Session 884

Dreams, Evolution, Value Fulfillment, Session 884

Let us return to our tale of origins.

We are sitting here on a specific autumn evening.  I am obviously dictating this book, speaking through Ruburt, while Joseph sits on the couch across from a very specific coffee table, taking down my words.

This is the year 1979, and the idea of time and dates seems to be indelibly mixed into [everyone’s] psychology.  You can remember last year, and to some extent recall the past years of your lives.  It appears to you that your present consciousness wanders backward into the past, until finally you can remember no longer – and on a conscious level, at least, you must take the very event of your birth under secondhanded evidence.  Few people have conscious memory of it.

For the purposes of our discussion, I must necessarily couch this book to some degree in the framework of time.  I must honor your specifics.  Otherwise you would not understand what I am trying to say.

Even though this book is being dictated within time’s tradition, therefore, I must remind you that basically that tradition is not mine – and more, basically, it is not yours either.

I used the term “before the beginning”, then, and I will speak of earth’s events in certain sequences.  In the deepest of terms, however, and in ways that quite scandalize the intellect when it tries to operate alone, the beginning is now.  That critical explosion of divine subjectivity into objectivity is always happening, and you are being given life “in each moment” because of the simultaneous nature of that divine subjectivity.

We will nevertheless call our next chapter “In the Beginning”, laying certain events out for you in serial form.  I hope that in other portions of this book certain mental exercises will allow you to leap over the tradition of time’s framework and sense with the united intellect and intuitions your own individual part in a spacious present that is large enough to contain all of time’s segments.

Chapter 2: In the Beginning

Once again, in terms of your equations, energy and consciousness and matter are one.  And in those terms (the qualifications are necessary) consciousness is the agent that directs the transformation of energy into form and of form into energy.  All possible visible or invisible particles that you discover or imagine – meaning hypothesized particles – possess consciousness.  They are energized consciousness.

There are certain characteristics inherent in energy itself, quite aside from any that you ascribe to it, since of course to date you do not consider energy conscious.

Energy is above all things infinitely creative, innovative, original.  Energy is imaginative.  (Any scientists who might be reading this book may as well stop here.)  I am not assigning human traits to energy.  Instead, your human traits are the result of energy’s characteristics – a rather important difference.  Space as you think of it is, in your terms, filled with invisible particles.  They are the unstated portion of physical reality, the unmanifest medium in which your world exists.  In that regard, however, atoms and molecules are stated, though you cannot see them with your [unaided] eye.  The smaller particles that make them up become “smaller and smaller”, finally disappearing from the examination of any kind of physical instrument, and these help bridge the gap between unmanifest and manifest reality.

For the terms of this discussion of the beginning of [your] world, I will deal with known qualities for now – the atoms and molecules.  In the beginning, they imagined the myriad of forms that were physically possible.  They imagined the numberless cells that could arise from their own cooperative creation.  Energy is boundless.  It is exuberant.  It knows no limits.  In those terms, the atoms dreamed the cells into physical being – and from that new threshold of physical activity cellular consciousness dreamed of the myriad organizations that could emerge from this indescribable venture.

Value fulfillment itself is most difficult to describe, for it combines the nature of a loving presence – a presence with the innate knowledge of its own divine complexity – with a creative ability of infinite proportions that seeks to bring to fulfillment even the slightest, most distant portion of its own inverted complexity.  Translated into simpler terms, each portion of energy is endowed with an inbuilt reach of creativity that seeks to fulfill its own potential in all possible ventures – and in such a way that such a development also furthers the creative potentials of each other portion of reality.

In those terms, then, there was in the beginning an almost unimaginable time in which energized consciousness, using its own creative abilities, its own imagination, experimented with triumphant rambunctiousness, trying out one form after another.  In the terms you are used to thinking of, nothing was stable.  Consciousness as you think of it turned into matter, and then into pure energy and back again.

Subjectivity still largely ruled.  Like an adolescent leaving home for the first time, individualized consciousness was also somewhat homesick, and returned often to the family homestead – but gradually gained confidence and left finally to form a [universe].

