Session 735

Unknown Reality, Session 735

The Sumari characteristics do not exist in isolation, of course.  To one extent or another, each family of consciousness carries within it the characteristics inherent in all of the families.  There is, therefore, great diversity.

The Sumari abilities are highly creative ones, however.  To a large extent they have been inhibited in your society.  I have been speaking of them here so that each individual can learn to recognize his or her own degree Sumariness.  The playful, creative elements of personality can then be released.  These qualities are particularly important as they add to, temper, or enhance the primary characteristics of the other families of consciousness.

If you are a “reformer”, a “reformer by nature”, then the Sumari characteristics, brought to the surface, could help you temper your seriousness with play and humor, and actually assist you in achieving your reforms far easier than otherwise.  Each personality carries traces of other characteristics besides those of the family of consciousness to which he or she might belong.  The creative aspects of the Sumari can be particularly useful if those aspects are encouraged in any personality, simply because their inventive nature throws light on all elements of experience.

The psyche as you know it, then, is composed of a mixture of these families of consciousness.  One is not superior to the others.  They are just different, and they represent various ways of looking at physical life.  A book would be needed to explain the dimensions of the psyche in relation to the different families of consciousness.  Here, in this manuscript, I merely want to make the reader aware of the existence of these psychic groupings.  I am alert to the fact that I am using many terms, and that it may seem difficult to understand the differences between probable and reincarnational selves, counterparts and families of consciousness.  At times contradictions may seem to exist.  You may wonder how you are you in the midst of such multitudinous psychic “variations”.

An apple can be red, round, weigh so much, be good to eat, sit in a basket, but be natural on a tree.  It can be tart or sweet.  You can find one on the ground, or on a table, or in a pie.  None of these things are contradictory to the nature of an apple.  You do not ask: “How can an apple have color and be round at the same time?”

You can look at an apple and hold it in your hands, so it is obvious that its shape does not contradict its color.  You see that an apple can be red or green or both.  If I said: “Apples sit quietly on a table”, you would have to agree that such is sometimes the case.  If I said: “Apples roll down grassy inclines”, you would also have to agree.  If I said: “Apples fall down through space”, you would again be forced to concede the point.  It would be clear to you that none of these statements contradicted each other, for in different circumstances apples behave differently.

So far, you do not hold your consciousness in your hand, however.  When I speak of the behavior of your psyche, then, you may wonder: “How can my psyche exist in more than one time at once?”  It can do this just as apples can be found on a table or on the ground or on the tree.

The inside dimensions of consciousness cannot be so easily described, however.  If you ask: “How can I have reincarnational and probable selves at once?”, you are asking a question comparable to the one mentioned earlier: “How can an apple have color and be round at the same time?”

A young man was here last evening.  He possesses great mastery of the guitar.  As he played, it was obvious that any given composition “grew” from the first note, and had always been latent within it.  An infinite number of other “alternate” compositions were also latent within the same note, however, but were not played last night.  They were quite as legitimate as the compositions that were played.  They were, in fact, inaudibly a part of each heard melody, and those unheard variations added silent structure and pacing to the physically actualized music.

Following this analogy, in the same way each psyche contains within it infinite notes, and each note is capable of its own endless creative variations.  You follow one melody of yourself, and for some reason you seem to think that the true, full orchestra of yourself will somehow drown you out.

When I speak in terms of counterparts, then, or of reincarnational selves and probable selves, I am saying that in the true symphony of your being you are violins, oboes, cymbals, harps – in other words, you are a living instrument through which you play yourself.  You are not an instrument upon which you are played.  You are the composer and the symphony.  You play ballads, classical pieces, lyrics, operas.  One creative performance does not contradict the others. 

Life as you think of it is far from being inflexible.

Returning to our comments about the alternate compositions, you can at any time bring into your own life-composition elements from any “alternate” ones.

