Rita Warren: Well, I think this is our 7th session. I was looking back today at some of the notes and thinking we have a few leftovers I should pick up on tonight. [pause] I have understood from you gentlemen upstairs that you have a great deal of information – maybe all of the information – and our job is to suggest a focus for identifying the information by asking questions.
F: You will have to pardon us if we always answer literally what you say, because we’re so aware of slippage in communications that we don’t know any better way to do. So the way you phrased your question, we would say we have access to knowledge and we probably have access to further knowledge when you want it. All we’re trying to emphasize is, we don’t ourselves know, but we can find out. That’s the way to put it. It’s one of our usual nit-picks.
R: Okay, well, how does all this information become available to you?
F: [pause] To us the process is more or less what it is to you when you’re thinking about something without needing external resources like books or conversation. So it’s as though we’re ruminating, only we’re kind of gravitating toward the information. Don’t know a better way to put that.
R: So it isn’t as though the information has to be collected.
F: Well that’s how the information is collected. It’s the same way that you do when you associate ideas, or when you hook a fantasy to a dream to an idea to a thought to something you’ve read. It could be looked at that you’re collecting information. It’s really a very similar process.
R: Well, and then does the information get organized in some way?
F: It does if you organize it. You organize it.
R: Uh-huh. But you don’t have the sense of speaking out of organized files, so to speak.
F: Well – We speak out of the knowledge in the same way that you speak out of the knowledge when you talk and don’t censor in advance what you’re saying. It’s really about the same thing. You’ve heard us begin to say something, stop, go at it again from another point of view. Or not so much another point of view as another way to organize the same material that will lead to a slightly different nuance. You do the same things. You all do the same things when you speak — or even when you think, but it’s more obvious when you speak.
R: When you started out last time in response to my question about evil by saying there are three different ways to look at this material, that’s what I was meaning by the organization of the material in some way.
F: Ah. Well, wait, look at the process. This isn’t something we had to go fetch, so to speak, and therefore you could look at it like these are organized thoughts in the way that you have organized thoughts when you discuss a subject you’ve thought about before. You know how the first time you try to explain something, you make a jumble of it? And by the third or fourth time you try and explain the same thing – hopefully not to the same person –it has organized itself, seemingly spontaneously. You see? The same with us. When you ask us something on which we are pretty firm, we can say, “well, it’s this, this, this and this. And we’ll talk about this first and then this and then this.”
We keep coming back to the fact that it’s almost too simple to get across to you that you and we are the things with more or less the same ways of being, and the main difference is the time-space matrix that you function in and we do not. Any time that you’re wondering how we operate, start with the assumption that it’s the same way that you operate, and then see that if you can intuit how that would be without the time-space constraint. You may not get it right, but it’ll be very productive.
And— as Frank’s very fond of saying – it’ll have the meta-purpose of accustoming you to thinking at a deeper level about how similar we and you are, how it isn’t “them and us”; it’s just us. And you have to realize, that was a short answer, for us.
R: [chuckles] Right. Well, we’ve heard the term akashic records. Does that term mean the same to you as the total knowledge that’s available to you to tap into?
F: Well, it’s not a library building, the way some people like to think of it, and, you know, it’s not a computer terminal, but it is there, objectively written, so to speak, in the fabric of time-space, and you probably will stump us if you ask how we read it, we just – read it.
R: I see.
F: But – when we ask you, “how do you remember last Thursday?” Could you answer? You don’t know, you just do. It’s such an automatic mechanism, it would be very difficult to trace out.
The Akashic record is not separate from time-space, it is time-space. It’s the same thing. So if you’re looking at it, there it is. But how we get to looking at it – we do it by intent, same as when you talk, and as when we talk. Just as it is your intent that points this conversation. [pause]
R: Hmm. Okay.
F: Have we confused you?
R: Yes. I am following that, and I’m thinking about it and making sure that I understand what you were saying about the fact that you have the advantage of perspective, so to speak, in that you’re seeing it all at once, and the totality of it —
F: Well we didn’t quite phrase it as an advantage; it’s just a circumstance. There are advantages to being quite pointed in time-space and there are disadvantages. And obviously, the other way around. Our disadvantage is a somewhat diffused consciousness. I mean, it’s an advantage, it’s a disadvantage. It depends on how you look at it. We would not at all say it’s an absolute advantage over you, it’s an advantage in certain ways.
