Sessions 848-859

I've been offline on a cruise ship for a couple of weeks, here are the sessions from the past two weeks.

Enjoy!

Chapter 7: The Good, the Bad, and the Catastrophic, Jonestown, Harrisburg, and When is an Idealist a Fanatic?

Session 848

… various kinds of governments represent the exercise of different aspects of consciousness.

The American experiment with democracy is heroic, bold, and innovative.  In historic terms as you understand them, this is the first time that all of the inhabitants of a country were to be legally considered equal citizens one with the other.  That was to be, and is, the ideal.  In practical terms, of course, there often are inequalities.  Treatment in the marketplace, or in society, often shows great divergence from that stated national ideal.  Yet the dream is a vital portion of American national life, and even those who are unscrupulous must pay it at least lip service, or cast their plans in its light.

In the past, and in large areas of the world now, many important decisions are not made by the individual, but by the state, or religion, or society.  In this century several issues came to the forefront of American culture: the exteriorization of organized religion, which became more of a social rather than a spiritual entity, and the joining of science with technology and moneyed interests.  Ruburt’s book on [William] James would be good background material here, particularly the sections dealing with democracy and spiritualism.  In any case, on the one hand each individual was to be equal with each other person.  Marriages, for example, were no longer arranged.  A man no longer need follow his father’s vocational footsteps.  Young adults found themselves faced with a multitudinous number of personal decisions that in other cultures were made more or less automatically.  The development of transportation opened up the country, so that an individual was no longer bound to his or her native town or region.  All of this meant that man’s conscious mind was about to expand its strengths, its abilities, and its reach.  The country was – and still is – brimming with idealism.

That idealism, however, ran smack into the dark cloud of Freudian and Darwinian thought.  How could a country be governed effectively by individuals who were after all chemicals run amok in images, with neuroticism built-in from childhood – children of a tainted species, thrown adrift by a meaningless cosmos in which no meaning could be found?

Organized religion felt threatened; and if it could not prove that man had a soul, it could at least see to it that the needs of the body were taken care of through suitable social work, and so it abandoned many of the principles that might have added to its strength.  Instead it settled for platitudes that equated cleanliness with virtue – hence, of course, your deodorant advertisements, and many other aspects of the marketplace.

In the public mind, it made little difference whether the devil or tainted genes condemned the individual to a life in which it seemed he could have little control.  He began to feel powerless.  He began to feel that social action itself was of little value, for if man’s evil were built-in, for whatever reasons, then where was there any hope?

There was some hope, at least, in looking for better living conditions personally.  There was some hope in forgetting one’s doubts in whatever exterior distractions could be found.  Idealism is tough, and it is enduring, and no matter how many times it is seemingly slain, it comes back in a different form.  So those who felt that religion had failed them looked anew to science, which promised – promised to – provide the closest approximation to heaven on earth: mass production of goods, two cars in every garage, potions for every ailment, solutions for every problem.  And it seemed in the beginning that science delivered, for the world was changed from candlelight to electric light to neon in the flicker of an eye, and a man could travel in hours distances that to his father or grandfather took days on end.

And while science provided newer and newer comforts and conveniences, few questions were asked.  There was, however, no doubt about it: Exterior conditions had improved, yet the individual did not seem any happier.  By this time, it was apparent that the discoveries of science could also have a darker side.  Life’s exterior conveniences would hardly matter if science’s knowledge was used to undermine the very foundations of life itself.

The various potions taken faithfully by the public were now often found to have very unfortunate side effects.  The chemicals used to protect agriculture had harmful effects upon people.  Such situations bothered the individual far more than the threat of nuclear disaster, for they involved his contact with daily life: the products that he bought, the medicines that he took.

Some people looked, and are looking, for some authority – any authority – to make their decisions for them, for the world seems increasingly dangerous, and they, because of their beliefs, feel increasingly powerless.  They yearn toward old ways, when the decisions of marriage were made for them, when they could safely follow in their father’s footsteps, when they were unaware of the lure of different places, and forced to remain at home.  They have become caught between science and religion.  Their idealism finds no particular outlet.  Their dreams seem betrayed.

Those people look to cults of various kinds, where decisions are made for them, where they are relieved of the burden of an individuality that has been robbed of its sense of power by conflicting beliefs.  At one time the males might have been drafted into the army, and, secretly exultant, gone looking for the period before full adulthood – where decisions would be made for them, where they could mark time, and where those who were not fully committed to life could leave it with a sense of honor and dignity.

In the past also, even in your country, there were convents and monasteries for those who did not want to live in the world as other people did.  They might pursue other goals, but the decisions of where to live, what to do, where to go, how to live, would be made for them.  Usually such people were joined by common interests, a sense of honor, and there was no retaliation to be feared in this century.

Cults, however, deal primarily with fear, using it as a stimulus.  They further erode the power of the individual, so that he is frightened to leave.  The group has power.  The individual has none, except that the power of the group is vested in its leader.  Those who died in Guyana, for example, were suicidally inclined.  They had no cause to live for, because their idealism became so separated from any particular actualization that they were left only with its ashes.

The leader of Jonestown was at heart an idealist.  When does an idealist turn into a fanatic?  When can the search for the good have catastrophic results, and how can the idealism of science be equated with the near disaster of Three Mile Island, and with the potential disasters that in your terms exist in the storage of nuclear wastes, or in the production of nuclear bombs.

People who live in tornado country carry the reality of a tornado in their minds and hearts as a psychological background.

To one extent or another, all of the events of their lives happen punctuated or accentuated by the possibility of disaster.  They feel that at any time they might be caused to face the greatest challenge, to rely upon their strongest resources, with greatest forbearance, and faced by a test of endurance.  They use – or often use – such a psychological and physical backdrop to keep those qualities alive within themselves, for they are the kind of people who like to feel pitted against a challenge.  Often the existence of probabilities and their acceptance does provide a kind of exterior crisis situation that individually and en masse is a symbol of independence and inner crisis.  The crisis is met in the exterior situation, and as the people deal with that situation they symbolically deal with their own inner crises.  In a way those people trust such exterior confrontations, and even count upon a series of them, of varying degrees of severity, that can be used throughout a lifetime for such purposes.

Those who survive feel that they have been given a new lease on life, regardless of their circumstances: They could have been killed and were not.  Others use the same circumstances as excuses for no longer hanging on to a wish for life, and so it seems that while saving face they fall prey to the exterior circumstances.

