Session 694

Unknown Reality, Session 694

The relatively insignificant example of probable events and their interaction just given provides a few important clues to the nature of probabilities in general.  An organization is definitely present, but it is not the kind of order you are used to recognizing.  This small private experience is repeated endlessly with different variations in all areas of daily living – that is, probable events constantly interact, and through their interaction you end up with one recognized series of episodes that you accept, called physical reality.

Underneath this recognized order of events, however, there is actually a vast filed of ever-occurring action.  These fields of probabilities are action sources for your reality; but your world-action is also a source for these other probabilities.

This applies at all levels, mental and biological.  Probabilities involve the atoms and molecules, therefore, and the cells.  They involve thoughts also, as well as more obviously physical events.  Your bodies are probable-constructs in that they exist only because of the atoms’ appearance at certain points of probability.  At other levels the atoms do not exist at those same points, and your bodies there are not the same physical constructs.  They do not, then exist there.

Scientifically, with all of your instruments, you are thus far able to perceive the atom’s presence only in the field of your own system of probability.  Since you perceive physically through the body, which is atomically structured, then of course your sense perceptions lead you to block out recognition of other probable stimuli or reactions.  In his book Adventures in Consciousness, Ruburt mentions what he calls “prejudiced perception”.  It is an excellent term in this regard.

The Electromagnetic Energy units (EE units) within matter, within the atoms and molecules, are aware of the probable fields of action that are possible.  While the body’s integrity must lie in a constant reiteration in one probability, and maintain within that probable system a certain “constant”, and while physically perception is directed there, the basic integrity of the body system and consciousness comes from outside the system into it.

The atoms, while behaving properly within the system, and seeming to adhere to its rules and assumptions, nevertheless actually straddle probabilities.  Your time structures, then, are intimately connected with probable action and fields of actuality.  In your terms, for example, it would seem as if Joseph could not have seen that house for sale until after a given series of events had occurred.  It would seem as if all of this was dependent upon earlier events: his mother’s prior meeting with Mr. Markle years ago, when both were young; her daydreams and fantasies in later years; her own death; Mr. Markle’s old age, and his own abandonment of the home.

In your terms it seems that all of that had to happen before the house was put up for sale, so that Joseph, passing by only a few days ago, could see the sign and decide to look at the house.  In much more basic terms all events exist at once, even as atoms and molecules appear at once in all probable positions.  The body, behaving in time, uses a time structure and acts in it naturally as its “constant” structure endures in time.  So in that framework time was experienced – and using that organizational structure, time seems to unite those events.

Those events then arise into significance because of the peculiar kind of organization chosen.  Other quite-as-valid events do not seem significant – they do not rise into perception, or reality.  They exist, however.  In one reality, for example, Joseph’s mother married Mr. Markle.  Joseph inherited the home.  In that reality Mr. Markle died before Joseph’s mother did, so there was no need for Joseph, here, to even look for a house; he had one.  In that reality Joseph did not marry Ruburt.  And in this reality [the one you and Ruburt know] Ruburt instinctively felt apart from that house.

(“... I know you said in the last session that from her nonphysical reality my mother isn’t trying to coerce Jane and me into buying Mr. Markle’s house – yet I keep wondering what others will think about the idea of influence being felt in our reality from the ‘other side’, you might say …)

I made it clear that the decision rested with Joseph and Ruburt.  But more than that, the whole question of a house of that kind brought into their own lives questions of values and prerogatives that were of great importance.  They needed to encounter their own positions on such issues.  Joseph was unconsciously aware of the first house [of the two in Sayre], and could have chosen not to drive down that particular street, for example.  Both he and Ruburt have thought relatively little about money or social status.  They have lived an apartment life instead, with little care for appearances.  Yet there is always pressure in your society toward the acquisition of fashionable homes, and material possessions are often considered the medal of ability.

Financially, Ruburt and Joseph were beginning to do well.  Only then did conventional ideas come to the forefront.  Those ideas themselves emotionally attracted certain aspects of Joseph’s mother.  Quite simply, in her terms, she wanted her son to do well, and to her that meant possessing an excellent home.  On her part it was an innocent enough ambition.

When she sensed any strong feelings that Joseph also wanted such a home, then – in your terms now – she began, from her different framework after death, to bring that opportunity into his experience.  This is not manipulation.  It does show, however, that one portion of Joseph’s mother, the portion connected to her son, still relates to him in a certain fashion.  It also shows that his desires for a house in Sayre helped bring about certain events: He could have such a house if he wanted one.

The episode also mirrored his beliefs, for to his way of thinking he would have to relinquish certain freedoms, and this he was not ready to do.  The events basically exist at once, though at your level you have to perceive them in time.  As your intimate daily reality can be involved with and colored by probabilities, brought into your experience by your own desires and beliefs, so is your mass culture, world history, and species orientation colored by probable events that do not fit into your officially recognized idea of physical reality.

Alternate man, probable man, alternate you’s, probable you’s – these issues apply individually as well as in terms of the species, and they apply to your future as well as to your past.

The greatest scientific discoveries are always “accidents”.  They come from intuitional creativity, when suddenly a new kind of significance is seen that was not “earlier” predictable.  You accept all data that fit your theories, and ignore clues to the contrary.  Yet underneath it all you are significance-making creatures, pattern-formers, immersed in time but basically apart from it, and so new insights come into your awareness and literally change the quality of any given reality at any given time.

Joseph’s mother is not only alive in another level of reality, but still learning.  She is quite aware, therefore, of his decision not to buy the [Markle] house.  In her level of reality, she was aware of the fact that Joseph wanted the house strongly; that one portion of him thought of possessing a large home, even though this would require upkeep and attention that another part of him did not want to provide because he felt it would take too much time from his painting and our work.

The portion that momentarily desired the house immediately attracted the same kind of desire always felt on the part of Joseph’s mother.  This, on another level of activity than physical, reactivated old conflicts between them.  For a while their desires united them.  Now, however, Stella Butts is better able to understand her son’s reactions.  Through his decision in this reality, she is finally beginning to glimpse the reasons for his actions in the past, that before were incomprehensible to her.

Try to understand that all of these reactions are really happening at once … Joseph’s desire at this end attracted his mother’s like desire.  In your terms, however, the reactions continue.

Note 1: Prejudiced Perception

In the Glossary for Adventures in Consciousness, Jane defines prejudiced perception as “The propensity for organizing undifferentiated data into specific differentiated sense terms”.  Also see Chapter 14 in Adventures in Consciousness.