As above, so below

Friday, August 27, 2010

7:15 AM.

The theme continues to be, “as above, so below.” This is the key to many things, and it’s why people repeat it even not having the slightest idea why they do, they not knowing what it means.

You want to know why “as above, so below”? Because anything else implies separation.

Think about that. Anything else implies that on this side of the line, life is one way, but on that side, it is another way. A physical analogy might be – below ground versus above ground, or land versus ocean, or earth-atmosphere versus outer space. Your physical existence is full of boundaries, some realer or more definite than others, but always reinforcing the illusion of separation into units.

But the world – that is, reality – is not like that. In reality, not even the barrier between physical and non-physical is what it appears from your end.

Everything, from lowest to highest, is another iteration of the same scheme. Everything is suffused with life because there is nothing else. There is no “dead”-ness to the universe, no “dead matter” into which “life” is inserting itself, contrary to Shaw’s fable. And there is no level of being that is in pieces that can be (or theoretically could be) detached.

Anything, looked at under a microscope, reveals itself to be not solid but porous. Anything, looked at through the largest telescope, reveals itself not to be chaotic and unrelated to the rest, but patterned and interrelated. The skies – that is, the heavens, the galaxies and universes and nebulae etc. – are as much a solid as the table you write on. The table is as much a wilderness of space connected in regular solid patterns as those same nebulae. And so you in the body as well. “Man is the measure of all things,” not only physically but non-physically, because that is the scale of measurement that is most convenient and appropriate to man.

We are not confining ourselves to physical appearance or structure – although those analogies do apply. For our purposes here, we are pointing out that you extend downward and upward equally; you are part of the microscopic world and the macroscopic world equally. (It ought to go without saying, but doesn’t, so we will say it for completeness, that the entire physical world has its underpinnings in the underlying world, the non-physical world; therefore all manifestation is at the same time an expression of the unmanifest.)

Try to understand, these are not just poetic images, not just philosophic words, but literal if allusive description. If you once receive into yourself the image and feeling of what we are saying here, you will hold it and it will change you. It is in order to do this that we have worked with the concept of the person-group and the social-group, to begin to accustom you to see how it can be that you are an expression of continuity with the microscopic and macroscopic worlds, literally, both physically and non-physically.

As we “guys upstairs” are part of you but are not confined within any arbitrary grouping, as the molecules of your body at any given time are part of you and then not part of you, seamlessly, as you breathe and cells die and are born and bits of air are breathed in and out, so you, considered as a sort of metaphorical unit, are neither really bounded nor defined. Your constituent organs are actually collections of person-groups at a lower level. You are actually part of person-groups at a higher level. And just as your constituent groups function – relative to you! – at a lower, more automatic level, so you function relative to the next higher level – and so correspondingly up and down the scale.

What we have just said is enough. It is the entire key, once understood. Everything we add to it is only because it will not be understood at any given time by any given person according to any predictable schedule.

Now we’ll try saying it again in different contexts, for context helps define what is being examined.

Let’s suppose that you are doing some robot-work. That is, you and another are attempting to discover and reprogram autonomous complexes so as to disable undesired automatic reactions and either enable different automatic reactions or create a space for conscious choice in the moment. To you, it appears that the intelligence operating (constituting) the robot is far less acute, far less conscious than you are. You are functioning in the moment. Hence, you are focused. It has not been functioning in the moment, in that sense of the term. That is, it has functioned moment to moment in terms of scanning the situation, alert for a match between the external situation and the situation it has been programmed to be activated by, but it has not functioned and does not function “in the moment” in the sense of actively thinking, perceiving, self-examining, except in so far as it decides whether or not it is being called to action.

When you, being in the moment, focus on it, it temporarily enjoys a higher consciousness, as your being-in-the-moment-ness creates a temporary joint consciousness. It experiences contact with a higher mind. It intuits purpose. It is reshaped.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Now, notice. The “it” that has been through this experience did not choose the experience. From its point of view, it was chosen. It was – shall we say – the grace of God that it experienced. It was an experience, it would feel, of Cosmic Consciousness. It was something that other person-groups, not having any consciousness of having experienced something similar, would dismiss, perhaps, as “woo-woo.”

Does it sound familiar?

The person-group that you reprogrammed has had its mission altered (for reasons beyond its ken) but since it cannot hold its larger more focused consciousness once you move on to other things, it may well forget. It may wall off its memory of the inexplicable experience and try to go back to normal. May indeed return to normal not quite noticing the course-change.

Or it may found a religion around the experience and its perception of the meaning of the experience. Or it may in its own way suffer from a neurosis of sorts, knowing that it has experienced what its beliefs insist could not have happened.

Or perhaps it will devote time and effort to attaining that moment of enhanced consciousness again – that is to say, either at will (hence, magic, control) or as a favor received (hence, ritual, devotion, willing surrender).

Can you see that from its point of view any of these reactions would be perfectly defensible, depending upon the psychological context? And yet, everything we have just sketched is inaccurate and misleading in so far as you identify with the person-group rather than any one strand of that group. For you could consider yourself a person-group looking downward, so to speak; looking upward, you could consider yourself but one strand of a larger person-group.

Yes, I do see that. And you’re about to tie this in to our work sideways, so to speak.

Exactly. “Know thyself” did not refer merely to knowing oneself as a unit. In fact, that is a trivial and misleading view of the saying. To truly know yourself – as you are learning – you must know that in all the world physical and non-physical there is no such thing as a unit, except provisionally, temporarily, and from a certain point of view.

So. Learn the other members of your person-group, bearing in mind that every strand has a right to be there, regardless whether you like it or not. This holds true for other members of your person-group in your body (as it seems to you) and equally true for other members of your person-group not seemingly sharing your body.

That isn’t going to be clear.

We know. You try.

We are not single or separate but inherently part of something larger, and also are made up of things smaller that cooperate to constitute us. This is true physically and non-physically. Thus we have to learn who else functions as part of the “I” we think we know, and we need to learn who else we as a composite form one part of.

You think that will be clearer to people?

Who knows? It tries to express what I am feeling you expressing.

All right. Class dismissed, and well done.

Glad we’re done for the moment. Only a bit more than an hour, but some intense concentration here. I suppose the bait in the trap is this continuing experience of higher consciousness?

Not exactly higher consciousness, but more intense focus, which is a necessary prerequisite perhaps.

You’ve provided a tremendous lot of food for thought, these past few days. We thank you.

You express your thanks – any and all of you – in so far as you do the work, and for that we thank you in turn.