Intuitive Linked Communication (ILC)

[Rita:] What I wanted to know in life, and what you want to know, and what some, at least, of our readers will want to know, is,  What is it like to live in the now without restriction? What is it like to live as part of a greater whole, neither losing our identity nor living in isolation? The question, “How do you spend your time? What do you do?,” really amounts to, “What is life in those circumstances?”

Now let me recommend that people read Far Journeys, only heed Bob [Monroe]’s warning that it is necessarily a translation of a translation of a translation, and not take it so literally as to turn it into scripture or lies. By reading it sympathetically, you can get the underlying sense of it between the lines – which is the only way some things can be conveyed.

Bob proceeded from the point of view of 3D and of the individual, and we will work from the opposite end of each polarity – from the non-3D and from the larger-more-comprehensive-than-the-individual. We will not be working in the awful isolation that Bob endured throughout his life.

You and I had the advantage of the community that he established, which could not be as useful to him as it is to those who followed.

He was fortunate – or guided – to have the New Land Community, and [his wife] Nancy, to leaven his isolation; and of course remember that what he did in this aspect of his life was a smaller part of the total time than others might think.

“Always there is life,” Thoreau said, “which, rightly lived, implies a divine satisfaction.”

And a divine dis-satisfaction, too! It is as well to remember that, in moments of discouragement or difficulty. You will remember, I went through years of quiet spiritual depression before the guys arrived to give us new meaning and a new approach.

Let us return to that central image. I am in the eternal “now.” I am Rita as Rita was formed and concreted in nearly nine decades of 3D choosings, but I am also that Rita newly aware of my being only part of a larger and more encompassing being. And I as part of that larger being am aware that I/we are only a part of larger beings, ad infinitum, and smaller ones, because all is ultimately one. There are no absolute divisions in the All-D. So what am I? How do I now experience myself?

It would be as well for you to do some mental stock-taking of all the aspects of the afterlife or heaven or however you think of non-physical life, and see how partial they are:

• Past lives, for instance.
• Angels, perhaps in hierarchies. God, perhaps, and the devil.
• Communities or families in heaven.
• Bruce Moen’s “hollow heavens” and Bob’s belief-system territories.
• Lost souls. Souls needing retrieval.
• “Energies.” Saints, helpers, spirit guides.

And plenty more, and each may make a different list. What is missing is a common way to see all these partially perceived, partially deduced characteristics, and, beyond that, a way to relate that to 3D life in an ordinary and not a “woo-woo” construction. That need not be as impossibly huge a job as it appears; it mostly requires a tap of the kaleidoscope. But it does require that tap.

And the tap, I take it, is your description of life as you experience it.

That’s right. Not as scripture, not as science, not even as anthropology. Just a tap that may function as does the finger pointing at the moon. It isn’t the finger that is important, but the vector it sets up. And a different finger from a different starting-place is not contradiction but confirmation.

And we’ll bear in mind the joke, “Please don’t bite my finger, look where I’m pointing.”

If we get our metaphysical fingers bitten, no great harm.

 

— From Awakening From the 3D World, available from publisher Rainbow Ridge Books (https://www.rainbowridgebooks.com) or from other booksellers.

 

]Rita:] There is a now-ness to our life in non-3D that is perhaps more prominent than in yours, and a here-ness that is perhaps less prominent. That’s one statement. A second statement is, we live our lives very differently depending upon whether we are or are not dealing primarily with the 3D’s glare, as I alluded to. Let’s start with these two.

Even in 3D life, it is always here, it is always now. Teachers like Ram Das in my time came to remind us in 3D of that fact, because it changes everything. “Be here, be in the now,” was powerful as the way to begin to escape the mental trance that made life automatic, low-power, misdirected, desperate, empty. It was particularly powerful for those who had not realized that their ordinary life encompassed such adjectives even when not full of drama. No one here can need such a reminder except those aspects recovering from the 3D trance.

I take it you mean, except those parts of non-3D minds that are unable to realize that the conditions of 3D life no longer applied.

What we in the Monroe community used to encounter when we did retrievals, yes. Being “stuck” or being trapped in one’s own mental construction was not what it appeared when you viewed it as if that mind was separate. But we can use that situation, familiar to some on the 3D side, as an entry point. So let us look at it from this side, bearing in mind that we are moving to elucidate the first of today’s points about our now-ness and here-ness.

