Year: 2025

I’d like to get something straight before we go on any farther. I get a firm idea of what I’m being told, but other people reading the same words get another idea that is clearly different, and, to my mind, confused. Is it my job to rephrase your words to make them clearer in such cases, or is it every man for himself, interpreting them, or what? I mean, it’s one thing when I bring through something that is susceptible to more than one interpretation in my view, but I think it is quite another when it seems clear to me and is read differently by others. On the one hand we don’t need a pope. On the other hand we don’t want to be putting things to a vote. My question amounts to this: When I, as scribe, feel that others are misinterpreting what came to me essence to essence, what can we reliably do to clean up the confusion? If we say, “Ask you,” well, that just comes back in the same hole we went out. And of course, here I am, asking you.

And here – as, ironically, you well know – you see the dilemma faced by any people attempting to bring information through. Any body of information must be conveyed through human instruments. The transmission, the reception, the process of assimilation, the process of mutual understanding – all the steps in the process are subject to the difficulties of communication among people who are having to rely partly on sensory data, partly on communication mind-to-mind that does not depend on data, and partly on each mind’s prepared reception.

Oh, I understand the problem, all right! But what is the indicated solution?

If we understand you correctly (this is sarcasm, you understand), you are asking how you can overcome the difficulties that caused the Protestant revolution, the controversies over heresy before that, wars between different religions, hostility between religions and secular orientations, wars within the scientific and mental worlds between, again, orthodoxy and heresy –

I get the point. But in practical terms?

You know the answer. You quote it every so often.

“You do the best you can.”

What else is there? As misunderstandings arise, you clarify your prior statements. But process and result are two different things, in all forms of cooperative thought. You can do your best to clarify. You can’t depend upon others seeing it your way.

Seems to me we are providing people with a lot of opportunities to mislead themselves – and to be misled by others.

We are. That is true whenever one brings any information through. But the alternative is silence, and the corrective is always at hand: It is for each person to wrestle with the material and make of it what s/he can, remembering that vehemence is no proof of truth (and is often an indication of suppressed doubt) and that sincerity of purpose combined with humility will lead you right, over time.

—

This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

 

You are not rational beings interrupted by occasional (or even frequent, or even continual) emotional forces. You are compound beings living your entire life as conduits for forces that flow through you, you doing what you can to channel and direct them. That is not the picture [English philosopher] John Locke would paint of humans. Nor behaviorist B.F. Skinner. But equally it is not the point of view of Freud and Jung and those who accompanied and followed them. They recognized the role of passion in the human, but they assumed that the human occupied a detached place that was affected by the emotions and what they knew as the problems of the person. They did not necessarily see that in any person’s life the central fact is that the 3D individual is a conduit of forces from beyond. They tended to see the 3D individual as a separate unit affected by these forces. We have repeated this now, several times. We wonder: Have any of you actually heard it?

Your physically separate and seemingly independent life accustoms you to thinking your mental life equally separate, and your civilization accustoms you to seeing your emotional life as an offshoot of your mental life, which is ridiculous but persuasive because habitual.

You know, I think that for the first time I understand why the metaphysical types and the religious types can not be made to take each other seriously!

Not to mention the scientific types, the “hard-headed realist” types and especially the worshipper of an idea of the mind as an ideal. Go ahead.

It is not just a temperamental difference, nor a matter of prejudice, nor of strongly held opinion, though that is how I have usually seen it (on either side). They aren’t using the same definitions!

They do not consider the same forces, no. They define the world differently.

And that is a matter not of opinions, but of orientation. Religious thought begins by seeing humans as living in a torrent of forces, call them, that often manifest as emotion or even as persistent non-rational motivators. Religious thought proceeds from a recognition that we as individuals are not the basic unit we think ourselves to be, but are conduits of vast inhuman forces that they perhaps personify as God or Devil, or perhaps see merely as illusion. [I was thinking of Buddhism, here.] For those who do not see life in this way, religious thought seems nonsensical, superstitious. And you can see that psychotherapy is halfway toward religious thought, only it persists (as far as I know) in thinking the individual the unit it seems to be, rather than the construct and community it also is.

All right, now you, and at least some of your readers, will have made the adjustment. You will find life looks differently, only – look close to hand, don’t succumb to the temptation to look only (or primarily) at others, or at society at large. Look to your own lives: What else do you know so well? What else can you know “essence to essence,” so to speak?

This is very interesting. With that one fundamental insight, we can proceed beyond futile arguments about the track record of organized religions, and about points of dogma, and about most of the things that prevent discussion on sympathetic grounds. Once realize that the great divide is between those who think us independent units mostly motivated by reason and those who see us as conduits of vast impersonal forces, and lots of things clear up, including where (relative to that divide) we ourselves belong.