Now because All That Is contains within itself such omnipotent, fertile, divine creative characteristics, all portions of its subjective experience attained dimensions of actuality impossible to describe.  The thoughts, for example, of All That Is were not simply thoughts as you might have, but multidimensional mental events of superlative nature.  Those events soon found that a transformation must occur, if they were to journey into objectivity – for no objectivity of itself could contain the entire reality of subjective events that existed within divine subjectivity.  Only in that context could their relative perfection be maintained.  Yet they had yearned before the beginning for other experiences, and even for fulfillments of a different nature.  They sensed a kind of value fulfillment that required of them the utilization of their own creative abilities.  They yearned to create as they had been created and All That Is, in a kind of divine perplexity, nevertheless realized that this had always been its own intent.

All That Is realized that such a separation would also allow you to bring about a different kind of divine art, in which the creators themselves created, and their creations created, bringing into actuality existences that were possible precisely because there would seem to be a difference between the creator and the creations.  All That Is is, therefore, within each smallest portion of consciousness.

Yet each smallest portion of consciousness can uniquely create, bring into being eccentric versions of All That Is, that in certain terms All That Is, without that separation, could not otherwise create.  The loving support, the loving encouragement of the slightest probable consciousness and manifestation – that is the intent of All That Is.

All That Is knows that even this purpose is a portion of a larger purpose.  In terms of time, the realization of that purpose will emerge with another momentous explosion of subjective inspiration into objectivity, or into another form.  In deeper terms, however, that purpose is also known now, and to one extent or another the entire universe dreams of it, as once cellular consciousness dreamed of the organs that it might “form”.

I want to stress that I am speaking here not so much about a kind of spiritual evolution as I am about an expansion.

We will for now, however, confine ourselves to a discussion of consciousness in the beginning of the world, stressing that the first basis of physical life was largely subjective, and that the state of dreaming not only helped shape the consciousness of your species, but also in those terms served to provide a steady source of information to man about his physical environment, and served as an inner web of communication among all species.

Session 883

Dreams, Evolution, Value Fulfillment Session 883

You cannot prove scientifically that [your] world was created by a god who set it into motion, but remained outside of its dominion.  Nor can you prove scientifically that the creation of the world was the result of a chance occurrence – so you will not be able to prove what I am going to tell you either.  Not in usual terms.

I hope however to present, along with my explanations, certain hints and clues that will show you where to look for subjective evidence.

You live your lives through your own subjective knowing, to begin with, and I will try to arouse within your own consciousnesses memories of events with which your own inner psyches were intimately involved as the world was formed – and though these may appear to be past events, they are even now occurring.

Before the beginning of the universe, we will postulate the existence of an omnipotent, creative source.  We will hope to show that this divine subjectivity is as present in the world of your experience as it was before the beginning of the universe.  Again, I refer to this original subjectivity as All That Is.  I am making an attempt to verbalize concepts that almost defy the edges of the intellect, unless that intellect is thoroughly reinforced by the intuition’s strength.  So, you will need to use your mind and your own intuitions as you read this book.

All That Is, before the beginning contained within itself the infinite thrust of all possible creations.  All That Is possessed a creativity of such magnificence that its slightest imaginings, dreams, thoughts, feelings or moods attained a kind of reality, a vividness, an intensity, that almost demanded freedom.  Freedom from what?  Freedom to do what?  Freedom to be what?

The experience, the subjective universe, the “mind” of All That Is, was so brilliant, so distinct, that All That Is almost became lost, mentally wandering within this ever-flourishing, ever growing landscape.  Each thought, feeling, dream, or mood was itself indelibly marked with all of the attributes of this infinite subjectivity.  Each glowed and quivered with its own creativity.

Before the beginning there existed an interior universe that had no beginning or ending, for I am using the term “before the beginning” to make matters easier for you to assimilate.  (That same infinite interior universe exists now, for example.)

All That Is contained within itself the knowledge of all existences, with their infinite probabilities, and “as soon as” All That Is imagined those numberless circumstances, they existed in what I will call divine fact.

All That Is knew of itself only.  It was engrossed with its own subjective experiences, even divinely astonished as its own thoughts and imaginings attained their own vitality, and inherited the creativity of their subjective creator.  [Those thoughts and imaginings] began to have a dialogue with their “Maker”.

