Magical Approach Session Two

Session Two: The Rational Approach. Scientific Hardbed Reality. The Intellect and The Magical Approach

August 11, 1980

It is not that you overuse the intellect as a culture, but that you rely upon it to the exclusion of all other faculties in your approach to life.

The intellect is brilliant, but on its own, now, it is indeed in its way isolated both in time and space in a way that other portions of the personality are not.  When it is overly stressed, with all of the usual frameworks or rationales that go along with it, it can indeed become frightened, paranoid, because it cannot really perceive events until they have already occurred.  It does not know what will happen tomorrow, and since it is overly stressed, its paranoid tendencies can only fear the worst.

Now those tendencies are not natural to the intellect, but only appear when it is forced to operate in such an isolated fashion – isolated not only in time and space, but psychologically isolated from other portions of the personality that are meant to bring it additional information that it does not possess, and a kind of magical support.

The so-called rational approach to life, as it is practiced, is a highly pessimistic one, carrying along with it its own methods and “solutions” to problems, its own means of achieving ends and satisfying desires.  Many people are so steeped in that approach to life that they become psychologically blind to any other kind of orientation.  Such is obviously not the case with you and Ruburt, or you would not be having this session, or any other such activity.

The rational approach of course suits certain kinds of people better than others, even while it still carries its disadvantages.  You have been living in an industrialized, scientific society, so that the benefits and the great disadvantages of the rational approach appear everywhere in the social and political world.  Artists of any kind find such an approach the least friendly, for it directly contradicts the vast thrust of man’s creativity in several important areas.  You, however, and Ruburt, do have evidence that hardbed reality is quite different.  In the past, you have both felt at some disadvantage yourselves, feeling our work to be theoretically fascinating, creatively valid, but not necessarily containing any statement about any kind of “scientifically valid” hardbed reality.

You did not think you were dealing with fiction.  On the other hand, you were not willing to call it fact, either.  You are, in fact, dealing with a larger version of fact from which – as I have said before – the world of fact emerges.

There have been numerous fascinating bits of evidence in your own lives, apart from these sessions, though certainly to some extent stimulated by the knowledge you gain in the sessions.  They remain isolated bits, odds and ends, in which case they begin to present you with a larger factual representation of reality.

All of this material applies to your lives in general and to Ruburt’s physical condition, because you must be clear in your minds as to your own status in that regard, and much of this material will clear the air and dissolve lingering doubts; doubts that cause both of you – but Ruburt in particular – to hold on to the rational approach in a misguided effort to maintain what he thinks of as a balanced viewpoint and open mind.  It seems, because of the definitions you have been taught, that there is only one narrow kind of rationality, and that if you forsake the boundary of that narrow definition, then you become irrational, fanatic, mad, or whatever.

The thin, cold “rationality” that is recognized as such is instead a fake veneer covering a far deeper spontaneous rationality, and it is the existence of that magical rationality that provides the basis for the intellect to begin with.  The rationality that you accept is then but one small clue as to the spontaneous inner rationality that is a part of each natural person.

Now: In one dream when you were asleep, when you were seemingly not rational, when your intellect was seemingly not operating, you perceived information about your past physical environment.  You saw your old neighborhood – the Brenner’s place, with animal and industrial waste all over the yard.  Symbolically you saw the situation in your own fashion, but you knew that the Brenner’s property had been polluted.  You still have a love of that area.  You are in a certain correspondence with it.  In a fashion, you keep your eye out for information regarding it.

You are also somewhat idealizing the past, however, so you did not simply get the information “straight on”, but you received it in such a fashion that it made its own psychological points also, and was furthermore wound into other action not only within that dream, but in a series of dreams.

The dream made its point, whether or not you read the article that later appeared (in the Elmira paper).  The dream made its point, in fact, whether or not you remembered it, though you did.  You remembered it because you wanted to bring into your conscious range instances of your own greater knowing.  The portion of you that formed the dream knew of the pollution; but also knew of the award, the newspaper article, and of your habit of reading the evening’s paper.  All of that involves a psychological motion of natural, magical import.  It shows you that the rules of the rational world are filled with holes.  It shows you that the rational world’s views do not represent the bulwarks of safety, but are instead barriers to the full use of the intellect, and of the intuitions.