Session 850

Let us look at the many different forms idealism can take.  Sometimes it is difficult to identify idealists, because they wear such pessimistic clothing that all you can see are the patterns of a sardonic nature, or of irony.  On the other hand, many who speak most glowingly, in the most idealistic fashions, underneath are filled with the darkest aspects of pessimism and despair.  If you are idealists, and if you feel relatively powerless in the world at the same time, and if your idealism is general and grandiose, unrelated to any practical plans for its expression, then you can find yourself in difficulties indeed.  Here are a few specific examples of what I mean.

One evening, in this very [living] room, a small group was assembled not too long ago.  One visitor, a man from another part of the country, began to speak about the state of the nation, largely condemning all of his countrymen and women for their greed and stupidity.  People would do anything at all for money, he said, and as his monologue continued, he expressed his opinion that the species itself would almost inevitably bring about its own destruction.

He cited many instances of nefarious acts committed for money’s sake.  A lively discussion resulted, but no countering opinion could enter this man’s mind.  Roger, let us call him, is an idealist at heart, but he believes that the individual has little power in the world, and so he did not pursue his personal idealism in the events of his own life.  “Everyone is a slave to the system”.  That is his line of belief.  He took a routine job in a local business and stayed with it for over 20 years, all of the time hating to go to work, or saying that he did, and at the same time refusing to try other areas of activity that were open to him – because he was afraid to try.

He feels he has betrayed himself, and he projects the betrayal outward until betrayal is all that he sees in the socio-political world.  Had he begun the work of actualizing his ideas through his own private life, he would not be in such a situation.  The expression of ideals brings about satisfaction, which then of course promotes the further expression of practical idealism.

Roger speaks the same way in any social group, and therefore to that extent spreads a negative and despairing aura.  I do not want to define his existence by those attitudes alone, however, for when he forgets the great gulf between his idealism and practical life, and speaks about other activities, then he is full of charming energy.  That energy could have sustained him far more than it has, however, had he counted on his natural interests and chosen one of those for his life’s work.  He could have been an excellent teacher.  He had offers of other jobs that would have pleased him more, but he is so convinced of his lack of power that he did not dare take advantage of the opportunities.  There are satisfactions in his life [however] that prevent him from narrowing his focus even further.

If you want to change the world for the better, then you are an idealist.  If you want to change the world for the better, but you believe it cannot be changed one whit, then you are a pessimist, and your idealism will haunt you.  If you want to change the world for the better, but you believe that it will grow worse, despite everyone’s efforts, then you are a truly despondent, perhaps misguided idealist.  If you want to change the world for the better, and if you are determined to do so, no matter at what cost to yourself or others, no matter what the risk, and if you believe that those ends justify any means at your disposal, then you are a fanatic.

Fanatics are inverted idealists.  Usually they are vague grandiose dreamers, whose plans almost completely ignore the full dimensions of normal living.  They are unfulfilled idealists who are not content to express idealism in steps, one at a time, or indeed to wait for the practical workings of active expression.  They demand immediate action.  They want to make the world over in their own images.  They are the most self-righteous of the self-righteous, and they will sacrifice almost anything – their own lives or the lives of others.  They will justify almost any crime for the pursuit of those ends.

Two young women visited Ruburt lately.  They were exuberant, energetic, and filled with youthful idealism.  They want to change the world.  Working with the Ouija board, they received messages telling them that they could indeed have a part in a great mission.  One young lady wanted to quit her job, stay at home, and immerse herself in “psychic work”, hoping that her part in changing the world could be accomplished in that manner.  The other was an office worker.

There is nothing more stimulating, more worthy of actualization, than the desire to change the world for the better.  That is indeed each person’s mission.  You begin by working in that area of activity that is your own unique one, with your own life and activities.  You begin in the corner of an office, or on the assembly line, or in the advertising agency, or in the kitchen.  You begin where you are.

If Roger, mentioned earlier, had begun where he was, he would be a different, happier, more fulfilled person today.  And to some extent or other, his effect on all the other people he has met would have been far more beneficial.

When you fulfill your own activities, when you express your personal idealism through acting it out to the best of your ability in your daily life, then you are changing the world for the better.

Our session is late this evening because Ruburt and Joseph watched the beginning of a TV movie in which a young woman I will call Sarah appeared as an actress.  Sarah wrote Ruburt a letter, telling him of the movie.  Sarah has abilities, and she is banking on them, developing them in a practical way.  She believes that she forms her own reality.  She quenched doubts that she was not good enough to succeed, or that it was too difficult to go ahead in show business.  The satisfaction of performance leads [her] to more expansive creativity, and to her natural sense of personal power.  Through developing those abilities personally, she will contribute to the enjoyment of others.  She is an idealist.  She will try to bring a greater sense of values to the screen, for example, and she is willing to do the work necessary.

A young man from a nearby town came here recently – a highly gifted, intelligent young person.  He had not gone to college.  He attended a training school, however, and has a fairly technical position in a nearby factory.  He is an idealist, given to great plans for developing novel mathematical and scientific systems, and he is highly gifted in that area.  He wants to change the world for the better.

In the meantime, he looks with horror and disgust at the older men who have worked there for years, “getting drunk on Saturday nights, thinking only of the narrow world of their families”, and he is determined that the same thing will happen to him.  He has been “called down” serval times for “things that everyone else does”, though he protests that no one else is caught.  His mood is despondent.  At the same time, he did not consider trying to go to college, to get a scholarship or whatever, to better his knowledge in the field of his choice.  He doesn’t want to leave town, which is the place of his birth, to find a better job; nor does it occur to him to try and understand better the experiences of his fellow workers.  He doesn’t believe that he can change the world by beginning where he is, and yet he is afraid to count upon his own abilities by giving them a practical form of expression.

Youth is full of strength, however, so he very well may find a way to give his own abilities greater expression, and hence to increase his own sense of power.  But in the meantime he is dealing with dark periods of despair.

Idealism also presupposes “the good” as opposed to “the bad”, so how can the pursuit of “the good” often lead to the expression of “the bad”?  For that, we will have to look further.

There is one commandment above all, in practical terms – a Christian commandment that can be used as a yardstick.  It is good because it is something you can understand practically: “Thou shalt not kill”.  That is clear enough.  Under most conditions you know when you have killed.  That [commandment] is a much better road to follow, for example, than “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”, for many of you do not love yourselves to begin with, and can scarcely love your neighbor as well.  The idea is that if you love your neighbor you will not treat him poorly, much less kill him – but the commandment: “Though shalt not kill”, says you shall not kill your neighbor no matter how you feel about him.  So let us say in a new commandment: “Though shalt not kill even in the pursuit of your ideals”.

