7. Mental and physical

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Friday, May 3, 2024

4:30 a.m. The mental life connects; the physical life separates.

That isn’t quite the way to put it, though it is what we said. Phrased more carefully, it would say, the physical circumstances lead you through the experience of isolation, but your mental life, carefully observed, provides you the evidence of continual connection that otherwise might not be noticed, not indeed believed.

It may seem to be a paradox. As always, any paradox may be resolved by considering the elements comprising it from a higher or deeper level. Here, the paradox resolves easily. (In fact, many will not even see it as paradox, seeing the resolution instinctively.) It is mostly an example of separation of function. A matter of specialization, one might say.

Your mental world functions from (connects you to) the non-3D from which you emerged. It continuously provides you access to abilities and perspectives you could not achieve if you were confined mentally, as you are physically, to 3D conditions. This is why some people discover liberation in meditation or prayer or any discipline that frees them from 3D sequential thinking.

Your physical existence in a separate body lives by very different rules, in very different conditions. This is not poor design, nor the result of bad choices, nor punishment, nor accident. Your 3D life is designed to place you in 3D conditions of seeming isolation in one time-space moment at a time. An illusion of separation is a part of that isolation. It functions as it is supposed to function.

However – and if you are reading this, you almost definitely know this from personal experience – this illusion of separation, of isolation, may be overcome by a realization of a deeper unbreakable connection, and that realization will certainly change your experience of 3D. The same conditions that provided a painful isolation now support a very different situation, in which physical confinement to one time-space moment may be connected to mental awareness of connection, to provide the best of both worlds.

You understand? At one level of consciousness, the phrase “All is one” will be seen to contradict everyday experience. How can all be one when conflict and cross-purposes and painful isolation are so evident? But then you achieve a higher or deeper awareness, and you see, you experience, that in fact both halves of the seeming contradiction are one.

When that occurs, you perhaps restate the situation in your mind as “Life is all one thing in its origins and in its non-3D manifestation, and it appears in 3D as separated elements because of 3D conditions.” Later perhaps you restate it more concisely. “Diversity in unity,” perhaps, or “Unity disguised by an appearance of multiplicity.” Any rephrasing is going to distort the fundamental understanding, because selection in 3D always does that. Sequential exposition – which is what language is, after all – cannot present all aspects at once, and even if it is able to list every single attribute of a situation, it cannot help but imply a hierarchy of importance even by the order in which things are listed, or by the length at which various things are discussed. With this in mind, you see the value of holding an image, or a feeling or a memory, so as to preserve your connection to the reality behind such statements as “All is one” or “All is well.”

We are tempted to digress, and perhaps it is as well to make note: The saying “All is well, all is always well” is so contrary to everyday experience in 3D that it can only be accepted provisionally (that is, on faith that it will prove true), or recast as a pious wish, or denied outright. If your being assents to it, it does so not on logical grounds, nor exactly in defiance of logic, but because something within you recognizes the truth of it. Of course, that may be said of anything we say, but it is particularly true for statements that seem to contradict experience so flatly.

How is everything always well? Phrase your understanding and we will assent or dissent or modify.

I’d say that the 3D can never be understood as a unity by logic based in sensory experience. Judging it by how it appears, we see joy and we see suffering, but we do not see an underlying unity, just as when we look at a family or any group from a 3D level, we see diversity and conflict and cooperation, but never unity. It is only as we look at life from a non-3D perspective that we see that the diversity proceeds from the fact that our consciousness of underlying unity is split by 3D conditions chopping life into time-slices and space-slices. This being so, it is clear that the appearance of diversity has to be rooted in one non-divisible underlying unity that we can mentally see but cannot physically experience.

Yes, that is a good summary. Your senses report on the world at any one time-space moment; your intuitions report on the underlying unity of time, and of space, and of life.

How could something that is one thing be self-contradictory? How could it be random? How could it be chaos, or divided into opposites such as good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, etc.? It may easily, almost inevitably, seem that way, when perceived at the level of consciousness that 3D conditions encourage, but beneath this appearance is the reality, and your deeper selves, your higher selves, will show you that, once you quiet your 3D logic and its insistence on presenting evidence of diversity.

