Author: Frank DeMarco

Thursday, September 10, 2015

5 a.m. Dr. Jung, I remembered, last night, a dream I had on my visit to the island of Iona, back in 2003. But when I went looking in my computer journals for an account of the dream, I found that I had remembered it wrongly. It wasn’t one dream but two, and they didn’t say quite what I thought I remembered them saying. At the moment, though, I am a little surprised that I could have forgotten them at all, or that they should come to mind now.

Fill in the dreams and we can discuss them. Tomorrow, if you don’t care to do so at the moment.

I could find them and print them out now, if you think dealing with the computer won’t put me in too exterior a mood.

“It” won’t put anybody into any kind of mood. “It” may lure you if you are conflicted, or may surprise you if you are unconscious. But if you are aware and intent, why should doing anything for any reason change your orientation?

But we aren’t very conscious usually, nor very intent.

Being aware of lack of awareness is the antidote.

We’ll see. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Let’s see how many: it is 5:08 now.

5:18. Well, that was interesting, to say the least. I go up to my office and I find the computer left on, the Iona file already on screen, where apparently I had left it last night. I never leave the computer on when I’m finished with it, but put it in sleep mode. Yet there it was. And, although the long narrative is shot through with accounts of dreams, I find what I want easily enough – and find more that would be worth looking at. But I managed to restrain myself and print out just the excerpts I intended to ask about. So I guess I was able to preserve my continuity for ten minutes, anyway.

So how do we proceed?

Copy, and re-read, the first dream. Omit the correlations with conscious life and we will look only at the dream.

 [Sunday, June 8

“I am in the church that [My Scottish friend] Michael [Ross] and I were in yesterday. There is a service going on, I think.

“Two women go up to the priest – he is in the aisle. They want his help, but I from behind one of them say, “I know what you need, my dear, and I can help you. But it can’t be right now. This is not to do with you, just I don’t have the time right now.” This is accepted by all concerned. From within the dream, I am concerned lest it be 8 a.m. when I’m going to awaken (alarm set) but am glad to realize that it is not yet that, but about 3:30 real time.

“As we were coming out of the church – but still inside, in the aisle, toward the door – there was something. The woman to my left didn’t figure directly in the dream – I’m not sure she said anything – but the dream concerned the four of us, among so many strangers I did not know.

“I note that the priest and the women accepted that I had the knowledge and ability to help the woman. It was not presumption, nor a vying with the priest. I could help her as he (the church, I think) could not, and all concerned knew it. But not just yet – I had something else to do first. I stressed, it wasn’t her fault that I couldn’t help right away, it was that I wasn’t yet free to get to it. But I would be.”

The church you had visited had been destroyed during the reformation, and had lain waste for centuries, and had been slowly and laboriously rebuilt in the 20th century. You approved of that [the rebuilding], but were repelled by the present-day church’s leaflets on the walls and by the sight of a flesh-and-blood priest walking by.

Yes, I remember that well. I approved, but I was not a part of it and didn’t want to be, or couldn’t. I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up one of the leaflets. That was at Pluscarden, the day before I traveled on alone to Iona.

You were one of four [in the dream], of course. The two women, the priest, and you. Three laity and a priest as the fourth. You were with the other two, and yet not with them. They were together, you were behind them, but the three of you were facing the priest, though he too was in the aisle. He was not on the altar, you see, but in the aisle.

Not quite him as only another member of the laity, though.

No, but not performing his priestly function, either. He embodied that function but he was not in the act of intermediating between humans and the divine.

And although I knew I could help one of them, I wasn’t ready yet.

Let us say the time wasn’t ready yet. You had something else to do first and so couldn’t help at the moment, but all concerned knew that it was only a matter of time. And your consciousness was aware that in “real life” it wasn’t time either; you didn’t have to leave your dream for external obligations – which fitted smoothly into the dream. Note that you, and the two women – only one of whom needed the help you could give – and the priest were four “among so many strangers” you did not know.

I am very much aware that what I don’t know about the dream, you or any analyst would know, or should know.

But maybe it isn’t everybody’s business. We don’t analyze in public.

All right, but then the second dream?

