Saturday, June 11, 2016
5:40 a.m. Ready to begin again – quite a bit later than usual, it feels like, though it is only 20 to 6 — but I am finding it impossible to keep the trend of the discussion in mind, even when I re-read the previous session.
You needn’t worry about it. That is your surface mind attempting to keep control, to reassure itself that what we get will be “on point,” will “make sense,” will advance the argument. The reason is, it gets worried for my credibility, and hence our credibility via the credibility of the process. It’s trying to make sure I really exist.
Almost makes me laugh. That worry used to be quite prominent, and quite a problem. I thought it was gone. You’re saying it went underground.
I mention it as much for those who will follow your example (and hence may meet some of the same obstacles to communication) as for any other reason. Doubt is always going to be part of the process, overt or unsuspected or lurking in the shadows. Don’t worry about it, and one way to not worry is to be aware of it as a fact of life. Think of worry as part of the price you pay to not fall into Psychic’s Disease.
Now, so much for “what are we?” Remember “what are we,” from a couple of sessions ago? We haven’t given a definitive answer to “what are we,” but enough for our purposes, enough for now. So let’s look at “what is our place in the overall scheme of things?” Surely you can see that the question contains hidden definitions.
Sure. Which “our,” if nothing else.
Exactly. That is the implicit definition that snarls many a discussion, as people slide around between reference points, quite unknowingly, in the same way they do when they discuss God, or “the afterlife” or any subject that cannot be directly apprehended by the sensory apparatus, but only by the intuitive connection that is your link to your non-3D component (which, for the requirements of the discussion, but only for that purpose, we have to treat as if it were something separate).
The “our” in “our place in the overall scheme of things” is not singular but plural, not consistent but very inconsistent as seen from any one point of view, which of course is how anything must be seen at any given time until the subject has been carefully discussed.
That’s practically all you’ve been doing here. It has been “see things from different viewpoints” from day one. Those were your last words in Muddy Tracks, more or less.
For a reason. You might take that section and add a little of it here, since you can do so without trouble.
All right.
[From the part of the Muddy Tracks epilog written by the guys upstairs:
[Reader, during the past few weeks, we have been drumming into Frank’s mind (though he usually thinks he is doing the thinking) that the gift he has to offer to the world, insofar as it is contained in writing, is the unique viewpoint that sees the affairs of “this” world and “the other” world as equally important, equally real. Most choose one or the other. The result of making so false a choice, we suggest, is a crippling unreality. This is the false choice, the wrong turning, if you will, that has crippled your culture. How can one find the most productive road if half the possible choices are unsuspected, if half the landscape is unsuspected?
[We end as we began. There are not two worlds, but one world, not two realities, but one reality containing an infinitude of seeming realities. Not a dream world and a real world, but a world that is a real dream. That is, reality is a dream; the dream is the reality. Same thing, said seemingly differently because of the difference in starting point and emphasis.
[You—we, everyone, everything—are part of one indissoluble reality. Thus everything impinges on, colors, everything else. Nothing can exist in isolation, because there is no isolation to exist in! All is one; separations are illusion. Not that it is a magic trick, or a delusion, but that the appearance of separation masks and blurs an underlying connection. Just as space is not separate, just as time is not separate, but each is considered to be made of separate parcels so that they may be apprehended; so reality in the widest possible sense is not separate, but all one thing.
[Live in that knowledge. Know that you overlook any one facet of reality only at the price of to that extent disregarding what is. “I say, ye are gods.” Of course. How could it be otherwise? Ye are also rocks, and sky, as actors in a movie might be said to be individual actors but might be also said to be “part of” that movie. Is either view of things untrue? Is either view the only valid way to see it?
[We say to you, see things as they are. The only way to do that—since neither the one viewpoint nor the other is the only correct way to describe reality—is to alternate from one to the other, or to overlap them (dealing with the slight resultant confusion and fuzziness), or to see one way, while remembering the other way. Then you will be whole.]
Huh! I had thought I’d quote the last graf and instead I see I have quoted the whole last page. It was all there from the beginning, wasn’t it, unsuspected – or, suspected but a long way from being spelled out.
Pretty amazing, isn’t it?
Very funny, but yes, in a way it is amazing. To have been picking my way across unmarked terrain and then to see that I was following an invisible path all that time is still striking even when not new.
So take heart as we continue.
The “our” may be looked at from the perspective of individual lives, even at its widest focus. That is, you who live your 3D lives at the moment (and who else could we speak to this way?) may define yourselves narrowly (one life) or broadly (one life with many active or inactive “part life” connections) or, really, as “all is one, therefore I am part of everything.” The difference in these definitions is not so much one of relative truth or error, so much as what is the usefulness for the present task, whatever it may be.
Today we will consider “our” to be the unsuspected you beyond “one life with many `past lives’,” but not yet to the indescribable one-with-everything.
Maybe you will, but we have burned half an hour already.
Then we had better proceed, hadn’t we?
As always, start from “as above, so below.” Remembering your obvious experience in the 3D world of your current lifetime, draw the analogy to the larger being of which you are a part. That being is itself composed of many strands; it experiences itself as developing over time (despite the fact that “on the other side there is no time”!); it learns from experience and makes succeeding moves in the wake of previous ones.
Until you have better evidence, I suggest you not give it Godlike attributes. Don’t expect it to be all-knowing, all-seeing, not even all-self-aware. It is to a degree stumbling around in the dark; it is to a degree guided. It is free within the limits of what it was created to be (that is, its composition determines its starting-point, hence its possibilities), and it widens or constricts its possibilities by its choices. In all this, as above, so below.
The main difference between you and the larger being is that it is constrained by the 3D world only indirectly, and you much more directly.
I take that to mean, because it experiences through us, what it experiences has been affected by 3D conditions, but that is the only way it may be seen to be in 3D.
Don’t forget, everybody is in all dimensions. It is entirely in 3D, and entirely in non-3D, because like you (obviously, inevitably) it lives in what Rita is calling the All-D. Just as you in your lives may experience yourselves as predominantly in the 3D or may come to see that your environment is much broader and deeper than that, so with the larger being. It can immerse its consciousness deeply in the 3D or can concentrate on other things. Either way, its existence is unaffected; its awareness of its existence is not.
I am tempted to say, “and so God became man.” That might be how it would look to a 3D being experiencing and trying to record that understanding. Bob Monroe mentioned somewhere that many people had had a hasty experience of what he was then calling the out-of-body world, and many had offered descriptions of what they thought they had experienced and understood.
It should be mentioned – to associate them in people’s consciousness – that Carl Jung, who was not a believer in the accepted sense, nonetheless wrestled with this same question in psychological terms.
Yes, I have wondered about Answer to Job. I was surprised to see him addressing a biblical story from a psychological perspective, not explaining it away, but explaining it as a real record of how God changed! as a result of an encounter with human 3D consciousness.
Worth pursuing, for those whose minds run in that direction. For today, merely remember that your entire 3D-human experience in all its ramification may be considered to be one aspect of a larger being’s experience.
Now, no need to postulate only one larger being for the entire human race – that brings you unthinkingly back to more elementary ideas of God, and does not advance the discussion. And no need, equally, to try to decide about soul groups and subdivisions of humanity into parts of various larger beings. That would bring you back to the days of polytheism, which is an understanding also too primitive and oversimplified to be of use.
So hold the image, as best you can. You, as a 3D being with all the extensions you care to recognize (“past lives,” genealogical antecedents, task companions present and, therefore, also past, and some whose being and yours are instinctively in resonance); and see it as one part of a larger being, leaving all definitions of that larger being for later.
There’s your starting point for next time.