Ruburt, having interpreted your dream, looked wide-awake but relaxed through his studio into the kitchen.  He thought of asking you to take a snapshot of the table with your camera, showing the partially-opened front door, so that later he could paint the scene.  Your camera could not take in all of that, a fact he never thought of.  Less than two minutes later, you came into his studio with the camera that you had not used for months.  Ruburt had also been thinking newly about the magical approach from ideas in your own notes that he had just read.  You came out as if in answer.  As if to say, “Yes, the magical approach does indeed operate, and this is how”.

Ruburt’s state of mind was in correspondence with your own state of mind, even as you are in some kind of correspondence with your old environment, so in these cases you have a free flow of information at other levels.

Now when you understand that intellectually, then the intellect can take it for granted that its own information is not all the information you possess.  It can realize that its own knowledge represents the tip of the iceberg.  As you apply that realization to your life you begin to realize furthermore that in practical terms you are indeed supported by a greater body of knowledge than you consciously realize, and by the magical, spontaneous fountain of action that forms your existence.  The intellect can then realize that it does not have to go it all alone: Everything does not have to be reasoned out, even to be understood.

This information is factual.  I am not saying that I do not use analogies often, or that I am not forced at times into symbolic statements, but when I am I always say so, and even those statements are my best representations of facts too large for your definitions.  The intellect, then can and does form strong paranoid tendencies when it is put in the position of believing that it must solve all personal problems alone – or nearly – and certainly when it is presented with any picture of worldwide predicaments.

The rational approach, built up around this framework, insists that the best way to solve a problem is to concentrate upon it, to project its effects into the future, to ruminate upon its consequences, “to stare at the bare facts head on”.

This brings about an atmosphere in which the problem is compounded.  The intellect on its own – so it seems – must deal not only with the problem today, but with its effects in the projected disastrous tomorrows.  This well-intentioned concentration, this determination to solve the problem, this rational approach, then causes an even deeper sense of inadequacy.  The concentration upon the problem brings about a kind of mechanical repetition, a repeated type of hypnotic focus.

The intellect is a great organizer – along certain lines, now – so if this concentration is continued it begins to organize its perceptions and experience along the same lines.  It is a kind of misguided attempt to find order by finding data that agrees with itself.  It collects evidence, then, to prove its point, because the rational mind, as you understand it, must have an acceptable reason for everything.

In the meantime, of course, quite valid rockbed evidence that does not fit into the picture gradually becomes discarded, ignored, thrown away.  It is there but it is not used.  It disappears as evidence, becomes inactive.  That method of problem-solving, need I say, is a poor one, and if anything, it causes far more problems than it ever solves.

In terms of Ruburt’s condition, he often thinks that he is “faced with the evidence” that his condition is not improving, that it is growing worse, that all the evidence says such conditions do deteriorate rather than improve.  He sometimes thinks that he is being realistic with such thoughts.

What happens, of course, is the process I have just outlined.  Other quite real, quite physical evidence – always now, apparent in his body at any given time – is ignored as nonessential, too trivial to bother with, or take seriously, because it does not fit into the so-called rational picture that has been developed.

The process is exactly as given in the paragraph above, so I want that understood.  Any improvement, unless stated, is almost overlooked, not considered as much hard evidence, while any difficulties definitely are considered hard evidence because they fit into the overall data-collecting intellect, as stated above.  They are significant, while the improvements do not seem to be nearly as much so.

Ruburt has had some releases in the past week of the jaw, neck, and shoulder areas.  His eyes at times, on three or four occasions, read remarkably better.  For some time, his ankles and knees have had greater freedom of motion – in certain motions – but all such evidence is ignored, largely – or worse, it is viewed ironically, since he is not walking any better.

You picked up the information about the Brenners because you were in correspondence with that environment.  You picked up inner evidence in that regard.  You ignored countless other bits of information.  Ruburt picked up your own camera activities because he was in correspondence with you.  He must be in correspondence with the evidence of mobility that his body tries to give him, so that it can build up a new picture of his body.

You change your focus point.  You change what you consider significant.  This session brings us to the beginning of a discussion of the magical approach to life, to the solving of problems.  I hope to stress what to do, rather than what not to do, although at times I must make the distinction clear.

If you understand this session thoroughly, and if you have the intent to really change your orientation, then the atmosphere will automatically be created in which desired changes occur.