History: Somewhat real

Friday, September 6, 2024.

I have been keeping this journal 58 years today.

4:25 a.m. Jon, your fourth point amounts to saying that the 3D world’s history both is and is not real, depending on how you view things, just like the rest of 3D life.

So what do you need me for?

Very funny. I think that was an accurate summary, but it doesn’t give us the ramifications you apparently see. I mean, if what I just said it true, it is tautology.

I think what I am getting at is that you shouldn’t say, “Oh, it is only somewhat real, so who cares?” To do that would be to disrespect the realness by overweighting the somewhat-ness.

All I can say is that I have always been consumed by an interest in history. Long before I began to really understand what I was reading, I was reading it for the excitement and intrinsic interest of it. It has always fascinated me. That doesn’t mean I was as interested in one thing as another, and it certainly doesn’t mean one historian’s writing was as clear or evocative as another’s, but I have never had an instant when I felt about it as I feel of most subjects, which is a mild interest, easily satisfied. I can never get enough of reading history and particularly biography. And I am still continually revising my views as I learn more.

So you might ask yourself, Why? You do have other interests, and a few of them are pretty deep – psychology, certainly – but they are more spasmodic than constant. Why history?

I take it for granted that this is illustration of something broader than my own fascinating life.

Why should your biography be less interesting, less instructive to others, than you have found the biographies of uncounted others? But yes, it is to serve a wider point. Your life many serve as an example of something universally true but not widely recognized.

What history is to you, innumerable other subjects are to others. To find a lifelong fascination in the study of chemistry or the practice of gardening or the honing of an athletic or mental skill is the same in one vital aspect, which is: It is a person taking the 3D world seriously. Even the study and practice of the occult is taking 3D seriously.

As so often, a simple statement but it seems new to me.

It’s just that you haven’t thought to look at it that way. Emerson was a minister before he became a writer and lecturer. All the Transcendental Idealists had their vision squarely in the non-3D world, you could say, but they were doing so from a very firm 3D platform, taken for granted, but as essential as gravity.

It is only the 3D/non-3D framework you are in – we are in – that gives anybody a place to stand. It, and therefore we, are somewhat real, but that’s a long way from not real, perhaps even farther than from fully real.

So we should be careful not to let our thoughts “think it away.”

Think it away, if you want to – but then you’re still going to get hungry, or tired, or sick, or elated, or depressed. To really see the 3D world as illusion, you would have to play pretend, because you always have your body to remind you, “Hey, are you listening? You’re still here.”

It is a balance, and everybody strikes the balance differently. On one end, people try to think the world away; on the other end, they accept the world as being as it appears. As usual, everybody is somewhat right, and most people are in the middle between the extremes of the polarity.

Now, this has ramifications that may not be immediately obvious. If you will think of this without forgetting other things you know, such as All Is One, and No Accidents, you will see that everything in your life contributes to your views, to your experiences, to your potential.

Get in a bad mood? It’s going to affect your view of the world, for however long it lasts. That’s true of a good mood, too.

Get sick? Endure a lasting condition? Suffer a temporary or permanent disability? Enjoy a particular gift of exuberant vitality? It all affects how you see the world.

Does your character (put it) match your circumstances only badly? Or, particularly well? You won’t be able to avoid drawing conclusions, even behind your own back.

So the result is a world filled with people drawing different conclusions at different times, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, saying “drawing conclusions” is too strong; it is more like being forced to conclusions. Not only is everybody distinct, everybody differs from one time to another, and frequently doesn’t notice any fluctuation.

So does this point amount to saying, our life interests help remind us to take the world seriously?

Ideally it would say, take the 3D/non-3D world seriously, but also remember that there is a deeper reality beyond it, and you belong to that reality too, of course.

Of course?

You can’t avoid living in all dimensions. You may not realize you’re doing it, but you do.

I take it that the reason for saying it is to clarify the relations between 3D/non-3D on one hand, and the deeper reality.

Yes. People have a tendency to divide the world between “physical” and “spiritual,” as if they were different things. Your guys used 3D and non-3D as a way of keeping the two ends of the polarity from flying apart in your mind, but now we need to go the next step and remind ourselves that 3D and non-3D are part of the same system – the concept of non-3D would make no sense without reference to 3D – and so it becomes 3D/non-3D versus the wider, deeper, reality..

For which we will need to come up with a name?

People have been naming it for a long time. Names often are more nuisance than assistance, as you know. For the moment, “deeper reality” will do.

There was more in this point than I had thought.

It would have been a waste of time, if there weren’t!

True.

And there is one thing more to say. The history means something. It is a record of where you all have been. I don’t mean recorded history; that is always going to be distorted because from one point of view (or even from several; it will never be from all). I mean, the history itself is where you come from. It is what you are that is unknown to yourself. If you were a tree, it would be your roots. As such, it is full of instructive clues.

I almost get it: You are connecting it with psychoanalysis.

I am comparing studying your history to studying your emotional reaction to a given moment. If your emotion is the interface between inner and outer, well, it was so before, too. You could look at history as a frozen picture of past reactions, and that will help you triangulate hidden parts of yourself, if you wish it to.

And that’s enough of this point.

All I can say is what I always say: Thanks, and looing forward to more.