Bearing in mind, of course, that this is one way to divide the world. It is useful at any given moment, but remember that the cake may be sliced in many different directions, to yield different, equally valid, divisions. But this particular division should prove particularly useful just at the moment. This is a logical place to pause, and an opportunity for people to examine the nature of their lives to see if they agree with what has been said.

—

This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

 

Your 3D consciousness considered by itself has room to grow. What you are aware of can expand, depending upon willingness and circumstance.

Doesn’t it amount to saying, we can become aware of more of the content of our entire mind, rather than only the 3D-specific parts of it that we always have?

In a sense, yes. But there is more to it than that: willingness, circumstance. Willingness means you have to be able to deal with it, and you have to be able to do the dealing. Circumstance means, not all times are equally propitious. Carpe diem. Those who are willing to expand their everyday-life consciousness will find the propitious circumstances. Your greater mind, your All-D mind, call it, will always bring you what you need when you are able to make use of it. But not every opportunity is taken. You can lead a 3D mind to water, but you can’t make it drink. Nothing tragic about that, it’s just the way things are in 3D.

However, the counterbalancing factor is propitious times. Sometimes you have to wait. That’s a reason to use your opportunities when they become obvious to you, lest you miss the opportune moment and are forced by circumstance to wait. Again, it isn’t a tragedy, but it can be inconvenient. The world will bring you what you want, and you can choose the reality you want to experience, but the 3D reality of the lives you are all living at the moment ought to tell you that it isn’t that simple.

As always, you can’t get anything from the material (or from anything, really) if you merely accept it but don’t relate it to what you know by living it. So don’t just say, “Oh, yeah, create your own reality, I know all that, I don’t have any problem with this” – apply it! Ask yourselves, if it is true, why does my life contain what I don’t want as well as what I do? If it is true, how can what I live be true as well? And don’t settle for an evasion, an easy answer that answers only by explaining things away, but wrestle with it.

If you find it easy, you aren’t wrestling with it. That’s a pretty flat statement, but we’ll stand by it at least for now. You have to really look, to really see what it is you believe, and if you find that you believe two things that seem to contradict each other, you need to see if you can work out a sense in which they do not. The more sincere effort you expend, naturally the better the prospects for a worthwhile outcome.

—

This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

 

[Epilogue to “Only Somewhat Real”]

Nathaniel – or whatever his name is – and I have worked hard to present a different way of seeing the world. I think it’s coherent, it explains a lot, and it is endlessly hopeful in its implications. But is it true?

Can it be true that this 3D life that seems so real to us is only somewhat real?

Is it a fair description of our lives, to say we’re always doing improv?

It may ring true, that we are creators by nature. Does it also ring true that our real work is to create ourselves?

Vast impersonal forces flow through us, animate us, and are deflected or are redirected to some degree by our decisions. Does this ring true to you?

We are all interconnected; thus in a sense we are all part of one thing. True? False? Debatable?

We are called to create ourself through our choices. Thus it may be said that we are the center of the world. Everyone else is called, equally, to create themselves by their choices. Thus it may be said that none of us is the center of the world. Nathaniel holds that both statements are true, that it’s all in how you look at it.

Free will is a given. (Choice without free will would be a pretense, a farce.) Predestination is a given. (Wherever we find ourselves, we are at the end of a long chain of cause and effect that could have led nowhere else.) Nathaniel says both are true, not just one. Do you know any way to reconcile the two other than Nathaniel’s?

These are big questions, big statements. The book is full of big questions, big statements. Is it safe, is it wise, either to reject them out of hand or to accept them without examination?

In short: What are you doing to do now?

Everything in this book may be true – I hope it is – but you won’t know until you test it for yourself. Knowing can’t be passed on through words or even by example. It must be lived. Until you live it, it is only hearsay to you.

It is true, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but that step begins with the decision to take the step. Until you decide to take that step, you aren’t on a journey, you’re toying with the idea of taking a journey. Similarly, sometimes you have begun a journey and you decide to pause. Nothing wrong with that. Choice is what it’s all about, after all.

But when you’re ready to start, or ready to resume, the things Nathaniel has given us in this book are things you might wish to test, so see if they will bear your weight.

Whether you are just beginning, or beginning again after a pause, or reading this while already traveling,  I wish you a productive journey. After all, I have a vested interest: Your success is mine, as mine is yours. It is very true, we’re all in this together.

—

From “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

 

Look at it this way. Daniel Boone may have been a respected member of his community in North Carolina, but what could his townsmen have told him about Kentucky? His role was to pursue the rumors of the Kentucky wilderness and bring them back to the Yadkin valley. Pioneers don’t use maps; they don’t even necessarily make maps. They cause them to be drawn.

I take it all the Daniel Boone stuff is out of my memory, not yours.

The process is not different, it is the character of the relationship.