So to return to the main point, not yet quite made: Your mental/physical outlook determines the nature of the world you live in. this does not – could not – depend upon the action or inaction of anyone else. It doesn’t and couldn’t depend upon political or economic or societal events of any kind. (Well, in one sense it may be said to depend upon physical externals, but only in one sense. To the degree that anyone allows external evidence – “the news” or ideology or religion or scientism – to shape their understanding, then yes, it could be said that only certain conditions allow people to get to the point where they can see the underlying reality, because it will keep them from doing the meditation or yoga or prayer or whatever that will quiet the sequential chatter and allow the deeper wisdom to emerge. But even this caveat depends upon sequential logic, you see. It assumes a lack of coherence in the interaction between the individual and its external circumstances.)

Do you really think that most people are precluded from achieving such contact until the world is at peace, or everybody learns to think alike, or all the stoplights across America turn green at the same moment? Such – slightly exaggerated here for emphasis – is 3D logic, saying, “This is how the real world is, as opposed to your pleasant fairy tale of unity and all being well.”

But if the life you experience may change as a result of a change within you – a decision to concentrate on the perception of underlying unity, rather than the appearance of chaotic diversity – what a hopeful fact! It is within your ability to choose how to see the world, how to see life. Your choice, no one else’s. Your choice, and it is not dependent upon wars and rumors or wars, nor upon the next election for city council. Your choice, and it need not wait for supportive others, and need not first clear out non-supportive others.

Could there be a more promising situation than to know that the life you live rests upon your own decisions, your own efforts? Jesus didn’t say, “I have come that you may have life more abundantly, once we’ve cleared the Romans out of here.” He said, “The poor you have always with you,” meaning not that this is a good thing, but in effect saying, “Don’t wait until social conditions are perfect (in your opinion); work on yourself now.” Or perhaps we should say more carefully, not “work on yourself” (which implies a long process) but “Decide now to be what you want to be.” This does not rest on results, but on your acquiring a surer basis to life.

Now, this is enough for today, and because it makes it easier for you to begin again, we’ll say that next time we may (or may not) begin with the effects on your lives of the fact that you are composed of strands – other Ives – which continue to live as you are living, even though from your vantage-point they are not in the living “present moment.”

This is wonderful material, and we are grateful for it. I am, particularly, given that I had thought we were done.

6. The roots of choice

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Thursday, May 2, 2024

4:15 a.m. So, to continue. Not sure how to proceed.

Relax the reins; let us worry about exposition. Remember, you can always shuffle the resulting passages if need be.

Let’s talk about choice as it can and cannot be manifested in 3D life. You will remember, we have said that providing the possibility of choice is the very reason for the existence of 3D conditions. By forcing your consciousness to concentrate on one time and space, 3D conditions provide the ability and the de facto necessity of choice. But what does it really mean, to choose? If human life were the relatively unitary, relatively separated thing it appears to be, choice would be nearly impossible, for it would involve changing the result of so many conditions that brought you to where you were.

But you are not what you appear to be, and therefore neither is choice. Because you are not the solitary individual units you appear to be, change involves not change of what you are, but change of emphasis among the many strands that you comprise. It is easier to change relative emphasis than it would be to bring in new elements.

This isn’t coming our clearly yet.

No. We see we will have to move to a more remote starting-point. Leet’s look at what a soul is, and which ways it can be considered to be continuing from a prior point and which ways it can be considered new in each incarnation. That will show how it is that choice represents a choosing among elements rather than an introduction of new elements. It will also show how different theological tenets arose from people seeing one but not other aspects of the human condition.

To do this, we will need to make certain flat statements of fact that the reader will have to accept or reject or hold in suspension, depending entirely upon whether the statements resonate. We remind people, there’s nothing wrong with accepting an idea provisionally and then later changing your mind if need be. Exposition is our part; judgment is the reader’s part.

So:

Into the making of a 3D human, many things contribute. The physical heredity has its analogue in what we may call the spiritual heredity. The two shed light upon each other and (as we shall show sooner or later) interpenetrate.

A 3D being created via sexual reproduction is necessarily a compound being, not a unitary one. This should be evident. One’s father’s line provides certain characteristics; one’s mother’s line provides certain characteristics. The resulting child is a compound of the two lines, every child different not only because of circumstances including time and place, but primarily because the possibilities for inheritance from both lines are so numerous, no two people (other than identical twins) are likely to share them all. And this is true all the way back along each parent’s line, and all the way forward along the lines contributed to by each descendant.