Our normal is a continual life of awareness centered on the non-3D. We – and I defer defining “we” for a while, but roughly say individual clusters or nodes or coalescences, not individuals one-per-3D-being, of course – we live our aware lives in the eternal now, not pulled from one moment to the next as in 3D, but still affected by changes in 3D-connected aspects of us caused by the lapse of time in the 3D.

Thus, it may be said we live in no-time (because we are always in the now), or in all-time (because we do change, which could not happen if our non-3D dimension were changeless, or in a sort of 3D-influenced time (because changes in our 3D components change us, and those who do not have a 3D component still deal with those who do).

But even though changes induced by or led from 3D conditions, as described at some length last year, do affect us, they are not central to us, in the way they obviously and appropriately are to those within 3D. And that is the balance we are encouraging you to strike: We are not isolated from the 3D; neither are we peripheral to it. [I realize, typing this, “peripheral to it” may be misinterpreted. I got that it means, neither the 3D or the non-3D is central or secondary.] Many a theological and philosophical argument arises from seeing only one half, or neither half, of this statement.

Just as a very young child cannot realize that adults live in a very different world, so a mind still in 3D may find it impossible, or at least very difficult, to realize that it is only a part, and a small part, of the reality we in non-3D experience. For the vast majority of “us,” 3D existence is only a minor part of our life. For a relative few, it is greater. So the non-3D, in its awareness of the eternal now-ness, is a very different environment than the 3D in its carefully constructed remorseless flow of moments. Urgency is gone; irretrievability is gone; competition except voluntary competition is gone.

That – I get – is what Bob [Monroe] was trying to convey in saying AA and BB, et cetera, were playing games. They were active, but there were no circumstances compelling them to do this or that, so anything they did choose to do could be considered to be play.

Yes, but don’t forget the massive distortion in the picture caused by treating various characters – AA and BB particularly! – as if separate when in fact their separate aspect was only relatively separate. But you can’t say everything at once, and he felt and feels he was lucky to get as much said as he did. Within those understood constructions, yes, all activity may be considered playing, just as they may be equally accurately considered as art.

But again, work to remember, we are not primarily engaged in picturing the non-3D as it would appear from within 3D, but as we experience it ourselves. So, again, see us not as individuals cooperating, so much as parts of a great entity, functioning together. Our relative individuality makes our differences and our – specialization, call it. Our essential unity makes the architecture, or our organic inter-relationship. There is an inherent structure to the non-3D no less than there is to the 3D, and a few moments’ thought should convince you that this must be so. Structure does not flow from created 3D: how could it? Structure is the essence from which the 3D was formed.

My point is that the non-3D (as a window on the All-D) is not merely a variant of the 3D. It shares characteristics but in different conditions, hence it manifests differently.

We are all one. We are aware that we live in the eternal now. We relate primarily to each other, which does not exclude the 3D directly or indirectly but does not make it front and center from our point of view.

“Directly or indirectly”?

Directly – meaning those of us in active contact with the 3D via parts of ourselves there. Indirectly – meaning, those without such contacts, dealing with those that do.

 

— From Awakening From the 3D World, available from publisher Rainbow Ridge Books (https://www.rainbowridgebooks.com) or from other booksellers.

 

[Me:] It often seems to me that in these sessions we tip-toe toward something, dance around it, decide our time is up, and never quite get to it.

[Rita:] Yes, and yet you see we  do get there, over time. The tip-toing and the dancing around is as much a part of the elucidation as the straight exposition. It is the invisible context that holds the link, what you used to call the carrier wave. Just like Rob Butts describing when the cat would jump up on Jane Roberts while Seth was talking, it keeps you and the later reader remembering that this does  not float in the air but is intrinsically real, continuing, everyday. It is very easy to forget that, and if you do, something very important is lost. Also, it is more effective to dance around a subject, as it seems to you we are doing, than to pursue it in a straight-line fashion. Straight-ahead seems more efficient, but carries the potential to be easily walled off from the rest of your life. Just as when you read a book straight through, not pausing or doing anything else, the contents may form an isolated lump rather than being digested and diffused and becoming part of your being.

It is hard to overcome certain habits of mind, such as impatience and haste.

Hard, but scarcely impossible, nor do you always proceed at the same breakneck pace.

If you in 3D were asked by someone not in 3D how you spend your time, “we relate” might be as good an answer as any, because it is a common denominator among so many activities and preoccupations that might not be so easily described, and certainly would be impossible to describe in their infinite interactions. Generalized almost meaningless statements are the natural result of attempting to explain unknowns. You remember Bob [Monroe]’s description of showing a non-3D person life in 3D.

