Sunday, October 3, 2021
7:10 a.m. Gentlemen, last time you said we should “resume with this question next time,” but I see that I am not quite clear on what you meant by “this question,” specifically. I guess the invisible factors in health?
You will notice that remembering to set your switches now automatically reminds you to see yourself and your surroundings from the new viewpoint. Let’s call it 3D-Plus, because it is not a non-3D viewpoint (which would be difficult or perhaps impossible to maintain while driving a 3D vehicle) and is not the default perspective you were used to. (We would call it the 3D-only perspective, but that would be misleading in so far as it suggested that ordinary 3D life could be conducted without input from non-3D, perceived or otherwise.)
I take this as a sort of promise that the new perspective can become the default. Certainly it seems easier to revert to each day. I don’t know how it would be if I were living with someone, or were working with others every day.
Think of it this way. “Nothing human to me is alien.” That is, anything you can get used to is by definition normal, or anyone one version of normal. That new viewpoint – that new mental environment – is then what you live.
You are thinking we have diverted from the topic we promised to continue, but actually, not so. Everything in your life connects, and the less obvious the connection, the more you may want to look at it, because that means the connections are not conscious, hence likely are pre-conscious, hence they may shed light upon another of the filters that separate your idea of the world from the world itself.
Interesting thought. But it’s sort of like following the trail of bread crumbs in the fairy tale.
The point in that tale being, of course, that leaving a trail of stones rather than bread crumbs is a safer procedure. Anything more permanent, less labile, let us say, has greater potential to facilitate changes that are relatively permanent rather than impossibly volatile. God knows we have dropped enough pebbles for you, all these years.
I’m smiling, thinking of Jesus saying what father would give his children stones when they asked for bread.
We smile too, knowing that you nevertheless get the point.
So, the invisible factors in health?
Bear in mind, the internal and the external and the interface between the two is not a description of factors in your health alone. It describes your life. But it is a matter of viewpoint. Once seen, it will be seen as obvious.
As so often.
That’s the nature of pebbles as markers. The bread-crumbs provide the same guidance, but only until the birds eat them. That is, only until a new set of thoughts replaces the thought of the moment.
You will notice, glancing back at Friday’s, that we said “the interface between the two [external and internal], namely, your body, most broadly defined.” So what do you suppose is your body “most broadly defined”?
I am supposing that this means not only the chemical and electrical systems but also the intangibles that animate it and guide it. Whatever it is that leaves when the body dies is clearly part of a functioning body. We don’t have to be able to define it to see its results.
Couldn’t you say that the body consists of everything that people commonly mean when they say “the body” plus what they mean when they say soul and mind?
I do think so, yes, though I guess I didn’t think that consciously until now. The damn words continually make us think divisions are real that are at best somewhat real.
Well, if your doctors (not to mention their patients!) consider only one part of the totality, how can they move from the “how” of a situation” to the “why” of it?
I suppose that’s what Dr. Jung was doing, moving toward the “why” of things.
Invite him in, and let’s see.
Dr. Jung?
It is a great mistake to mystify the commonplace. I was continually being accused of doing this, but in fact I was demonstrating the common-sense reality of things that were being ignored or were being seen as irrelevant.
I have always assumed that you knew much more than you were willing to print or even perhaps to say.
It is closer to the truth to say that I suspected many things that I could not demonstrate. There would have been no point in making bald assertions that could not be substantiated. As it was, the hints I set out were too much for most of my profession.
Then what can you tell us of the connection between health and life and the interface of internal and external?
I would give you one rule of thumb, one practice to fall back upon in such things: Look to the simplest explanations, but then look to see how they may hint at another context.
I know I warped the end of that. Sorry. Try again?
Every experience in life has been repeated many times. Do not look for something new under the sun. But, new truths for new eyes. You understand? What you bring to a subject is all that you can take from it. If you look at a thing with the same old viewpoint, how can you expect to see something new? But if you come to it with new eyes, no effort will be required save honesty and awareness: Your new being will show you the thing in different guise.
So, as usual, a reciprocating process. We change and we can see more. We see more and we change as a result of what we have seen.
As a result of as much of what you have seen as you have absorbed. It is not a passive process. Your intention and your awareness will allow you to see deeper, but they will not necessarily lead you to see deeper automatically. From time to time, yes, they may. But I wouldn’t count on it as a regular thing!
Yes, I see that.
So if you wish to explore the hidden roots of health, or of life itself, first look to what is popularly known, and do not despise what people know but do not easily express. Nor, by all means, should you hesitate to explore the things the learned (and especially the comfortable) have discarded as worthless. Remember, my advantage over Freud was not merely in being younger, or stronger physically. It was also in having been raised among Swiss peasants, and having absorbed things in that way that Freud could never believe in, because he was not as close to the people.
Well, that’s how I felt – and still feel – about astrology, say, and tarot and such things. Intellectually disreputable to think for myself in such matters, but instinct said, “There’s something here.” I was heartened to remember that you had had to force yourself to continue to examine alchemy. It seemed a very similar dynamic must have been operating within you – and the result certainly justified your faith.
But you see, I didn’t have faith, I had what you call a disreputable instinct pushing me. Intellectually, I knew this was nonsense. What they were saying couldn’t be true. Yet intelligent men had devoted their lives to it. How could this be? And why did a traitorous element within me (that I nonetheless could not quite distrust) tell me to press on until I found the key to it? When you press forward despite your better judgment, your faith is not in the subject-matter but in your guidance. And faith, as you know well by this time, is doubt.
So when we look at the body – ?
Begin with what “everybody knows.” Each of you will have a different inventory, for everybody grows up in a different family, lives among different people, reads and absorbs different things. But what you need, your life will have brought to you, and what you need next will be brought to you at the proper time, in the proper way. You can count on this, because there is not only one proper order, only one appropriate stepping-stone. Life provides many possibilities, and you choose among them, consciously and, mostly, unconsciously.
But righteous persistence brings reward, I know. Our thanks for this.
Remember if you can: The world is here to serve you, as you are here to serve the world.
Well you certainly did. Thanks again.
(Afterthought: Did I end the session arbitrarily? But it seemed ended. I will assume it was all right.)