What does that mean?  In practical terms it would mean that you would not wage war for the sake of peace.  It would mean that you did not kill animals in experiments, taking their lives in order to protect the sacredness of human life.  That would be a prime directive: “Thou shalt not kill even in the pursuit of your ideals” – for man has killed for the sake of his ideals as much as he has killed for greed, or lust, or even the pursuit of power on its own merits.

You are a fanatic if you consider possible killing for the pursuit of your ideal.  For example, your ideal may be – for ideals differ – the production of endless energy for the uses of mankind, and you may believe so fervently in that ideal – this added convenience to life – that you consider the hypothetical possibility of the convenience being achieved at the risk of losing some lives along the way.  That is fanaticism.

It means that you are not willing to take the actual steps in physical reality to achieve the ideal, but that you believe that the end justifies the means: “Certainly some lives may be lost along the way, but overall, mankind will benefit”.  That is the usual argument.  The sacredness of life cannot be sacrificed for life’s convenience, or the quality of life itself will suffer.  In the same manner, say, the ideal is to protect human life, and in the pursuit of that ideal you give generations of various animals deadly diseases, and sacrifice their lives.  Your justification may be that people have souls and animals do not, or that the quality of life is less in the animals, but regardless of those arguments this is fanaticism – and the quality of human life suffers as a result, for those who sacrifice any kind of life along the way lose some respect for all life, human life included.  The ends do not justify the means.

Session 852

When you are discussing the nature of good and bad, you are on tricky ground indeed, for many – or most – of man’s atrocities to man have been committed in misguided pursuit of “the good”.

Whose good?  Is “good” an absolute?  In your arena of events, obviously, one man’s good can be another’s disaster.  Hitler pursued his version of “the good” with undeviating fanatical intent.  He believed in the superiority and moral rectitude of the Aryan race.  In his grandiose, idealized version of reality, he saw that race “set in its proper place”, as a natural master of mankind.

He believed in heroic characteristics, and became blinded by an idealized superman version of an Aryan strong in mind and body.  To attain that end, Hitler was quite willing to sacrifice the rest of humanity.  “The evil must be plucked out.”  That unfortunate chant is behind the beliefs of many cults – scientific and religious – and Hitler’s Aryan kingdom was a curious interlocking of the worst aspects of religion and science alike, in which their cultish tendencies were encouraged and abetted.

The potential arena was the practical working realm in which those ideas were to find fruition.  Hitler’s idea of good was hardly inclusive, therefore, and any actions, however atrocious, were justified.

How did Hitler’s initially wishy-washy undefined ideals of nationalistic goodness turn into such a world catastrophe?  The steps were the ones mentioned earlier (in a number of sessions in Part 3), as those involved with any cult.  Hitler’s daydreams became more and more grandiose, and in their light, the plight of his country seemed worsened with each day’s events.  He counted its humiliations over and over in his mind, until his mind became an almost completely closed environment, in which only certain ideas were allowed entry.

All that was not Aryan, really, became the enemy.  The Jews took the brunt largely because of their financial successes and their cohesiveness, their devotion to a culture that was not basically Aryan.  They would become the victims of Hitler’s fanatical ideal of Germany’s good.

Hitler preached on the great value of social action as opposed to individual action.  He turned children into informers against their own parents.  He behaved nationalistically, as any minor cult leader does in a smaller context.  The Jews believed in martyrdom.  Germany became the new Egypt, in which their people were set upon.  I do not want to oversimplify here, and certainly I am nowhere justifying the cruelties the Jews encountered in Germany.  You do each create your own reality, however, and en masse you create the realities of your nationalities and your countries – so at that time the Germans saw themselves as victors, and the Jews saw themselves as victims.

Both reacted as groups, rather than as individuals, generally speaking now.  For all of their idealisms, both basically believed in a pessimistic view of the self.  It was because Hitler was so convinced of the existence of evil in the individual psyche, that he set up all of his rules and regulations to build up and preserve “Aryan purity”.  The Jews’ idea was also a dark one, in which their own rules and regulations were set to preserve the soul’s purity against the forces of evil.  And while in the Jewish books [of the Old Testament] Jehovah now and then came through with great majesty to save his chosen people, he also allowed them to suffer great indignities over long periods of time, seeming to save them only at the last moment – and this time, so it seemed, he did not save them at all.  What happened?

Despite himself, and despite his followers, Hitler brought to flower a very important idea, and one that changed your history.  All of the most morbid of nationalistic fantasies that had been growing for centuries, all of the most grandiose celebrations of war as a nation’s inalienable right to seek domination, focused finally in Hitler’s Germany.

The nation served as an example of what could happen in any country if the most fanatical nationalism was allowed to go unchecked, if the ideas of right were aligned with might, if any nation was justified in contemplating the destruction of others.

You must realize that Hitler believed that any atrocity was justified in the light of what he thought of as the greater good.  To some extent or another, many of the ideals he held and advocated had long been accepted in world communities, though they had not been acted upon with such dispatch.  The nations of the world saw their own worst tendencies personified in Hitler’s Germany, ready to attack them.  The Jews, for various reasons – and again, this is not the full story – the Jews acted as all of the victims of the world, both the Germans and the Jews basically agreeing upon “man’s nefarious nature”.  For the first time the modern world realized its vulnerability to political events, and technology and communication accelerated all of war’s dangers.  Hitler brought many of man’s most infamous tendencies to the surface.  For the first time, again, the species understood that might alone did not mean right, and that in larger terms a world war could have no real victors.  Hitler might well have exploded the world’s first atomic bomb.

In a strange fashion, however, Hitler knew that he was doomed from the very beginning, and so did Germany as far as Hitler’s hopes for it were concerned.  He yearned for destruction, for in saner moments even he recognized the twisted distortions of his earlier ideals.  This meant that he often sabotaged his own efforts, and several important Allied victories were the result of such sabotaging.  In the same way, Germany did not have the [atomic] bomb for the same reasons.

Now, however, we come to Hiroshima, where this highly destructive bomb was exploded – and for what reason? To save life, to save American lives.  The intent to save American lives was certainly “good” – at the expense of the Japanese this time.  In that regard, America’s good was not Japan’s, and an act taken to “save life” was also designed to take individual lives.

At what expense is “the good” to be achieved – and whose idea of the good is to be the criterion?  Man’s pursuit of the good, to some extent now, fathered the Inquisition and the Salem witch hunts.  Politically, many today believe that Russia is “the enemy”, and that therefore any means may be taken to destroy that country.  Some people within the United States believe fervently that “the establishment” is rotten to the core, and that any means is justified to destroy it.  Some people believe that homosexuals and lesbians are “evil”, that somehow they lack the true qualities of humanness [and therefore need not be treated with normal respect].  These are all value judgments involving your ideas of the good.