“Again at 6:15 a.m. I am up to record a dream:

“An experience that was almost suffocating in its intensity. I went into a church and proceeded down, down, down stairs to lower and lower – older and older – levels. I could see I was below the level of our civilization, where the steel foundations for it, the support of the structure, were. Construction was going on and I was concerned that I not interfere or get hurt. At a passageway, a ladder in front of me, a wooden ladder, very tall, of the A-shaped kind. A worker was sitting high up on the wall to the left. The ladder was tilted away from him [tilted onto one set of legs, on the right, its left-hand side in the air] though it was not falling. I gently pulled it down to sit firmly, and walked under it. I came to a level still far above the depths, I thought, though far below our time. But they had a press operating there, though it was not printing, but before printing. They asked if I would lend a hand for a few minutes – and hours later I was happily still there.

“They were not signatures but single sheets 8 ½ by 11 or larger, and were first individually written and colored – in many colors, not just red on black – and the sheets were collated and bound. It was full color printing, before printing, each sheet being individually prepared. [Here I sketched a sheet with the left third of the page being design and the right two-thirds being lines of text.]

“The dream ended there for the moment.”

You related it in your mind to my dream of going farther and farther beneath the basement of my house and discovering archaic levels of my psyche. That is a valid association in so far as it concerns the descent into historical realms. Your dream was leading you to the foundations of the church. Steel, thus rigid, modern and strong, and then below the upper levels, construction was going on.

Yes, I noticed that vaguely, although naturally I allowed for the vagaries of a dream’s logic. In real life, you don’t construct from under an existing construction.

You persist in contrasting dream reality to “real life” although a part of you knows better.

True. Anyway — ?

The dream was “almost suffocating in its intensity.” It was meaningful and you knew it was meaningful. This closely concerned your life. You had no doubt of that. You were not part of the construction work going on – you didn’t want to interfere but you didn’t want to get hurt either. In short, you knew to keep your distance.

But then there was the ladder.

Ahead of you, in the direction you wanted to go, was a man on a very tall wooden (not steel) ladder. [But the dream said the man was on the wall, not on the ladder. Yet “Jung” proceeded as though my inaccurate recall was correct. We addressed this two days later, in a session I shall post tomorrow.] Although a man was sitting on it (that is, although he was not falling), one half of the A-shaped ladder was in the air, an unstable position. You pulled it – gently – until it sat firmly on both sets of legs – and then walked under the ladder and there you found what at first seemed a moment’s useful amusement but which turned out to occupy quite a bit of your time, happily but unconsciously.

Do you customarily walk under ladders? Is that not supposed to be bad luck, as well as perhaps slightly dangerous?

I had no sense of danger, and I had no sense of incurring bad luck. I can’t remember if I even thought about walking under the ladder as a sign of bad luck, either in the dream or later, writing it up.

You remembered the sensation of working happily with the press and the printers, but you did not pay attention to the fact that you had walked under the ladder you had stabilized, to get there.

Does this imply that in fact working further with the printers was a bit of bad luck?

It implies that you lost consciousness.

And if I hadn’t walked under the ladder?

You would have been left with a very different feeling – suffocating in its intensity.”

Hmm. So I let myself get diverted.

You were told earlier, you couldn’t help the woman yet, that you were not yet free to do so. No one and nothing implied that you were not free because of external circumstances (as if that could really happen, but we are holding to the conscious understanding here).

I had things to live, first.

That’s one way to look at it. Now continue to the third dream, three days later.

Only that one, or the others of which it was part?

We cannot do everything at once. Your hour is already over, even allowing for the time spend retrieving the file.

All right.

“There was some kind of building work being done in the church. And there was a man working who was somewhat skillful. I was involved with it at a less skilled level. The man had to quit. He couldn’t do it any more, there was something wrong. The posture hurt his feet, or something. I offered to do the work, or was asked, I forget which. The woman in charge of the thing said I had great [force?] The idea was that I could do the job, and otherwise it couldn’t be done.”

And the point, as you well knew and know yet, is that otherwise, it couldn’t be done. It doesn’t matter how much more skillful others may be – if only you can do the job, only you can do the job. Do you imagine that I felt up to the task life set for me?

I am well aware that this does not refer only to me but to those who read this. I’m merely noting that I know it.

Yes – but don’t forget that for you as well as for others there is something only you can do, well or badly, so you do not have the luxury of assuming that it doesn’t matter if you do it, it will be done by somebody else, and perhaps better. Your work can never be done by any but you yourself. Your inner work, your outer work. If you do not do it, your un-done outer work may perhaps be compensated for by the work of another, but it will remain un-done. And who is going to compensate for the work that you, as leader of your particular soul, are responsible to do?

