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.

 

5. The cosmic weather

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

4:45 a.m. Rereading the four previous entries is both encouraging and daunting. OT1H, a sense that the material is flowing. OTOH, what a mass of material to hold in mind together! But I will assume that you will provide a logical exposition. I am trying not to press, trusting.

Trust is always good, subject to later verification. “Later” verification, note. You can’t verify as you go along, any more than you can analyze while perceiving. First absorb the material, then pick it apart if you feel the need.

Now, we sketched a vision of time as continuing to exist before you move through a given moment and after you have moved on to the next moment. We are tempted to discuss what is called the Akashic Record, a concept we see as widely misunderstood. The misunderstanding stems from a small and seemingly insignificant distortion, but although it is small, it may not be so easy to demonstrate.

We will attempt an analogy with ordinary 3D life as experienced, and see if it illustrates our point. Just as “The map is not the territory,” so “The memory is not the experience.” Or, let’s say, the individual memory is not the same thing as an objective record.

We are not thinking of lies, nor of incomplete or inaccurate recollection, nor even of the construction of narrative using inadequate tools. What is at issue is not any inadequacy of individual recall. Instead, we are discussing the difference between, say, any careful individual’s record of the day’s weather, on the one hand, and the graphs and charts produced by scientific instrumentation, on the other. The latter form of recording is one degree less subjective than the former.

Think of it this way: The Akashic Record is not decided upon, at whatever level of reality. It isn’t like the concept of a recording angel, taking notes. It is automatically produced, it is the image of each moment. It is that moment, in a sense, and ultimately is a compilation of all such moments.

You see the distinction? The record is the shadow of the event, you might say. Or, the record is the event when seen from any other moment of space-time. In that sense (only) the Akashic Record appears as such only when viewed from the 3D. From within the non-3D, there is no distinction between “now” and “then.” Therefore there is no distinction between “now” and the other times that in 3D you see as available on the Akashic Record. That record is a 3D construct, making sense of what otherwise would not make sense in a context that assumes that “past” moments no longer exist.

You see? Someone in 3D, viewing any other moment, may accurately be said to be reading the Akashic Record. But it would be more accurate to say that they were reading, not the record, but the reality, because all those moments continue be as alive in potential as your present moment. A mere static record could not contain the possibility of choice, but – as we will show – just that possibility does exist in every moment. The world doesn’t freeze just because your time moved on to another moment, any more than Detroit freezes when you move to Cleveland. Life continues, whether or not you in 3D are in a position to observe it.

And this provides a segue into other topics, for everything connects. You should remember as we go that many things said in one context will have to be clarified – in effect, revised – when considered in other contexts. This is not because of slipshod exposition, but because different facts reveal different facets depending upon the viewing point. Thus, we are going to discuss choice, but later we will discuss the community nature of what seem like individuals, and what we say now will be understood differently then. This is a drawback of language (sequential exposition) and cannot be avoided. However, it can be kept in mind, which will result in a helpful attitude of readiness for revision, as opposed to thinking in absolutes.

So, choice. Remember that to us, the 3D is a crucible, concentrating you in one moment, one space, one set of circumstances at a time. Now remember the image of your sun and planet pulling you smoothly through space, and envision each such moment as being also a particular bit of space. That is, planetary motion moves you from one moment to the next (as you see it) by moving you from one bit of “space” to the next.

Each bit of space, each moment, has its own particular set of qualities. It is emphatically not true that one moment of time is the same as any other (much less every other), and it is equally untrue that one bit of space has the same qualities, the same effect, as any other. Careful analysis of your experience will tell you this. And this is why such arts as astrology and geomancy work. Once understand the underlying principles, and the working-out in practice follows. (Of course, in the absence of the theoretical background, such arts will necessarily seem to be superstition or fantasy.)

Every moment of time having its own nature, it follows that some things will be easier at one time, harder at another. This is another reason why astrological correlations were studied and codified: They provided predictions for the cosmic weather one will sail through, and when.