Very few people start out trying to be as bad as possible.  At least some criminals feel that in stealing they are simply righting society’s wrongs.  I am not saying that is their only motive, but in one way or another they manage to justify their activities by seeing them in their own version of the good and the right.

You must realize that fanatics always deal with grandiose ideals, while at the same time they believe in man’s sinful nature, and the individual’s lack of power.  They cannot trust the expression of the self, for they are convinced of its duplicity.  Their ideals then seem even more remote.  Fanatics call others to social action.  Since they do not believe that the individual is ever effective, their groups are not assemblies of private individuals come reasonably together, pooling individual resources.  They are instead congregations of people who are afraid to assert their individuality, who hope to find it in the group, or hope to establish a joint individuality – and that is an impossibility.

True individuals can do much through social action, and the species is a social one, but people who are afraid of their individuality will never find it in a group, but only a caricature of their own powerlessness.

Session 853

I want to make a few comments.  Generally speaking, creativity has feminine connotations in your society, while power has masculine connotations, and is largely thought of as destructive.

Your scientists are, generally now, intellectually oriented, believing in reason above the intuitions, taking it for granted that those qualities are opposites.  They cannot imagine life’s “initial” creative source, for in their terms it would remind them of creativity’s feminine basis.

In the framework of this discussion only, you have a male’s universe.  It is a universe endowed with male characteristics as these appear in the male-female orientations of your history.  The universe seems to have no meaning because the male “intellect” alone cannot discern meaning, since it must take nothing for granted.  Even though certain characteristics of the universe are most apparent, they must be ignored.

You must understand, I know, that the terms “male” and “female” here are being used as they are generally understood, and have nothing to do with the basic characteristics of either sex.  In those terms, the male-oriented intellect wants to order the universe, name its parts, and so forth.  It wants to ignore the creative aspects of the universe, however, which are everywhere apparent, and it first of all believes that it must divorce itself from any evidence of feeling.  You have in your history then a male god of power and vengeance, who killed your enemies for you.  You have a prejudiced god, who will, for example, slay the Egyptians and half of the Jews to retaliate against previous Egyptian cruelty.  The male god is a god of power.  He is not a god of creativity.

Now, creativity has always been the species’ closest connection with its own source, with the nature of its own being.  Through creativity the species senses All That Is.  Creativity goes by a different set of rules, however.  It defies categories, and it insists upon the evidence of feeling.  It is a source of revelation and inspiration – yet initially revelation and inspiration do not deal with power, but with knowing.  So what often happens in your society when men and women have creative bents, and good minds to boot?

The Catholic Church taught that revelation was dangerous.  Intellectual and psychic obedience was much the safer road, and even the saints were slightly suspect.  Women were inferiors, and in matters of religion and philosophy most of all, for there their creativity could be most disruptive.  Women were considered hysterics, aliens to the world of intellectual thought, swayed instead by incomprehensible womanish emotions.  Women were to be handled by wearing down their energies through childbirth.

Ruburt was highly creative, and so following the beliefs of the time, he believed that he must watch his creativity most carefully, for he was determined to use it.  He decided early to have no children – but more, to fight any evidence of femininity that might taint his work, or jumble up his dedication to it.  He loved you deeply and does, but he always felt he had to tread a slender line, so as to satisfy the various needs and beliefs that you both had to one extent or another, and those you felt society possessed.  He was creative, and is.  Yet he felt that women were inferior, and that his very abilities made him vulnerable, that he would be ridiculed by others, that women were not taken seriously as profound thinkers, or innovators in philosophical matters.

The trance itself had feminine connotations, though he conveniently forgot [several excellent male mediums].  And yet at the same time he was afraid of exerting power, for fear it would be thought that he was usurping male prerogatives.

(To Rob): You are creative, but you are a male – and one part of you considered creativity a feminine-like characteristic.  If it were tied to moneymaking, as it once was, then painting became also power making, and hence acceptable to your American malehood: and I am quite aware of the fact that by the standards of your times both of you were quite liberal, more the pity.  You would not take your art to the marketplace after you left commercial work, because then, in a manner of speaking, now, understand, you considered that the act of a prostitute – for your “feminine feelings” that you felt produced the paintings would then be sold for the sake of “the males role as provider and bringer of power”.

The art of the old masters escaped such connotations, largely because it involved so much physical labor – the making of colors, canvases, and so forth.  That work, providing the artist’s preparation, now belongs to the male-world manufacturer, you see, so as a male in your society the artist is often left with what he thinks of as art’s feminine basis, where it must be confronted, of course.

I want to make it plain that such ideas are rampant in society, and are at the basis of many personal and national problems.  They are behind large issues, involved in the [Three Mile Island] nuclear fiasco, for example, and in the scientist’s idea of power and creation.  Both of you, highly creative, find your creativity in conflict with your ideas of sexuality, privately and in your stances with the world.  Much of this is involved with the unfortunate myths about the creative person, who is not supposed to be able to deal with the world as well as others, whose idiosyncrasies are exaggerated, and whose very creativity, it is sometimes said, leads to suicide or depression.  No wonder few numbers of creative people persist in the face of such unfortunate beliefs!

Indeed, these are some of the reasons why Ruburt distrusted the spontaneous self: because it was feminine, he believed, and therefore more flawed than the spontaneous self of the male.

You run into many contradictions.  God is supposed to be male.  The soul is sometimes considered female.  The angels are male.  Now let us look at the Garden of Eden.  The story says that Eve tempted the male, having him eat of the tree of good and evil, or the tree of knowledge.  This represented a state of consciousness, the point at which the species began to think and feel for itself, when it approached a certain state of consciousness in which it dared exert its own creativity.

This is difficult to verbalize.  It was a state when the species became aware of its own thoughts as its own thoughts, and became conscious of the self who thinks.  That point released man’s creativity.  In your terms, it was the product of the feminine intuitions (though, as you know, such intuitions belong to both sexes).  When the [Biblical] passages were written, the species had come to various states of order, achieving certain powers and organizations, and it wanted to maintain the status quo.  No more intuitive visions, no more changes, were wanted.  Creativity was to follow certain definite roads, so that women became the villain.

I have given material on that before.  To some extent, Ruburt became afraid of his own creativity, and so did you.  In Ruburt’s case the fear was greater, until it seemed sometimes that if he succeeded in his work he would do so at some peril: You might be put in an unpleasant light, or he might become a fanatic, displaying those despicable, feminine hysterical qualities.

