Friday, October 1, 2021
5 a.m. Have we finished with the four topics you proposed to cover, some time ago?
You might set down your observations from Wednesday.
All right. “9:30 a.m. It occurs to me, watching myself deal with asthma: In a way it is as simple as it seems. It is a physical condition resulting from interaction with physical conditions. It is external dealing with external. Yet it is also internal dealing with external, insofar as my mental condition may interact with my physical condition. Hence, psychosomatic. Life is complicated no matter what explanation-system you put around it.”
Now, you see what this shows?
I didn’t, until you just put it into my mind. All our conundrums arise from our reverting to the idea of two kinds of reality, internal and external, or mental and physical.
Yes, but go slower. Slide-switches.
I don’t know why I don’t remember to set them automatically, each time. But anyway, proceed.
So what just changed? That is, why did remembering your visualization change your viewpoint so that you are once again observing your body writing these letters? We didn’t mention “objectivity,” and that switch did not occur to you until after your perspective changed. So what is going on?
I suppose it is all the same subject, after all, so why shouldn’t one part trigger the next?
Or, in English? (We smile.)
As soon as I am reminded that all these dualities are only relative dualities, then of course I am reminded – effectively reminded, not merely theoretically reminded – that there is no absolute distinction between 3D and non-3D, and that goes for viewpoint as well as anything else. The change in perspective then comes naturally. But what does that feel like from your side? Planted question, probably, but I’ll ask it.
Even the concept of ownership of ideas, or one or the other side prompting a question, stems from an underlying assumption of duality. The point is, duality is always relative; there can be no absolutes, no dividing-lines, if you move far enough to the underlying reality. However, in practice we have to observe these dualities if only for relative clarity. To put it more clearly, any game you participate in will be more understandable if you remember it is a game.
That’s a terrible mistranslation of the thought I at least felt you were attempting. I would say, even though we have to play a game, it is different if we remember we are playing it while we are doing so.
If that was a massive increase in clarity, we will have to take your word for it. It is what we said. Anyway, how it feels to us when you change viewpoints: It is as if an electric current was suddenly able to flow more smoothly.
I become a superconductor, in effect.
We smile at the psychic inflation that could follow the “super,” but yes, that is the analogy. In one state you and we have to deal with built-in resistance to the flow. We do live with it, but it isn’t too efficient. In the other state, things are possible that are not possible previously, because, just as in superconductivity in the strictly physical realm, not only does resistance cease (and therefore things flow easier) but the very properties of the materials change. A rough analogy would be that matter has four states: solid, liquid, gaseous, plasma. The same material in each different state might as well be different material. Ice, water, steam, and whatever you call dissociated hydrogen-oxygen. Same thing, and in effect different.
So what is happening to my vision as we do this? The page is becoming harder to see, or, no, the pages seem solid, but the place where my pen is seems distorted, behind a bubble. Is this pathological? Connected to my mental state? Coincidence? What? I have experienced something like it before, but not exactly like it.
Is it not strange that only in the area your vision focuses on is there this distortion?
Very strange. The outline of the journal book, my hand holding the pen, the fingers of the other hand, all clear and unaffected. But precisely where I am writing, and an area a few inches around it, it is as if I am looking through a wavy bubble that keeps moving. Yet I can read what I wrote as I write, and in fact it is nearly only the actual place I am writing that is being distorted this way.
Years ago, you would experience what you called “the dazzle.”
Yes, and as you say that, this seems to be changing into that, a sort of incomplete circle of light, the circle being formed of shallow V’s, in a way – in other words, not a smooth arc but an arc made up of short straight lines V-ing inward and outward. The colors are clear, bluish, and occasional reddish tinges. But where the bubble distortions were right on the area where pen met paper, forcing me to write blind, so to speak, the dazzle forms an arc across my viewing area, but above the level of my focusing, so that now what I write is clear as I write it, and in effect we have a normal field of view with this arc superimposed over it.
Since I am not an absolutely bigoted believer in coincidence, I’d welcome some commentary, here. What’s going on?
Several things:
- You observe but you do not panic. This is an established habit now.
BTW the arc is more definitely established, now, and as always is crystal-sharp and the impression of colors is actually quite beautiful. It seems to be strengthening as a manifestation, as we pursue it.
Stick with this mental space, and observe.
- You began with an observation, and we countered with an observation. You had noticed the contradictions of thinking of yourself dealing with your body, and we had reminded you that if all is mind-stuff, those categories were makeshift at best.
- The reminder (slide-switches) let you move into another, freer, space. You characterize it as seeing yourself from the outside as well as from inside.
- Mentioning that moving into the superconducting state brings change of state as well as an absence of friction led immediately to an unprecedented light-phenomenon.
- You still not panicking from that, the unfamiliar turned into the more familiar, without your changing states or reacting in any way other than intense interest.
- We calmly discussing it, you will notice it suddenly ceased. That doesn’t mean it will not recur, perhaps in an altered form, and perhaps right way. (Or perhaps not, of course.)
I take for granted that an eye scientist or perhaps a brain scientist would have a pathological explanation of whatever it was, and I take for granted that you will also have an explanation, pathological or otherwise.
Isn’t it obvious?
Not really. I get that it is similar to the various aches and pains we get, seemingly at random. They come, they go, and we never really know what they’re about. We get serious conditions and we deal with them or ignore them, and still we don’t know what they’re about, nor do the doctors. To say that X organ has failed or is failing or may fail or is acting up, etc., merely describes what has happened and is happening, but it doesn’t really address why. The doctors think they do, but they’re really able to tell you only the “how” of it, not the “why” of it.
Don’t think they don’t know it, too – but what are they supposed to do? Theirs is a practical profession. They attempt to move bodies (and souls, regardless how they think of them, or if they think of them) from a state of dysfunction to a state of renewed normal functioning. The more advanced doctors have come to factor in environment, diet, lifestyle, morale – many factors previously unconsidered – but they still have no way to say “why” rather than “how” something manifests, because the two major variables are invisible to them, as they are to you.
- The “external” environment, perceived as physical and psychic.
- The “internal” environment, perceived as thought and emotion.
- Mostly, the interface between the two, mainly, your body most broadly defined.
Now since the hour is about up, and since your vision is normal (or what has become normal to you after a process of decades), let us pause here and resume with this question next time. You may wish to skip a day, it’s up to you.
I don’t know what to call this one.
You’ll think of something. “Beginning another discussion of health,” maybe.
Okay. Our thanks as always.