Notice, too, that your lives are the interaction of cosmic weather (in effect, the external world) with your own psychic makeup (the internal weather). Rough water for some will be smooth sailing for others. The difference is not in the times, nor in the individual makeup, but in the interaction of the two.

Now whether you are in a smooth patch or a stormy one, you still have the ability to choose. That is, after all, the point of 3D, to provide the continuing ability to choose among possibilities that are available. Each past choice has brought you to your present moment; each choice from here will bring you to your next choice. (Bear in mind, one valid choice is to continue as is. Choice doesn’t have to mean change of direction. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.)

But what exactly does it mean, to choose? The answer may seem obvious, but if you look carefully at the question, it will reveal aspects that may not be immediately obvious.

You are what you are. The possibilities of the moment are what they are. Where is the ability to choose? Haven’t your past actions determined your present, and therefore your future? Isn’t free will an illusion, when  stacked up against cause and effect? It may easily seem that way. And if what you know were the total of what is, you would have to conclude just that.

That isn’t clear.

No. let’s try again. Your present and past and future may be made to seem predetermined by feats of logic honestly intended and carefully constructed. But logic is only as strong as its weakest link, and there is more than one weak link in the chain. For one thing, you as individuals are vastly more like communities than you realize, and none of your constituent elements ever gets to fully express itself. By a change in emphasis among them, you may seem to change, and that change of emphasis depends not upon (external) circumstances, but upon an effort of will, of intent. Hence even if everything external led toward one predicted result, the actual event is likely to surprise you. In effect, you are many people, and you have many possible futures. It is not that simple, of course, but we are well past your usual hour, and it would be as well to pause here.

Interesting. I seemed to perceive your choosing which rocks to step on as you crossed the river this morning.

An unrecognized difficulty of this kind of communication is that we cannot give you anything without breaking it down for sequential exposition. But, enough gets through to justify the effort.

Well, thanks for making that effort. Next time.

 

A current of ink

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

It isn’t my fault. What could I do? These three men had a conversation in a bar in the middle of World War II, and one thing led to another.

See, in December, 1943, Jack Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s eldest son, was a young officer in the military police spending the night in New York City, a few days before his unit was to leave for Europe. Late at night, after dinner and a show, he dropped in to the small bar of the Algonquin Hotel, where he was staying. Other than Jack and the barman, the bar was empty except for two men engaged in a heated argument over which was a better writer, Fitzgerald or Hemingway. He injected himself into the conversation, getting away with it on the strength of his uniform in wartime. As he reconstructed the conversation in 1986 (in Misadventures of a Fly Fisherman):

 

“I think you’re both wrong. I know of a writer I think is better than either Hemingway or Faulkner. At least he’s a hell of a lot better storyteller.”

I had their attention, all right. The near man snapped, “And who the devil might that be?”

“Maurice Walsh,” I said, and then I started to detail his books I had read and that my father had told me he was a truly fine storyteller.

I stopped myself in mid-sentence as I noticed that the near man had blanched. I asked him what was the matter.

He answered, “I’m Maurice Walsh.”

A shiver went down my spine and the back of my neck crawled.  “I’m pleased to meet you, sir. My name is Jack Hemingway and my father is the writer you favored.”

The drinks we had before us, needless to say, were not the last we had that night.

 

Well, I can take a hint. I can’t remember when I bought Jack’s book – a dozen years ago, I suppose, more or less – but I remembered the reference, and after a while I began accumulating Walsh’s novels, which by the way, are indeed wonderfully appealing story-telling. A few titles, in case you’re interested: The Key Above the Door, The Small Dark Man, The Quiet Man, Castle Gillian, While Rivers Run, The Hill Is Mine. They are wonderfully evocative of an Ireland and a rural Scotland now long gone.

