Magical Approach Session Fourteen

Session Fourteen: The Self.  Relaxation and Effortlessness.

September 29, 1980

It is not true, of course, that before the time of modern psychology man had a concept of himself that dealt with conscious exterior aspects only, although it has been written that until that time man thought of himself as a kind of flat-surfaced self – minus, for example, subconscious or unconscious complexity.

Instead, previous to psychology’s entrance, before psychology mapped the acceptable or forbidden, the dangerous or safe compartments of the self, man used the word “soul” to include his own entire complexity.  That word was large enough to contain man’s experience.  It was large enough to provide room for conventional and unconventional, bizarre and ordinary states of mind and experience.  It was roomy enough to hold images of reality that were physically perceived or psychologically perceived.

Now the church finally placed all of the condemnation of its religious laws against certain psychological and mystical experiences – not because it did not consider them realities, of course, but precisely because it recognized too well the disruptive influence that, say, revelationary experience could have upon a world order that was based upon a uniform dogma.

“Witches” were not considered insane, for example, or deranged, for their psychological beliefs fit in only too well with those of the general populace.  They were considered evil instead.  The vast range of psychological expression, however, had some kind of framework to contain it.  The saint and the sinner each had access to great depths of possible heroism or despair.  Psychological reality, for all of the religious dangers placed upon it, was anything but a flat-surfaced experience.  It was in fact because the church so believed in the great range of psychological activity possible that it was so dogmatic and tireless in trying to maintain order.

Unfortunately, with the development of the scientific era, a development occurred that need not have happened.  As I have mentioned before, science’s determination to be objective almost immediately brought about a certain artificial shrinking of psychological reality.  What could not be proven in the laboratory was presumed not to exist at all.

Anyone who experienced “something that could not exist” was therefore to some extent or another deluded or deranged.  There is no doubt that the accepted dimensions of psychological reality began to shrink precisely at the time that modern psychology began.  Modern psychology was an attempt to make man conform to the new scientific world view.

It was an attempt to fit man within the picture of evolution, and to manufacture a creature whose very existence was somehow pitted against itself.  Evolutionary man, with Darwinian roots, could not be a creature with a soul.  It had to have hidden in its psychological roots the bloody remnants of the struggle for survival that now cast it in its uneasy role.  There is no doubt that the church cast the soul in a position of stress, caught as it was between its heavenly source and original sin – but there was a sense of psychological mobility involved, one that saw continued existence after death.

The new psychology shut off mobility after death, while giving each individual an unsavory primitive past heritage – a heritage genetically carried, that led finally to the grave.  Psychological activity was scaled down in between life and death, then, even while the possibility of any after-death experience was considered the most unreasonable and unintellectual of speculations.

Any man might rise in your democracy from a poor peasant’s son to be the President.  Outcasts might become the socially prominent.  The unlettered might become highly educated.  The idea of achieving greatness, however, was considered highly suspect.  The self was kept in bounds.  Great passion, or desire or intent – or genius – did not fit the picture.

Now some peoples would not fit into that mold.  They would take what they could from your technology, but in conscious and spontaneous ways they retaliated – and still do – by exaggerating all of those human tendencies that your society has held down so well.  If you can have reason without faith, then indeed, for example, you will see that there can be faith without reason.  When human experience becomes shrunken in such a fashion – compressed – then in a fashion it also explodes at both ends, you might say.

You have atrocious acts committed, along with great heroisms, but each are explosive, representing sudden releases of withheld energies that have in other ways been forbidden, and so man’s mass psyche expresses itself sometimes like explosive fireworks, simply because the release of pressure is necessary.

Even your poor misguided moral/religious organization is saying in its fashion to the scientifically-oriented society: “How is faith not real, then?  We’ll change your laws with it.  We’ll turn it into power – political power.  What will you say then?  We have been laughed at for so long.  We will see who laughs now.”

Fanaticism abounds, of course, because the human tendencies and experiences that have been denied by the mainline society erupt with explosive force, where the tendencies themselves must be accepted as characteristics of human experience.  Iran is an example for the world, in explosive capsule form, complete with historical background and a modern political one.  Modern psychology does not have a concept of the self to begin to explain such realities.

Now, in the world you (Rob) early formed your own beliefs and strategies.  In midlife, you were presented with our sessions – or [the two of] you presented yourselves with them, if you prefer.  You recognized the overall vitality of our material – but again, you did not realize that it meant a complete reorientation of your attitudes.  You did not realize that you were being presented, not merely with an alternate view of reality, but with the closest approximation you could get of what reality was, and how it worked, and what it meant.

I have been very gentle in my treatment of your mores and institutions – for I do not want you to be against your world, but for a more fulfilling one.  Toward the end of our present book (Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment), we will be discussing how our ideas can be applied by the individual in terms of value fulfillment, so that individuals can begin to reclaim those dimensions of experience that are indeed your rightful heritage.

Now: For Ruburt, I want him to remember the idea of effortlessness, because with the best of intentions he has been trying too hard.  I want him to remember that relaxation is one of creativity’s greatest champions – not its enemy.  He is naturally gifted with the quickness of body and mind.  Remind him that it is safe to express his natural rhythms, to remember the natural person.  Your most vital inspirations are effortlessly yours.  I want you to see how many of your beliefs are the result of the old framework, for in that way you will find yourselves releasing yourselves more and more, so that your own strengths come to your support.