Thursday, January 27, 2022
5:20 a.m. Yesterday you promised a word on two topics you didn’t get to. One was on the individual v. the collective in 3D and non-3D; the other was on the state of the body that did not depend upon mental states. You care to deal with either or both of these today?
Why not? Let’s look at the former topic and see where we wind up.
Bearing in mind that “as above, so below” is not restricted to considerations of size, but refers to the fact that structures tend to repeat, to echo, in various situations, let’s look at ways in which non-3D echoes 3D, and vice versa, that may not be obvious. One example is the question of individuality and collectivity.
In 3D, as we have said, you are individual to the extent that you are responsible for your day-to-day life physically. You don’t rely on a collective consciousness to keep you safe when you re crossing a busy street; collectives don’t feed you and provide your body rest; you do not navigate your way through life by ceding control to some undefined community.
However, that said, it remains true that you as individual are a community, learning to function as one. Your thoughts, your emotions, your decisions as to who and what you want to be are community decisions just as much as they are individual. That is, your life’s individuality or its community composition is as much a question of viewpoint as it is anything else.
I hadn’t set my switches. Though that came through easily enough, I’m not sure it was particularly clear. Did it say what you wanted it to say?
Let’s see if bullets will do it. What we want to get across is a simple point, but it may require a certain gymnastic approach before the idea becomes plain. (For some, of course, it will be painfully obvious immediately. This is not because they are smarter than those who have to struggle to get it: It is because the position they occupy happens to be close to what we will set out. Another exposition, a different topic, may find them struggling because they begin from a very different view, while those who struggle with this one may find that other one self-evident.)
In 3D:
- Communities (strands) associate to cohabit one body and form one mind.
- That habit of operating as one moves from being an “as if” to being a reality (the soul becomes permanent), or it does not.
- Nonetheless, that individual, temporary or permanent, is never a unit in the sense of being isolated. It always extends beyond any way it can be defined. It always depends upon others for its continued existence, and it cannot help influencing and being influenced.
- Depending upon where in the chain of being one is, one’s individual responsibility is greater or less, as we have said. Water has no individuality, nor does rock, or gas. Plants have more, animals more than that, humans more than that, and so on. The greater the external ability (and responsibility), the greater the individuality, in order to use those abilities and meet those responsibilities.
Now relate this to non-3D, remembering that 3D and non-3D shade into one another. Your minds, we have told you many times, exist in non-3D and express in 3D primarily through your body: brain, nervous system, and other physical receptors of non-physical impulses.
I get your point. Non-3D – at least, insofar as it relates to us in 3D, which is what we are talking about – reflects those characteristics.
It does. So when you come to communicate with the non-3D, you do not meet the all-knowing mind you once expected, nor the all-one-thing, the monolithic unity, that implied. You meet individuals who are also communities and part of communities. You meet diversity and discord and cooperation and even mutual incomprehension, though you are less likely to experience the latter, mostly because you yourselves are too pointed to extend simultaneously to two points that do not understand each other.
This all seems to me to be a little more important than merely a side-note.
Well, it is, for those who don’t already know it. As we said, for some this will be self-evident, for some it will be a major revelation, and everyone else will be somewhere in between.
Now, this subject extends to many others, as is always the case.
Yes, I can hear you (so to speak) trying to decide whether to continue.
Questions would help. Let’s wait and see if anyone poses any.
Okay. What about the other question, then, the physical states not dependent upon the mental states.
This was offered merely as a reminder not to let even a valid concept take over to such an extent that it becomes an absolute. It is true that mind influences matter. It is true that your health is a ratio of physical and mental factors, as we said. But it is not true – not to any practical degree, anyway – that every little thing has deep significance. (There is a sense in which, in fact, that is true, but for the moment we prefer to remain at a practical, more superficial, level.)
Not every splinter in a finger symbolizes a psychic fact, you mean.
Well, let’s say that for practical purposes, many things happen that can be adequately explained in their own terms. It is always possible to examine events more profoundly or less so, but it is not always worthwhile to examine a superficial phenomenon in depth.
Odd advice, considering the source.
No, not at all. We always strive to be practical. If you want to be looking more deeply into things, there’s no reason not to, but you don’t always need to be doing it, nor will it always prove enlightening.
It’s funny, I just overheard you deciding to change your approach. “Overheard” not meant literally, of course.
Well, we realized, the best way to illustrate this simple point is by analogy. Just as you are both individual and community, so your body is both self-sufficient and interdependent. That is, it functions on its own and it also functions as a reflection and a cause of non-3D interaction. It does not necessarily need to ask for assistance in digesting its food; at the same time, sometimes its processes reflect larger or let’s say subtler realities. Again, a simple point.
Very well. Today’s theme, I suppose, is “individual v. community.”
Or perhaps “3D and non-3D analogies.” Your choice.
Thanks as ever.