But of course chains of references have no end. After a while I noticed that Walsh every so often plugs an American writer, a writer of Westerns that he says is a master. At the time, apparently Eugene Manlove Rhodes was very well known. Today, I guess, not so much. But the other day I bought just one, to see if he was to my taste. At first, he wasn’t. But by the time I finished the little book, Paso por Aqui, which more or less means “he passed this way,” I decided I liked it. This morning, finding that the story stayed in my mind, I re-read it, and I can see that I will have to look out for another, to see if this was an unrepeatable fluke or a sign of genius. My guess is, the latter, or Walsh wouldn’t have gone out of his way to praise his works.

With my luck, Rhodes will praise some other writer’s work, and I’ll be swept along into yet another channel. Seems to me, I owe Jack Hemingway a drink.

 

Interim Report

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Chapter 13. Interim Report
So what does this whole book amount to? It doesn’t amount to proof of anything, that’s for sure. For all you know, I’m deliberately deceiving you, or am deceiving myself. My data may be wrong, my reasoning may be wrong, my “knowings” may be wrong, my conclusions may be wrong. As always, you’re pretty much on your own, and you’re pretty much going to believe whatever you allow yourself to believe. The only other choice is to find an authority to follow, trying not to remember that belief in authority is itself a belief, not a known.
I wrote this, not to persuade you of anything, but to present a clear statement of first-hand experience that might suggest to you that your life is more magical than you may have thought. I have seen, first hand, that there’s a lot for us to learn about many things that have been reported for centuries and denied only in the past few hundred years. These phenomena, if taken seriously, cast serious doubt on the materialist fantasy that has passed for science and common-sense in our day. Among those inconvenient reports: ghosts. out-of-body experiences, spirit possession, witchcraft, telepathy, afterlife experiences, the power of prayer, the ability to heal by touch or and at a distance… and plenty more.
Do such things happen? Is the commonly accepted view of the world significantly different from real life? There’s only one way to know. You have to investigate. You can’t just take another person’s word for it, except as an interim report. I know that stepping off the beaten path can be somewhat scary. But the land beyond the beaten path is not a featureless wilderness. I hope that my few muddy (not, I hope, muddled) footprints in the grass will give you whatever excuse you need to go find out for yourself. Herewith, a summary of my own interim report.
.2.
My own experiences (including reading and thinking, trying to make sense of these experiences) convince me of 10 interrelated points.
1) We are immortal spirits temporarily inhabiting bodies. Although by habit we identify with our bodies, this is a mistake, or a partial mistake. We are somewhat material; somewhat mortal; somewhat human. The identity we call ourselves — Downstairs, as I call it — is linked to the Earth in many ways, some known, some not. Our bodies are of the earth. Our genetic memories, our physical ancestry, our everyday interests, are all firmly rooted in the earth. To our physical bodies — the human part of us — earth is home. It is rightly said that we are spiritual beings having a human experience; that human experience is an experience of living “in the earth”, that is, in 3D Theater–physical matter reality. Therefore it isn’t “spiritual” to hate our bodies or our lives, however much our moments of deepest homesickness may tempt us to.
But we are more than our physical bodies. We are spirits, forming and maintaining and living in physical bodies, and neither this beautiful earth nor any other physical place, here or in the next galaxy, can be home to a spirit. We come from Elsewhere (or perhaps I should say Else-non-where); we’re just visiting here. Therefore, neither is it “scientific” or “realistic” to think that the body, or even human existence as body/mind/spirit, is all there is. Too much experience flatly contradicts this. Therefore,
2) This life is not our only life. As immortal or relatively immortal spirits, we lived before we were born this time, and will live after we die this time. Before and after this one physical-matter-reality life, we exist. It seems likely that we’re somewhere (physical or otherwise), doing something (whether imaginable to us now or not). And in fact explorers before and since Monroe have found just this.
3) We “individuals” are all connected one to another. The lives we lead seem to be separated between Me and Not-Me, with the dividing line seeming to be our physical bodies, but even science now knows that the division is illusory. We touch each other and are touched both in and out of body. Our scents, our auras, our thoughts, all touch at a distance. We often know each other’s thoughts, and “spontaneously and fortuitously” intervene in each other’s lives when needed. We engage in dance-like, perfectly executed interactions in ways that do not originate Downstairs and cannot be understood strictly in Downstairs terms. I think this is because