I see, So you are going to give us rumors of Kentucky.

In a sense, yes. Only, the fewer your expectations, even in analogy, the easier the task.

Keep firmly in mind the larger theme: Why is 3D life only “somewhat” real? But bear in mind that this is going to bring you a long way seemingly afield, and will involve what seem to be extraneous matters, and contradictions, before we can bring in enough context to allow you to see things sufficiently differently. Even more so than in your work with Rita in which she sketched the variables around death and rebirth, we need to associate many things in your mind that you have never consciously or coherently associated. Much of what you need to know you do know, only you don’t know you know it, or you know it only in a seemingly unrelated context, or you know it distorted by other people’s reports.

While writing that, I had the thought, “You’re finding it easier to speak,” and then I had a flash of “You’ve connected to Rita somehow and learned how to do it,” though I don’t think that’s quite right. But, something has changed.

There are others in the mental world, call it, besides Rita, you know. But your intuition was mostly correct.

You are somehow communicating through Joseph, or someone!

That’s right. This still involves distortions, but using personalities even closer to you than someone you worked with and were on affectionate terms with and shared a vocabulary and a set of external situations with – Rita, that is – provides the link with language and assumptions, but with fewer confusions.

Can you go into why?

The shortest way to say it is that in dealing with you through Joseph Smallwood, say, we are thus dealing essence to essence on your end. That is – well, here, you state it.

It is a little more complicated than a sentence conveys. All right. This kind of communication is always essence to essence in one sense, in that it bypasses the personas that are our guardians at the gate, our pre-established interfaces with “the other.” So it is mind to mind, not mind to verbiage to reception to mind, as it would be in 3D (overlooking, for the moment, the fact that mind to mind also functions in our 3D life). But mind-to-mind between X and Joseph, say, is different from mind-to-mind between X and me, or X and Bertram. It is as if each of us is a different mood of our over-arching being.

Yes, and that is enough for the moment. This isn’t the time for further speculation, although another time may be. The point is that whoever we contact, bias will have been thereby introduced. The process cannot be helped, it must be allowed for.

I get the feeling that if we pursued this correctly, we’d learn something about why spiritualists used to think they needed a conductor to bring them to the one they wanted to speak to.

Don’t forget, those were early days. Their ground rules never applied as universals, however helpful they were to their times.

Which is why it is a mistake to be bound by other people’s rules.

Which is why it may be a mistake to be bound by them. It is usually worth your while to try them on for size, though.

So, are we good?

Ready to stop, then? We can stop for the moment. Yes, we have a way to proceed. As we say, it will have its disadvantages, but we will work around them, as people always need to do.

I take it that who you connect with may differ depending on where we go.

Depending on many things, many of them unsuspected on your end. And remember,

Oh, is that a correction I just sensed, of something I got from the guys when Rita and I were first contacting them?

It is a sort of correction, yes. A slight readjustment of your understanding.

I had been thinking the guys had said that they took turns speaking to us – that sometimes even in the middle of a sentence, one phased out and another phased in, usually unnoticed by us. It strikes me now, what they may have been saying is that the intent remained constant, but that the minds that they were silently connected with as intermediaries might fluctuate. Small difference, but significant. Did I get that right?

Remember always, in this work: Many, even most, of your misunderstandings and misstatements will go unchallenged. In the course of time, contradictions and errors will emerge to be corrected, but if we were to be correcting every misstatement, it would involve so much tedious restatement and spelling-out of context as to make any coherence impossible. When you get something wrong and it is going to make a big difference, we have to correct the statement, and the correction itself is part of the learning. But if it is minor and has no great consequences, we let it go, in the way that you, say, might not correct every slip of someone’s grammar for fear of inhibiting them from saying anything at all.

—

This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

The theme is that the forces in the world that we call the virtues and sins make up our 3D environment.

That isn’t quite right, but it will lead you in the right direction. The question is, how does 3D life express forces that are realer than 3D life itself.

Yes, Woke up to hear “love makes the world go round,” not as an annoying refrain, just as a one-time statement. So I take it that is our theme, this morning? Love as an example of the forces that animate our lives?

This collaboration may be a little bit complicated. It is as if there is systematic interference between what we want to express and what you understand us to say, or mean, or intend.

Yes, it’s a form of static on the line, coming from the differences between your experiences and our assumptions, maybe.

Whatever the reason, it causes difficulties.

Why not continue to use Rita as intermediary, or anybody whose human experience will enable them to make allowances and understand how to compensate for differences in assumptions?

That has been done, for millennia. The advantages of the proceeding are obvious. But there are disadvantages. The very earth-shaped characteristics of the human or ex-human mind that aid transmission of the familiar impede transmission of the unfamiliar. The disadvantages are the unwanted associations of ideas, of the sounds of the words, of logically unrelated but emotionally connected incidents or thoughts, mostly unnoticed, almost always incompletely traced.

