Sunday, May 29, 2016
F: 4:30 a.m. Good morning, Miss Rita. Turning off the Wi-Fi modem at night may be making a difference. I think my sleep is less broken. But then, we live in this electric soup anyway, more so every year. Even when I was a boy in the 40s and 50s, electricity grew by leaps and bounds around us, not to mention radio and television broadcasts. I wonder if anybody has enough data yet to study the long-range effects of this involuntary experiment in electronic immersion. Well, on to other things.
As I thought about our extended sessions of yesterday, at first I thought we had made good progress, then, with time, I thought maybe we made less than at first appeared. But I do think we – or I should say you – are getting there. How well do you think we are doing?
R: Any teacher can tell you, you never know. Things you think you got across leave no sign, and things you say offhand make a deep impression. Or, students who seem unimpacted – inert, practically – turn out years later (as you hear accidentally or fifth-hand) to have had their eyes opened maybe not at the time but later, in a delayed-action effect. There is undoubtedly a secret – maybe even a formula – for conveying knowledge, but nobody knows what it is. You do your best. You care about your students and you try to let them see that you do. But more than that? It is in the lap of the gods.
F: And if the gods stand up?
R: I never knew how to do anything but my best, moment to moment. It got easier once I learned to see life as having no meaningless coincidences.
F: Yeah, it does. [I was agreeing with her that it has none.] So, okay, additions or corrections to the minutes?
R: Not corrections, really, but certainly additions. We haven’t yet addressed the question of difference that is often expressed or experienced as “old souls” or “young souls,” nor the concept of our having “final lives.”
What we have been exploring concentrates our attention on the aspects of existence that clarify when we look at the unifying elements. We should now look at the opposite tendency.
F: I’m not sure that will be clear. How about if we remind people that reality might equally well be described either as one thing, with subdivisions, or as many things, functioning as one?
R: It may be too early for that, but it is part of our understanding, yes. The sentence “we are all one” expresses it well: We are a “we”; we are a “one.” So now let us look more at life in its “we-ness” as we experience it in 3D – and in non-3D, which is less often considered.
The concept of a last life implies of course a life cycle of the soul. It is a cycle independent of the individual chronological lives in 3D, obviously, being far greater than any of them could be. This is another subject we will have to approach slowly, carefully.
F: I’m learning. You’ve seen the difference in patience, as I’ve come to trust your track record and as I’ve formed habits.
R: Yes I have. All right. Where to start? Let’s continue with the hint offered by the comment about Katelyn’s “final life.” We will have to trust the reader to remember the various analogies such as the multiplex-interactive-theaters. Those who cannot keep earlier examples and tendencies in mind will not be able to follow into new ground, for it is only new analogies that provide the mental shorthand to allow limited 3D-time-and-attention limitations to be
F: I get it, but that was getting tangled. You’re meaning, enough shorthand will allow us to cram complicated concepts and relationships into our available memory (to put it into computer terms) so that they may be processed together, rather than being swapped in and out.
R: Your re-phrasing may or may not be clearer; it will depend upon the audience, I suspect. But that is the idea.
F: I’m wondering how in 40 minutes we have only written five pages, and only tippy-toed up to the subject. Where did that time go? I wasn’t reading or doing anything else, but it – went, somehow. And I wasn’t watching the sunrise, either. At 10 after 5, it is only just beginning to think about coming up. So where did the time go? That is, what happened?
R: Rhetorical question?
F: Well, I’d like an answer, if you have one.
R: Sometimes you are “here,” and sometimes not.
F: So what am I doing, sitting like a turned-off robot?
R: Life has many more activities than the consciously directed ones. But let’s not abandon the question of cycles of life larger than any single 3D life.
F: All right. Pretty cryptic, though.
R: Often enough, the choice is between taking a side-trail, perhaps at some length, or refusing comment, or – as an in-between choice – marking the place but declining to divert the attention of the moment.
F: I got it. Okay–
R: The only reliable guide to understanding life is “as above, so below.” But, I recognize, cryptic sayings and laconic adages aren’t necessarily enough to show people how to satisfy their curiosity, so we will continue – only remember, that is the key, now and always. The universe may be considered as a fractal, endlessly repeating its basic pattern at different scales.
F: Huh. Side-trail, no doubt, but for the first time I get a sense of the endless destruction and creation of the 3D. Each [creation] is a different fractal, isn’t it? Somebody is continually creating new living art?
R: Side-trail certainly, but worth your making note of.
F: [And, before we continue, I want to note that this ends journal number 101, begun 2-27, in a project that began 9-6-1966 – nearly 50 years ago.]
So—
R: You must try to bear in mind that in discussing the human experience, we are discussing something unique in the reality. Compound beings differ by nature from unitary beings. It was to enable these differences that 3D was created. We have been through all that, if it can be kept in mind.
But in describing the human experience, it is necessary to describe the environment in which it was shaped – is shaped, for of course the shaping continues –
F: [Did you] Get lost?
R: Well, sometimes sentences tend to go on too long, which impedes clarity. I thought it just as well to stop there before continuing.
F: Okay.
R: The environment is not only the surroundings at any given time. It is also the surroundings past and future, but this is hard to grasp within 3D logic.
F: Yeah, it is a little hard to see how the future can shape the present, let alone the past.
R: If you go back to thinking of a timeline among all other possible timelines, it will be less so. The future is discovered, not created. The past moves out of sight, it is not dissolved. The present is multiple, not single.
F: I know all that, but, true, it is hard to keep in mind.
R: Particularly in the context – or perhaps we should say as the context – of what seems an entirely different subject.
Now, we should pause here, either for the day or not, but at any rate this is a time to pause. Meanwhile, think of Katelyn’s two-year-old’s knowledge of “last life” and its reality “elsewhen,” and remember “as above, so below,” and consider the human as (inherently) the necessary trickster in the world, and, finally, consider that different creatures have different natural lifespans, different qualities of their lives, different natures and purposes – but that ultimately there is only one thing. Think about it, but at a semi-conscious level, and we will take it up whenever we do.
F: Huh. Thanks, Rita. I always like that we go new places with this.
R: You don’t like treading ground that is well-known. Like Daniel Boone, somebody moves in 20 miles away and you are yearning for elbow room.
F: That’s about it. Thanks as always, Rita. Till next time.