Now, a word or two more, and we will dismiss class for the day. What do you understand the point to be, of today’s exploration?

I get that it may be time for me to consider that Iona manuscript again.

Not in the form you left it, but in the form you will have to find for it. Yes, and?

I always knew that the church was essential but that I couldn’t really be a part of it. I guess this showed me that I could help it get more grounded on the psychic side.

They won’t necessarily recognize the assistance, or appreciate it, but yes, demonstrating the everyday-ness of the nonphysical world in its interaction with the physical is a potential reconnection of a social institution with the basis of belief for people. It is an old, old wooden ladder, and a tall one, and the human at the top is not in danger of falling off, nor was the ladder in danger of falling over, but it is better when firmly placed on either side.

And one more thing.

It isn’t primarily about me and a manuscript, or printing, or helping others or placing the church on firmer footing. It is about me orienting myself correctly.

I will be very glad to continue our conversation whenever you find it convenient.

My thanks, and I think those of others whose interest you arouse now, let alone so many you have helped out of the wilderness in life and in your books. Till next time, then. (6:28 a.m.)

 

Friday, September 4, 2015

5:45 a.m. All right, let’s keep going. Into the breach: soul and spirit, some clarification.

You have been given a view of the non-3D life from the point of view of the soul created to hold together various strands to create a new habit-pattern, a new viewpoint, a new window on the 3D world and thus a new window on the non-3D world thereafter. But this view must now be corrected, or shall we say compensated, or complemented, by the same reality seen from the point of view you call spirit.

In this phrasing we are being careful to imply that soul and spirit, though different manifestations, are not in any way absolutely different.

I know what you are meaning to convey there, but I’m not sure how to get it across. I guess a good analogy would help, but I can’t think of one and I gather you don’t have one to suggest.

Why not spell out your understanding, and we will correct or modify if need be?

All right. I think you’re meaning, soul and spirit are the same essence, manifesting differently enough to seem like different things. Like, I suppose, vegetables and animals might be seen as fundamentally different but are both living matter.

Maybe a more productive analogy would be humans and animals being different expressions of animal life – physically identical except for a small percentage of their genetic make-up, but that small percentage being enough to render them vastly different in appearance and function in their environment – yet still mostly the same thing, not easily seen to be such when looked at only in the physical environment.

In fact, this is a very good analogy. In 3D, humans and other animals may not even be able to communicate except indirectly because only humans have intelligent speech, and humans have lost the ability to understand non-vocal communication. So, the gap is widened, perceptually. Now as humans re-learn the language they lost – as they begin to realize the other ways animals communicate, and mostly as they realize that animals who cannot talk can nonetheless understand – the differences between humans and other animals will seem to shrink, and what they are in common will seem to expand.

All through writing that, I was in mind of the analogy the guys once provided of the difference between us in the 3D and us in the non-3D – the difference between ice cubes and water. Same substance, different expression because different environment.

Yes, but look at that closely. The ice cube, though it experience itself (and other ice cubes) as separate and different, is still water, only temporarily frozen in form, or let us say firmed up in expression, made more rigid. So the soul is still spirit, only somewhat more rigid in expression.

For the first time I got the sense that souls, too, like bodies, may be only temporary.

Yes. Yes. Ice cubes are not intended to be forever as ice cubes. The water does not cease to exist, whether as liquid or as vapor. But in solid shape, it may have only a very limited life. Can anyone in his right mind say that this is a tragedy? Only if it sees things exclusively from the point of view of the ice cube. But in that case, this is the same mind-set that sees physical death as a tragedy because the 3D body ceases to exist as a container after the end of its time to function.

Okay, were circling back on old material and looking at it again, aren’t we? Understanding A better because we now understand B better.

You can see that your earlier questions could not be answered clearly except in whatever context you inhabited (or, you may think, created). The whole discussion of minds being discarded as insufficiently unique to be worth keeping could go only so far because of the contents of your conceptions to that point.

Yes, it looked very much like murder, or callous indifference, to some who read it.

And it may still look like loss to many, as long as they cling to identification with soul – that is, as individuality – rather than with spirit, or identity.

You’re going to confuse people with the word “identity.” You mean, more, universality, I think. Or – well, I don’t know – what?