Thoughts of such magnificent vigor began to think their own thoughts – and their thoughts, thought thoughts.  As if in divine astonishment and surprise, All That Is began to listen, and began to respond to these “generations” of thoughts and dreams, for the thoughts and dreams related to each other also.  There was no time, so all of this “was happening” simultaneously.  The order of events is being simplified.  In the meantime, then, in your terms, All That Is spontaneously thought new thoughts and dreamed new dreams, and became involved in new imaginings – and all of these also related to those now-infinite generations of interweaving and interrelating thoughts and dreams that “already” existed.

So, beside this spontaneous creation, this simultaneous “stream” of divine rousing, All That Is began to watch the interactions that occurred among his own subjective progeny.  He listened, began to respond and to answer a thought or a dream.  He began to purposefully bring about those mental conditions that were requested by these generations of mental progeny.  If he had been lonely before, he was no longer.

Your language causes some difficulty here, so please accept the pronoun “he” as innocuously as possible.  “It” sounds too neutral for my purpose, and I want to reserve the pronoun “she” for some later differentiations.  In basic terms, of course, All That Is is quite beyond any designations having to do with any one species or sex.  All That Is, then, began to feel a growing sense of pressure as it realized that its own ever-multiplying thoughts and dreams themselves yearned to enjoy those greater gifts of creativity with which they were innately endowed.

It is very difficult to try to assign anything like human motivation to All That Is.  I can only say that it is possessed by “the need” to lovingly create from its own being; to lovingly transform its own reality in such a way that each most slight probable consciousness can come to be; and with the need to see that any and all possible orchestrations of consciousness have the chance to emerge, to perceive and to love.

We will later discuss the fuller connotations of the word “love” as it is meant here, but this chapter is a kind of outline of other material to come.

All That Is, then, became aware of a kind of creative tumult as each of its superlative thoughts and dreams, moods and feelings, strained at the very edges of their beings, looking for some then-unknown, undiscovered, as of then unthought-of release.  I am saying that this mental progeny included all of the consciousnesses that [have] ever appeared or will appear upon your earth – all tenderly couched: the first human being, the first insect – each with an inner knowledge of the possibilities of its development.  All That Is, loving its own progeny, sought within itself the answer to this divine dilemma.

When that answer came, it involved previously unimaginable leaps of divine inspiration, and it occurred thusly: All That Is searched through the truly infinite assortment of its incredible progeny to see what conditions were needed for this even more magnificent dream, this dream of a freedom of objectivity.  What door could open to let physical reality emerge from such an inner realm?  When All That Is, in your terms, put all of those conditions together it saw, of course, in a flash, the mental creation of those objective worlds that would be needed – and as it imagined those worlds, in your terms, they were physically created.

[All That Is] did not separate itself from those worlds, however, for they were created from its thoughts, and each one has divine content.  The worlds are all created by that divine content, so that while they are on the one hand exterior, they are on the other also made of divine stuff, and each hypothetical point in your universe is in direct contact with All That Is in the most basic terms.  The knowledge of the whole is within all of its parts – and yet All That Is is more than its parts.

Divine subjectivity is indeed infinite.  It can never be entirely objectified.  When the worlds, yours and others, were thus created, there was indeed an explosion of unimaginable proportions, as the divine spark of inspiration exploded into objectivity.

The first “object” was an almost unendurable mass, though it had no weight, and it exploded, instantly beginning processes that formed the universe – but no time was involved.  The process that you might imagine took up eons occurred in the twinkling of an eye, and the initial objective materialization of the massive thought of All That Is burst into reality.  In your terms this was a physical explosion – but in the terms of the consciousness involved in that breakthrough, this was experienced as a triumphant “first” inspirational frenzy, a breakthrough into another kind of being.

The earth then, appeared as consciousness, transformed itself into the many facets of nature.  The atoms and molecules were alive, aware – they were no longer simply a part of a divine syntax, but they spoke themselves through the very nature of their being.  They became the living, aware vowels and syllables through which consciousness could form matter.

But in your terms this was still largely a dream world, though it was fully fashioned.  It had, generally speaking, all of the species that you now know.  These all correlated with the multitudinous kinds of consciousnesses that had clamored for release, and those consciousnesses were spontaneously endowed by All That Is with those forms that fit their requirements.  You had the birth of individualized consciousness as you think of it into physical context.  Those consciousnesses were individualized before the beginning, but not manifest.  But individualized consciousness was not quite all that bold.  It did not attach itself completely to its earthly forms at the start, but rested often within its “ancient” divine heritage.  In your terms, it is as if the earth and all of its creatures were partially dreaming, and not as focused within physical reality as they are now.

