[continued from July 5 post]
R: Once Frank crosses the line, is there some reason to believe that he won’t join those of you who are speaking to him?
F: Well, he couldn’t help it. Oh, you mean, in our function?
R: In the functions that you’re engaged in right now.
F: [pause] Well, he’s an explorer and a teacher by inclination. It’s part of him. But he has lots of other parts that are other things. If you mean will this – Okay, we got it. [laughs] We’ll give you a choice of answers: yes and no. [they laugh]
Yes, in that that particular atom of that being will be on call for a specific person who needs to talk to him. When he’s the closest resonance to someone who’s talking, you see, and he might be on call. But the difference between him and Frank is so –
You think, because you’re in bodies, that the body makes a unit. But it doesn’t. The body has huge amounts of stuff inside it to make it function as a unit, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But in your terms, if he is also David and John and Katrina and others — and in that he participates with them, he is, you know – how can he be separated out? You see? Because the body holds together a bunch of disparate things. Because basically the body gives a point of view and a set of abilities and a locus in time and space. That’s really what the body does! So take away the body, and all those strands of the bundle – well, the analogy breaks down, but you see where we’re going with that?
R: There’s no reason to believe that these parts will hang together–
F: Well, that’s when we stopped, because of course they’re not going anywhere, but – there’s no reason to think of them only in that way, would be a better way to put it. Just as Katrina would see them from Katrina’s point of view, it’s the same bundle. But there’s plenty more of that bundle that’s unsuspected and that does not manifest in that life, that would manifest somewhere else. So –
[change sides of tape]
R: Feel okay?
Frank: Yep. Where were we?
R: We were talking about the various bundles of what could be from different lifetimes; we could have a part of the energy that’s moving across temporarily into the there, although that’s a time concept, which I assume you don’t want.
F: Well, the point at the moment is just that individuals are so much less individual than you think they are because they’re enclosed in a body. It would be like thinking that the electric components inside of a tape recorder are all inherently part of that tape recorder, but they’re not. They are, while they’re in a tape recorder, but the tape recorder could be taken apart and all the components reshuffled somewhere else. It’s a clumsy analogy, because that’s mechanical and not alive in that sense, but you understand.
So to talk about will “he” be doing this or that later, in a way we’ll say no, “he” is only here between the time that he’s born and the time he dies, which is a finite thing. That’s a slice of reality during which he functions in a certain way. That slice of reality doesn’t go away; it’s just that you’re not experiencing it. Thomas Jefferson functioned as a particular bundle in a certain place. He’s still doing it in that place, it’s just you can’t access that place. They reshuffled the bundle later. Or earlier, or at the same time or however you want to say it.
R: You’ve talked a number of times about the idea of other lives, with the suggestion that parts of the energy field that represent Frank now have also participated in some other lifetimes—other experiences in different physical bodies.
F: With the exception of the tenses of the verbs, we agree with that. It’s more like, “are participating,” although we know that’s nearly incomprehensible to all of you.
R: Well, it is nearly incomprehensible, but I can understand that there is such a concept.
F: It’s so easy once you step outside of where you are, but – that’s why you’re there! [laughs] New Jersey doesn’t cease to exist when you move to New York. But you can’t access it. And in this particular case, you don’t ever have the ability to go backwards to where you were. Seemingly.
R: Okay, now I’d like to ask, the kind of thing we’ve been doing this evening: Is there any merit in this kind of thing for Frank?
F: Sure. Sure. There’s no substitute for experience. This is like going to school in a sense. It’s like reading. It’s input. If you read, and think about what you read, it changes you. If you experience something, and think about what you experienced – or even if you don’t, in a sense –- it changes you, and the more you do, the easier it is to do more of, and therefore the easier to get input and therefore it’s more efficient. That’s one way to look at it, anyway. Besides, he enjoys it.
R: [pause] The exploration here of his relationship with you has been a main topic. I’d like to know if there’s something else that’s coming up that would be good for us to explore.
F: Well, you haven’t said anything about your reasons for doing it, what you’re getting out of it. In other words, you know — if you look at it — what you’re getting out of it. That ought to put you in a different place in terms of how you’re spending your time.
Frank: I have no idea what that means. I’m starting to fight some emotional resistance now, because I feel like an eavesdropper. I hope that meant something to you.
R: Yeah, I thought I understood that. What am I up to here? Why is this something that I want to do?
F: Not that we want to know the answer to that, but to show you that we already know the hidden question – which we’re trying carefully to conceal! [they laugh]
R: — and too well! I really hadn’t thought in terms of that kind of question, because this a role that I’ve played a lot, and enjoyed a lot, and it has to do with another way of looking at what from our point of view is a human being in all his complexity and all his glory, and thinking about how much we learn from thinking of each other in quite different slices, looking at that picture that the way people normally do. And it is always a combination of learning something about a specific human being and learning something about the nature of things generally. This is a very positive experience.
F: We suggest to you that you have yet to make a decision as to whether you wish to consider yourself honorably retired, or to go on and do some more pleasurable but perhaps strenuous explorations. We also remind you that all paths are good. We’re not making any implied push – although we’ve been known to do it in a certain direction, but he’s more stubborn. [chuckles]
R: Well, that sounds awfully like Frank.
F: Well, but, you know, this is one of the things that began to erode his artificial concept about the difference between him and me, is to realize – “him and me”; did you hear that?
R: I did hear it.
F: Is to realize that when you say “that sounds like him,” we often sound like him, because we often are –
Well, that’s not the way to look at it, but –
Well, yeah, it is. You understand what we’re saying here. We’re often coming through – and not only are we often coming through, but David, or Katrina or John or whomever – and obviously the same for you and everybody else. That was one of the realizations that began to erode that artificial separation for him. Finally.
R: Well, the question of retirement is a reasonably useless word – all it means is that you stop working for pay and go on doing what you want to do.
F: Mm-hmm. If you’re lucky. If you’re fortunate.
R: If you’re lucky, and I am very lucky in this regard. And I’m not about to go out and apply for a job as a monitor of people for these kinds of experiences.
F: [chuckles] We’ll make it a little blunter. [they laugh] You could take this as a self-chosen assignment and structure it in any way that you wanted, and here you have the unique opportunity to do it either reciprocally or at the same time; you can do it once a week, once a month, once a year, every 25 minutes – and you could explore whatever you wanted to explore, without any external considerations of utility – which is what Ed Carter did, some years ago. Or, as we say, you could regard yourself as honorably retired and you don’t need to do any of this. That’s what we meant.
R: I feel able to retire at a moment’s notice. [they chuckle]
F: Well, to take that seriously – that’s freedom. You’re not required or even expected to do anything at all. You’re required and expected at this stage in your life to be able to do what you want to do. The difficulty is deciding what that is. We would say to you that in the present state of development in August of 2001, the vast majority of seeming individuals are not doing what they want to do.
R: Well, I don’t have other questions at this time.
Frank: No, I just got the same feeling, that that’s like a natural end to things. [yawns]
R: I guess you were awake the whole time.
Frank: No, I’m very rested. Shall we stop?