November 13, 2001
R: This is our 14th session. We still have some questions around the concept of the amoeba. We want to make sure that our understanding is as complete as we can get it.
F: We’ll be glad to ask you questions if you like.
R: [chuckles] Frank noted, the other day, that maybe everyone he’s ever been close to was part of his amoeba. Is that a possibility?
F: Well of course, you know, we’ve been listening to your conversation, by definition. You and your readers are going to have very different ideas, and we want to express things in a way that will have the least chance of being misunderstood, which is difficult.
Yes, you could conceivably have all the inhabitants of the earth in one amoeba. We never meant to imply one amoeba to one person or one amoeba to a few people. But at the same time – it isn’t the case but it could be the case. As far as we know, there’s no theoretical limit to the number of space-time lives one amoeba could generate. You mustn’t think of us as being bound in bodies the way you are. Even the elastic ones.
At the same time, — [pause] we’ll back up a little more.
Remember our discussion about pluses and minuses, or blue and orange, and how everything is a combination of blue and orange, and that more blue in one place frees room for oranges somewhere else. But blue can’t overcome orange, and orange can’t overcome blue, except locally in time.
Well, one way of clustering blues and oranges is to make them into teams, so to speak. And you can have amoebas that are orange amoebas and blue amoebas, more or less. We’re going to go back to plus and minuses, because blue and orange starts sounding like football teams, and we don’t want to give you that sense. But you could have one amoeba that was 78 percent pluses and another amoeba that was 60 percent pluses and a third that was 23 percent pluses. The overall flavor of the various amoebas varies, just as the overall flavor of various individuals varies, and for the same reason.
So when you, in your Downstairs lives, meet people that you have no affinity for, many times this is because they are not of your amoeba, but more than that, because that amoeba is of a different specific gravity, so to speak. So that you and this other individual, were you out of the bodies, would never mix, because –
Oh, that’s one more thing we need to tell you. Here’s something that’s really going to kind of make a problem. [pause] If Frank’s any example, you are thinking of the amoebas as a relatively shapeless bag that contains things in it. But that would imply that two bags next to each other had surfaces that they didn’t intermingle, and that’s a spatial analogy. It’s only a spatial analogy, and if you have within the amoeba an individual who is 17 pluses and 3 minuses, and you have within another amoeba another individual that’s 17 pluses and 3 minuses, they are going to be at the same level of being, regardless of their life experiences or their beliefs or anything else, they’re going to sort out to the same place once there’s no body holding them separate.
Now, they’re from different amoebas, but at the same time they are of similar composition, which brings them to the same level. You could look at it as saying this is as close as different amoebas come to interacting with each other.
Time out.
We’re going to restate the way we think you see it, and then try and restate the way we think it is. We think you see it as maybe ten amoebas sitting together, each of them looking like a bag full of peas, each pea being an individual lifetime. That’s not the way we see it at all. We would see it as perhaps ten different clouds, and the layers of the clouds intermingle without the clouds losing what they have in common. Each cloud maintains its own self, even though it’s intermingled with others. And the levels of the cloud have different gravities, and the various levels sort out together. That should be pretty well incomprehensible to you.
R: [laughs] Well, I haven’t been seeing it the way you’ve described us as seeing it.
F: So how have you seen it?
R: First of all, in your description I thought we had one amoeba per person, so to speak, although there might be two lifetimes going on in the same time space that belong to the same amoeba, but a single amoeba would include an individual who’s living a lifetime but also includes all the lifetimes that person has ever lived, and all of the dimensions in which they’ve existed, and so on.
F: Yes, we described all that, but we didn’t mean to imply that’s all there was.
R: So I was thinking of that as one individual, or as perhaps that same amoeba having the possibility of several lives at the same time. So you change it as soon as you put other individuals into it. I hadn’t quite caught up with that until Frank asked his questions about maybe everyone he’s close to is in the same amoeba. Can you start from that point on now?
F: Sure. We think the easiest way is to start with Bob Monroe’s description of the INSPEC, because it was really very acute. That is, a being outside of time-space, that inserts itself into time-space to experience time-space, and does so in multiple extensions in time-space. But you were thinking of them somewhat locally, and we are thinking of it much more globally. You were thinking that you, Rita, are one of 15 lives led by your amoeba. And that’s true, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go very far, because remember we said that a new being from the amoeba might be drawn through the other lives, or it might be drawn separate from them? And if it was drawn through them they would experience the idea of reincarnation, or they might? And if it was drawn separate they probably would not, because it wouldn’t resonate? Well, that’s true, but that was an example based on one person. We never meant that to be the extent of the amoeba. The amoeba may have millions of the same thing. As far as we know, there are no theoretical limits to how many lives at various times, or even together, one amoeba may have.
If you wish, you might think of the amoeba as one cell of a larger amoeba, and that works okay. In fact, there’s something to be said for that. It’s sort of true that you could have the amoeba be various lives that this small portion has put together, and then that small portion together with other small portions, make a larger amoeba. But don’t think that it’s all concrete differences. It’s more like viewpoint. Again, it’s a cell if you look at it one way, it’s an individual if you look at it another.