Thus, physically you contain characteristics taken from  each of two lines, each of which lines is composed of countless individuals who were equally composed. In short, you are the latest in a long series of mixtures, a very complex result that can be considered individual only in that you each live in separate bodies.

This is so, physically. It is equally so spiritually. When the spiritual (the non-3D) elements came together in the new baby, they too were the result of mixtures going back to the beginning of human life. (And farther, but we will not concern ourselves with that at this time. The exposition is complicated enough as it is!)

Some people believe in reincarnation, the return to 3D of souls that have lived there before. Others believe that each new body receives (or contains, let’s say) a new soul. Both are correct as far as they go, and neither goes far enough, because each considers the 3D human is if it were a unit, when in fact it is a compound.

Reincarnation is valid, in that the same elements live again. It is not valid, in that it is not the case of one unit dying to 3D and being reborn to 3D. If you were units, it would have to be one way or the other: Either the unit came back or it did not. Thus, reincarnation would be true or it would not.

Individual souls being created for each 3D incarnation, similarly, is valid and not valid, depending on how you look at it. When you see that each new soul is a combination of souls that have lived before, you see that yes it is new, in that that particular combination never existed together before, and no it is not new, in that the elements that comprise it are not new. As in so many things, it is all in what factors you include as you consider the matter.

So we propose this scheme, which is somewhat simplified but is accurate enough to be going on with.

  • The human body is a compound, not a unit. It may be said to be a collection of characteristics that have to learn to live together. This is true physically and also spiritually.
  • Physically, the characteristics from either line are so manifold that there is little possibility they will all mesh smoothly. In greater or lesser degree, what one piece needs, another piece may suffer from. Hence, illness, incapacity. Hence also, certain remarkable seemingly superhuman abilities.
  • Spiritually, the same. You are composed of many strands of – shall we call it non-3D DNA? If several different combinations of previous lives go into the making of a new 3D consciousness, you may expect conflict, cooperation, and overlap among them, just as in the inherited physical characteristics.
  • In a sense, it could be said that both body and soul enter this life with unfinished business. By this we mean, not a conscious agenda, but a vector arising out of what the elements in combination create. Your life is a drama, you might say, and both in physical and spiritual terms, it involves the conflict and cooperation of elements that have come from different places, have different needs, have different aptitudes.

Does this clarify our description of life as choice? You know this by your experience. You live the conflict and cooperation of your constituent elements every moment. You choose among available options, all of which are equally you. It isn’t a matter of changing what you are, it is closer to changing the order of precedence of your various constituent elements.

You may ask, “Why?” Why is life this way? Life is often painful, or boring, or liberating, or ecstatically joyful – or any other possible state of being – but does it mean anything more than the passing of time?

Recognize that some questions cannot be answered too soon, or they get falsified by lack of context. But keep the question in mind; it will give point to further exposition. For now, consider the idea that you are not a unit in any sense but as a separate body. Your physical and nonphysical composition is a combination; your mental life is not separate –

In fact, that is where we should resume, with the fact that your mental life connects you, even as your physical life separates you. This should follow logically from the fact that the mental functions in non-3D; you would expect it to follow different rules and exhibit different characteristics. However, the idea may not be obvious until stated. We will go into it next time, probably.

Wonderful. Our thanks, today, as always.

 

4, Time-space as a crucible

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

2:40 a.m. Very well, the continued existence of each moment of time.

This is a fundamental concept that differs from the accepted “common sense” idea of what goes on. Once absorb this concept and many things open up to reinterpretation. Those for whom it does not resonate will be unlikely to agree with much that will follow.

The difference is this: Instead of the commonly accepted idea that moments of time are created, exist briefly, then cease to exist, we tell you that this is true only as seen from within 3D, because 3D is necessarily experienced as if that way. Outside 3D – that is, outside time-space – reality does not exist as a moving platform. Instead, reality is every moment of time existing as it always did exist, not created, not destroyed. In 3D, you are conveyed from one moment to the next; Outside of 3D, you may go where you please, and it is all there, just as you experience in your minds alone while still in 3D.

