Sunday, April 27, 2025
3:50 a.m. Let’s try for a session. I got a brief thought, Friday, that what we call consciousness is the result of a process of subtraction, rather than of addition.
And you have glimpsed this truth before, but you have forgotten.
I almost remember, but not really.
Let us distance our thought from the word “consciousness,” which is so laden with contradictory implications. To grasp the basic concept here, we will need to use the simplest terms and make the simplest arguments.
Let us begin thus:
- All this level of reality – which is all we can know – is alive and is all one thing.
- What we experience as matter and spirit, as alive or dead, as substance or thought, is all one thing under the 3D conditions of time and space.
- Thus, before we exist, before the world as we experience it exists, there is a “something” whose qualities give rise to all the qualities we experience as part of life.
- That primitive substance that is the world prior to our perception is alive – because nothing can be constructed out of dead material, if there could be such a thing as dead material.
- Being alive, this substance must have within it all the qualities that it gives rise to in our experience. In development, something cannot come out of nothing, nor can lesser produce greater.
- However, the categories through which we view things may mislead us, and in the case of “consciousness,” the concept is backwards. We tend to think that what we call consciousness is a construction, a development, an increase, and it is none of these things.
The reality that emanates from a higher level begins as an undivided unity. As such, it is aware of itself in the way that any unity is aware of itself before it becomes aware of the existence (or even the concept) of “other.” If you did not know that others existed, how could you feel any need (or ability) to communicate?
So, becoming aware of the existence of other things is not an increase in consciousness?
It is a matter of viewpoint – and the very word “viewpoint” implies separation. If you are everywhere, how can you have a viewpoint? If you are everything, what can there be to see? If your awareness is universal and undifferentiated, how can you channel it into senses? So, yes, the conventional view of things is somewhat true – from one point of view – but the view of consciousness as being a state of subtraction (and its result) is at least equally true. And, as usual, considering a thing from more than one point of view adds understanding.
Now, the nature of 3D is separation in time, separation in space. You are here, now, in bodily placement and sensory awareness. But if 3D were all there is, life would be impossibly fragmented. How could there be continuity of awareness, continuity of effort? So, intrinsically connected to 3D conditions is the other end of the polarity, that you call non-3D. In non-3D you have the glue that holds together your lives. Time, space, being, becoming, all require non-3D to exist equally with 3D.
As has been said many times, non-3D is the home of mentality, 3D the home of the adaptation of mentality to physical conditions of separation.
I don’t think you ever put it quite that way.
Perhaps not, but we have said the equivalent. The mind is in non-3D, the brain is in 3D, and it is a matter of translation. To exist in 3D, then, one must also exist in non-3D, while the reciprocal is not so. Thus, non-3D is closer to the initial creation.
I’m not sure we could prove that, or even state it more convincingly.
There is not time enough to try to prove anything. We state it, and people can work it out for themselves, or, usually, can intuit their way to accepting or not accepting it. For the moment, accept the corollary: Non-3D is the superior state, 3D the subsidiary.
What you are accustomed to think of as progression up the scale is at least equally truly a descent. Not either/or, but both.
“What we gain in the swings, we lose on the roundabouts,” the English say.
The very distinction between yourself and “the English” (or anybody) is an example of the state of separation of concepts that you take for granted as life.
Now, try not to let yourself slip into categories of good and bad, or even better or worse. just follow our description of what is.
Yes, I get it.
Just for this discussion, we may need to make up some words, just to clarify. But we do not intend to create a jargon if we can avoid it.
Probably we can’t avoid it, and who cares? We’ve created enough clarifying distinctions over the past 25 years.
Yes, but simpler is better.
- The initial state of this level of reality when created. Prior to any form of separation, call it peaceful floating.
Call it the waters before God divided them.
Yes, very good. Undifferentiated creation from a higher order which our ancestors called God or the gods or whatever. So rather than unity, let’s call it “undivided creation.”
- Separation, the descent into polarities beginning with the separation by time and space. No longer a timeless universal unity, now a multiplicity of moments, a multiplicity of places. Does that first-order separation have consciousness?
We didn’t establish that the first-order condition had consciousness.
We did; we reminded you, nothing can proceed from less, only from more.
So you did. Well, I suppose you’d guess that whatever was separated might experience a lack where there had been whatever it was separated from. And it might experience that lack as the existence of other things, at the same time.
Yes, it is all in how you look at it. You might say that the primordial material lost its sense of completion and gained a sense of a more particular sense of itself as part of many. And on and on, as division followed division.
I may have to reread the first part of Genesis in this light. No point in going to other scriptures that I am less familiar with, but I’ll bet they will give the same kind of insights when reassessed this way. When I get to the computer, I’ll see if I can find a few verses worth looking at. Probably more than I will be able to add to this session, though.
We will do well to finish this initial thought. Consciousness looks higher if you examine the individual components, and looks lesser if you look at it comparing it to the initial unity. Thus:
Unity
Time and space
Land and water
Sentient and non-sentient
Rooted and mobile
Generalized species
Individuals
The Bible and other scriptures may not put it just this way, but perhaps you can see that his list represents a successive descent into particular from general, and ascent from unawareness to greater awareness.
Culminating in man being told to name the beasts.
Yes, and all this before the descent into better or worse, symbolized by eating from the tree of the perceiving things as good or evil. Before that, remember, God looked at all the polarities and said it was good.
That’s a pretty different way of reading it than we usually see.
Remember, we said the new civilization will have to consider scriptures among other things presently being neglected – but in considering them, it will see them differently and in turn they will help shape how it sees.
I get that. A place to pause?
Yes. Perhaps call this “Subtractive consciousness,” though that really may mislead.
How aout, “In the beginning….”?
Perhaps “The roots of consciousness.”
What happened to avoiding the word?
Well, you’ll think of something.
Our thanks for all this, as always.
& & &
Chapter 1 Genesis, [Not the King James version, to make it easier to grasp anew, and verse numbers removed for the same reason. https://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/genesis/documents/bible_genesis_en.html]
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night – and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.