Oneness, perhaps. If one identifies with any specific thing, loss is the inevitable result. If one identifies with the “all” of things, loss is out of the equation entirely. That isn’t the reason to identify with the all, just to avoid the feeling of loss. The reason is, that is a valid way to see it. But perhaps a more balanced view while you are in 3D is to recognize that life does involve loss, but only relative loss, never absolute loss. A hand of playing-cards, once thrown in so a new deal may proceed, ceases to exist as a present reality. It exists as a memory, and as a potential future reality again, but  not (in the given 3D moment) as an existing reality. So, the soul.

Thoreau expressed a similar thought once, though not in the context of playing cards, of course. He said he identified not with the individual but with the thing that pre-existed the individual and would  not cease to exist with the end of the individual.

Yes. But to most people until they come to think about it – and that’s what we’re doing, here, trying to help you all think about it – the thought of an individual soul ceasing to exist will seem as final as death, and perhaps even more wasteful and tragic.

It will, unless you can tell us how else to think of it. We have become accustomed to the idea of the soul as immortal.

And here is where things get tricky. The soul is immortal. And yet, it may cease to exist as a separate or relatively separate “individual” soul. But this is going to take some context to establish, because as usual what one can understand depends upon what one has as a platform from which to examine it. Just as the materialist has no platform from which to examine non-3D existence, so one who holds too firm a view of the nature and structure of non-3D existence will have no place to stand and change viewpoints. Both – standing in one place, and changing viewpoints. Both, not one or the other. Were you to do only the one, your views would harden inappropriately. Were you to do only the other, you would produce only a kaleidoscope, or a whirlwind.

I see my value to this process.

Of course. Your very limitations aid you in doing your job. Others with different limitations – hence with different abilities – will complement your efforts, if you all work together either simultaneously or in succession.

I think we’re pretty much done this morning.

There are other mornings, and as you have seen repeatedly, Yeats was quite right to say that achievement comes in sedentary little stitches.

Seems so. All right, you’ve whetted our appetites for more. I’ll be interested to see where this goes. Till next time, then.

 

Saturday August 29, 2015

5:45 a.m. Dr. Jung, Bernie asks how the Nazis affected you personally and your psychiatric practice. I’m not sure what he’s getting at, but do you care to respond?

And you having your own agenda wonder why he does not ask directly, you not wishing to realize that different people have different inclinations, different talents, different

Lost it, but I get it.

Let each one find his own path. You are not required – no, nor empowered – to turn another onto your path. I do not ask you to become a psychiatrist.

Yes, I get it. All right.

It is one thing, and a very good thing, to encourage another to develop. It is another, and not a good thing, rather a useless thing, even a harmful thing, to expect him to choose what you choose, express what you express, develop as you have developed. This is not something you would do deliberately but it is, shall we say, the shadow side of good intentions. Showing someone a road map so that he may be aware of the roads leading outward is all to the good, but it is not a waste of time or opportunity if he freely chooses to stay home. What you really want to do – the thing everyone should really want to do, ideally – is help each person to become even more what he is.

All right, I stand corrected, and I know this isn’t meant only for me.

No, but primarily! Zeal is good, but restraint is good, as well.

Now to the question at hand, how did the Nazis affect me, how did they affect my practice.

You must understand, I spoke German, but I was Swiss. That is, I deeply understood the German psyche but I did not share the cause of the national psychosis (to put it that way) that caused the Nazi movement.

My goal in life was to understand, not to condemn. What kind of doctor condemns his patient for being ill? And, as a good European, I felt the situation deeply.

As you know, I was in England when the World War broke out in 1914, and I spent nearly a month trying to get home, through Holland and Germany in the chaos of that first month of war. The war itself came as a relief to me in one sense, in that it showed me that what I [had] feared was a personal psychosis was actually a prefiguring of the event. Europe was being submerged in a sea of blood. My country’s mountains were rising higher to protect one island of sanity. I was not crazy after all.

But what came as a personal relief came also as the most appalling tragedy. No one in your day can realize the shock that war gave to the system of anyone who was already shaped by the prewar era. I was nearly 40 when the war came. It came as a crashing destruction of everything I and others cherished in European civilization.