Session 854

Basically, a fanatic believes he is powerless.

He does not trust his own self-structure, or his ability to act effectively.  Joint action seems the only course, but a joint action in which each individual must actually be forced to act, driven by frenzy, or fear or hatred, incensed and provoked, for otherwise the fanatic fears that no action at all will be taken toward “the ideal”.

Through such methods, and through such group hysteria, the responsibility for separate acts is divorced from the individual, and rests instead upon the group, where it becomes generalized and dispersed.  The cause, whatever it is, can then cover any number of crimes, and no particular individual need bear the blame alone.  Fanatics have tunnel vision, so that any beliefs not fitting their purposes are ignored.  Those that challenge their own purposes, however, become instant targets of scorn and attack.  Generally speaking in your society, power is considered a male attribute.  Cult leaders are more often male than female, and females are more often than not followers, because they have been taught that it is wrong for them to use power, and right for them to follow the powerful.

I said that you have religious and scientific cults, and the male-oriented scientific community uses its power in the same way that the male Jehovah used his power in a different arena, to protect his friends and destroy his enemies.  I spoke rather thoroughly in my last book (The Nature of the Psyche) about the sexuality of your species, but here I want to mention how some of those sexual beliefs affect your behavior.

The male scientist considers the rocket his private symbol of sexual power.  He feels he has the prerogative to use power in any way he chooses.  Now many scientists are “idealists”.  They believe that their search for answers, however, justifies almost any means, or sacrifices, not only on their parts but on the parts of others.  They become fanatics when they ignore the rights of others, and when they defile life in a misguided attempt to understand it.

Women make a grave error when they try to prove their “equality” with men by showing that they can enter the armed forces, or go into combat as well as any man.  War always makes you less as a species than you could be.  Women have shown uncommon good sense in not going to war, and uncommon bad sense by sending their sons and lovers to war.  Again: To kill for the sake of peace only makes you better killers, both sides are fanatical to the extent that they are involved.  I am quite aware that often war seems to be your only practical course, because of the set of beliefs that are, relatively speaking, worldwide.  Until you change those beliefs, war will seem to have some practical value – a value which is highly deceptive, and quite false.

Fanatics always use ringing rhetoric, and speak in the highest terms of truth, good and evil, and particularly of retribution.  To some extent capital punishment is the act of a fanatical society:  the taking of the murderer’s life does not bring back the victim’s, and it does not prevent other men from [committing] such crimes.  I am aware that the death penalty often seems to be a practical solution – and indeed many murderers want to die, and are caught because of their need for punishment.  Many, now – and I am speaking generally – are in the position they are because they so thoroughly believe what all of you believe to a large extent: that you are flawed creatures, spawned by a meaningless universe, or made by a vengeful God and damaged by original sin.

Criminals act out those beliefs to perfection.  Their “tendencies” are those that each of you fears you possess.  Science and religion each tell you that left alone you will spontaneously be primitive creatures, filled with uncontrolled lust and avarice.  Both Freud and Jehovah gave you that message.  Poor Darwin tried to make sense of it all, but failed miserably.

Fanatics cannot stand tolerance.  They expect obedience.  A democratic society offers the greatest challenges and possibilities of achievement for the individual and the species, for it allows for the free intercourse of ideas.  It demands much more of its people, however, for in a large manner each must pick and choose from amid a variety of life-styles and beliefs his and her own platform for daily life and action.

There are periods in which it certainly seems to some that all standards vanish, and so they yearn for old authorities.  And there are always fanatics there to stand for ultimate truth, and to lift from the individual the challenge and “burden” of personal achievement and responsibility.  Individuals can – they can – survive without organizations.  Organizations cannot survive without individuals, and the most effective organizations are assemblies of individuals who assert their own private power in a group, and do not seek to hide within it.

Organized action is an excellent method of exerting influence, but only when each member is self-activating; only when he or she extends individuality through group action, and does not mindlessly seek to follow the dictates of others.

Fanatics exist because of the great gap between idealized good and an exaggerated version of its opposite.  The idealized good is projected into the future, while its exaggerated opposite is seen to pervade the present.  The individual is seen as powerless to work alone toward that ideal with any sureness of success.  Because of his belief in his powerlessness [the fanatic] feels that any means to an end is justified.  Behind all this is the belief that spontaneously the ideal will never be achieved, and that, indeed, on his own man is getting worse and worse in every aspect: How can flawed selves ever hope to spontaneously achieve any good?

Let us see.

Session 855

Earlier today, Ruburt wondered if I might dictate more in reply to your scientist’s letter.  As he wondered, I very briefly responded to the effect that since we come from such different perspectives, it is actually quite difficult to give your scientist what I would consider a full response.  I could dictate a reply that would satisfy him well enough, but it would perhaps be the more distorted the more it was geared for his understanding.

It is no coincidence that Ruburt does not possess a scientific vocabulary, though he does possess a scientific as well as intuitive mind.  The very attempt to describe reality in scientific terms, as they are currently understood, pays, my dear friend, undue tribute to a vocabulary that automatically scales down greater concepts to fit its rigors.  In other words, such attempts further compound the problem of considering a seemingly objective universe, and describing it in an objective fashion.

The universe is – and you can pick your terms – a spiritual or mental or psychological manifestation, and not, in your usual vocabulary, an objective manifestation.

There is presently no science, religion, or psychology that comes close to even approaching a conceptual framework that could explain, or even indirectly describe, the dimensions of that kind of universe.  Its properties are psychological, following the logic of the psyche, and all of the physical properties that you understand are reflections of those deeper issues.  Again, each atom and molecule – and any particle that you can imagine – possesses, and would possess, a consciousness.  Unless you accept that statement at least as a theory upon which to build, then much of my material would appear meaningless.

That statement, therefore, must be the basis for any new scientific theories that hope to accomplish any performances at all leading to an acquisition of knowledge.

Since I must use [an] objective vocabulary I am always seeking for analogies.  By objective I refer to the use of language, the English language, that automatically sets up its own screens of perception – as of course any language must do to some extent.

The universe expands, as I have said before, as an idea expands; and as sentences are built upon words, in your terms, and paragraphs upon sentences, and as each retains its own logic and continuity and evidence within that framework, so do all the portions of the universe appear to you also with the same cohesiveness – meaning continuity and order.  Any sentence is meaningful.  It seems to fall in order by itself as you say it.  Its order is obvious.  That one sentence is meaningful because of its organization of letters, or if it is spoken, its organization of vowels and syllables.  It makes sense, however, not only because of the letters or vowels or syllables that are used within it, but because of all of the letters or vowels or syllables that it excludes.