Some people structure their lives around their children, others around a career, or pleasure, or even pain.  Again, these are simply certain focuses that you choose, that direct your experience.  You can add other focuses while still retaining your own identity – indeed, enriching it.

Sometimes you act as though one ability contradicts another.  You think “I cannot be a good parent and a sexual partner to my mate at the same time”.  To those who feel this way a definite contradiction seems implied.  A woman might feel that the qualities of a mother almost stand in opposition to those of an exuberant sex mate.  A man might imagine that fatherhood meant providing an excellent home and income.  He might think that “aggressiveness”, competition, and emotional aloofness were required to perform that role.  These would be considered in opposition to the qualities of love, understanding, and emotional support “required” of a husband.  In the same way, however, you often seem to feel that your identity is dependent upon a certain highly specific role, until other qualities quite your own seem threatening.  They almost seem to be unselflike.

To some degree you feel the same way when you encounter the concept of probable selves, or of counterparts.  It is as though you had an unlimited bank of abilities and characteristics from which to draw, and yet were afraid of doing so – fearing that any addition could make you less instead of more.  If all of this goes on personally, as you choose one melody and call it yourself, then perhaps you can begin to see the mass creative aspects in terms of civilizations that seem to rise and fall.

So you look back through the historical past.  All of the counterparts alive as contemporaries then form, together, a musical composition in what you think of as a present; and once that multidimensional song is struck then it ripples out behind it, so to speak, and its future sings “ahead”.  But the song is being created from its beginning and its end simultaneously.  In this case, however, it is as if each note has its own consciousness and is free to change its portion of the melody.  Yet all are in the same overall composition, in “time”, so that time itself serves as the scale in which the [musical] number is written – chosen as a matter of organization, focus, and framework.

Now in music the pauses are as important as the sounds.  In fact, they serve to highlight the sounds, to frame them.  The sounds are significant because of their placement within the pauses or silences.  So the portions of your psyche that you recognize as yourself are significant and intimate and real, because of the inner pauses or silences that are not actualized, but are a part of your greater being.

Now imagine a composition in which the pauses and the silences that you do not hear are sounded – and the notes that you hear are instead the unheard inner structure.

In the last few sentences there is an intuitive “definition” of probable and reincarnational selves, and counterparts, in relationship to the self that you know.  In your case, however, you can change your own pacing, add variations, or even begin an entirely new composition if you choose to.  Now many people have done this in very simple, mundane ways by suddenly deciding to use abilities they had earlier ignored.  A man of letters, for instance, at the age of 40 suddenly remembers his old love of carpentry, reads do-it-yourself manuals, and begins his own home repairs.  After disdaining such activities as beneath him for years, he suddenly discovers an intimate relationship with earth and its goods, and this appreciation adds to words that before may have been as dry as ash.

In that case, you see, there would be in another reality a carpenter or his equivalent with a latent love of words, unexpressed – and that individual would then begin to develop; reading books on how to write, perhaps, and taking up a hobby that would allow him to express in words his love of the land and its goods.  The creativity of the psyche means that no one world or experience could ever contain it.  Therefore, does it create the dimensions in which it then has its experiences.

Each portion, by whatever name, contains within it the latent potentials of the whole.  If the unknown reality exists, it is because you play one melody over and over and so identify yourself, while closing out, consciously at least, all of the other possible variations that you could add to that tune.

There are many kinds of music.  I could say: “Music is triumphant”, or “Music is tragic”.  You would understand that I am not contradicting myself.  You would not say, or at least I hope you would not say: “Why would anyone write a composition like Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique?”  Why would a composer choose a somber mood?  The music itself would have its own sweep and power, and would indeed be beautiful beyond all concepts of good and evil.

In the same manner, even a tragic composition of merit transcends tragedy itself.  The composer was exultant in the midst of the deepest emotions of tragedy, or even of defeat.  In such cases the tragedy itself is chosen as an emotional framework upon which the psyche plays.  The framework is not thrust upon it but indeed chosen precisely because of its own characteristics – even those of despondency, perhaps.

