[I apologize but for some reason the site won’t convey italics from the original, as it used to do. Won’t insert extra leading between grafs either. Very annoying. Don’t know why, don’t know how to fix it.]
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Let us consider the celestial kingdom in some detail.
Every time I write “the celestial kingdom” at your behest, I think of China.
Well, we could call it something else, but there isn’t much point, really. Any name will have associations that distract. Whatever we would call it, still we would need to describe a part of the natural order of things in the 3D world that are not to be perceived by the senses, nor by instrumentation, hence are invisible to common sense and to science.
Underlying the physically obvious aspects of the 3D world is the celestial kingdom, the fourth kingdom. We are stressing the multiple layers of discrete but interacting energies that go into the making of a stable environment. The world you live in didn’t just happen, and doesn’t just happen to continue, any more than, say, a subway system just happens, or just happens to continue to operate. Layer upon layer of interlocking function is required to produce and sustain the effect that your 3D vision sees as a solid material world that exists on its own.
You are giving me back Paul Brunton’s vision of how the world exists, only in different detail and assembled in a way he never did.
There is a reason why you didn’t quite finish The Wisdom of the Overself despite learning from it and finding it inspiring. You got what you needed, and sometimes it is important to not get someone’s completed thought. It is much more important that a book or a teacher or a friend or a situation spark you, than that they convert you, and particularly than that they convert you into a disciple.
Nonetheless, he helped enormously.
Yes, he provided logical pathways to connect what you knew intuitively, but not scientifically, to be true. Cite the logical conclusions you derived from Brunton’s thought, without worrying about accurately summarizing what he said. That is, regardless of what he said, tell what you heard.
That’s a very interesting distinction.
Brunton logically analyzed our experience of the world and demonstrated that we can know nothing except what our minds report. What this desk feels like, say, or the pen in my hand, or the hand itself, or the light that lights the page, or the coffee that fuels my awareness – all of it is known to us only second-hand. Even though you may have helped move the desk, and may be relying on it as you use it to hold the book you are writing in, you couldn’t prove it actually existed. All we know is a representation of reality; there is no way to know if it is real in the way it appears, even though in practice we rely on it being there moment by moment.
This seems like playing with words and concepts, but the fact remains, when you look at it closely (I can’t cite Brunton’s reasoning) the physical world cannot be proved to exist outside our own minds. But in that case, where are we? After all, in practice, there it is. The world can’t very well be billions of individually produced illusions that only happen to mesh.
Brunton convinced me that the world as we experience it can only exist in the way we experience it if it is, in effect, continually dreamed up by an overarching unblinking mind that encompasses it all. To posit anything less produces paradoxes and logical fallacies.
He showed why people concluded that
• there is a God; or that
• the world is mind-stuff rather than independent external reality; or that
• the world winks into and out of existence forever; or
• that if God were to forget us for an instant, we would cease to be.
Without subscribing to any of those views, he shows why they came into existence, what they explain and do not explain, and what larger view incorporates them.
In short, nothing is as it seems, but it cannot be meaningless either. We are not what we seem, and neither are our lives meaningless. And that is as much as I can do to show what Brunton’s lifetime’s conclusions meant to me. He carried me by evidence to what I already felt but could not logically demonstrate.
Not more than you wanted, I trust.
No, admirably done. As usual in such cases, you setting it forth as your own thought allowed you greater freedom than you would have felt if you had thought you were conveying our thought.
But I felt you in the background anyway, putting in your oar, helping me make a clear statement.
If one is in good connection with the “unconscious” mind, the non-3D component, one’s functioning is going to be smoother, easier, more reliable, because of just that sort of background facilitation. Your summary provides a concise statement of many assumptions that have been implicit. It helps make conscious connections that until now may have been only semi-conscious, or indeed undreamed of. You – we – are functioning as generator of sparks, remember, not as layer-down of the law.
Brunton’s exploration of what the senses can and cannot establish is essentially without flaw or gap. His further exploration of how “mind is the builder,” to use Edgar Cayce’s words, is equally flawless. And finally, the movement beyond the two pillars will lead to enlightenment any who are ready to enter in. Bear in mind, to become enlightened does not mean “to become an exalted one”; nor “to suddenly know everything,” nor even “to be endlessly wise.” It means, to be in light instead of darkness. It means, to see because the conditions (light) now allow you to see, whereas before, conditions (darkness) prevented you from seeing.
And I get as subtext, just because you become enlightened doesn’t mean all your opinions of things – even of the things you have just experienced as enlightening – are necessarily accurate.
That’s right. There is a distinction to be made between the process of seeing, and what is seen. What is seen has been interpreted, and interpretation is always a subjective thing. So one may become genuinely enlightened and yet remain pig-headedly or absent-mindedly stupid about some things.
That’s a very freeing thought. Thus we may follow someone’s footsteps without needing to believe every word, however convinced we may be of his or her sincerity and intelligence and knowledge.
Ultimately one has only oneself. However, used properly, the tool should be more than adequate for everyday purposes.
Very funny. Is this a pause, then?
It is. Nice work today.
I think it is very interesting – and it is very agreeable to me – that you continually remind us of our possibilities and our limits, both. You’re always saying, “Here’s how it is, only maybe not.”
It would be closer to say that we are always saying, “Depend upon yourselves, but remember that you don’t know everything, and might easily be wrong about any given thing. But, depend upon yourselves.”