Special, like everybody else

Sunday, September 16, 2018

3 a.m. All right, I’m working on the assumption that as usual what you tell me has wider application than me alone. The purely personal and the “personal but meant for others as well” are two different things, and I think I’ve learned to distinguish the two, over the years. So – Joseph and Bertram and Frank as three simultaneous manifestations of one thing, manifesting in different times and places, but, simultaneous.

This needn’t be a big stumbling-block, because it is a distinction not so much aggravated by the difficulties of language – that is, expressing something in a medium designed to express very different understandings – as by a set of assumptions. And we have been working at undermining those assumptions right along. When we say “we,” we don’t mean merely those who connect with you in particular. It is a message being delivered in many ways, places, and times.

At one level, time is traversed sequentially and – as we have said – must be traveled in order. You can’t tear down the pyramids before they have been built. Common sense, after all. On another level, you have access to all times, and they are all going on continuously, are all alive, are all current. The first experience of time is like the hands of a clock; the second is like the face of the dial. Or, another way to say it, the one is like the part of the path you are walking on, the other is like the path itself as it extends past and forward. The path in its entirety exists; your particular place on it is all you know of it directly, but the path exists no matter where you step.

(You mustn’t allow yourselves to be distracted by the difficulties that can arise by taking that paragraph too literally, too mechanistically. It is mean to illustrate a concept, not to imply there is “a” path, etc.)

Now if all times are equally alive, if everything that exists ever exists now, and if everything that exists is part of everything that is – surely you can see that your possibilities are much greater than they appear to those who think that times are separate, individuals are separate, and, in fact, that the appearances of separation in space and time as appears in 3D are reality.

Quite a sentence. You do that sometimes, I notice, when you are reluctant to break up a complex of ideas.

We are aware – sometimes more than other times – of the difficulty, for minds functioning in 3D, of holding together what look like disconnected pieces. We do what we can to hold the pieces together for you, even if sometimes it results in awkward construction.

And I am aware that what you do is sometimes as difficult on your end as comprehension can be on our end.

If it were not for the intuitive spark to jump the gap, communication would scarcely be possible, even though your minds are as much in non-3D as ours.

Now, the point of this is that all times are equally alive because the world is mental and not physical. That is the point of the Brunton books, is it not? And all of you are part of each other, hence part of us, because after all there is only one thing, which is everything. And, finally, we remind you, in saying that one thing manifested in three people, we explicitly pointed out that this was a simplified example, that ignored all manner of cross-connections.

So this is merely to remind you that those cross-connections exist and must exist.

I’m getting what you are wanting to get across, but I don’t quite know why you are having a problem expressing it. Oh, because it is a general concept and you fear its losing impact in specifics?

Not exactly. State it and we will comment.

What I get is that Bertram-Joseph-Frank is not something special, but merely an instance, and you don’t want people thinking it is more than it is. It’s another case of, “You’re special, just like everyone else.”

The difficulty is exactly there. You are special; you are like everyone else in being special, though everyone’s special-ness is different. So on the one hand it is important not to succumb to false or exaggerated humility, and on the other hand it is equally important not to succumb to psychic inflation. And compounding this simple problem of balance is explaining it to others at the same time.

Because the others are prone to forget that what they are reading applies to themselves as well, only in ways not specified in this particular example.

Or in any particular example, yes. Any example is necessarily going to be specifically about someone else’s situation, and only generally or by inference about their own.

Hmm, so where are we?

Your semi-public life is being used as an example – something more personal than an abstraction, but less detailed than you live it –

And?

Well, the more you, Frank, loosen the reins of imagination so that you live the life you can lead, the more clear (by the power of example) it is to others what they may do, which is the point, of course.

“Of course” meaning, I take it, that otherwise we could do this in private.

Yes. Your particular life is of interest mainly insofar as you give glimpses into subtle processes that go on in everyone’s life, and possibilities that are inherent in everyone’s life. But they are not you, any more than you are Colin Wilson or he was Shaw, etc.

That was Colin’s gift to the world, wasn’t it? He was pretty shameless about letting us see his explorations.

Not like you! But yes, he let you think alongside him. only of course that can’t really be done, because no two people bring the same background to what they read. Still, he struck sparks.

That, he did.

Now, anyone whose mind leads them to pay attention to your explorations is along for a reason, obviously. What that reason is will not be known to you (Frank) and why need it be? But it won’t be obvious to them either, because they will come to it only by living it. That is, living with a thought or an emotion or an experience changes you, and the change is part of the effect.

Third-tier effects can’t be predicted from first-tier stimuli, I guess you mean.

We wouldn’t have put it that way, but, true enough.

The ideal result is for one person’s words to throw the spark that lets another person catch fire. You kepi reading Colin Wilson all those years because he encouraged you to hope for something that was otherwise too good to be true. His written words threw sparks, and if you did not catch fire, at least you smoldered, and the spark did not quite go out. You may be doing that for others, and they for others yet. There is no rule that says that you or anyone else has to know the effects you help produce. Indeed, almost the opposite: You can’t know, needn’t know, maybe even are better off not knowing.

Speaking of smoldering, this session feels to me like that. You are saying something and not quite saying it clearly enough to produce a kindling effect; instead, we see a smothered smoking coughing.

Then try this. “Have you not heard it said, ye are gods?”

[That one stunned me. I must have sat for several minutes.]

I can see that’s it for today. Thank you for your continuing efforts to wake us up.