Reading German, speaking German, and being immersed in the great and profound culture of Germany, I could not be unaffected by their struggle. But being Swiss, and reading and speaking English and French, I was saved from being [either] a German partisan or a partisan of their enemies. I was Swiss. We were neutral in sensibilities as well as in politics. And I was a doctor, a healer by profession. I could see the war not as a battle between good and evil, but only as a tremendous catastrophe that had overtaken civilization. And so it proved. I think historians in your day – and more so in later days to come – would agree.

Seeing it from within and yet without, we Swiss could see easily enough the tremendous sense of injustice felt by the German people at being made to pretend that the war was entirely their fault when, in their innermost souls, they did not believe it was their fault at all.

Unexpressed truths breed hatred just as surely as does fear. Resentment, deprivation, chaos, indignation – all mingled with the carefully repressed knowledge of Germany’s complicity with the forces that had caused the war – all raged within the German psyche, and it began to emerge as some of the initial numbness of defeat wore off.

Now you may ask yourself what has this to do with Nazis, and I say everything. If you do not understand the psychology of the German people after the war, if you do not understand their desperate longing for a leader who would express their resentments, their sufferings, their grievances – you cannot understand how the Nazis came to be a power in the land. Faced with a choice between a fragile parliamentary democracy in which they had no faith, and a communist party of frightening strength, the Germans saw only the Social Democrats or the Nazis as their representatives, and it required greater faith in democracy to support the Social Democrats than the Nazis. Nevertheless it might have been that the Nazis would not have attained power, only no one in German government seemed to understand that they would not play by the rules, but only by a fig leaf covering force. The Reichstag fire, the rule of emergency, the Prussian government under Goering, the arming of the Nazi party members as “unpaid volunteers” alongside the police, then then their swift replacement of police – the whole story is well known. The Germans did not vote in the Nazis in any free election, nor did Hindenburg realize the use that ruthless men could make of what was intended to be severely limited authority. It was, as has been said, revolution from the top.

As a neighbor of Germany, as a European citizen, as an educated man, I could not fail to be aware of these events. As one who had lived through the changes from 1914, I could not fail to be aware of the misfortunes and sufferings of the German people. And, finally, as a neutral Swiss unaffected personally by the German people’s dislocation, I could see clearly the things that they themselves could not see, or could not see dispassionately.

And, most of all, as a doctor of souls – a psyche doctor, a psychiatrist – I could understand the deeper currents flowing beneath surface events.

You, Frank, are aware that I had a patient who was so near psychosis that I did not dare to treat him, a patient who later became a Nazi. This did not surprise me. Being brittle and endangered within, he naturally gravitated toward a force that would provide him with a façade of certainty and strength rooted in fanatical adherence to absolute standards. In this he merely reflected millions of his countrymen.

I am aware of the suspicion that I had Nazi sympathies, and this suspicion is correct to the extent of saying that I deeply understood why people were Nazis, and what the Nazis represented to millions of people. If you cannot see the idealism that was channeled into the Nazi movement, you will never understand how millions supported it. Saying that those millions were evil is merely saying you choose to condemn rather than to understand.

But to understand is not to condone. When one sees why a patient is led to become an ax murderer, the natural result is not to say, “oh yes, I see. Well, that’s all right then,” but to say first we must remove the ax and then we must either treat the patient or execute or imprison him. And since one cannot execute or imprison a whole people, what is left but to disarm them and then understand them and try to help them understand themselves?

So, I never hated the Nazis any more than I hated the Communists, who did an equal amount of evil in the world. But neither was I blind to the terrible fall from civilization that both movements attested to. [Transcribing this, I get that “fall from civilization” may have been a mistranslation. “Fall from consciousness” is closer to his meaning, I think.] Within individuals, to become a committed Nazi or a committed Communist was far more likely to represent psychosis than sanity. I understood why, and I deeply sympathized, as I would with any of my patients. But sympathy with the plight of someone in the grip of paranoia does not therefore lead one to join in the same terrible situation.

I’m not sure this is what Bernie wanted or expected, but I find it valuable, and I thank you.

The answers to his questions are implicit, at any rate. I did not have any Nazi patients! [Said with the impression of an ironic smile.] I was on the list, you know. The Nazis had a list of those they intended to seize immediately if they invaded Switzerland, and I was one. Our government ordered me, should invasion come, to escape southward immediately. Neither the government nor I had any illusions as to what fate I would meet in such case. One thing the Nazis were very good at was knowing their enemies. What doctor of the psyche could fail to be opposed to a regime that treated the individual as an insignificant cog in the machine of state?