It’s true, the super-amoeba, shall we call it, that deals with people on earth, is not undifferentiated between it and the people. It isn’t like on the one end there’s the whole amoeba and on the other end there are all these tiny little particles. It sort of is organized by its own affinity. So that if one part of yourself is five pluses, and another part of yourself is ten pluses, and another 15 and 20 and 25, each of those will develop into the physical world according to what it is, so you could look at it as those various sections being individuals. That is, individual amoebas or portions. Again, we always come back to the fact that individuals of any kind are really literally not possible, so when you’re talking about anything being “an individual,” it’s only an approximation. It’s only a convenience.
R: And that’s true when you’re talking about amoebae.
F: Sure. You could look at it like, there are x numbers of amoebas, or you could look at it like there’s only one. The difference is more a matter of viewpoint. From your point of view it would be probably more productive for you to think of the amoebas as being vastly larger than one individual or group of individuals, because if you start thinking that your individual amoeba is different from Frank’s individual amoeba, and different from Marilyn’s individual amoeba, it will slide you back in your mind toward thinking of us as individuals again. It isn’t exactly that it’s wrong, but it leads in the wrong direction, an unhelpful direction.
R: Is there any advantage to thinking about an organizing principle that would pull individual components together into a larger unit? You used the word affinity: Does it have to do with the proportion of pluses and minuses?
F: Yes, exactly. We thought that wasn’t going to work for you, but that’s the only analogy we can think of. Proportions. It’s the nature.
R: You used the word specific gravity at one time.
F: Just trying to give you a physical analogy. Because if we say specific gravity, and you can imagine a bunch of potatoes floating in water, or not floating but in various depths of the water, there’s no connotation of right or wrong, or positive or negative in the moral sense that way. That’s what we were trying to avoid, is all. It’s just convenience. We know that this became an unsuspected can of worms for you tonight, but – that’s just as well. [they chuckle]
R: Well, each time we’ve talked about it has, in thinking about it, led to further questions. That’s the nature of it.
F: We congratulate you.
R: [chuckles]
F: It’s not meant as a joke.
R: Well, could you say that everyone has an amoeba, or everyone is part of an amoeba, but not everyone’s in touch with a concept like the Guys Upstairs.
F: Well, we’ve answered part of this before. By definition, everyone is part of an amoeba, because it is the amoeba that puts you into physical time-space. There’s no other way. Just say by definition you are all part of something outside time and space that inserts you into time and space.
The other is just a question of access. Some people don’t have any realistic possibility of developing conscious access during a lifetime, because that’s how they’ve set it up; others have no realistic possibility of not having that access, because that’s how they’ve set it up. Most people are in the middle, and depending on the choices that they make, and depending on the circumstances in which they put themselves – or as they would say, find themselves – they will to a larger or a lesser extent open those channels.
Now, sometimes the plot of their life is that they will be surprised by it opening – in other words, it will open from the other side – but that’s no more accidental than anything else in life. It appears to them that way. Bob Monroe himself, if you look at the whole pattern of his life (as he could not, because he was in the middle of it) you see how perfect it was to insert this surprise into his life, from his point of view at the time. He had no clue what was going on! But Upstairs and in the overall purpose of his life – the Worm Monroe – knew full well.
So that’s a long-winded answer to your question, but there is a bell curve as to whether people will or won’t develop that access. Most people are in the middle and have the ability to greatly increase it, but it’s a matter of choice/circumstance. Just to clarify that one more time. We’re talking there only of conscious access. You always have unconscious access.
R: [pause] I think this question would change, now that we’ve had this discussion, but the question I have written here is, that you said earlier that you have some responsibility, or affinity, for looking after others besides Frank. Does that mean others within the same amoeba that he’s in, or others in other amoebas, or is that a meaningful distinction?
F: [pause] Well, it’s a meaningful distinction, but not an easy one while you’re in the body. We would say there’s no real access between ourselves on this side and those who aren’t of the same amoeba that we’re of. It’s only an indirect access, which means someone speaking to someone, rather than us thinking through them, or giving them hunches, or whatever. That’s the easiest answer. There is access indirectly by that way. One major function of your culture is to provide the ability to talk between amoebas.
R: Via us.
F: Sure. By you, by your cultural concepts, by your constructs, like books or movies or whatever, by someone in the body expressing something which affects someone else in a body who’s of a different amoeba. Take that and churn it about a million times, and you can begin to see the beautiful complexity of it. A kaleidoscope. That’s our summary of the beautiful complexity of it. Kaleidoscope, it’s wonderful.
R: Okay. The package that is any of us is created by the amoeba. At death we rejoin our amoeba, but we may have a crystallized soul (the language you used) if all works well, or may become individualized. So when we drop the body, do the crystallized souls become part of the amoeba, or is it some other way?
