless you want to go elsewhere.
No. Go ahead.
You said, intriguingly and bafflingly, “the progress of any given `level’ does not depend upon, or affect, any other level — and yet it does.”
Yes. Having established a vocabulary to use — group-mind, person-mind, strand-mind — in order to provide symbols (packed data) to expand your usable RAM on the subject —
Hold in mind that
Ironic that you say “hold in mind” at just the moment that my thoughts strayed.
A good reason to come to this work before exposing your mind to other stimuli such as e-mail or the web. But — merely take a moment to recalibrate.
Okay.
Hold in mind the fact that we are proceeding from one overview: All the world (that is, all of reality) is one thing; there is no absolute division into two or more, even in the world of polarities. (This itself could be a topic for the future.) No division into kinds can be other than relative. Therefore — as we said — different “levels” of physical reality will be seen to repeat the structure of other “layers” — and ultimately it will be seen that even the “layers” are merely convenient illusions, like any other “units.” In a real way, not as metaphor at all, the microscopic and macroscopic levels interpenetrate each other. They are the same. Not merely the same substance; they are the same. But you probably don’t yet have the background to even intuit the correctness of this statement, let alone understand it. Let’s say only this, for the moment, and then go on to other things with you bearing in mind that this is the perception I proceed from [in re-reading that, I noticed that atypical “I” instead of we]: Size is merely a physical manifestation, and is irrelevant in its non-physical manifestation.
You’re right, I can’t quite grasp it, although that last sentence seems to strike a distant chord.
The entire experiencing of a physical world is an elaborate and instructive metaphor, but it is not the ultimately real experience that it appears to be.
So. Three levels of mind as seen from any level. We “guys upstairs” experience you, Frank, as a strand, and we are a strand to that above us. You, Frank, experience strands, which experience you as the group-mind of which they each function as a strand-mind. And so up and down the scale without limit, for there is no ultimate up or down because it is not actually the smaller-to-larger polarity it appears.
I had an altered-state experience in the black box once, I vaguely remember, in which I perceived that as I looked into smaller and smaller, it got larger than me somehow.
You are not remembering it right. Your physical brain tries to reinterpret experience to “make sense” of it, as it does everything in life. It isn’t that the smaller gets larger but that it is larger, as well. But we cannot stay to discuss this yet. Too long and still insufficient background conveyed. It is enough that you somewhat remember that you experienced, even if you could not make sense of the experience.
So — from any point of view, three levels of mind. That being the case, we need only examine the composition of the nearest, to shed light on the others — both the two directly perceived and any others, either perceived in extraordinary circumstances or never perceived or perceivable at all. That’s one task — examine the nearest as it functions in itself.
Then, examine the three layers as they function in relation. How does group-mind express in the life and functioning of a person-mind, and how does a strand-mind, and how does the group-mind function in relation to either and both? Don’t be overwhelmed by the size and scope of the conception. It is actually easiest this way, for it will continually tie together experience and concepts previously seeming unrelated.
You must, you see, overcome the continual and often unsuspected effect of the spatial analogy if you are to grasp the actual nature of the interaction of “levels.” A group-mind is not larger than a person-mind; a strand-mind is not smaller than either. Size does not validly enter in it. Mind is not physical and does not exist within physical restriction.
But your brain is wired by its entire experience of earth — of 3D — to correlate things by size. To learn to think in other ways, it requires some framework to array those things on. A theoretical physicist uses mathematics. As long as he remains within that framework he can think thoughts and envision relationships that vanish or at any rate are without application as soon as he returns to everyday life. This, not because his mathematical model is cloud-cuckoo-land, but because in stepping outside his alternative framework he finds himself unable to sustain the intellectual model he well understands within it.
Neither mathematics nor hard science is your “thing.” Nor, for that matter, the soft sciences. Others will be able to translate those frameworks. Your gift and your preference and your affinity (three ways to say the same thing) is to speak plainly so that you de-mystify. So — the alternative framework you employ cannot be mathematics.
No, nor would it serve those who are listening to this.
That’s what we just said. And neither will theology work even if you knew enough or learned enough to employ it.
No, because they would be unable and unwilling to follow it for emotional and historical and cultural reasons, and for ideological and political reasons.
So you return to your roots. Not history, exactly, but biography.
That’s very interesting! Testimony.
The testimony of what happened to people, yes. And their view of it, yes. And — mainly —
Well, well, well. Huh! That ties it together nicely.
Have we not said, inner biography?
Well, I wondered why the connection to Hemingway, developing so quickly over two years, and culminating — as I thought — in this series of conversations.
As we said more than once, a biography more or less known, so that what you bring forth can be weighed against the objective evidence. “Objective” in this case meaning the evidence of the senses — history — rather than the “subjective” evidence given you in these talks.
And of course not only Hemingway.
If you will look at the men — all men — to whom you have had deep instinctive sympathy, you will find them of two kinds, or rather you will find your interest to be of two kinds: those whose character fascinated you and those whose work, or lives, fascinated you. Two very different kinds of appeal, and those who transcended the division — Lincoln more than any — had a special place. List them as they occur to you.
Lincoln
John F. Kennedy
Thoreau
Churchill
Emerson
It’s funny, I know there are so many more, but these five above all, and I can’t think of others. The ones that come to mind — Washington, FDR, etc. — are somehow not in the same league regardless of their achievement.
We are talking here of your personal resonance. Notice, you didn’t add Hemingway.
Didn’t think to.
Didn’t add Gurdjieff or Ouspensky or Thomas Merton or Lindberg or many you admire.
No. It would be a long list of non-included. So?
So these five are of particular importance to you for reasons not necessarily accessible to you. Follow that.
Now — to return. Inner biography as a way of creating an alternative measuring stick.
I didn’t think to add Carl Jung!
Don’t obsess on it. We didn’t say draw a complete list even of the most important. You can’t yet see why we wanted the list.
Now, hold this thought, for this is where we will proceed next: It is in inner biography that the experience of how life plays out on many levels can be given. Not theory (for we are providing what theory is helpful) but story will enable you to enable the meaning to slip in.
And we are proceeding toward an understanding of how the various levels of being interact and affect each other — and yet don’t?
We are.
If you say so. All right, it’s seven o’clock, time to close up the shop till next time
Be well.