This is even on the non-3D end?

What else are we talking about? The obstacles on your end are constant, it is the obstacles on the other end that are variable.

Oh, I get it, I think – the vagaries of the temporary joint mind.

We cannot add unwanted assumptions if they are not there to be added.

That’s an interesting complication that had not occurred to me.

Yes, the love that makes the world go round provides a strong bond that lasts beyond physical death, so, all to the good. But sometimes you need to learn from a more neutral force, if you wish to expand your territory.

—

This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

 

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The initial insight was that our lives are only “somewhat” real because this level of reality we experience is not in any way an ultimate level. Since it isn’t, we aren’t. We are, in a way, characters in an on-running drama, created for the purpose of being conduits of forces greater than us, realer than us somehow, preceding us and, I gather, destined to outlive us. They may be eternal, whatever eternal means.

Compound beings. Humans. Constructs that live in an abbreviated version of reality, knowing only what can be known while constricted to a present moment that is a moving pinpoint. Yet, eternal beings no less.

We were given a definition of the larger being (of which we 3D beings are a part) that was arbitrarily called Sam to avoid an implication of gender, as Sam could stand for Samuel or Samantha. Our part-of-Sam nature is as eternal as Sam, and we assume that Sams are eternal at least for the purpose of the exploration. Relative to any one earth life, certainly a Sam is eternal, immortal. We, sharing that essence, are equally so. not much different from religion saying we share the essence of God (whatever God may be), but the rest of the analogy is close enough to continue with.

But if we are made of the undying essence of a Sam, the combinations we form are not unchanging or necessarily eternal. Joseph, Bertram, Frank, etc., all have a limited existence in 3D. Do they necessarily have an unlimited existence beyond 3D?

Need to go slow.

I remember author C.S. Forester saying somewhere that what ruins plots is forcing them rather than letting them grow in their own time. This sounds like a similar process, maybe the same process. All right then.

Essence and personality

Our essence is Sam’s essence. Our personality is the 3D expression of certain combinations of traits, etc. But we haven’t noted the difference in relative reality. Funny phrase, “relative reality.” But that’s the way to put it, I think.

Essence is real and unchangeable. Personality is more like a mask or a costume or a role in a drama, and is real only in its own terms, as Han Solo is real only in the Star Wars movie context, while Harrison Ford is real beyond the movie, in 3D life. But Harrison Ford is real only in the 3D context. The actor who is playing Harrison Ford himself is real beyond the 3D context, in real (realer?) life.

That’s the difference between spirit and soul, come to think of it. If I have it right, spirit is unchanging, unchangeable, unconstrained. “The spirit goes where it wants to,” to put it into modern language. Thus, the actor playing Harrison Ford. The soul, born into 3D, experiencing all the emotions of life, affected by what happens to it, is Harrison Ford as played in 3D Theater.

Actor and character

Hmm, so the point being pressed is that we are both actor and character, and that is a source of great confusion and great opportunity for growth. Religions see us as both divine and human, do they not? That is how they describe Jesus – but he is reported to have said that anything he had done, his followers would do and would do more, or greater. I often wondered if his calling himself “son of man” meant that he was what we could become.

In any case, if we are both actor and character, it is as if Han Solo, in character, during the movie, became aware of being the creature of Harrison Ford, and began speaking and reacting as Harrison Ford rather than as himself, not knowing the link between them, and perhaps not sensing the confusion as actually a breakthrough. It might play hell with the movie being shot, unless the movie was about Han Solo discovering he was a creation of (part of) Harrison Ford.

But we aren’t in a movie, I have been told more than once, but are doing improv. That’s exactly how it feels. And it comes to me, maybe one reason for the improv is for the actors to see through the drama (knowing there is no plot) so as to realize fully that they are actors (i.e. only relatively real in that their roles are added on to their essence, not intrinsic to it) and that the purpose of their acting is not to fill the time but to give expression to the forces that they feel flow through them. The cardinal virtues, the deadly sins: real forces, expressing in 3D. Why? As a sort of safety valve? A puppet show? Why?

The cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. (And some add faith, hope, and charity.)

The seven deadly sins, whose initials I years ago made into an acronym so I could remember them: LEG CAPS. Lust, envy, gluttony, covetousness, anger, pride, and sloth (or ennui). Of the seven deadly sins, pride is traditionally considered first in importance.

All human life may be considered as a playing-out of those forces among varied circumstances.

But the forces pre-exist human life.

They are realer than human life, as you are realer than your human roles.

Hard to see how they could manifest outside of 3D conditions. Gluttony? Lust?

That is how they manifest in 3D conditions. But the underlying forces exist or they could not manifest.

—

This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.