4) We as individuals are fragments of a larger being that cares about us and can be trusted. What Monroe called the INSPEC, what religions call God, what New Agers sometimes call The Universe–something vastly greater than us is yet an intimate part of us, as we are an intimate part of it. It is our connection to the larger whole that makes our lives possible, and gives our lives meaning. We are as fingers of an immense hand–which analogy demonstrates why the intentions of the larger being can be trusted. Does a finger distrust the hand it is part of? And if the finger comes to grief for whatever reason, does it suspect that the misfortune came from the hand’s malice? Obviously not. Where there is identity, there is identity of interest.
5) Nonetheless, this larger being sees things differently. Down here, immersed in 3D-Theater, we can’t help identifying with the here-and-now. Indeed, that’s what we’re here to do! But naturally anything that had its being in a framework outside of time and space would see things differently. What is desperately real to us would be a dream to it, and what was important to it might be nonexistent to our consciousness. We almost always forget the larger reality when we enter this one. Mythology had it that we forgot as we crossed the River Styx. Monroe says the noise of unfocused human mental and emotional activity is too great for us to function if we were to stay at the level of awareness natural to us outside 3D Theater (that is, in the non-physical realm he called Locale II). Other mythologies and cosmologies explain it in other ways. Different ways of saying the same thing. We forget. But the larger being remembers, and it is there to remind us.
6) The larger being is a source of foresight and wisdom. The larger being cannot live our life for us. This would deprive us–and thus itself–of choice and growth, which is the result of choice. But it sees outside of time, and it knows our purpose for this lifetime, as we cannot, and it has insights that can help us stay “on the beam” and live this life to the fullest. Think how wise we would be if we could remember the experiences and conclusions of thousands of other lives from the inside. Think what wise counselors we could then be to one who was within such a life, with its sensory and other constraints. Access to wider knowledge, combined with intimate insight and identity of interest, makes the larger being a trustworthy source of unlimited wisdom, relative to even the wisest and best of us fragments.
7) The larger being contacts us, sometimes sending dreams, sometimes visions, sometimes hunches or “knowings” or precognitive flashes. It works through intuition, regularly, and sometimes automatic writing, spontaneous recall, coincidence, you name it. Any time you hear or see something that resonates, your larger being may be taking advantage of an opportunity to get something across. Monroe said non-corporeal beings communicate exclusively by non-vocal communication rather than by words. Isn’t this precisely what dreams do? Dreams usually set up pictures, scenarios, symbols, leaving us to decode them as best we can. Sometimes, it is true, we get words; sometimes words, even sentences, of great power. But primarily dreams send symbols, which we can learn to read. (Let me say in passing that all means of divination, including Tarot decks, the I Ching, and those not yet devised, seem to me to work by helping the larger being to communicate with us, if only by concentrating our attention on symbols.) And this is not a one-way street.
8) We can contact the larger being. Some call it prayer; some, meditation; some, asking for guidance. The names vary according to time, culture and tradition, but the means of access are well known. Regardless of context, the underlying reality is that we as fragmentary individuals have access to a trustworthy source of relatively boundless knowledge and wisdom, ours for the asking. We need only to learn how to communicate, and to practice doing it.
9) Thus our lives need not be disconnected and solitary. We are always in intimate connection with the larger, wiser being we sometimes call “our” higher self; because we are part of this higher self, as fingers are a part of a hand. (Is a hand a finger’s higher self?) Without this intimate connection, we could not live, any more than a finger could live apart from its hand, or the hand away from its arm, etc. Therefore it is impossible for us to be alone in this sense.