R: Well in comparison I thought you were saying you had the advantage in the perspective and we had an advantage in the perception, or the focusing.
F: We have an advantage not so much in perspective as in totality of access. You can provide the needle to play the record, we can provide the record to be played by the needle.
R: Uh-huh. I like that. When I interpreted something you said as your understanding more, you asked us to get back to you on that. That didn’t seem to be quite the way to put it. You were using an analogy of a child and an adult, and that the adult is seeing in much more understanding. And do you have some more to say to us about that?
F: Our meaning would be the same, that a child sees probably more clearly because it’s more clearly focused: It’s absolutely right at the moment, but what it sees it may interpret badly for lack of context. This is the only way in which we would make the analogy between us on this side and you on your side. It is like a parent-child relationship in that respect strictly, not in any other way. But we do have a —
Frank: [Not wider, what’s the word they’re looking for? We do have a –]
R: Broader perspective?
Frank: [No, it starts with I-m, but I can’t find the word. We do have a – Huh. Anyway, we’ll back off. They’re saying they have a broader perspective and we have better – No! That’s not what they’re saying, they’re saying, — Well, say it.]
F: Our perspective is tempered by our experience, and the experience is relatively vast because we have vastly expanded access. Your awareness is perhaps more acute than ours, because where we see somewhat fuzzily because our consciousness is less intense, you see sharply as anything and your struggle is to be able to provide a proper interpretation to what you see so clearly. [pause]
We do want to stress, that’s the only aspect of the parent-child analogy that applies. We’re not saying that you were created from us or anything on that order. [pause] Although that would be another metaphor, actually, but we don’t want to muddy those waters.
We’re working hard to be sure that people get out of the habit of worshipping us as all-knowing, all-being, all important, because all that does is degrade yourselves and it is what could be considered false humility, because it makes you think of yourselves – if you’ll pardon the expression – as worms. [they laugh] No matter how we see you.
R: I see.
F: You’ll find that’s a constant refrain with us, because at the moment it is so important. People who have the gifts have to give the gifts, and if they think they have no gifts, and don’t –
This is the time in which you’re not only giving the gifts of what you make yourselves, but you’re contributing specifically to a set of situations that we are working hard to design, in order to bring your whole –
How to say this? A somewhat misleading way would be to say, to bring your society to a new place. But what we really mean is to provide the external circumstances such that they will lead to what seemingly is internal development, which is more important to us. [pause] We don’t need to pursue that, but we can if you want. Wherever you want to go.
R: That was development in human beings, is that what you mean?
F: Mm-hmm. You are going to become a different thing, and so the social developments are important because they contribute toward your becoming a different thing, but they’re not the important part in themselves. They’re not the focus of the play, so to speak. If you’re mining for iron ore, you make a big pit in the earth. The pit is important because it gets you the iron ore, but it’s the iron ore that’s important, not the pit.
R: So the meaning of that analogy for what’s happening here is —
F: That it is important that we twist and turn and manipulate so society changes in certain ways, but we’re not interested in society changing primarily; we’re interested in changing the society to provide a matrix in which individuals will change in certain ways. You see. To provide a supportive external environment. But to us that is not the important part. That’s the hole in the ground. It’s the people that are the iron ore. It’s the new way that they will be.
R: So that answers my next question, which is how are we to proceed to move to this different level. Our role, anyhow, is to do this sort of thing.
F: You will find – and you already have found, as an individual, but others will find – that the important thing to do is always right there. You don’t have to step across a thousand-foot gulf, it’s always right there by you. And you do that faithfully and it leads you to the next thing. The work of self-transformation is nothing more than self-development, because you’re just becoming aware of what it is that you already are, potentially. That work is always available, and that work can be shirked if it’s put off in response to seemingly more urgent claims elsewhere. But those urgent claims elsewhere can be done in such as manner as to very much further the work of self-development, self-transformation. Self-remembrance, is really what we would say. Rita, you as an individual know all this; this is just for the record.
R: Well, I’m wondering. You know, there’s some specific places in the world where some things are happening, like the Monroe Institute training process, and other similar things where people are getting some direction in this process, and it seems as though most of the world isn’t there, so are we talking about building little islands here that will somehow spread?