The same applies to your universe.  It has meaning, coherence and order not only because of those realities that are obvious to you, and that appear, but also because of those inner realities that are “unspoken”, or hidden.  I am not speaking merely of hidden variables, in scientific terms, nor am I saying that the universe is an illusion, but a psychological reality in which “objectivity” is the result of psychological creativity.

It is not just that your view of reality is relative to your position within the universe, but that the universe itself is different according to your position within it, and that spiritual or psychological rules apply.  The universe deals with different kinds of order, perceptions, and organizations, each dependent upon the others, yet each separate in its own domain.

In your realm of reality, there is no real freedom but the freedom of ideas, and there is no real bondage except for the bondage of ideas, for your ideas form your private and mass reality. You want to examine the universe from the outside, to examine your societies from the outside.  You still think that the interior world is somehow symbolic and the exterior world is real – that wars, for example, are fought by themselves or with bombs.  All of the time, the psychological reality is the primary one, that forms all of your events.

It is not to say that you cannot understand the nature of the universe to some extent, but the answers lie in the natures of your own minds, in the processes of individual creativity, in studies that ask questions like: “Where did this thought come from?  Where does it go?  What effect does it have upon myself or others?  How do I know how to dream, when I have never been taught to do so?  How do I speak without understanding the mechanisms?  Why do I feel that I have an eternal reality, when it is obvious that I was physically born and will physically die?”

Unscientific questions?  I tell you that these are the most scientific of all.  To some extent the attempt on the part of science to consider such material may possibly bring about those qualities of true scientific intuition that will help science bridge the gap between such divergent views as its own and ours.

Chapter 8: Man, Molecules, Power and Free Will

Session 856

Before we end this particular section of the book, dealing with frightened people, idealism, and interpretations of good and evil, there is another instance that I would like to mention.  It is the Watergate affair.  Last evening, Ruburt and Joseph watched a (television) movie – a fictional dramatization of the Watergate events.  Ordinarily a session would have been held, but Ruburt was interested in the movie, and I was interested in Ruburt’s and Joseph’s reactions to it.

To some extent or another, I watched the program with our friends.  Actually, I allowed myself to become aware mainly of Ruburt’s perceptions as he viewed the motion picture.  By one of those curious coincidences that are not coincidences at all, another dramatic rendition of that same Watergate saga was simultaneously showing on another channel – this one depicting the second spiritual birth of one of the President’s finest cohorts.

Let us look briefly at that entire affair, remembering some of our earlier questions: When does an idealist turn into a fanatic, and how?  And how can the desire to do good bring about catastrophic results?

The President at the time, and through all of his life before, was at heart a stern repressed idealist of a rather conventionally religious kind.  He believed in an idealized good, while believing most firmly and simultaneously that man was fatally flawed, filled with evil, more naturally given to bad rather than good intent.  He believed in the absolute necessity of power, while convinced at the same time that he did not possess it; and further, he believed that in the most basic terms the individual was powerless to alter the devastating march of evil and corruption that he saw within the country, and in all the other countries of the world.  No matter how much power he achieved, it seemed to him that others had more – other people, other groups, other countries – but their power he saw as evil.  For while he believed in the existence of an idealized good, he felt that the wicked were powerful and the good were weak and without vigor.

He concentrated upon the vast gulf that seemed to separate the idealized good and the practical, ever-pervading corruption that in his eyes grew by leaps and bounds.  He saw himself as just.  Those who did not agree with him, he saw as moral enemies.  Eventually it seemed to him that he was surrounded by the corrupt, and that any means at his disposal was justified to bring down those who would threaten the presidency or the state.

He was as paranoid as any poor deluded man or woman is who feels, without evidence, that he or she is being pursued by creatures from space, earthly or terrestrial enemies, or evil psychic powers.  Those poor people will build up for themselves a logical sequence of events, in which the most innocent encounter is turned into a frightening threat.  They will project that fear outward until they seem to meet it in each person they encounter.

It is obvious to most others that such paranoid views are not based on mass fact.  Your President at that time, however, had at his command vast information, so that he was aware of many groups and organizations that did not agree with his policies.  He used those as in other circumstances a paranoid might use the sight of a police car to convince himself that he was being pursued by the police, or the FBI or whatever.  The President felt threatened – not only personally threatened, for he felt that the good for which he stood in his own mind was in peril.  And again, since the idealized good seemed too remote and difficult to achieve, any means was justified.  Those who followed him, in the Cabinet and so forth, possessed the same kinds of characteristics to some degree or another.

No one is as fanatical, and no one can be more cruel, than the self-righteous.  It is very easy for such persons “to become [religiously] converted” after such episodes (as Watergate), lining themselves up once more on the side of good, searching for “the power of fellowship”, turning to church rather than government, hearing in one way or another the voice of God.

So how can the well-meaning idealist know whether or not his good intent will lead to some actualization?  How can he know, or how can she know, whether or not this good intent might in fact lead to disastrous conditions?  When does the idealist turn into a fanatic?

Look at it this way:  If someone tells you that pleasure is wrong and tolerance is weakness, and that you must follow this or that dogma blindly in obedience, and if you are told this is the only right road toward the idealized good, then most likely you are dealing with a fanatic.  If you are told to kill for the sake of peace, you are dealing with someone who does not understand peace or justice.  If you are told to give up your free will, you are dealing with a fanatic.

Both men and molecules dwell in a field of probabilities, and their paths are not determined.  The vast reality of probabilities makes the existence of free will possible.  If probabilities did not exist, and if you were not to some degree aware of probable actions and events, not only could you not choose between them, but you would not of course have any feelings of choice.  You would be unaware of the entire issue.

Through your mundane conscious choices, you affect all of the events of your world, so that the mass world is the result of multitudinous individual choices.  You could not make choices at all if you did not feel impulses to do this or that, so that choices usually involve you in making decisions between various impulses.  Impulses are urges toward action.  Some are conscious and some are not.  Each cell of your body feels the impulse toward action, response, and communication.  You have been taught not to trust your impulses.  Now impulses, however, help you to develop events of natural power.  Impulses in children teach them to develop their muscles and minds [each] in their own unique manner.  And as you will see, those impulses of a private nature are nevertheless also based upon the greater situation of the species and the planet, so that “ideally” the fulfillment of the individual would automatically lead to the better good of the species.