10) Nonetheless, we may often lose communication. The intimate connection cannot be severed, but communication may be, and often is, distorted, neglected or forgotten. Many never even learn of the possibility of such intimate communication, having been taught otherwise. Obviously if you don’t believe it exists, you don’t try to communicate with it, and don’t listen when it communicates with you. And even those who know about the larger spirit sometimes forget, mostly in those times when “the world is too much with us.” At such times, be it a period of forgetfulness or a lifetime, everything you might have learned from that source is closed to you, not as punishment but as a consequence of your own forgetfulness or disbelief. But regardless of belief, we can contact the larger being, using many tools internal and external. Thus our lives don’t have to be disconnected and solitary. Thus we need not live our lives alone, even if all contemporary society says otherwise.
It seems to me that thinking in terms of our connection to a larger being clears up a lot of mysteries. It opens up unsuspected possibilities for us as individuals as well as collectively as a species. It means more, suggests more, than the words God or Higher Self. If the concept still poses perplexities, and if it still leaves vastly more unexplained than explained, so what? That leaves all the more work — and fun — for us and those who follow us. But it does give us a point of departure.
.3.
The experiences I have shared with you in this narrative cease to be inexplicable when viewed in this context. They become what is only to be expected. They become (dare we say it?) ordinary. And the things religions have tried so hard to tell us, these many generations and centuries, make sense in an entirely new way.
We are immortal spirits temporarily inhabiting bodies, and so this life is not our only life. We “individuals” are all connected one to another, if only as fragments of a larger being. This larger being cares about us and can be trusted. It is a source of foresight and wisdom, but nonetheless, it sees things differently. The larger being contacts us, and we can contact it, and so our lives need not be disconnected and solitary. Nonetheless, we may often lose communication.
Immortal spirits, temporarily inhabiting bodies? My contacts with living beings who no longer live on this earth –including some who I did not know when they were alive here–would be enough to convince me, if I needed convincing, that it is demonstrably untrue that “one life is all you get.” The only way that saying is true is in the limited sense that a given personality in a given historical time is somehow significantly different and distinct from other personalities and lifetimes that are embodied by the same soul. Thus, one might reasonably argue that a given life is not really a “past life” of another, but “another life” of some common-denominator soul. Or, one might make the counter-argument that all beings are at bottom part of one great being. It’s only a conflict of viewpoint. I can’t see how it ever could be resolved, and I don’t see that it would be important to do so.
As to this life not being our only life, here are a few of the lives I have found to date: Bertram, a Norman monk of the middle ages; John Cotten, the 18th-century Virginia farmer who married Clara; Joseph (or Josiah) Smallwood, the Vermont nature mystic; David Owen Poynter, the Welsh journalist and seeker of hidden knowledge; Katrina, the Polish Jewish girl; Also Clio, a Roman diviner in fire; Senji-san, a Japanese monk, and unnamed others, including at least one (if the evidence may be believed) on another planet. I don’t expect it to convince anyone else, but it goes a long way toward convincing me.
As evidence of our connection one to another, I might cite every instance of so-called telepathy mentioned in this book, and–more to the point, perhaps–all the mutual assistance so freely offered and received. Think of the interaction between Mary and me, for instance, or Suni and Ed and Dave and so many others named and unnamed. We tend to take love and friendship for granted, considering them to be part of ordinary life. So they are. But the very prevalence in our lives of love and friendship may blind us, sometimes, to how very strange and interesting they are as symptoms (not merely symbols) of our deep interconnectedness.
That we are fragments of a larger being that cares about us and can be trusted has always been an axiom of religion. My experiences, inner and outer, convince me that this is a straightforward description of the way things are. And although Monroe calls that being INSPEC and others call it God, Monroe made it quite clear in his book Far Journeys that INSPEC (on INSPEC’s own say-so) was not God. Yet he also said that he could see how people in the past, catching just a momentary non-physical glimpse of INSPEC, might decide it had seen the deity. Just so, Carl Jung once described what he called the racial unconscious in terms that he explicitly said resembled the traditional conception of God, including, among other attributes, (relative) omniscience and omnipresence.