F: [Sigh] We’re getting really tired of the English language. It makes a lot of trouble. It’s a mistake to say that you’re away from the amoeba and then you rejoin it. You’ve never left it. The only thing that’s happened is, there have been barriers to your awareness of it, and the removal of barriers to your awareness of it. That’s the only change. All the time that you’re developing your flower, the stem connects to the amoeba, which is the ground. The flower may think it’s just out there by itself, well that’s all right; we don’t care what it thinks. It’s still part of us. When the flower withers into the ground at the wintertime, it may remember then that it’s always been a part of the earth, but it’s always been a part of the earth whether it realized it or not. (Taking us to be the earth, for the moment.)
So we’re going to come back to that every time you say something that implies something other, because everyone who reads this will need that reminder. It’s like, if you go back to the way the Christians look at it, it’s a very good hint: There’s never any separation between yourselves and God. There’s never any separation between you and us, except in your awareness of it. The Christians would say, “God never turns his back on you, but you can turn your back on him.” We would say, “we’re always aware of you, you may not be aware of us.” It’s the same thing, only without the overlay of guilt. [laughs]
Now, perhaps saying “crystallized” gave a misleading impression, although it really is a very good way of stating it. But for the moment let’s change the analogy and say that you were a new kind of tulip; you developed somehow new colors that had never been seen in tulips before. You’re still a tulip; you’re still a flower; you’re still connected to the earth, but you have added something a little more complex. Now you’re a special tulip. It’s true that everything is special, but when everything is special, the special-ness can be taken for granted and they’re not special, in a sense. Sorry to do that to you, but that’s the way it is.
Let’s go back to crystallizing. We really like the word crystallizing, because it implies several things. It implies, you’ve put together something that’s permanent, and –
Well, perhaps this will shed light on the other thing, which seemed to perplex you quite a bit. If you crystallize the elements, they’re permanent, and they have their own – it has its own (because it’s no longer a “they,” you see; it’s crystallized) – it has its own center of being, let’s say. If it doesn’t crystallize, you could look at it as being thrown back into the water, in the way that we were talking about before; the ice cube that didn’t gel. And so maybe that will feel less painful to you, to look it like, most of the time the ice doesn’t gel. And when it does, those cubes are permanent. We’re saying few, it’s just relative. But – you understand what we’re saying? Don’t think of the ones that don’t become permanent as a tragedy, so much as think of the ones that do become permanent as an achievement.
Now when they do, then you have a seed – shattering the metaphor, but that’s the way it goes – that crystal is a seed from which new tendencies can develop. It opens new lines of endeavor. Radical change of metaphor here. A musician might come up with a phrase which could be elaborated, and elaborated and elaborated, and he winds up with a sonata or a symphony. A crystallized being could be considered to be the equivalent of a phrase that could be elaborated and elaborated and elaborated upon. One that doesn’t crystallize doesn’t give you that possibility, and so you just keep going until it does.
That is to say, it’s back in the pot; the pot manifests others, some of which crystallize and some don’t. And the ones that do, offer the ability for specialized manifestations. That’s really what we need to say. Not specialized in the sense of division of labor, so much as just specialized as precious and different and individual.
R: And does this manifestation occur within the amoeba when the body is released, or are you talking about the implications for another lifetime?
F: Well, there’s not much different there, really. Remember, when you created this crystallization, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in a body or not, because when the body falls away, it’ll still be there. Well, you might look at it this way, which is slightly misleading: That the amoeba projects another lifetime through that crystal, which polarizes the light, so to speak. Which, you see, systematically warps the energies to produce a certain bias. It acts as a polarizing filter to produce a certain shape, a certain pattern. We’re stumbling looking for a metaphor that will say that the crystallized being acts to give shape to the energies flowing through it, without those energies duplicating it. It’s somewhat of a catalyst. It catalyzes new developments. That might be a way to look at it.
R: And does it matter whether we’re catalyzing new developments in that same individual in that lifetime, or a further lifetime, or in the amoeba on the other side?
F: It would be the amoeba’s energies flowing through that pattern to create a new pattern. It wouldn’t be in the same lifetime. Well, — wait. [pause] It’s not worth going into, but theoretically it could happen while the person was still alive, we suppose. But don’t worry about that.
R: [chuckles]
F: It’s too long a detour. But take it as given that the energies of the amoeba are – there’s a word we’re looking for and we can’t find it. It means establishing a pattern, and channeling something, and molding it. It’s an easy word, but we can’t find it. It’s like, — Here’s an example. If you project light through a slide, the picture appears on the screen. That’s sort of the way that the crystallized being is functioning, as a slide. So that the energies go through it, and are patterned by it, only the difference in the analogy is that they become something quite different from it. Does that help at all?
R: I think I understand that as a theory. [laughs] I’m having a little trouble thinking what that would be like in manifestation.
F: You ought to see the trouble Frank’s having with it!
R: [laughs] Yes. Well, I don’t know if these are worthwhile distinctions, but we have a great need to know, for some reason.
F: Well, we would say, you will come up with more interesting questions in a way when you don’t read them but allow what happens to flow through you, rather than depending on the notes. Just like him speaking.
R: Well I was wanting to make sure I got in the questions that had come up in me since our last talk.
F: Understand. We don’t have any problem with you doing it, we just see you as a more versatile tool than you perhaps see yourself.
[Continued in tomorrow’s post]