Aside by Jane

As you learn to trust your natural impulses, they introduce you to your individual sense of power, so that you realize that your own actions do have meaning, that you do affect events, and that you can see some definite signs that you are achieving good ends.  The idealized goal isn’t as remote, then, because it is being expressed.  Even if that expression is by means of steps, you can point toward it as an accomplishment.  Previously we distrusted our own impulses to such an extent that they often appeared in very distorted form.

Session 857

Impulses, therefore, provide impetus toward motion, coaxing the physical body and the mental person toward utilization of physical and mental power.

They help the individual impress the world – that is, to act upon it and within it effectively.  Impulses also open up choices that may not have been consciously available before.  I have often said that the cells precognate, and that at that level the body is aware of vast information, information not consciously known or apprehended.  The universe and everything within it is composed of “information” – information concerning the entire universe is always latent within each and any part of it.

The motive power of the universe and of each particle or wave or person within it is the magnificent thrust toward creative probabilities, and the tension that exists, the exuberant tension, that exists “between” probable choices and probable events.  This applies to men and molecules, and to all of those hypothetically theorized smaller divisions with which scientists like to amaze themselves.  Divisions or units.

In more mundane terms, impulses often come from unconscious knowledge, then.  This knowledge is spontaneously and automatically received by the energy that composes your body, and then it is processed so that pertinent information applying to you can be taken advantage of.  Ideally, your impulses are always in response to your best interests – and, again, to the best interests of your world as well.  Obviously there is a deep damaging distrust of impulses in the contemporary world, as in your terms there has been throughout the history that you follow.  Impulses are spontaneous, and you have been taught not to trust the spontaneous portions of your being, but to rely upon your reason and your intellect – which both operate, incidentally, quite spontaneously, by the way.

When you let yourselves alone, you are spontaneously reasonable, but because of your beliefs it seems that reason and spontaneity make poor bedfellows.

Psychologically, your impulses are as vital to your being as your physical organs are.  They are as altruistic, or unselfish, as your physical organs are, and I would like that sentence read several times.  And yet each impulse is suited and tailored directly to the individual who feels it.  Ideally, by following your impulses you would feel the shape, the impulsive shape of your life.  You would not spend time wondering what your purpose was, for it would make itself known to you, as you perceived the direction in which your natural impulses led, and felt yourself exert power in the world through such actions.  Again, impulses are doorways to action, satisfaction, the exertion of natural mental and physical power, the avenue for your private expression – the avenue where your private expression intersects the physical world and impresses it.

Many cults of one kind or another, and many fanatics, seek to divide you from your natural impulses, to impede their expression.  They seek to sabotage your belief in your spontaneous being, so that the great power of impulses becomes damned up.  Avenues of probabilities are closed bit by bit until you do indeed live – if you follow such precepts – in a closed mental environment, in which it seems you are powerless.  It seems you cannot impress the world as you wish, that your ideals must always be stillborn.

Some of this has been discussed earlier in this book.  In the case of the Jonestown tragedy, for example, all doors toward probable effective action seemed closed.  Followers had been taught to act against their natural impulses with members of their families.  They had been taught not to trust the outside world, and little by little the gap between misguided idealism and an exaggerated version of the world’s evil blocked all doors through which power could be exerted – all doors save one.  The desire for suicide is often the last recourse left to frightened people whose natural impulses toward action have been damned up – intensified on the one hand, and yet denied any practical expression.

There is a natural impulse to die on the part of men and animals, but in such circumstances [as we are discussing here] that desire becomes the only impulse that the individual feels able to express, for it seems that all other avenues of expression have become closed.  There is much misunderstanding concerning the nature of impulses, so we will discuss them rather thoroughly.  I always want to emphasize the importance of individual action, for only the individual can help form organizations that become physical vehicles for the effective expression of ideals.  Only people who trust their spontaneous beings and the altruistic nature of their impulses can be consciously wise enough to choose from a myriad of probable futures the most promising events – for again, impulses take not only [people’s] best interest into consideration, but those of all other species.

I am using the term “impulses” for the understanding of the general public, and in those terms molecules and protons have impulses.  No consciousness simply reacts to stimuli, but has its own impulse toward growth and value fulfillment.  It seems to many of you that impulses are unpredictable, contradictory, without reason, the result of erratic mixtures of body chemicals, and that they must be squashed with as much deadly intent as some of you might when you spray a mosquito with insecticide.

Often the insecticide kills more than the mosquito, and its effects can be far-reaching, and possibly have disastrous consequences.  However, to consider impulses as chaotic, meaningless – or worse, detrimental to an ordered life – represents a very dangerous attitude indeed; an attempt that causes many of your other problems, an attempt that does often distort the nature of impulses.  Each person is fired by the desire to act, and to act beneficially, altruistically, to practically put his stamp, or her stamp, upon the world.  When such natural impulses toward action are constantly denied over a period of time, when they are distrusted, when an individual feels in battle with his or her own impulses and shuts down the doors toward probable actions, then that intensity can explode into whatever avenue of escape is still left open.

I am not speaking of anything like “repression”, as it is used by psychologists, but a far deeper issue: one in which the very self is so distrusted that natural impulses of any kind become suspect.  You try to inoculate yourselves against yourselves – a nearly impossible situation, of course.  You expect your motives to be selfish because you have been told that they are, and so when you catch yourselves with unkind motives you are almost comforted, because you think that at least you are behaving normally.

When you find yourself with good motives, you distrust them. “Surely”, you think, “beneath this seeming altruism, there must indeed be some nefarious, or at best selfish, motives that escape me”.  As a people you are always examining your impulses, and yet you rarely examine the fruits of your intellects.

It may seem that impulsive actions run rampant in society, in cultish behavior, for example, or in the behavior of criminals, or on the part of youth, but such activities show instead the power of impulses denied their natural expression, intensified and focused on the one hand into highly ritualized patterns of behavior, and in other areas denied expression.

A particular idealist believes that the world is headed for disaster, and [that] he is powerless to prevent it.  Having denied his impulses, believing them wrong, and having impeded his expression of his own power to affect others, he might, for example, “hear the voice of God”.  That voice might tell him to commit any of a number of nefarious actions – to assassinate the enemies that stand in the way of his great ideal – and it might seem to him and to others that he has a natural impulse to kill, and indeed an inner decree from God to do so.

According to conditions, such a person could be a member of a small cult or the head of a nation, a criminal or a national hero, who claims to act with the authority of God.  Again, the desire and motivation to act is so strong within each person that it will not be denied, and when it is denied then it can be expressed in a perverted form.  Man must not only act, but he must act constructively, and he must feel that he acts for good ends.

