Suicide, evil, and 3D life in context

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

5 a.m. I am asked to ask you to say more about suicide.

As we said, though, it is a different subject. Yesterday we were talking about how you can choose your attitude toward what happens to you. We mentioned suicide in passing only to differentiate a decision to die from decisions on how to face life. They seem like the same thing, but they are radically different, you see, being aimed in opposite directions.

As you say that, I can sort of see it, but not quite, not yet.

Why is it not clear? One is a decision on how to live, the other is a decision on whether to live.

When you put it that way, it is clearer.

No one who wishes to live, deliberately chooses not to, but sometimes circumstances makes it impossible to continue. But this is a complicated subject. Even in what we first said, things like “who wishes to” need to be defined.

Are you reluctant to discuss the subject?

Reluctant to divert our discussion in that direction, yes. Our preference is to say merely that those who do not kill themselves should avoid criticizing those who do, on the usual grounds that no one really is in a position to judge anyone else’s life. But as to discussing the circumstances that bring people to do it, this is not the time or the place, as people say.

Because a discussion would not be useful?

Let’s say, because it would not be as useful, anyway.

I’ll take your word for it. Then, what do you have in mind to talk about?

Let’s return to the question of evil in the 3D world, because it is an important and slippery subject. To detour into the subject of life-weariness was natural, but to then proceed into discussing the circumstances that lead some to end their 3D existence would distract from real work.

“Real work” being, mastering the concepts that will help us understand.

Correct. What else are we doing here but mastering concepts that help deal with your lives?

• 3D life is part of and only part of life.
• You as 3D beings are part of and only part of your greater selves.
• Those selves, in turn, are only part of larger selves, in ways we have glanced at but not spelled out (nor will we here). Only, “as above, so below.”

Therefore, to understand 3D life, it is essential that we study it not as if it were a thing in itself, but as it is, a thing that is part of a greater thing. It does not begin with birth nor end at death.

This is so fundamental! One might describe a flower in infinite detail and with great precision, and understand it in isolation quite well – but if it is a flower needing pollination, and you try to describe it without mentioning air flow, and insects, and other means of pollination that all involve extension beyond the narrow definition of the flower, you will understand it only in an artificial isolation that never can exist. In this way, one sees and does not see, understands and yet distorts, sees mechanism and does not see – renders invisible, in fact – meaning.

That is said very clearly.

You will find that not everyone agrees with you [about that], because it depends partly upon the background from which one views it. But we know that you do take our essential point, which is that nothing studied in isolation is studied as it is, but only as it appears to be. Not that there is any reason not to study things in detail, but that to study them in detail is to distort your understanding unless you remember while studying them in detail, that they are intrinsically and not only incidentally part of a greater whole.

But that in turn leads to saying that “all is one,” which is true but not particularly helpful.

No, you are missing the point, a bit. Study detail but study that detail in context, not in isolation.

And I was about to ask how that could be done, and I remembered Rita’s “Sometimes to understand A you must understand B, but to understand B you must understand A.” So we may have to study something in isolation in order to get the detailed understanding, but we cannot stop at a detailed understanding of a unit as if the unit were not part of something greater, and less.

Remembering, when you can, that words like “unit” are themselves imprecise, if necessary.

I remember that at some time you gave us an elaborate discussion of environment, and pointed out that air can exist very nicely without those who breathe it, but not vice-versa, and therefore air-breathers might be described as a subset of air, not the other way around. .

That is a rough paraphrase, but essentially, yes. How could you explain human 3D beings without realizing that they are entirely dependent upon an atmosphere to breathe? Even their artificial equivalents like scuba gear merely show it.

And your analogy is our dependence upon the non-3D, or anyway the greater All-D environment.

While that is true as well, here we are looking at your dependence upon your larger non-3D components, which may properly be seen as your real self of which your 3D self is a part. In other words, the non-3D self can and does exist without the 3D self; the 3D self cannot exist without the non-3D self. This being so, what price materialism. when it comes to seeing things straight?

• As your non-3D functions beyond 3D, so does it function in a non-3D environment.
• As you (considered as a 3D being) function in 3D, so you function in a 3D environment.
• It follows that non-3D forces, like non-3D beings, function within 3D, partly or mostly or sometimes entirely unseen and certainly not seen in true perspective.

That may require a little fleshing out, no pun intended.

It is simple enough. The 3D is entirely dependent for its existence upon the larger All-D of which it is a part. So much is clear, is it not? Therefore, it can never be understood correctly as a thing in itself unless it is remembered that as “a thing in itself” it is also part of something greater (and less). And thus, life. You cannot understand physical 3D life if you persist in seeing it as if it were only what can be explained in 3D terms. To try to do so leaves everything trailing off into mystery. Hence you get what someone called diseased questions, like “How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?”

• What existed before time? What will exist after time ends?
• What is beyond the end of the universe (meaning, beyond physical reality)?

I thought you were going to give us a list of diseased questions.

So did we, but we reconsidered. That would lead down a different rabbit hold. Let’s finish with this one.

Finish? It feels like we have still barely begun.

If this were a logical exposition, attempting proofs, that would be so. As a billboard, a spark-generator, less so. The point here is that to discuss vast impersonal forces, we must do so in two ways at once, which is not so easy: in isolation so that we may describe them carefully, and in context so that the inevitable distortion caused by examination in isolation may be corrected. But this is true of any subject. At any rate, that is the direction we are going.

“And more next time.”

Correct, and we will see you then. Our thanks for the attention of any who read this.

And ours to you, of course.