You may wish to think of it this way: When the universe is created, it is created entire. Every possible moment exists, immediately, and if you had no way to filter out most of it, you could never make sense of what would be an overwhelming chaos of impressions. That is what 3D does; that is what the body and its brains do: They filter out all but a small manageable slice of reality.

You may wish to think of all moments of time in the same way you do all “moments” of space. There is the vast territory, and you traverse it, one step at a time. The movement of the planet through space carries you smoothly in rhythmic patters, vast spirals through space, and each bit of space is a bit of time.

This is either obvious to you or counter-intuitive, or a confused idea, so we will have to restate it for the sake of the stragglers.

What you experience as time is actually a property of space, as encountered by the earth’s movement through what you may call All-Space-All-Time. You cannot get away from your local movement even if you travel to the moon: After all, your entire solar system is only a tiny, tiny dot in the whole fabric. So you do not experience one such moment while your neighbor experiences another (excepting trivial differences) because you and your neighbor cannot help stand side by side. The qualities of the space-time moments you are being carried through may be very different – will be very different – from those experienced in other galaxies, but of course you cannot know this experientially, only, at best, conceptually.

You may get a faint echo of this reality by considering your experience of geography in 3D. The African desert and the Siberian steppe and the Brazilian rain forest are vastly different from each other, just as they are all vastly different from the deep Atlantic or the heights of Everest. In 3D you can travel in space, so you can experience these differences if you wish to. Well, in non-3D you can experience the similar differences in time.

For those this hasn’t lost:

The 3D world is a focusing device that makes possible things that could not be done otherwise. You live in one time, one space. The world you live on carries you from one moment of time to the next, never returning, never skipping, and you say “time passes.” The time factor is constant even if you move in space from one place to another. You do not – by flying from one continent to another, say – escape the narrow confines of the moment. You can’t fly into yesterday or into tomorrow. (Your flight may last until tomorrow, but wherever you are, whatever you do, you are carried through time smoothly, just like everyone else, necessarily.)

But because you are carried from one bit of time to the next, and then the next, that doesn’t mean that the bit you left ceases to exist, nor that the bit you move to does not exist until you get there. It will seem like that, but that is the difference between a concept – an interpretation – and the experience itself.

This will make sense of certain anomalies that have been noticed. The relativity of time and space, for instance. The possibility of precognition and retrocognition. Accurate and inaccurate prophecy. (Sometimes the mind sees what is coming; sometimes it sees what might have come but won’t. It can be hard to know the difference.)

As we say, the constrictions of the framework of 3D existence make certain things possible. They may be summarized as the ability to concentrate experience into one crucible. You live moment to moment, necessarily. Although your mind may range backwards and forwards, your bodies are held to what is in effect the eternal present-moment, and therefore must deal with life that way.

There is a tremendous advantage to experiencing life in so concentrated a form. It allows you, forces you, to decide from moment to moment. Your entire life may be regarded as one long succession of choices. This is because your lives are experienced in the way they are experienced. If you were released from the constraints of the time-space crucible, your perspective would vastly widen, and you would become aware (again) of so much that you cannot be aware of in 3D for sheer lack of ability to process overwhelming mountains of data.

And of course, this liberation is exactly what you experience when you drop the body at the end of your 3D life.

Now, you may think, “If what follows 3D life is a release from 3D constrictions, why not go now? What is the advantage of staying?” The answer is simple: The qualities that constrict also concentrate; the things you experience as painful or boring have the qualities of their defects (to turn the old phrase on its head). What is seen as disadvantage in one light will be seen as advantage in a different light. The hard work that goes into learning a trade or organizing some specialized knowledge pays off in increased capacity.

When you leave 3D, you will exult in your new freedom – but you will also see that certain things that had been possible (mostly pertaining to the shaping of your essential character by a process of continual choosing) are not possible outside of that crucible. So, it isn’t all gain, dropping the body. Like any journey, there are losses that accompany the gains.

But anyway, think about this way of seeing reality and see if it resonates with you. Those who learn to see time and space in this new relation gain the ability to see their life differently.

That must do for the moment.

Next topic?

Again, try not to anticipate. But the matter of choice is one likely possibility.

Our thanks for all this, as always.