Only when the natural impulse (to act constructively) is denied consistently does the idealist turn into a fanatic.  Each person in his or her own way is an idealist.

Power is natural.  It is the force, the power of the muscle to move, or the eye to see, of the mind to think, the power of the emotions – these represent true power, and no accumulation of wealth or acclaim can substitute for that natural sense of power if it is lacking.  Power always rests with the individual, and from the individual all political power must flow.

A democracy is a highly interesting form of government, highly significant because it demands so much of individual consciousness, and because it must rest primarily upon a belief in the powers of the individual.  It is a tribute to that belief that it has lingered in your country, and operated with such vitality in the face of quite opposing beliefs officially held by both science and religion.

The idea [of democracy] expresses the existence of a high idealism – one that demands political and social organizations that are effective to some degree in providing some practical expression of those ideals.  When those organizations fail and a gulf between idealism and actualized good becomes too great, then such conditions help turn your idealists into fanatics.  Those who follow with great strictness the dictates of either science or religion can switch sides in a moment.  The scientist begins tipping tables or whatever, and suddenly disgusted by the limits of scientific knowledge, he turns all of his dedication to what he thinks of as its opposite, or pure intuitive knowledge.  Thus, he blocks his reason as fanatically as earlier he blocked his intuitions.  The businessman who believed in Darwinian principles and the fight for survival, who justified injustice and perhaps thievery to his ideal of surviving in a competitive world – he suddenly turns into a fundamentalist in religious terms, trying to gain his sense of power now, perhaps, by giving away the wealth he has amassed, all in a tangled attempt to express a natural idealism in a practical world.

How can you trust your impulses when you read, for example, that a man commits a murder because he has a strong impulse to do so, or because the voice of God commanded it?  If some of you followed your impulses right now, for example – your first natural ones – it might seem they could be cruel or destructive.

How do your impulses affect your future experience, and help form the practical world of mass reality?

Session 859

Again, you have been taught to believe that impulses are wrong, generally speaking, or at best that they represent messages from a nefarious subconscious, giving voice to dark moods and desires.

For example: Many of you believe in the basis of Freudian psychology – that the son naturally wants to displace the father in his mother’s attentions, and that beneath the son’s love for his father, there rages the murderous intent to kill.  Ridiculous idiocy!

Ruburt has been reading old poetry of his own, and he was appalled to find such beliefs in rather brutal, concentrated form.  Until our sessions began, he followed the official line of consciousness, and though he railed against those precepts he could find no other solution.  The self, so spectacularly alive, seemed equipped with reason to understand the great import of its own certain extinction.  Such a tragedy to project upon the living personality.

You cannot begin to have a true psychology, again, unless you see the living self in a greater context, with greater motives, purposes and meanings than you now assign to it, or for that matter than you assign to nature and its creatures.  You have denied many impulses, or programmed others so that they are allowed expression in only certain forms of action.  If any of you do still believe in the Freudian or Darwinian selves, then you will be leery about impulses to examine your own consciousness, afraid of what murderous debris might be uncovered.  I am not speaking merely in hypothetical terms.  For example, a well-intentioned woman was here recently.  She worried about her overweight condition, and [was] depressed at what she thought of as her lack of discipline in following diets.  In her dismay, she visited a psychologist, who told her that her marriage might somehow be part of the problem.  The woman said she never went back.  She was afraid that she might discover within herself the buried impulse to kill her husband, or to break up the marriage, but she was sure that her overweight condition hid some unfortunate impulse.

Actually the woman’s condition hid her primary impulse: to communicate better with her husband, to ask him for definite expressions of love.  Why did he not love her as much as she loved him?  She could say it was because she was overweight, after all, for he was always remarking adversely about her fleshy opulence – though he did not use such a sympathetic phrase.

He could not express his love for her in the terms she wished for he believed that women would, if allowed to, destroy the man’s freedom, and he interpreted the natural need for love as an unfortunate emotional demand.  Both of them believed that women were inferior, and quite unknowingly they followed a Freudian dogma.

The ideas we have been speaking of, then, are intimately connected with your lives.  The man just mentioned denies his personal impulses often.  Sometimes he is not even aware of them as far as they involve the expression of affection or love to his wife.

In those areas where you cut down on your impulses, upon their very recognition, you close down probabilities, and prevent new beneficial acts that of themselves would lead you out of your difficulty.  You prevent change.  But many people fear that any change is detrimental, since they have been taught, after all, that left alone their bodies or their minds or their relationships are bound to deteriorate.  Often, therefore, people react to events as if they themselves possessed no impetus to alter them.  They live their lives as if they are indeed limited in experience not only to a brief lifetime, but a lifetime in which they are the victims of their chemistry – accidental members of a blighted species that is murderous to its very core.

Another woman [friend] found a small sore spot on her breast.  Remembering well the barrage of negative suggestions that passes for preventative medicine – the public service announcement about cancer – she was filled with foreboding.  She went to the doctor, who told her he did not believe there was anything wrong.  He suggested X-rays, however, “just to be on the safe side”, and so her body was treated to a basically unnecessary dose of radiation in the name of preventative medicine.

I am not suggesting that you do not visit doctors under such situations, because the weight of your negative beliefs about your bodies usually makes it too difficult for you to bear such uncertainties alone.  Nevertheless, such actions speak only too loudly of your mass beliefs involving the vulnerability of the self and its flesh.

To me, it is almost inconceivable that, from your position, any of you seriously consider that the existence of your exquisite consciousness can possibly be the result of a conglomeration of chemicals and elements thrown together by a universe accidentally formed, and soon to vanish.  So much more evidence is available to you: the order of nature; the creative drama of your dreams, that project your consciousness into other times and places; the very precision with which you spontaneously grow, without knowing how, from a fetus into an adult; the existence of heroic themes and quests and ideals that pervade the life of even the worst scoundrel – these all give evidence of the greater context in which you have your being.

If the universe existed as you have been told it does, then I would not be writing this book.

There would be no psychological avenues to connect my world and yours.  There would be no extensions of the self that would allow you to travel such a psychological distance to those thresholds of reality that form my mental environment.  If the universe was structured as you have been told, the probability of my existence would be zero as far as you are concerned.  There would have been no unofficial roads for Ruburt to follow, to lead him from the official beliefs of his time.  He would never have acknowledged the original impulse to speak for me, and my voice would have been unheard in your world.

The probability that this book would ever exist, itself, would have remain unactualized.  None of you would be reading it.  The mass world is formed as the result of individual impulses.  They meet and merge, and form platforms for action.