For one thing, while individualized consciousness was within the massive subjectivity of All That Is, it enjoyed, beside its own uniqueness, a feeling of supporting unity, a comforting knowledge that it was one with its source.  So, in the beginning of [your] world, consciousness fluctuated greatly, focusing gently at the start, but not quite as willing to be as fully independent as its first intent might seem.

You had the sleepwalkers, early members of your species, whose main concentration was still veiled in that earlier subjectivity, and they were your true ancestors, in those terms.

For one thing, early man needed to rely upon his great inner knowledge.

All of the species began by emphasizing a great subjective orientation that was most necessary as they learned to manipulate within the new physical environment.

Session 882

Chapter 1: Before the Beginning

Session 882

The universe will begin yesterday.  The universe began tomorrow.  Both of these statements are quite meaningless.  The tenses are wrong, and perhaps your time sense is completely outraged.  Yet the statement: The universe began in some distant past”, is, in basic terms, just as meaningless.

In fact, the first two statements, while making no logical sense, do indeed hint of phenomena that show time itself to be no more than a creative construct.  Time and space are in a fashion part of the furniture of your universe.

The very experience of passing moments belongs to your psychological rooms in the same way that clocks are attached to your walls.  Whenever science or religion seeks the origin of the universe, they search for it in the past.  The universe is being created now.  Creation occurs in each moment, in your terms.  The illusion of time itself is being created now.  It is therefore somewhat futile to look for the origins of the universe by using a time scheme that is in itself, at the very least, highly relative.

Your now, or present moment, is a psychological platform.  It seems that the universe began with an initial burst of energy of some kind.  Evolutionists cannot account for its cause.  Many religious people believe that a god exists in a larger dimension of reality, and that he created the universe while being himself outside of it.  He set it into motion.  Many individuals, following either persuasion, believe that regardless of its source, the [universe] must run out of energy.  Established science is quite certain that no energy can now be created or destroyed, but only transformed.  Science sees energy and matter as being basically the same thing, appearing differently under varying circumstances.

In certain terms, science and religion are both dealing with the idea of an objectively created universe.  Either God “made it”, or physical matter, in some unexplained manner, was formed after an initial explosion of energy, and consciousness emerged from that initially dead matter in a way yet to be explained.

Instead, consciousness formed matter.  As I have said before, each atom and molecule has its own consciousness.  Consciousness and matter and energy are one, but consciousness initiates the transformation of energy into matter.  In those terms, the “beginning” of your universe was a triumph in the expansion of consciousness, as it learned to translate itself into physical form.  The universe emerged into actuality in the same way, but to a different degree, that any idea emerges from what you think of as subjectivity into physical expression.

The consciousness of each reader of this book existed before the universe was formed (in your terms) but that consciousness was unmanifest.  Your closest approximation – and it is an approximation only – of the state of being that existed before the universe was formed is the dream state.  In that state before the beginning, your consciousness existed free of space and time, aware of immense probabilities.  This is extremely difficult to verbalize, yet it is very important that such an attempt be made.  Your consciousness is a part of an infinitely original creative process.

I will purposely avoid using the word “God” because of the connotations placed upon it by conventional religion.  I will make an attempt to explain the characteristics of this divine process throughout this book.  I call the process “All That Is”.  All That Is is so much a part of its creations that it is almost impossible to separate the “creator from the creations”, for each creation also carries indelibly within it the characteristics of its source.

If you have thought that the universe followed a mechanistic model, then you would have to say that each portion of this “cosmic machine” created itself, knowing its position in the entire “future construction”.  You would have to say further that each portion came gladly out of its own source individually, neatly tailored to its position, while at the same time that individual source was also as intimately the source of each other individual portion.

I am not saying that the universe is the result of some “psychological machine”, either, but that each portion of consciousness is a part of All That Is, and that the universe falls together in a spontaneous divine order – and that each portion of consciousness carries within it indelibly the knowledge of the whole.