 

Robert Bruce

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Robert and me in Virginia Beach, 2009

I heard today that Robert Bruce, author of Astral Dynamics, made his transition to the non-3D on Monday morning, the 22nd. He died peacefully in his sleep, in the hospital where had was being cared for. His wife said he died surrounded by friends and family, with more than 10 people crammed in the room. That would be fitting. Robert was one of those guys you loved as soon as you saw him, a wonderful man, so much heart, so willing to give, such a combination of idealism and practicality.

I gather that people have been sending testimonials about Robet’s influence on their lives through his books. That is certainly appropriate. Astral Dynamics was one of the most important and helpful books Hampton Roads ever published.

Robert and I must have been connected invisibly, because as soon as I received his manuscript, I had an instant reaction to it. As the manuscript stood, it was totally unpublishable – the material was wonderful, but the language was awful. Didn’t matter, I knew hat it must be published.

I spent days editing Astral Dynamics. First I marked up the manuscript, “clearing away the shrubbery,” as I used to say, then I entered the corrections in the computer file, and printed out the clean file and edited it all over again, at a deeper level. That was more work than I had ever put into a manuscript, and more than I ever did again. But I just had no doubt, this was an important book, worth the extra work even if it never made us any money.

Well, it did make us money, and it did change people’s lives. That book went around the world. One day I received a manuscript from someone who said he had come across a second-hand copy of Astral Dynamics, without a cover – in Katmandu!  There is no guessing how much encouragement Robert spread. Nor any sign that the wave of influence is over, either, of course.

Then there was Robert himself, when we finally met, at a conference at the A.R.E. in Virginia Beach where he spoke. Here is this great bear of a man – I used to tease him, saying he looked like a biker – and he was as gentle and as funny and as sincere and intelligent a man as I have ever met. Lovely man.

Here’s a toast to your next career Robert: Well done, and bon voyage!

The view from here (1)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

_________________________

[                                       ]

[                                       ]

[__________________________]

Portrait of the guys upstairs

(So were you expecting a screenshot?)

All right, a bit of foolishness, but there’s a point to it. When you deal with the non-3D, by definition you deal with things that are beyond the sensory . How could the non-3D be detected by our physical senses, or by instruments, which are merely extensions of our physical senses?

In common speech we say “I heard them say such-and-such,” or “I could see them doing x-and-such,” but this is merely the imprecision of language. We don’t really see them or hear them., not directly. Phenomena such as visions, words, feelings are produced on our end  and represented as if they had been experienced through the senses. (That’s why it is called extra-sensory perception!)

You can’t see them, hear them, smell them, taste them. You can’t bump into them.

But then, why is that it seems like we can do just those things? Why do people hear voices in their head? Doesn’t that contradict what I just said about us being unable to experience them through our senses? I don’t think so. I think it is our bodies translating the effects of communication.

We differ in how we perceive things. Some people are clairaudient, some see visions, some experience an emotional response, some get feelings in their bodies, such as chills, or goose bumps, some merely know.  The non-3D contacts us, and we experience that contact in whatever way we experience. It isn’t a difference in the other side (I think); it is a difference in us.

Or maybe I’m all wet, but that’s how it seems to me at the moment. Maybe tomorrow I’ll see it differently.

 

 

 

 

 

Rita Warren (2)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Soon after Rita and I finished our series of session in 2002, I got her to write an introduction for the book of transcripts,  but by the time The Sphere and the Hologram came out, she had already made her transition. She came to me in a dream to assure me that she was fine, and then for six and a half years I assumed our work together was over.

But in December, 2014, I dreamed of her saying she was ready for us to work together again. I was surprised, but pleased. At 7:30 the next morning, I sat down with my journal, prepared for anything or nothing, as usual in this business of communicating. We were beginning where we had left off, still looking for clarity about life, and the afterlife, and the reality behind appearances.

She began by surprising me, saying, “You have had an effect on my life here, you know. Letting people in body know of our work together results in some of them contacting me, not necessarily being aware of it, which of course affects me here.” I took this to refer to The Sphere and the Hologram, and my talks to Guidelines groups at TMI.

“So – did you have something in particular you wanted to start with? Or did you already?”