F: We’re laughing at you again. You really like that word “seems.”
R: Seems, I do, yes.
F: [laughs] There are always secret schools, and secret schools may not even know that they are secret schools. They may have their attention firmly placed on something else but of course from the other side we can direct the opportunities and we can suggest to people lessons to be learned from things. So, you know the parable of the leavening of the loaf. It takes only a tiny bit to leaven a huge loaf. If all the leaven were to stay in one place, it wouldn’t accomplish what it was doing. If the leaven were absent, the bread would not rise. If it were all leaven, it wouldn’t be bread. It’s a matter of proper proportions in the proper place.
You are a member of one secret school, although it may not know that it’s a secret school – some do and some don’t, depending on their perception – and this secret school is being supported from our side in order to provide a cadre of people with improved access to certainty. That’s really the ideal thing we’re doing here, so that they may be anchors of stability to those around them.
But there is no necessity to have 13,425 Monroe Institutes around the world.
R: [chuckles] Good
F: There’s no necessity to have that same number of Trappist monasteries throughout the world. Or Buddhist monasteries, or Islamic study centers, or synagogues. You see? Secret schools are secret for one reason – because they’re right out in the open. That’s the only way to keep a secret. They’re secret because people can’t see what’s in front of them. And it also is not necessary that in a secret school – we’re using that word meaning a school that teaches secrets – the people on a Downstairs level understand what they’re doing. It is only necessary that they change in the way that they’re being changed. Okay?
R: Mmm.
F: So their Upstairs component is leading them gently to do this, that and the other, and some are good Catholics and some are good Muslims, and there are innumerable members of secret schools who consider themselves to be atheists. [they laugh] It doesn’t matter to us! And in fact, it is an old law of nature that safety is found in diversity. So, if you need for your secret schools to be on a continuing basis and to be invulnerable to the vagaries of history, scatter them out in 50 million different ways. Make them look like nothing like each other.
R: Mm-hmm. And some will survive.
F: More than some. And it’s not so much a question of surviving, that’s a little too grim. It’s more a question of, some will have greater influence than others. You’re not in a situation where it’s beginning to rain and there’s only one ark.
R: Before Frank came along and we started this process, I thought I was in a state where nothing was happening, and it seems like —
F: [laughs]
R: Don’t laugh, now. This is a serious question.
F: [laughs] Yeah, but we’re laughing and we’re serious. [they laugh]
R: I assume on principle that what looked like a delay to me had some purpose. I’m willing to accept that on faith. But you know, it’s a big step for me to feel like there isn’t something we should do to push, rather than just to sit back and say. “well things come about in their proper time,” you see.
F: Ah. You’re right, it is a serious question, but we look at it – as so many things – somewhat differently. [pause] When things appear to be not moving, sometimes it’s a process of settling in, sometimes it’s a process of preparation. Sometimes it’s a necessary rest, sometimes it’s stopped here because you’re working elsewhere, you know? Sometimes it’s waiting for external circumstances to come around. And sometimes, of course, it is that you are refusing to do what you know you should be doing. But those are all very different circumstances, all of which look the same. That’s one of the reasons why we’re laughing about seeming. The other reason is to underline it, of course.
When things seem like they’re dead still in the water, you can always find out whether or not things are stagnant or whether they’re fallow. Examine your feelings. Is there something that you know you should do that you don’t want to do and you’re not doing?
We don’t mean this in a sense of “I should be a better person, I should be more helpful”; those are beating yourself up. But if you’re saying, “this job has to be done, I know I have to do it, but I don’t want to,” that’s not necessarily wrong either, but examine your feelings about that. If you’re shirking something that you legitimately should do, you’ll know it. And if at the same time things feel stagnant, there may be a connection.
Your comments brought up two things to talk about, and that was one. The second is, it’s a common mistake, and a very understandable one, to confuse doing nothing externally with doing nothing. A monk who is in a monastery and not even speaking to his fellows who is sincerely and intelligently striving for whatever his own goals are – he would call it, probably, getting closer to God; you might call it self-development — whatever the goal, someone who is sincerely striving is not doing nothing.
Now, it may look from the outside that they’re not doing anything productive, or that they’re even shirking their job. But we would say if you’re shirking your job, you always know it. We would also say, there’s an awful lot of waste energy going on because people think they must “do something.” But you never have to “do something.” If there’s something you really have to do, you know what it is, you don’t call it something. You see? [laughs] So beware of people who say “we need to do something.”