That came out pretty fluently, and it has been a little more than an hour. Thanks, as ever.

We will talk again.

That would be very pleasing to me.

 

Friday June 19, 2015

For months I have been silently concentrating on getting my weight below 200. Although I have brought my average weight down by several pounds, I have broken the 200-pound barrier only once, and then shot right up again. Today I thought to ask what’s going on.

205.5 at six a.m., and for the first time it occurs to me to ask, is there a reason I can’t get to the weight I want to be? Is there some reason I need to be at a different weight?

I don’t know who[m] to ask, so I’ll throw it out for anyone who can help. Is there a reason why I am held to a weight above 200 pounds? Or, if that’s too big a question, what are the factors in play?

Weight is not the issue; a percentage of body fat is. Just because you don’t want the necessary factors doesn’t mean you can perform your functions without them.

I get from that that a certain percentage of body fat is needed almost as a battery, to deal with the energies I deal with. I that what you mean to say?

It is what we just did say. Your body operates as a shock absorber, to some extent. A thinner body has less – well, let’s begin again.

Obviously it isn’t as simple as “a certain body type or shape, or a certain percentage of body fat is needed in order to be a medium, say.” If it were that simple, wouldn’t everybody know it? It would be in the folklore.

Bob Friedman pointed out years ago how many women were hefty who did this work.

But then there is slight Jane Roberts. And it isn’t even proverbially true among men. Edgar Cayce, for instance. So as I say, it can’t be that simple, even if you were to regard these as exceptions.

All right. So?

So think of the variables involved. Different body types, different mental types (some sluggish, some hyperactive, and anything between). It isn’t only your health that is a ratio between mind and body, it is everything. In fact, that is the same thing. Looked at one way, you are describing health of lack of it, because that is what you are concentrating on. Looked at another way, the same data can tell you things about proclivities, aptitudes, dis-abilities (not meaning handicaps, here, so much as anti-abilities, areas of least aptitude and skill potential).

So if you are looking to find aptitude for mental communication with other beings, or shapeshifting, or sorcery, or ultra-rationality, you could find it if you knew how to  read what you received.

I’m hearing that someone with one type of mind and body – no, clarify, please?

You know the conventional wisdom of the four body types and the diet best suited for each. Well, you could know it. You know of it.

Yes.

It isn’t understood very well yet, but the gist of it is that different blood types require a different mixture of nutrients to function at optimal capacity. Is isn’t quite thought of that way, but that is about what it amounts to. This may be regarded as fine-tuning an engine. No, that’s too crude an analogy. Think perhaps of the training table in a sports establishment, where the gladiators are fed steaks rather than, say, a vegetarian diet. A certain diet for a given body type maximizes effect and minimizes internal friction and unnoticed continual adjustment.

Rather than use the actual blood types, let’s use the non-existent types E, F, G, and H. Otherwise there will be a theoretical danger of someone applying an example as if it were a prescription.

Suppose blood type E. it has its specific requirements for optimal functioning. But it is not the only variable involved, or there would be only four types of people in the world instead of the multitude actually in existence.

And those other variables are?

Nationality, for one, or rather ethnicity. Blood type E in a Chinese lineage will not be the same – that is, will express differently – than E in a lineage from an Incan, say, or an Italian.

Again, if things were that simple, different ethnicities would have different blood types and they would be incompatible. That just is not so. But it does not mean that the ethnic heritage of a given body is a matter of indifference in considering the expression of the blood type. Again, type E will be different depending on which genetic markers it interacts with.

Similarly, mental acuity, or perhaps we should say intensity of natural focus. By this we don’t mean the ability to focus on any given thing, nor, quite, the intensity one can bring to a subject. Rather, it is the natural, resting-state, degree of intensity in the mind under consideration.

Somebody probably has made a study of typing of mind, but I don’t know what it would be.

Of course you do. Astrology, for one. Any system that attempts a comprehensive description of humanity is going to have described different kinds of minds. However, it may not be described or thought of as such.

Astrology would look at Mercury in Leo, say, and say the mental characteristics will be thus and so.

Exactly. Regardless of attribution of cause, description of result. Well, Mercury in Leo will express differently in an Irish type E than any other combination of the three variables.

But – is there any such thing as an unmixed ethnicity? I’m 100% Italian, ethnically, but what does that mean really? If you go back far enough, surely every possible ethnic strand is intermixed, despite dreams of “racial purity” or “pure whatever-ness.”