I do. BB, in Far Journeys.

Yes. Remember – Bob explicitly reminded the reader that everything he tried to show would necessarily be distorted by translation into words, into sequential logic, into all sorts of unacknowledged assumptions.

But, “you do the best you can.”

Right, and that’s our task now, to do the best we can because our conditions and perceptions and assumptions and experience are different from Bob’s, and so will complement his and at the same time inform his.

We must not leave the impression that what Bob was able to convey was gospel, any more than what we can bring forth. Nor are contradictions in description important in themselves. You don’t want dogma, you want doorways, things that lead on, that give the impetus to look in a certain direction, to make certain connections. Our hope is to cut doorways where people have only seen walls. Not that we are “going where man had never gone before,” but that we are demonstrating that the walls were never real in the first place, so why not have a doorway here, or a window? This kind of encouragement of imagination can only be done one person at a time. Each person reading this is part of a unique equation of Rita (for TGU) / Frank (for sequential exposition) / reader (for association of the material with everything else in his or her life). There is no mass communication, no matter how widely we scatter the seed. There is only one-to-one, and that unpredictable.

 

— From Awakening From the 3D World, available from publisher Rainbow Ridge Books (https://www.rainbowridgebooks.com) or from other booksellers.

 

Saturday, December 14, 2024

5:10 a.m. Shall we continue?

You started to steer the conversation, then struck out your question and left it to us. Why?

More interested in where you wanted to go than what had occurred to me. I can never tell how much of my motivation is “me” and how much an intuition from the universe and how much perhaps the product of some robot.

Not that it matters.

Well, you say that, and I can get a sense of it – that since we are all one thing, what difference does it make what causes what to surface. Still, it seems to make a difference.

It does, of course. A philosophy is at a different level from a prejudice, say, or a knee-jerk reaction, or a reasoned position based on other premises. But at the same time, in a sense it doesn’t matter (which is the same as saying “All is well”) because the world isn’t drifting.

This reminds me of a thought I had yesterday (and lost until now) that I did want us to discuss.

Yes, and if you go looking for the source of an idea – sources, rather – you will waste a certain amount of time and energy, because what difference does it make? If Leonardo da Vinci could find inspiration in a pool of water or a mottled wall, why should anybody worry that the diamond they just found may have come from a dunghill?

My thought may have come from Paul Brunton, prepared by earlier exposure to Carl Jung. Hardly dunghills. But I get your point.

And you are hesitating at the brink because it is a sort of impractical-sounding question.

Very well, I cease to hesitate. I thought, people have said that if the physical world really exists as a sort of epiphenomenon, that means it depends upon not being forgotten by whatever is dreaming it. Thus, if God were to forget us, we would cease to exist, is how the theologians would put it. But there is another way to phrase the understanding that doesn’t involve postulating a separate God. But although I can intuit it, I cannot put words around it. I’m hoping you can, because I think it is the kind of understanding that could be quite a doorway.

Bullets, then, and we’ll see if we can fence it in:

• Your 3D existence is a subset of your non-3D existence, necessarily since the 3D in general is a subset of the non-3D.
• But your 3D existence – your life on the avatar level – depends upon the existence of many things: time, space, genetics, and the non-3D seeds you call other lives, or threads.
• All is one, all time is part of the eternal now, there are no divisions in any direction except provisional, temporary, illusory barriers that nonetheless appear real and even formidable.
• Thought, too, is all one, and at the same time is locally divisible.
• No civilization, any more than any individual, can do justice to every aspect of reality. The more one accents one end of a given polarity, the more one neglects the compensating “opposite” end of the polarity.
• Thus, every thought, every structure of any kind, is necessarily incomplete and – you might say – unfair.
• What is the succession of days but the trying out of this or that emphasis? And given that we are talking about not one set of polarities but many, you can see the amazing complexity of the resulting creations. The Renaissance in Europe, the Taoist or Muslim or Christian or Jainist understandings of reality, the materialist hypothesis, magicians, devil-worshippers, ecstatics – you see the point.

I do. Infinite diversity, and different times call forth different manifestations, like an art gallery continually changing its displays.

Now, you as individual at the avatar level usually function as if separate. Even if you experience telepathic contact with others, usually you experience it as you (the individual) experiencing other (humans, or ex-humans or never-been-human). You don’t usually experience the sense of oneness that puts you as avatar in your proper place as both center and nowhere.