Certainly a larger being connected to all of us, and existing outside time-space, would be a source of foresight and wisdom. Certainly it would see things differently from those of us enmeshed in 3D Theater. Yet it would be willing and able to contact us, and would encourage such contact. I have given many examples in this book of the simple process of establishing and deepening connection with the larger being. What else was it, when I learned to talk to (listen to) The Boss, or The Gentlemen Upstairs? When, before that, I connected with my Higher Self in the image of a unicorn? The information I have gotten has proved reliable on matters mundane and practical, no less than philosophical and abstract. And when I listen to hunches, it is the same thing.
But you must be willing to connect. What is leading an exclusively Downstairs life, if not loss of communication with Upstairs? This is the long hard solitary Downstairs road, with a vengeance, and it is no fun.
This new overview is all right there within the context of my experiences. I promised, in advance, to speak of what I know of my own knowledge. The same knowledge, by way of different experiences, is available to you. It is merely a matter of going after it.
.4
Every religion I know of testifies that we are spirits in bodies, and that we are an integral part of an eternal being that guides us and cares for us, and is essential to our moment-to-moment existence. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Religions have greatly discredited themselves by their quarreling over the way they see things. Nonetheless I think it would be a great error, almost a laughable one, to ignore the existence of so many thousand years of religious testimony, testimony that coincides.
Experience unites; opinion divides. Those who give testimony to personal experience of what they call God describe what happened to them as best they can. Of course, their testimony is going to differ as to detail and emphasis. But the reports are similar. It is when we get into opinion about what that experience means that we meet intolerance, the construction of logical prisons, and the laying-down of rules, and the beginnings of religious wars. Little minds attempt to interpret great experience, and the inevitable result is distortion, and quarreling over the nature and attributes of God, and the nature of humans, the nature of reality, the nature (and existence or non-existence) of heaven and hell, and of the afterlife in general.
Different religions emerge, shaped by different types of people, for different types of people. They place their emphasis so drastically differently that they seem to be describing differences in essence when in fact they are describing difference in nuance, or in interpretation. What they cannot spread and often do not share is the experience of the very real existence of the larger being of which we are a part.
One of the greatest Christian mystics and seers in history, Emanuel Swedenborg was also the most famous European scientist of his day. For more than 27 years, beginning in his fifties, Swedenborg conversed with spiritual beings he called angels and was granted visions of heaven and hell. He interpreted his entirely in a Christian context, but they sound remarkably like what Lifeline participants experience. Shared experience does not imply shared interpretation. Yet the experience is real.
.5.
We are in one of those historic moments when a civilization’s old way of seeing things is breaking into fragments, and a new way is not yet born. It is exciting, challenging, liberating–and also disorienting, frightening. No matter. This world we are moving into was not called forth by us and it won’t be banished by us. All we can do is meet it well or badly. And the only way to meet it well is to live our greatest truth as see where that brings us. Neither materialism nor fundamentalism contains enough truth to be worth the distortion they include. Neither offers us firm ground upon which to found our new lives. Only experience, followed by reflection, does that.
So it becomes a matter of personal exploration. My Upstairs link provides me with whatever assistance I happen to want, along with quite a bit that I need but don’t have sense enough to ask for. Do you have reason to think your Upstairs is any less interested in helping you? Is yours any less practical than mine? Why not ask your own questions?
Of course, any process of interpretation includes distortion. As an example, I suspect that often people experience the larger being as an external spirit, because it seems to them to be something outside themselves. In a sense, it is outside themselves: it extends far beyond the bounds of their own personality. In another sense, it is not at all outside themselves: it is an integral (and often unsuspected) internal part of the larger being that they are. Each viewpoint is sort of correct; neither is exactly correct. The distortion caused by viewpoints can be recognized and allowed for, but not prevented.
And the same thing goes for this overview. It is (at best) sort of correct, from a certain point of view. As far as I can see, “sort of correct, from a certain point of view” is about as good as we can do while still being in physical-matter reality. Even at best, anybody else’s ideas and experiences are no more than an interim report.