“That’s as good a place to start as any – the continuing interaction between those in and those out of the body, not necessarily known to those in body, but real nonetheless. There is a tendency to think of life in the body as an interruption of life outside it, as though we come into form, have a lifetime’s worth of experiences, and then report. But it doesn’t work that way. I’d like to correct the picture, but it can’t be done in a hurry.”

“Well, I got the sense, the other day, that I was being primed for a new set of lessons. Didn’t guess that it was going to come via an old friend rather than anonymous guys upstairs.”

She reminded me that i had gotten that my understanding to date “was merely provisional unless you lost your nerve or your appetite for further refinement and redefinition.” In other words, somebody wanted to use us to redefine life for people. And I got the sense that Rita had an outline of where she wanted to go.

 “Let me say, this is exciting! I have Papa’s Trial to finish, yet something tells me this won’t interfere and actually may help.”

“It will be reciprocal, as you will see.”

So we began, and, as promised, we wound up redefining things we had been told before and had thought we had thoroughly digested. For instance, she started by saying:

“’This side’ and “the other side’ [what I now call 3D and non-3D] are in continuous unbroken communication, regardless what it feels like to those in body. Some, like you, won’t find anything to object to in that statement, but in fact, in day-to-day living, in ideas as expressed in action, few if any live that reality. In fact, in actual living, you live as though communication exists only when you intend it, or are aware of it. This is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’; it is how the separation of 3D life leads you to experience (or not experience) that aspect of life. But your life is bounded by your expectations of life, and we’re interested in expanding these expectations.

“The idea that there can be a separation between physical and non-physical stems from the idea that different substance is involved in either realm. As you were told pretty much right away, there is no difference between beings in the physical and in the non-physical except the conditions of the terrain each is on. In other words, although it is convenient to talk of different beings, in truth we are all part of one thing – the ‘everything’ – in a way you can’t yet imagine, which I am going to try to help you with. Many of the contradictions between systems disappear if you see that all is one.

“’All is one’ – it is a New Age cliché – but what does it mean in practice? Next time.”

And so we were off to the races yet again. That entry was the first in six months of entries. Bob Friedman suggested they be made into a book, and he published Rita’s World in two volumes. Then came Awakening from the 3D World (which I wanted to call Awakening from the 3D Trance, which I still think would have been a better title), and It’s All One World. Taken in connection with The Sphere and the Hologram, a massive amount of work, a real accomplishment.

Can you be involved in so massive a project and be unaffected by it? That isn’t quite the right question. A better question would be, Can you be involved in such a work, over the span of nearly 20 years, and realize the extent to which it has changed you? My answer would be, I doubt it, not by yourself. You are a moving platform, and you will tend to overestimate your continuity. What you need, if you are to recognize the changes, is a friend, or friends, to tell you what you look like from the outside. Those friends are likely to be in the 3D, but they needn’t be.

I am pretty sure Rita’s and my work together is finished – but then, I have thought that before!, In any case, it is clear to me that the work we did – while she was in 3D and even more, as it turned out, when she moved to the non-3D – changed her, changed me.

What more can you ask?

 

Rita Warren (1)

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Jim Szpajcher took this nice photo in October, 2006

Rita’s husband Martin died on Friday, April 7, 2000, a few days after an accident in his car, after having asked to be taken off life-support. A few hours later, I sat down with my journal, thinking to talk to the guys upstairs, and instead this is what came out:

“Frank, this is Martin. Tell Rita thanks and remind her that over here we have no time – so the slight delay in decoupling from the body doesn’t have any significance. I will be seen and heard for a little while, tell her, so don’t be surprised and don’t be surprised at what she hears from others. Tell Leslie [Rita’s daughter] that the timing was good as always. She’ll know what I mean by the ‘as always.’”

Now, this was cryptic, except for the part about Rita experiencing him for a while, and if Rita or anybody ever told me what it meant, I have forgotten. It was the second paragraph that changed things:

“Don’t tell her, but take care of Rita. I know you will want to. It won’t be all that long, as you already know.”

Then he was gone and I asked the guys if that was really Martin.

“Did it feel like his presence?

“Yes it did. Quite strongly there, for a moment. But who ever knows what we self-suggest.

“Don’t worry about it. You know the saying, you inhibit what you doubt. You aren’t a true believer, so don’t worry so much about deceiving yourself.”