Tasting those qualities to the utmost, from that framework the psyche probes the fires of vitality and being as experienced from that specific viewpoint, and the despondency can be more alive than an unprobed, barely experienced joy.  In the same manner, certain individuals can and do choose life experiences that involve great tragedies.  Yet those tragic lives are used as a focus point that actually brings into experience, through comparison, the great vitality and thrust of being.

This does not mean that a tragic life is more vital than a happy, simple one.  It just means that each individual is involved in an art of living.  There are different themes, instruments, melodies – but existence, like great art, cannot be confined to simple definitions.

From the outside, for instance, it might seem as if a young person dies because in one way or another he or she is dissatisfied with life itself.  Certainly it is usually taken for granted that suicides are afraid of life.  However, suicides and would-be suicides often have such a great literal lust for life that they constantly put it into jeopardy, so that they can experience what it is in heightened form.  The same applies to many who follow dangerous professions.  It is fashionable to suppose that these people have a death wish.  Instead, many of them have an intensified life wish, so to speak.  Certainly it seems destructive to others.  To those people, however, the additional excitement is worth the risk.  The risk, in fact, gives them an intensified version of life.

This is obviously not the case with all suicides or would-be suicide, or all risk-takers.  But those elements are there.  A person who dies at 17 may have experienced much greater dimensions of living, in your terms, than someone who lives to be 82.  Such people are not as unaware of those choices as it seems.

This does not mean that you cannot alter your experience at any given point.

Take a hypothetical woman named Mary, who is partial to the kinds of experiences just mentioned.  Temperamentally, she seeks out crisis situation.  She may initiate suicide attempts.  On the other hand, she may entertain no such ideas, but be murdered at the age of 17.

We are certainly not condoning the murderer – but no slayer kills someone who does not want to die, either.

He picks, or she picks, victims as intuitively as the victim seeks out the slayer.  On the other hand, Mary’s experiences in life may make her change her mind, so to speak, so that at 17 she encounters a severe illness instead, from which she victoriously recovers.  Or she might narrowly miss being murdered when a bullet from the killer’s gun hits the person next to her.  On an entirely different level and in a different way, she might have no such experiences but be a writer of murder mysteries, or a nurse in surgery.  The particular variations that one person might play are endless.  You cannot consciously begin to alter the framework of your life, however, unless you realize first of all that you form it.  The melody is your own.  It is not inevitable, nor is it the only tune that you can play.

To some extent you can actualize portions of your own unknown reality, and draw them into the experienced area of your life.  There is an obvious relationship between one note and another in a musical composition.  Now in terms of physical families and in larger terms of countries, there is a relationship between realities, which constantly changes as the notes do.  To some extent your reality is picked up by your contemporaries.  They accept it or not according to the particular theme or focus of their lives.

In those terms, you are not a part of any reality that is not your own.  If you share it with others, it is because others are concerned with variations of the same theme.  This applies in terms of world goals “at any given time”.

For example: In certain terms, you are working with the challenge of how best to use the world’s resources.  Some countries will overproduce.  Others will underproduce.  Contradictions seem to occur.  Some people will be overfed while others starve; some sated with material conveniences, other relatively ignorant of them.  These are variations of the same theme, you see.  In overall terms contemporaries are working on the same group of challenges, though either oversupply or great lack might show itself at any particular place.  Perhaps, however, the challenges could not be clearly delineated without those extravagances of degree.

As contemporaries, counterparts choose a particular time framework.  The time format alone makes certain focuses clear, that in your terms could not be made in another context.  What you learn in your present about industry – “progress” – and the equitable sharing of the earth’s products, could only be learned in a context in which industrialism was experienced as going too far, where technology was seen and known as a growing jeopardy.

In terms that I admit are difficult to describe, the creative solutions will change the course of history in the past, so that variations are taken, and technology does not progress in the same way that it “has” in your experience.

I have said before that personally you can change your past from the present.  The same applies to civilizations.