Sometimes we do.

If no one ever did, how could we describe it? We said usually.

Yes, I got that. It still seemed worth noting in case it didn’t occur to people.

All right. Since you function as if separate (and of course this is by design, it is not a malfunction or imperfection), you do not usually sense your theoretical fragility of existence.

That could use a little clarifying.

“If God forgot us, we would cease to exist.” Only, for God substitute the group-mind that is everything.

Is there a difference?

Difference in associations people will make to different words. The word God will raise resistances in some, as you well know. The idea of a universal group-mind will raise resistances in others, particularly if expanded to include what is seen as non-living “matter,” as it must if it is to include everything. And any conception that proceeds from postulates and assumptions and associations different from one’s own will necessarily appear biased, perhaps ludicrously so. It is hard to hold one’s own view and at the same time look from another window.

It seems to be the nature of religions – including scientism – to rigorously exclude opposing views. What is heresy, after all, or superstition, but unacceptable modes of thought?

Yes, well, you are going to have to find ways to do what has till now been impossible. Your new civilization will be broad-minded or it will fail. But of course even broad-mindedness is one position, that excludes certain extremes. As we say, you can’t have any positive expression that includes everything. At best you may get a negative expression like Taoism that says to each successive attempt to define the world, “No, it isn’t that either.” You can see that such a recurring negative may be quite valuable against fanatism but may also lack a certain something that people need.

I can’t tell, looking back on this, if we have succeeded in saying anything that will be intelligible to people who don’t already get it. But then, that’s what you often say, isn’t it? We are connected, and sparks jump.

Could you trace the origin of the ideas that occur to you? By looking carefully you can sometimes see how they connect with other things, how they latch onto the moving train that is your momentary consciousness, but that says nothing important about the mechanism or nature of organization of ideas. Nor – we repeat – is it necessary or even helpful to trace such relationships. They may interest you, and if so, fine. But they are not important per se. You have spent your entire life reacting to ideas without knowing why they came when they did, or how. You will spend the remainder of your life the same way. If isn’t in any way a problem.

But I still can’t tell if anything I wanted to convey comes through. You will say, it isn’t my business who picks up what, but I’d say what is my business is, did I make as clear a statement as I could?

Perhaps you will receive “external” feedback.

Perhaps. Well, I can feel my mind wandering a little, so I guess this is it for the moment. Thanks as always.

 

[Me:] Rita? The world – that is, all-D, 3D and non-3D both — from TGU’s point of view?

[Rita:] The object of this second run is to give the same facts a second look from somewhat the opposite perspective. So in a way there will be nothing new, but in a way it will all be different.

It reminds me, what you’re saying here, of how the Indians and the plainsmen kept themselves oriented. Every so often they would look back, to see what the country they were traversing looked like from the other direction, so it would be recognizable.

They were giving themselves perspective, orienting themselves in a 360-degree rather than a 180-degree fashion, you might say. Yes, that’s what we’re doing here. Any exploration can be describe going forward, or going back over the ground, but it is more orienting to do it both ways if possible, and an aerial view would be so much the better. Bear in mind, then, our intent is not to describe something no one has ever seen before; it is to describe relationship between things seen and not so well understood. That includes anything you and I ever discussed, whether I was in or out of body.

We have already sketched life in 3D and non-3D from the point of view of the 3D-bound individual. Now we are looking at the same reality from the point of view of the non-3D-bound individual – not, exactly, your own non-3D component (though that is part of it) but the dweller in these parts not particularly bound by a tie to 3D, the non-3D neighborhood as it appears to each other. The logic of our lives once the intense 3D focus is no longer out-glaring subtler lights. Our center of gravity firmly placed here, not tugged at from 3D. You remember, I asked once how TGU spent their time, and they said, “we relate.”

I remember they said, “You might think of us as teachers, but what if we said we were roofers?” Meaning, the nature of their occupations couldn’t be easily related to us because we would find it hard not to force any explanation into 3D terms.

And one way of looking at events would say that that interchange was for the purpose of establishing this conceptual link between us, I being on both sides of that questioning and therefore being uniquely able to understand the needs of the questioner and the constraints on the responder – and you being able to establish or hold the continuity. So, we’re setting out to answer the question left open – what does it mean, “we relate”?

 

— From Awakening From the 3D World, available from publisher Rainbow Ridge Books (https://www.rainbowridgebooks.com) or from other booksellers.

