Saturday, July 10, 2021
3:40 a.m. We proceed from the question of how we live each other’s lives, you said: how our lives are a continuous process of change.
Let’s say, a process of continual interaction, causing and reflecting change. The first thing to bear in mind is that you do not live in isolation, no matter how it may appear.
“You are not alone. You are not alone,” etc.. My transformative message from Gateway.
Well, you aren’t, because you can’t be, because there is no “you” separate from anything. You are an individual made from a community, and part of a community at another level. As above, so below.
I believe your sketch is becoming clear. I am connected to all those individuals who are part of my strands. I am a strand in a larger individual somewhen. Anything that affects them, affects me and is transmitted on by me.
Yes, and every scheme of “the way things are” that has ever been devised will have one or more aspects of reality to it. Individual reincarnation, karma, etc., aren’t wrong concepts, only incomplete.
I never feel like I’m on firm ground in such matters, not knowing the teachings of the various higher religions.
Of course, but your knowing is not your job here. Your faithful transmission of the sense of what you get is all that is justified or required. If “we” get it wrong, does that discredit your work? Does it demonstrate that we do not exist? (Or that you don’t? J)
No, I understand that, and we’ve been over this ground, how many times?
You do not need to worry quite so much about possibly misleading people, or making statements out of ignorance. Given correct intent on your part and on the part of the reader, things straighten out over time. Even mistaken concepts (let alone mistaken single facts) may serve to spark a correct understanding.
So, if in some Sanskrit library there is a more sophisticated understanding than you or we display here, what does that discredit? If you are teaching a child to count, is your teaching invalidated because you are ignorant of number theory? As long as you stay practical, theory will not matter so much; perhaps not at all. Teach the child to count and let it pursue its own number theory if it ever needs to.
Keeping it practical is a safety valve of sorts, isn’t it? What you just said shows me that of course this is my only solid ground: what I have experienced myself. My interpretation may be entirely inaccurate without doing any great harm, for people can draw their own conclusions.
And do, of course, just as you have always done, in a lifetime of reading.
Nor is this the preliminary diversion you think it. We actually dived directly into the subject of change through interaction.
Because, we being all interconnected, understandings pass among us internally as well as externally.
Spell that out, though.
If I learn something, or think it, or experience it, or formulate it or express it – if I deal with a thing in any way – my interaction with it transmits to the strands that are part of me and to the strands I am a part of. That is how we communicate across time and space directly, quite independently of how we communicate within 3D, which is limited to communication via external links such as conversation or writing or any other form of externalizing our thought and emotion.
Yes. Not one method, but two. Not one chain of influence, but two. And of course ultimately this “two” is really one, but for practical purposes, two: intuition and sensory; or non-3D and 3D; or private and public.
Yes, I do see it. I remember as a boy reading of the monks in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, reclaiming swamps, etc. (their external community work that was intrinsic to their community life) but also living lives of prayer which – we were assured – were not wasted although they showed no effect. I think I believed (that is, I felt this was true), while still not understanding how it could be so. How could prayer and contemplation lived in isolation, sometimes in silence, affect anything? The explanation of the “why” did not seem right to me, even though the explanation of “what” did. I didn’t believe that God decided on things depending upon how many people prayed how directly and earnestly – but I could feel that there was something real going on.
And thus you provide an illustration of our earlier point: Even the simplistic and distorted explanation you were given did not prevent you from intuiting the reality.
That’s true. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Your psychological makeup provided you with direct (if not conscious) connection to those monks. What neither you nor they knew, perhaps, still allowed for the passage of knowing among you.
You mean, I didn’t have a conception for direct access between us, and neither did they, but it didn’t matter; the access was there regardless.
That’s right. It is part of the safety valve you have mentioned.
I can see this as already a form of immortality, regardless what happens to us once we are no longer captaining a 3D ship.
Certainly. You, as you exist today, continue to exist as the 10-year-old you continues to exist, for nothing is lost, and nothing exists in suspended animation either. But this is only one way you continue, and, in a way, it is the least dynamic way.
I always wonder why your sentences so often come out like that one, repeating a word in different senses, not as a pun or as a play on words, but merely as an awkwardness of style. Sometimes I find myself doing it.
To some extent, avoiding such awkwardnesses requires attention that is too peripheral to bother with.
You mean (I think) you have enough on your plate to get the idea across, without having to also bother to sculpt a style.
Our native language is “thought,” not English. When you as a strand are cross-communicating in Hindi in a hundred years, you may experience difficulties too.
Interesting thought. Another remnant of the mind-set that assumes you know everything, can do everything. So – this is the least dynamic way we continue to exist?
It is. But we’re not sure it is wise to undertake this in the few minutes that remain. Bullet-points, perhaps:
- Your 3D life continues to exist because these living minutes do not cease to exist when the ever-moving “present moment” clicks on.
- Every moment of 3D time, continuing to exist, exists living, not as a museum or as a fly in amber.
- Every moment is thus susceptible to alteration as whatever it is connected to alters.
- The motive force for change is always the moment that is “living” in “the present.” That is, what you experience as the present moment is a reflection of a particular quality not shared elsewhen.
- That is to say, there is only one mover, even though all moments are alive and are capable of responding. (Indeed, they are not capable of not)
I think you are meaning, there can be only one prime mover, or everything would be chaos, and that prime mover may be experienced as the living present moment.
Yes. Or God.
I see why you were concerned that we might not have enough time! Okay, so I take it we start here, next time.
We do. Bear in mind, we said “may be experienced as” God. We didn’t say, “This is God.”
Very well, I hope we all live long enough to get your explanation. Till then, and thanks as always.