R: Yes. Well there’s sometimes a sense also of feeling impatient that things aren’t happening, as you suggested. And not knowing what it is that one’s supposed to be doing.
F: You always have that knowledge available. Just sit quietly and meditate and ask sincerely. You may not get, “you should go do this,” but in the absence of “you should go do this” you’ll know “no, no this is fine, what I’m doing.” You see? Sometimes waiting is what you need to do. And while you’re waiting on one level, you’re working on another. [pause] What would you like to do?
R: I would like to do what I’m doing now, but I felt there was a period of time when I was describing myself as spiritually stuck.
F: Ah. Well, then we suggest that for your own amusement, or for your own reassurance, at some point go back and look and ask yourself the simple question, “what would be different had this happened before that period?” and that will tell you what you got out of that period. You see?
R: I see.
F: And the answer may be, “well, I had to wait for the time to be right.” Or the answer may be, “I had my attention focused in the wrong place and that delayed it.” But the answer very well may be, “oh no, because of this I’ve been changed to this,” you see. “Made me a better instrument. We’re not predicting what the answer will be, but we say it’s a good exercise. Nor is it something for the public record, so don’t say it here.
R: It’s not something for the public record?
F: The results of your private query.
R: Oh, I got it I see. All right. Okay.
F: There is a tendency in this business to forget that people have their own business that’s nobody else’s business.
R: Okay. I certainly believe that’s true. That it’s not everything that needs to be known by everybody.
F: Correct.
R: There’s some sense where you feel that something came so close to not happening – and you feel so pleased that it happened, but it might not have happened!
F: There are innumerable realities in which it did not.
R: Yes.
F: But you chose the one in which it did. Your choice.
R: That’s good. All right, I wanted then to go —
F: That includes the World Trade Center situation. Everyone who’s here chose the reality in which it happened. One of the realities in which it happened. By definition.
R: And it’s always so mysterious to us that 6,000-some people have chosen the path they chose of being in the way of that falling building plus–
F: Well in this case we’re talking about the rest of you, who are living with the aftermath of it, rather than having chosen to live in the realities in which that didn’t happen at all, you see. You are not in any different circumstance from the people who were in the plane or people who were in the buildings, in one respect, and that is, all of you chose this particular reality rather than others. And of course in the others they’re in the same fix relative to theirs.
R: Now see, it’s so hard to imagine that without having a sense of somebody directing that.
F: Well that’s fine, but you’re the director. [laughs] You, Upstairs. [pause] Well, no. You Upstairs puts you Downstairs into situations and you Downstairs choose, and where you choose shows where you go. Now, you didn’t know anything about that, ahead of time. You know, the situation was on its way, but you chose –
Okay, how do we do this?
Let’s find another place to start this. [pause]
If you see yourself – as is valid– as not only that part of yourself that is Downstairs, but also that that’s Upstairs, at the same time remember that there are countless versions of you in all the various different realities. So in a very real sense, you don’t choose that at all. Everybody takes all conceivable actions, or inactions. The only question is, where is your particular consciousness in that maze of choice?
All right? You have a version of yourself living in worlds that didn’t experience that crash, but also didn’t experience World War II! You have versions of yourself that have no Korea war or any of the infinite variety of things, good and bad. It isn’t that you chose and chose and chose – although that’s the way we always put it, because that’s the way it seems. You’re only choosing in the sense of choosing to put your consciousness through one door or the other door. But in the sense of you actually being an actor in each of those realities, you’ve made all the choices! And all the non-choices. [laughs] There’s no – if you’ll pardon the expression – choice about it.
All right? Now we know full well how impossible it is for you to understand how there can be millions of variants of yourself living breathing walking, dealing with all those situations – and yet you are aware of only one. Knowing. Because you are in all conceivable paths, all of the dilemmas, and particularly the moral ethical dilemmas that you all think are inherent in a situation, aren’t. They’re not real. Because it isn’t that you chose this path or that path and something might have happened. The paths all exist; you down the path exist; you chose to identify for the moment with this particular you in this particular path.
It’s the best we can do. You can stretch your mind that far, but we know you can’t make it as real as the moment of time-space you’re in, because that’s how it is.