Of course, but note:

• Any given person’s ethnic mix will have a different composition, but most will have a dominant strain.
• It is the very richness of ethnic heritage to choose from that allows individuals to take what they need. This is the converse of an individual taking on a hereditary disease.

So, as opening gambit, consider the mixture of blood type, ethnic derivation, and what we might call environmentally-allowed factors – that is, the range of possibilities allowed by the moment of one’s birth. We have not yet begun to explore the effects of choice and lifestyle and diet and other more behavioral factors, and already perhaps you can see that the situation is a little more complex than it might as first seem.

I thought I was asking a simple question. I gather that I have opened a larger discussion.

Notice how tentative you are, vis a vis the material, how much less sure-footed than when dealing with matters outside 3D, or matters involving 3D as a sort of interface with non-3D. But what do you think health is, but one specific example of such an interface? And what is nutrition but one specific example of the subject of health? It is time for your understanding to broaden in a different direction. You are not disembodied minds. (Not yet!) Neither is your body merely a carrier of mind [in order] to give it the 3D experience. It is that, but it is not only that. In fact, you might think of it as the densest part of the densification that is life in 3D. Your mind operates within that density to the extent that your awareness centers there. But your brain operates within physical rules, which is denser yet, and brain tissue, like bone tissue, is about as solid, about as dense, as you are going to experience in 3D. Depleted uranium is heavier than brain cells, but it is not denser in the sense we mean, that is, participating in the densification that is the 3D part of the world.

Well, this is all a surprise. I thought I was asking a simple question that would get an answer describing unsuspected emotional problems, or telling me to get more exercise, or something. But I think you are leading us into deeper waters.

Diet, exercise, and all that can’t be deemed irrelevant. But what we are trying to do – to answer your question and lead it in a direction you will find more interesting than calorie-counting – is put the known variables in the context of some unconsidered variables.

Well, I’ll be interested to see where it leads. I’ll post and we’ll see if we get response. Are we already working on a sequel to Rita’s World? This doesn’t seem like Rita; you don’t have that feel, but I didn’t want to interrupt anything by asking.

Nor is it necessary. Continuing weighing the material for resonance and you will get there.

All right, I’m game. Till next time, then.

 

 

[Hemingway talked of achieving the fourth and fifth dimension in his writing. I asked if those dimensions were Time and Beyond Time.]

Close enough. Or you might say viewpoint over time, viewpoint beyond viewpoint, or overall viewpoint, or, really, view without the distortion of viewpoint. To hint at going beyond viewpoint (you cannot actually do it) is very difficult, and requires not only skill and luck in the writer but, let’s say, skill and attention in the reader. Luck, too, perhaps, for the reader has to be in the right mental space to be able to comprehend it.

That’s what I was trying for in Across The River. I told the story seemingly from inside Colonel Cantwell’s head, but not precisely. Within his mind — the nonphysical mechanism we all live in, as you recognize — he moves across elements of his past, both what he has experienced and what he has experienced second-hand through reading or other instruction or from appreciating, as in a picture. I believe I achieved that fourth dimension, and it was disappointing to have it not recognized — because of Renata, of course.

Now here is something nobody sees. I achieved the fifth dimension with Santiago, who lay dreaming of the lions at the end. My achieving it was not at the end, though, but throughout, because in careful recounting of his moment by moment actions, and his moment by moment thought or memory, and his moment by moment emotion, I was so close to the moving present that we get beyond time to the timeless. Where else do you think that strange aura around the story comes from? It is not told from Santiago’s viewpoint, or from Manolin’s. It may be said to be narrated by God, or the guys upstairs, or the part of Santiago that lives outside time and space. It is our life described neither from within it nor from without it.

Yes, there is the story itself — the old man striving, and winning, and losing, and remaining himself. There is the effect on the boy. But beyond all that is the strange penumbra that people feel but don’t quite understand, and this is because the story’s atmosphere talks to us of things beyond the story.

I could not have produced the story to order. And it came as a gift, and I passed on the gift. Those who think it’s simple or simpleminded are only one eyed; they cannot sense the presence of that extra dimension.

It is a curious paradox, isn’t it? To get beyond time, one way is to sit on the very edge of the moving line. There are other ways — Tolstoy did it on a mammoth scale — but this was mine.