Tuesday, December 21, 2021
3:35 a.m. Gentlemen, do you have something cued up for us?
The interpenetration of minds, if you will set your switches.
Wouldn’t you think that would be so habitual by now that I could never forget it? I wonder how long it will take. Very well. Focus, receptivity, clarity, presence. I’m all ears.
Until now, in discussing the temporary joint mind, we have talked about the sharing of ideas and, to a lesser degree, of feeling. But you should have a pretty good handle on that by now, so let’s look a little deeper, spurred specifically by our recent discussion.
Yesterday’s, you mean.
Yesterday’s as the most recent approach to the subject, yes. We will use as our entry-point the idea of your being open to influence by other minds not in the sense of invasion, or even of infection, but of diffusion. Water that is heating on a stove does not have one molecule feeling imposed upon because adjacent molecules are affecting it. Each molecule warms as part of the general warming-up process, and how that occurs may be a matter of viewpoint, but, it occurs.
If I read that right, you mean, the process may seem like one molecule being affected by another, or as each molecule being affected by the general process, and which way one sees it is likely to be more or less right, but mostly a matter of opinion.
Well, let’s say that whatever way it appears is less important than the fact that the process follows its own laws. In other words, in the discussion to follow, we don’t want you (any of you) to hare off into political thought, or into paranoia. We will discuss the nature of the unbreakable connection, and if you wish later to discuss human conscious interference with the pattern, we can do that. But there’s no point in discussing mind control or distant influencing or anything of that nature at this point. Attempts to tamper with natural processes will be better understood once the material processes themselves have been explained, discussed, and assimilated.
A whole new range of topics here.
But although perhaps you think our explanations to date have come glacially slowly, consider how much background has had to be set out before each new complication could be considered in context. Or, not even “complication,” necessarily, but in any case each new level of consequence. How could we discuss the interpenetration of mind, for instance, without first establishing that you as individuals are in fact made up of communities, and in turn help make up higher communities? To try to build a structure of explanation on an inadequate or erroneous structure of prior explanations would only (1) reinforce the prior misunderstanding and (2) place new obstacles in the way of coming to proper conclusions, because the data and concepts such conclusions would be based on were erroneous, convincing, and misleading.
All right, that’s clear, and if anybody is complaining about this coming at a slow pace, I’m not one of them. I have found it to be pretty continuously engaging, each piece building upon previous pieces. Not too fast, not too slow. Goldilocks would be content.
Contentment produces few fairy tales. On the other hand, we have been at some pains to not spin fairy tales.
So let’s look at the situation.
- “We’re all one thing.”
- Yet at the same time, the world is made up of divisions: 3D v. nun-3D; you v. other people; you v. “the world” (that is, the shared subjectivity that seems to you to be “other”); many other polarities.
- You are all individuals, you are also communities.
- “You” are also “we.” Yet there are distinctions, or we wouldn’t be saying “you” and “we,” and neither would you. Similarly, of course, with distinctions between “this side” and “the other side.”
- Most notably there is the difference between those living in the living present moment, and those living elsewhen. The living v. the dead; this life v. other lives; 3D v. non-3D (as long as you consider only the present moment “real” in a way other moments are not).
These background facts must be taken into consideration together if you are to understand why what we will sketch makes sense and, indeed, must be. But the largest fact to be borne in mind is the effective division, while you are in 3D, between what you are conscious of and what you are not conscious of. In shorthand you call this the conscious and unconscious mind, but this common parlance has the disadvantage of making it seem like your one undivided mind is in fact functioning as two.
I hear you hesitating.
Well, it is and it isn’t, but not as consciously assumed. It is functioning as two – as more than two, in fact – in that the mind is an association of elements being held together by intent, by circumstance, and by assistance from outside 3D. But it is not functioning as a conscious mind operating by what [Robert] Graves called the Solar mind and an unconscious operating by the Lunar mind. The split is apparent – that is, it appears that way – but is not actual. The actual splits occur for different reasons.
I’m not sure I got that right. It got difficult in the middle.
Yes. Set the question aside for the moment. Make a note to return to it sometime. The point is that as long as your focus is in 3D because you are living in a 3D body, you will have in effect two minds. You will be living in two worlds (3D and non-3D, of course). You will be balancing between two modes of perception and therefore between two coherent realities.
I can feel the struggle not to let this very fine distinction escape into vaporous nothings.
You do the best you can. By repeating ourselves in different ways, in different contexts, we hope to get it across. That’s what usually happens.
Which world you live in depends mostly upon your mental balance. This sentence is hopeless in itself, but we intend to explicate it, and with luck it will become clear, or anyway clearer.
We still have a good ten minutes, if you wish to try.
If you are entirely unaware of anything but what your senses report and whatever grist your conscious mind grinds – memories, fantasies, free-associations, chains of logic – that’s a world with no space for other lives, for the non-3D reality, for anything but the shallowest presentation of “what is.” Bear in mind, for some people this is an appropriate stage of development. But while one is at this stage, one’s awareness of the vast overwhelming amount of reality does not exist as a factor.
It still influences those lives, though.
Of course, but the point is, they are not aware of it. To them, the shared subjectivity is merely “the world out there,” and they are very separate things from it. Other people, other times, other lives – it’s all “other” to someone at this stage of development.
We will continue next time.
Too much to begin now, I take it. Very well, our theme today?
“The interpenetration of minds (1),” if you like.
That seems to work. Very well, our thanks as always.