Well, if you had received such a message, would you write it off as one of those things, or would you listen? Martin asked me to take care of Rita. I took that to mean, give her some attention. So I got us into the habit of having supper together every Saturday night. (Always at the Lovingston Café, almost the only restaurant she ever frequented, as far as I know, Charlottesville being twice as far from her home on the New Land.)

I thought I was doing it out of the kindness of my heart, but as usual, kindness paid unexpected dividends. You can’t go out to eat with someone every week, for months, without moving your relationship to a deeper level. You will share stories, and experiences, and jokes, and (if only between the lines) values and hopes deferred and hopes not yet abandoned. And all the time you are doing that, you will be building up an understanding and a trust between you, and trust is always the sine qua non. Without trust, any relationship can go only so far.

Neither Rita nor I had any idea, at least, not on the conscious level, that we were being brought together to accomplish something. We were enjoying each other’s company.

She was one more example of benign, nurturing, maternal energy that I seemed to need. (She was only five years younger than my parents.) yet she was also a rigorous intellect, a trained academic, an experienced Monroe participant, an inquiring mind with a long list of questions she had not been able to get the answer to.

Just what she saw in me, I don’t know, of course. Sincerity, openness, curiosity, intelligence, no doubt. Kindness. And perhaps I was a window into other worlds: journalism, business, politics on the practical level, even perhaps merely the world-view of someone her children’s age.

In any case, we interested each other, and we enjoyed each other’s company, and in the months between April and September, we entered a relationship of mutual trust and affection. Then I took a step that led to so much more. I signed up for ten sessions in TMI’s black box.

Beginning in September, I spent every Friday morning in the isolation chamber, with Skip Atwater as monitor. He and I would discus my goals beforehand, and would debrief the session afterward, and during the session itself he, sitting in the control booth, would watch the instruments and vary the Hemi-Sync frequencies being delivered to my earphones, and would sometimes offer input, and would answer whatever questions or concerns that would arise.

When I returned home with the cassette tape of the session, I would spend time – a lot of time! – transcribing it, and then would send that transcript to a short list of friends, of whom Rita was one. She and I would discuss those sessions the following night, Saturday, over supper in Lovingston. (I later self-published those transcripts as A Place to Stand.)

Fast forward to August, 2001. Rita had gotten me another session in the black box as a birthday present, and when I said I wished I could do sessions on a continuing basis, she said I didn’t need the box, and so we set up a schedule. Tuesday nights after I had supper, I would drive up to Rita’s house, only a couple of miles away. I would lie down on the bed in the guest room, with my head toward the center of the room. She would sit nearby with her pad of questions and the tape recorders, and we would do just what I did for ten weeks at the end of the previous year. And I would take my tape home and transcribe….

We did that for 22 weeks in a row, and those sessions became The Sphere and the Hologram.

Now, bear in mind, Rita is the one who originally designed TMI’s protocols for PREP sessions. For the lab’s first four years, she and Martin had functioned as monitors. She had a huge backlog of questions she had never been able to get answered.  She would ask them of participants who had run through their own questions, and would get only frustratingly vague non-answers. “Oh, it’s hard to explain.” “Everything is fine.” “You’ll know when you get here,” etc.

But from me, for some reason, she could get fluent answers, and the more complicated or arcane the question, the better it got. At one point I said to her, “Rita, you’re asking me these questions, and you’re getting these answers, but I don’t know any of this stuff. I feel like I’m lying here just being a  know-it-all.” She paused and then said, “That’s practically the definition of an intuitive.”

So Rita’s part of my story is that she brought me from exploring experiences to actually bringing forth information. She did that partly by building on the trust between us. (Trust removes that inhibition that comes from doubt as to how material will be received.) But Skip had done the same thing. Equally important in Rita’s case was her long backlog of specific unanswered questions, and the academic training that led her to question closely the material as it arrived. Thus she would say, “But this seems to contradict what you said three sessions ago,” and the guys would pause and say the could see why it might look that way, and then explain both the previous and the present statements. They more than once said, “The better the questions, the better the answers,” and her questions were first-rate.

Rita died March 19, 2008, and I had a dream that told me she was fine, and I thought that was the end of the story. Not quite!