[From Oct. 3 and 4, 2021, slightly edited]
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 neither a non-3D viewpoint nor the default perspective you were used to.
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.” Anything you can get used to is by definition one version of normal, a new viewpoint, a new mental environment, that you then you live.
You are thinking we have diverted from the topic, 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 pre-conscious connections 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, 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. 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 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. 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.
…
“Remember if you can: The world is here to serve you, as you are here to serve the world.” We ended on that note, but although I got the sense of it at the moment – while directly connected – I see now that it could use some exposition. Guys?
The simplest layer is obvious: There are no coincidences. But yes, it could stand further consideration.
The world is here to serve you:
- The external subjectivity provides stubborn, relatively independent, uncooperative (let’s say) alternative viewpoints.
- It provides definite irreducible facts, to be dealt with.
- It provides the timing in which various possibilities emerge.
- It is, in short, everything “external” to the point of view that is your consciousness.
- At the most abstract level, it sets the scene and maintains the playhouse. That is, “the world” is always full of things happening, any one or any combination of which may be of use to you.
You are here to serve the world:
- You are each part of someone else’s shared subjectivity. That is, you are part of their environment. They may experience you as a stubborn fact, and may experience you either first-hand or at many removes. Things that influence someone may be the result of a result of a result of something concerning you. They may never have heard of you and yet be affected by something that changed because you lived.
- Such changes – direct and indirect – may be deemed good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, important or unimportant, but as usual we would advise you that judgment of the lives of others, or of your own, is likely to be erroneous. So, caution. Still, our point here is that you will be experienced as other people’s “other,” as they are experienced by you as your “other.”
- You make your own change in the local experience of the world, so bear it in mind.
I remember Thomas Merton saying that the qualities of the monks were important to each other’s lives. He said people had lost their vocation because a fellow monk was grouchy, so to speak.
Yes, that’s what we meant. Your own private world is never as private as you may think. Your qualities affect your fellows, for the better or for the worse or – usually – some of each.
- You as a non-3D being in what you and others perceive as a 3D world will similarly affect the shared subjectivity itself, over and above any 3D interactions you may have. “Thoughts are things,” Edgar Cayce heard, and came to believe. This is another sense in which your very being affects the world.
As usual, common sense, but turned in an unusual direction.
There is a reason why “common sense” is often dependable: It is held in common: It is somewhat freed from individual eccentricity by the process of mutual abrasion that is the coexistence of many viewpoints, many different experiences of the world. Common sense is at its weakest when dealing with unusual depths of meaning; at its strongest when dealing with rules of thumb for general guidance.
Hmm, and you are generally doing both: giving us an unusual viewpoint, but then providing rules of thumb as to how to integrate that viewpoint in everyday thought and feeling.
That’s a very good description of what we do. As we say, we wish to be helpful. In your case that is the approach indicated. For someone else, the flavoring would be different. Perhaps it would be a different menu, probably different chefs.
Well, while we’re on the subject –
Yes, we knew you would wish to discuss points of view.
Then you know the background. Well, you would, of course. It is a problem: People read into your words things that I know you didn’t mean, because we were linked essence to essence; yet you have said many times that words are sparks, not signposts, and therefore it would seem to stand to reason that whatever people get from the material, they get for a reason, and so it must be valid. The conclusion I come to is that it doesn’t matter if what people hear is what you meant, because their own guidance will not lead them astray. But – is that right? It seems like there’s something subtly wrong somewhere in that take on things.
Here is an example of you being there for the world and the world for you. It is reciprocal action, is it not? You speak, another hears, they reply, you hear, and on and on. How necessary is it that the interchange be accurate according to any one standard? What is important is intent. If the intent is sincere, errors will not matter, and in fact may be more apparent than real. Only if the intent is not sincere do problems arise.
I wish you would enlarge on all this. You have made several statements that are not at all self-explanatory. That is, they lead to multiple, conflicting, interpretations.
Well, they will. Multiple recipients guarantees multiple interpretations. But, all right:
- Any one standard. To choose one standard is to choose one set of official interpreters. This has advantages and disadvantages. It is the basic psychological divide between Catholic and Protestant, in effect: authority (collectively determined truth) v. individual conscience (which may include individually derived error). Which way you see it shows where you are personally; it does not provide the way to see things, except for you.
- This point may be obscure, because as usual words make distinctions clearer than they should be in some directions, hazier than they should be, in others. But in general, proper intent will bring you home safely.
Following one’s guidance, you mean. But what about Psychic’s Disease?
Life does not come with guarantees. Every moment is an opportunity and a caution for your best awareness of (a) the situation and (b) your own motives. It is always well to be a bit skeptical of one’s certainties. Today’s certainty may be tomorrow’s recognized error. However, remember that things do not happen at random, however it may appear. So, it isn’t as if you need to be on tense alert at every moment, lest you go wrong. A sort of habit of quiet skepticism of your own infallibility will do.
- Insincere intent. This is the trap to be avoided. Fortunately, it is pretty obvious – only, you must be willing to see it. If in place of knowing the truth as best you can, you place ego or convenience or any form of deliberate self-deflection from knowledge, what good can you expect to follow?
Hemingway, substituting palatable untruths for memories that were too painful.
That’s an example, yes. Or someone putting ideology or politics or any allegiance ahead of knowing the truth. It comes in many forms, and it is always harmful. But this is a pitfall easily avoided or, if necessary, put behind you, by a combination of willed consciousness and sustained intent to know the truth as best you can.
In all this, the indicated result is not uniformity of opinion (which can never happen) but, let’s put it, uniformity of intent. Let each one continually strive for consciousness and all will (continue to) be well.