 

When we talk about “everything,” the words we use – “The world,” “the universe,” “reality” – mislead, and you can’t just throw in a paragraph of I-Mean-This-When-I-Use-This-Word without destroying the flow of the thought. So I guess I’ll have to invent a word for us to use.

[Rita:] Try “the All-D.”

Meaning both the 3D and the non-3D. Well, we’ll see if it works out. We are meaning to convey, as a concept, “everything.” Not only all physical reality but all non-physical reality as well. So rather than say “creation” – which implies only the 3D universe – or “the universe” – which may imply the astronomical usage – or “the world” – which certainly would leave people uncertain as to what we mean – we hesitated. Rita’s usage amounts to seeing the spiritual and physical worlds as organic, living, rather than seeing the physical world as mostly dead and the spiritual world as either living or (the materialist position) non-existent.

It is one thing to see the 3D world as mostly dead and the non-3D as non-existent. It is a second thing to see a mostly-dead 3D and a living non-3D. a very different third thing to see the 3D as fully alive, cooperating with and interacting with (and indeed being a part of) a living non-3D.

The all-D is alive. It is conscious. It seems to have purpose and will inherent in its nature. This is what mystics sometimes realize but rarely are able to describe and even more rarely are able to explain. Indeed, perhaps it can’t be explained at all, merely realized. It is what some call an all-pervasive God, the pantheistic or panentheistic position. People’s incomplete perception of the truth produces division in their opinions, divisions that cannot be bridged at the level they hold them.

Some people believe in God, and no matter what form that belief takes, it amounts to a sense of the all-D’s inherent living purposiveness without a sense of its indivisibility or its comprehensive consciousness.

Others believe only in what their sensory apparatus reports to them, which amounts to blindness to the non-3D and to the non-sensory interconnections within 3D, let alone the connections between the 3D and the (unperceived and hence presumed-to-be-nonexistent) non-3D.

Others believe in 3D and non-3D but do not believe in the purposive nature of the all-D, and may call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” They do not experience the 3D as inherently conscious necessarily.

Good enough to begin with. The point here is that we are exploring the nature of reality from a particular point of view that needs to be firmly established if anyone is going to be able to get anything new from it. It is one thing to be religious, another to be “spiritual but not religious,” a third to be materialist. We are postulating a fourth position that differs from any of these in the one vital respect of seeing All-D as a unity of conscious (hence, obviously, alive) parts. The difference doesn’t so much invalidate any of those other orientations as demonstrate them to be partial. They are each a way of seeing things, but are each an incomplete way; hence the conflict among them.

So let me ask: Does All-D mean All-That-Is, or are there different levels to be considered?

We are describing the world from TGU’s point of view. It may be that there are wheels within wheels, and indeed, there must be. Remember, any view puts into focus only what is at the scale of the viewer.

We have been given clues in scriptures and metaphysics, and we have to keep coming back to, “As above, so below.” We can have confidence that the All-D repeats at different scale, essentially as a fractal. But anything beyond our range is, by definition, beyond our range. We cannot know

I keep forgetting that this is The World As Seen by TGU.

This is intended to be a complementary approach to TGU’s view of “the world as experienced by consciousness limited to 3D. Complementary views allow you to shift perspective, and get to the view beyond perspective.

 

— From Awakening From the 3D World, available from publisher Rainbow Ridge Books (https://www.rainbowridgebooks.com) or from other booksellers.

 

Thursday, December 12, 2024

9 a.m. Perhaps we can continue from where we left off yesterday. So, sin as opportunity?

We smile. Yes, but not yes to everything that phrase may suggest. In this discussion we are going to have to stick closely to the main line of thought, and resist diversions, which will present themselves at every turn.

Something says, call Jon, to help provide that focus.

Yes. Thank you. The subject is huge, and it could be approached from so many angles – and it hares off into so many interesting connections to other thoughts – that this will indeed require vigorous pruning as we go along.

I am assuming that you are doing fine and would ask for help if you needed it.

I would – and it is a good thing that you remind people that 3D/non-3D interaction is a two-way street, just as you were told from the beginning. Each “side” of the great divide can help the other, and can be helped.

So let’s talk about sin. In what way could it be described as an opportunity?

