Saturday, November 5, 2022
4:10 a.m. I see that your point yesterday is not quite clear. As Jane Coleman said in an email, the penny still haven’t dropped. Care to take another crack at it?
Focus, then.
Yes. Presence, receptivity, clarity.
On Friday, we in effect looked at why people have such different views of what is real and important. But look back to Thursday’s discussion, which is what Friday’s was taking off from. This was all about the reality of suffering. We know that wasn’t what it was about ostensibly, but it really centered on that. Your suffering, and that of anyone who ever lost someone they loved deeply, personally known to them or not. The suffering of people in general over one event, or over a prolonged process, or over enduring conditions.
That is, for example, a one-time tragedy, or a drawn-out tragedy like a senseless war, or an on-going tragedy like people living blighted lives.
Yes. That is really what is at stake when people consider the reality or otherwise of 3D appearances. Nobody cares whether life’s joys are real, they take them as given. But life’s ills give people something they have to react to, one way or another. You may take good for granted, but you have to take some stance on evil. It is real or not, and if evil is real or not, the question necessarily broadens to, Is life itself real or not. So that’s what we began to look at, starting with, Why is there no unanimity of opinion?
All right, I see that.
There is unanimity of opinion about so little in life! One might say, without exaggeration, that there is none, about anything, because even on the things about which there is widest agreement, still there will be those who dissent. You may disregard that dissent; you can’t wish it away with a wave of your hand.
Thus anything we say will meet dissent. Only those people whose psychological makeup leads them to find comfort in numbers will say to themselves, “X number of other people I respect also believe this; that’s pretty good evidence that it is true.” And even they will have to concede, if pressed, that this is illogical as demonstration of truth, for obviously most people do not believe along with them.
After all, the Flat Earth Society members – at least, many of them – believe sincerely, and perhaps strongly, that established scientific opinion is wrong; that physical evidence is misleading; that most people are acting like sheep in trusting to scientific opinion without independently examining the evidence. Sincerity, individuality, conviction: yet they are wrong, and mainstream opinion is right.
Yet mainstream scientific opinion is wrong, on so many issues. Being wrong is a necessary step in the process of learning what is truer than one had seen. And – crucially – “progress” is not a one-way street. Knowledge does not win victories over ignorance every time. Ground once won may be lost again. And, as we have told you many times, sometimes looking at things from a new starting point will require that some old truths now be recognized to be not as true as they appeared, and some old superstitions may be required to be accepted as truer than they seemed, even if for different reasons than the ones that had led some to uphold them.
Astrology. The mantic arts in general.
Yes. Anything that saw invisible connections that a materialist view could not concede. And similarly chance, coincidence, randomness, disconnection in general: Now they may be seen as more superstition than fact. Yet as we tried to tell you earlier, truth depends more on the context and vector than on its independent existence. It is a process, a reducing valve, not a position to be held as permanent standing ground.
So, someone like Bobby Kennedy, passionately engaged in life, taking it for real, cannot be said to be mistaken. Dealing with the 3D world on its own terms, certainly he affected the shared subjectivity and was affected by it. But that doesn’t mean that’s all there is to be said on the subject. The world remains only somewhat real, but in its own terms, reality is reality. We don’t know how to say it any plainer.
Let me try, then, for I think I get where you are going with this.
Go ahead. Sometimes 3D focuses the awareness that non-3D feels and even knows but cannot easily express. That’s the advantage of connection, of course.
Couldn’t we just say that the reason 3D exists is to focus efforts on the shared subjectivity’s unfinished business, and in order for people to do so, they have to take it seriously? And couldn’t we say that there is also a valid place for those who see through appearances? Both positions, not only one, being necessary?
You touch on a point we have thought we have made, but perhaps not explicitly: The unfinished business of the shared subjectivity is generated not only by 3D events but by things before and beyond 3D. You deal with the results of the vast impersonal forces being filtered into and through 3D conditions.
You’re saying, in effect, “It isn’t all your own fault if the world is such a mess; if it is filled with suffering.
Yes, in effect. But that does not mean, “The non-3D is deliberately torturing you, or even is allowing you to suffer.” For one thing, that view would illegitimately separate non-3D and 3D whereas in fact, as we have been repeating, the two conditions are not separate but are ends of a polarity, seeming more separate than they are because words emphasize separation. It would be closer to the truth to say that the 3D is where reality helps deal with itself.
That doesn’t cut it, but I felt myself freeze up, trying to phrase it.
The ultimate causes of suffering in 3D may stem from other than 3D, but it will be difficult to explore the subject in the face of the way words distort understanding by chopping up unities and lending reality to what are really only concepts.
It comes to me that we will need an image, if we are to get the gestalt of it rather than merely the disassembled pieces.
Probably. Can you furnish one?
Not a very good one, perhaps, but let’s try this. If one is standing in a river, the water comes flowing from some source, and it continues beyond where one stands, going on toward its destination. In a sense we could think of the 3D world as our spot on the river, with the conditions of our life coming to us from elsewhere, and interacting with – affecting – us, and then moving onwards out of sight. Not a perfect image, but perhaps it will do.
Actually it will do nicely, provided one does not unconsciously confuse the image with another process that may seem the same, the passage of time.
Yes, I see that. We do sometimes talk of the river of time.
Perhaps you could think of the 3D world as an airplane, flying through conditions not of its making (except insofar as its choice of direction might be considered to be part of the conditions it encounters). Also not a perfect image, but the two together may help convey the idea.
In either image, you can see that it would be an error to take personally the fact that life entails suffering. It isn’t that somebody wants the suffering to be there (though, as we have said, it is so useful to you). It isn’t as if better management or better design would have obviated the necessity. And it isn’t as if the suffering is meaningless or futile, just because it appears so. But, to grasp this, you need to be able to see that, as we have said, life is only somewhat real. Take 3D life as being nothing more than it appears to be, and you will conclude that it is a terrible mistake, or is the product of someone’s malice, or is a botched process.
I suppose one would conclude that about an internal combustion engine, if one only looked at the explosions and never at the purpose.
Also a fair image.
Today’s theme?
“Invisible connections.”
Yes, I think so too. Thanks as always.