Whoever you are, you are not so much accustomed to words, are you? Yet, you are coming through my mind; why does that not command the language I know?
[A long pause. At least, it seemed long. Less than a minute, I suppose.]
That was quite an experience. The response I got was a deepening of communication, in a few waves of difference, as if my mind settled, bit by bit, into a deeper, calmer place. And this wasn’t during the reaction, or because of the reaction. It was the reaction. Whoever I am in communication with is well beyond words, and needs my access to words if it is going to communicate at all.
That is much better. Can you see how your assumption that you were talking to a human mind – or an ex-human mind, as you like to say – absolutely interfered with the communication process? Absolutely interfered, and, carried farther, might have absolutely prevented.
You are nearing a fundamental transformation of your understanding of the process, if you are open to it and do not prefer to halt at the relatively stable place you have come to.
No, actually, I look forward to it.
Only somewhat real
Very well. So, from a mind that has never been human, you cannot expect a human slant on things, even though the words and concepts have to come through yours. Remember, always, that you are in the process. Any communication to humans must have a human intermediary, obviously. This affords opportunities for mistranslation of concepts, but without it, there is no medium of transmission. And of course in speaking to humans, the recipients themselves are equally sources of misunderstanding, mishearing, even deliberate refusal to understand or to hear.
Yes, that’s clear enough.
It is clear, but it is almost immediately forgotten as soon as heard. So, try to bear it in mind.
I’m not writing scripture, I get that.
Oh, but you are! What is scripture but human attempts to convey messages? Any serious and relatively successful attempt to communicate is of the same nature as scripture. However, don’t take that to be elevating you in stature; take it to be reminding you and your readers not to elevate scripture to a level it cannot sustain.
“You do the best you can,” Bob Monroe said. I think he was trying to say something of what you’re implying here, that all communication involves distortion because it is a translation from one set of conditions to another.
Almost from one reality to another. Not quite, but almost. And it requires great patience, practice, sincerity and even a form of recklessness. All of which you have been practicing for as long as John Tettemer was a monk.
I take it that is encouragement for any who are impelled to take the same road.
They don’t necessarily require encouragement, but some may find it there.
Now listen, for time is short in the remainder of this session. You have been told that your life as experienced is only somewhat real. This is because your life as you are experiencing it is deeper, with stronger cross-currents, than a mere conflict of compound-beings. You got the idea: Try to express it.
We see history as it affects us, so it becomes a matter of individuals, such as MacArthur and Wilson and Roosevelt and Hemingway and John F. Kennedy and Churchill and Robert Henri, and W.B. Yeats and so on. And to us, this is reality. It combines the external world we experience, even at second-hand, and the inner world we construct or experience as we cooperate in shaping our ideas of what is going on. But a deeper level of reality involves the same events, the same individuals, but experiences them as forces, as – I don’t know how to put it. As manifestations, I suppose.
Try not to stop there, but continue, for when you return you will not be in the same place.
In a real sense, our 3D lives may be seen at different levels of reality, and our accustomed way of seeing them is relatively superficial. All the deadly forces that run through us, as well as the living forces too, could be said to live their own lives through us. No, that doesn’t get it.
Try!
If you were a playwright, you might try to express certain ideas. You would have to clothe the ideas in characters, and express them in conflict and interaction of the characters. There would be no other way to do it.
Perhaps not “no other way,” but continue.
It would be the interplay of forces that concerned you, and the interplay of the characters you had invented would be secondary.
Well, not exactly. You acquire a stake in the characters as you animate them. You should know that, as you think of those you have brought to life and then have seen having that life, with its own bounds and possibilities.
—
This is an excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.