You understand, I come at this from a certain point of view: I was Jewish – that is, not Christian with a Christian’s burden of belief – and a trained psychiatrist, and a Jungian in outlook, and a convinced experiencer while in 3D of the continued 3D/non-3D interaction. This is our angle of approach. A Catholic psychiatrist, or a Catholic counsellor who was not a psychiatrist nor even a psychologist perhaps, would see things differently – which means, would see some things I can’t, and would be unable to see some things that I see. And of course the examples could expand in all directions, according to people’s differences. The specific point here is that you and I share certain aspects, and it is these shared approaches that can be conveyed. This is what you mean (though you don’t think of it this way) when you say you “resonate” with someone or something. To say that something resonates is to say that you and it have something in common that facilitates direct connection.

Jews knew the concept of sin very well; that doesn’t mean they see it exactly the same way that Christians do, or Muslims. For our purposes, we will stick to the definition you like, as “missing the mark,” stripping away connotations of offending God or choosing evil. If you wish, later we can look at those (or other) aspects of the question, for remember, anything people have believed is worthy of examination.

Want to do this in bullets?

As an initial ordering device, yes, that will probably be useful.

• What you are in 3D – what you are calling the avatar-level of consciousness – is a particular blend of characteristics, traits, impulses, predilections, etc. as allowed in at your time and place of birth, as filtered through your parents’ physical heredity.
• That mixture is not uniform, and is not meant to be. It contains internal contradictions, unknown passions, traits that become weaknesses in certain circumstances or combinations.
• Your life you are given is the puzzle you set out to solve. It is the raw material for the artwork you are to create.
• It is also, unavoidably, something far beyond the personal, for you as individual are also you as threads extending in all directions, and some of those extensions may hate each other.
• These extensions are actively living in you and through you. They are also actively living in and through everything else they connect with. Can you see the complexity, the potential for conflict and cooperation, the potential for struggle and surprise?
• But you as avatar have to live your life in its own context. You may easily be unaware of these extensions; all you know, maybe, is that you are strongly impelled to do this or that, to be this or that. You don’t know why, but you do recognize compulsion when you experience it.
• I say “compulsion.” It may feel like it is externally imposed, and in a way that is correct. But – is anything really external? At most it is external to your
• And that gives you the clue for how to broaden your control over life. Widen your consciousness, extend your awareness, and your mastery of circumstance grows.
• And what prevents, or hinders, such growth of consciousness? Seven major tendencies have been called the seven deadly sins.
• You understand, as you and I are seeing it, these have nothing to do with “wrong because forbidden.” Just the opposite: They are forbidden because they are wrong.
• But – “wrong”? does that mean there really is God-the-judge-and-jury? Obviously you don’t think that, and neither do I. It means – at least to us – wrong because destructive and obstructive.
• The seven tendencies are, as noted, habits, or let’s say temptations. I know that usually “temptations” means temptation to sin; I am saying here that sin itself is temptation to underrate oneself, to shrink the productive work that can lead to freedom.

Very nice. I’d think some examples would help.

Well, nobody has to look very far to find examples! The person who has not sinned is like the house in the fable that has never known sorrow: Good luck finding one.

Let’s start with lust.

Understand, the sin of it has nothing to do with the act. When Jesus said the men who looks with lust in his heart has already committed fornication, he was trying to get people to realize that thoughts are things, that just because something isn’t expressed externally, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and doesn’t have consequences.

But, someone might say, “What’s so wrong with lust? We even have a word – lusty – meaning whole-hearted appreciation.

The point is always, not what does this do externally, but what does it do to the person experiencing it?

Well, what?

All the sins have as common denominator a lowering of consciousness. What confuses the issue is that they often are associated with heightened energy. But sexual excitement, or the high-pressure intensity of anger, or the cocksureness of pride, may feel pleasurable (indeed, you could almost say they wouldn’t be indulged if they didn’t), but they are not you in your own fragile precarious consciousness. If anything, they are opposed to that consciousness, wanting to carry you along.

Like mob psychology.

Very much like that. It is well known that mobs will do what the individuals themselves would never do – and perhaps will be appalled, after regaining individual consciousness, to see that they have done. So with the individual and sin. The mob psychology, while it lasts, may carry you “beside yourself,” but when it ebbs, you rue the result.

I have thought that the difference between venial sin and mortal sin may be that the first sort of happens and the second is intentionally chosen. I don’t know if that’s what theologians mean, of course.

Can you see where this centers?

The more robots we have, the less conscious we are – and sins are habits rooted in robots.

Also you could say, creating or at least encouraging robots.

Tired now.

Yes, and this is not a bad place to stop.

I enjoyed it. Looking forward to more another time. Thanks.