Tuesday, July 27, 2021
1:40 a.m. Okay, so I gather we change gears today, or take another tack, and round out the picture a bit.
That is the plan, but of course the reality may prove to be different. We’ll see.
What we have been tracing is what you/we look like in our “soul” aspect. Now we turn to our “spirit” aspect, which is no less true and is radically different.
I go back to Peter Novak’s book, The Division of Consciousness, that I found so illuminating. And he, of course, was not inventing concepts but was calling our attention to them; he pulled them directly from scripture, among other sources. But I quail at the idea of reproducing the argument. I hope you have in mind an easier approach.
Just as we use Nietzsche or Jung or Emerson or Ouspensky not as monuments or as authorities but as the sources of sparks, so we can use Novak, and you. We remind you, we are not in the persuasion business, but in the travel-alarm business. Thus we can dispense with lengthy passages of logic and exposition. Those are other people’s gifts, not yours, and to write pieces as long and carefully put together as Paul Brunton’s pieces would not only be beyond you, it would be pointless, as people wouldn’t read them.
You prefer short, sweet, and to the point, even if exposition requires years of work.
You jest, but it is true enough. Our way of proceeding allows people to hop on to the moving train; they don’t need to have gotten on at the station or miss the train.
Okay, so, bite-sized: Soul and spirit, their differences and possibilities.
No, not quite. We can do it far more smoothly.
- The soul is you considered entirely in relation to matter and time. It involves connections across time and within time. It involves emotional consequences. It encompasses a good amount of slippage, as people work largely unconsciously.
- The spirit is you considered in your immortal unfettered aspect, unfettered by 3D considerations, unrestricted by much of what is called “human” life.
- You are both: soul and spirit. It is the alliance of the two – or, let’s say, the convergence of the two – that is represented by the peculiar qualities of the living-present moment.
That third point is not clear to me.
No. It is a new thought, not previously offered.
Bear in mind, a continual necessity is the interleaving of schemes of things previously held separately. That is where the insights come, when suddenly you see two things intermeshing that until then you had seen only as disconnected bits. So, you have thought of soul and spirit, and then thought of them somehow coexisting in a 3D body. You have also thought of time as being of two natures: the living-present-moment, and the – shall we call them the fossilized moments? – that are real and are existent but are not that living-present moment.
Now consider both concepts together, and see how it looks.
- Within 3D, there is the soul, enmeshed in relationships, and there is an endless succession of moments that are briefly (instantly) enlivened by that living-present-moment-ness, then retreat into relative silence and immobility.
- Outside of 3D, there is the spirit, which famously blows where it wants to. Unlike the soul, it is not enmeshed in relationship any more than it is enmeshed in time. And it is always in freedom, always in consciousness, always without restriction.
- Yet you – we! – are both. Is it any wonder that you sometimes feel torn? Feel of 3D that “this is not my home”? Feel of non-3D that it is heartless or at least callous, unfeeling of 3D pain and not understanding of 3D restrictions?
- Note, we are not saying that these feelings are accurate or are absolute, but we do say that they spring naturally from our being two things at once, spirit and soul.
- It may be obvious that a soul can only originate in 3D conditions. It may be less obvious – but is no less true – that the soul alone, if it could exist alone, would have no independent place to stand. It would have no individuality in the way you experience it, and hence would not have its community aspect either. (How can a string of zeros add up to anything but zero? But every soul is a digit, and no matter what various digits add up to, they do add up.)
I think your analogy will lose some people. I get that you are saying that soul without spirit (if such a thing could exist) would have no individuality, and so in its interactions with strands there would be no complication, no complexification, no creation through living in 3D conditions.
That is what we meant to convey, and thought we did convey.
Perhaps you did. It isn’t always easy to tell. So, this ties into time – how?
Very simply – once you remember that time is no more something “out there” than is matter. You see?
Oh!
As we said, simple.
Yes, but not something we would necessarily think of.
Time is as subjective as space, just as matter and energy are as subjective as thought. When you remember the sense in which “Life is but a dream,” you remember to look at things differently. “Soul” is no more material than “spirit,” because “material” is not what it appears to be. So, looking at life as projected from a deeper reality, what do you see?
Well, I don’t know. Let’s feel our way into it. We know that what looks like “external” and “material” are actually part of the shared subjectivity: what we might call our own unrealized elements, as mingled among those of all the rest of the world.
Yes, and your “internal” life?
It feels autonomous, and yet we realize that it is mostly hidden from us. Our consciousness results from extensive pre-conscious filtering that prevents us from seeing or thinking or suspecting many alternate pieces of reality.
And do you suppose that spirit operates under these same rules?
Hmm. I don’t see how it could be constrained, but I don’t see how it could be conscious of everything, which would seem to be the only alternative position.
So you think it is an either/or? Either the soul’s much-conditioned consciousness, or the spirit’s free unfettered omniscience? No room for intermediate positions?
I suppose we are the intermediate position.
Very good, let’s resume there next time.
All right. Our thanks for all this, as always.