The birth of the world represented a divine psychological awakening.  Each consciousness that takes a part in the physical universe dreamed of such a physical existence, in your terms, before the earth was formed.  In greater terms than yours, it is quite true to say that the universe is not formed yet, or that the universe has vanished.  In still vaster terms, however, the fact is that in one state or another the universe has always existed.

Your closest approximation of the purpose of the universe can be found in those loving emotions that you have toward the development of your children, in your intent to have them develop their fullest capacities.

Your finest aspirations can give you some dim clue as to the great creative thrust that is behind your own smallest act, for your own smallest act is possible only because your body has already been provided for in the physical world.  Your life is given.  In each moment, it is renewed.  So smoothly and effortlessly do you ride that thrust of life’s energy that you are sometimes scarcely aware of it.  You are not equipped with a certain amount of energy that then wears out and dies.  Instead you are, again, newly created in each moment.

Rest of the Preface of Dreams, "Evolution" and Value Fulfillment

Private Session 10 September 1979

The two of you thought of yourselves specifically as a writer – or rather a poet – and an artist before your sessions began.  I would like to clear up some important points.

You identified, primarily now, as a poet and an artist because those designations, up to that time, seemed most closely to fit your abilities and temperaments.  Ruburt’s writing set him apart.  Your painting set you apart.  These were recognizable, tangible proofs of creativity.  You therefore identified with elements, characteristics, and traditions that seemed to suit you best.

To some extent you had your own niches, recognizable by society even if they were relatively unusual.  You did not know that there was a deeper, older, or richer tradition – a more ancient heritage – to which you belonged, because you found no hint of it in your society.  It seemed at different times since our sessions began that there were disruptive conflicts.  For example: Was Ruburt a writer or was he a psychic?  Were you an artist, or weren’t you?  What about the writing you did – both for our books, and the writing that you sometimes plan to do on your own?

Those kinds of conflicts can only exist in a society in which the entire concept of creativity is segmented, in which the creative processes are often seen as inner assembly lines leading to specific products: a society in which the very nature of creativity itself is largely ignored unless its “products” serve specific ends.

Ruburt was correct … about the poet’s long-forgotten abilities, and his role.  Ruburt has been a poet all of the time in the most profound meaning of that term.  For the poet did not simply string words together, but sent out a syntax of consciousness, using rhythm and the voice, rhyme and refrain as methods to form steps up which his own consciousness could rush.

Early artists hoped to understand the very nature of creativity itself as they tried to mimic earth’s forms.  Poetry and painting were both functional in ways that I will describe in our next book and “esthetic”, but poetry and painting have always involved primarily man’s attempt to understand himself and his world.  The original functions of art – meaning poetry and painting here specifically – have been largely forgotten.  The true artist in those terms was always primarily – in your terms again – a psychic or a mystic.

His specific art was both his method of understanding his own creativity and a way of exploring the vast creativity of the universe – and also served as a container or showcase that displayed his knowledge as best he could.

That is the heritage that both of you follow, and have followed faithfully.  It has an honored tradition.  Also involved is, as Ruburt correctly picked up from me, a group of accomplishments that we will call the psychological arts.  You are involved in those also.

I want you to specifically understand that there is and can be no conflict, for example, between your writing and painting, for in the most basic of ways they represent different methods of exploring the meaning and the source of creativity itself.

The sessions I give you, in usual terms, are a new extension of that creativity – but again, that extension has an ancient heritage.  Your own writing, of course, is art.  It is also a method of perceiving and understanding creativity.  It is a method of learning that redoubles upon itself, and you are uniquely equipped to discover comprehensions from a standpoint that is most unusual.

Explore, for example, your own feelings toward me: whether or not they have changed through the years, how much I seem to be myself, or part Jane, or part Ruburt, or part you, or part Joseph, or whatever.  Realizing that you are in the position you wanted to be [in], and realizing that your abilities are not in conflict with each other, nor you with them, will automatically fulfill and develop all of those abilities, in a new kind of overall creativity that is itself beyond specifics.

When Ruburt begins to trust himself, as he has, the physical armor loosens.  The creative abilities become even more available, hence his new creativity, and the new physical steps he has taken.  They all go together.

He believed in the specific nature of the creative self, so that it could only be trusted in certain areas.  He believed he needed strong mental barriers as well as physical ones, set up against his own spontaneity.  He is beginning to understand that the spontaneous and creative aspects of personality are the life-giving ones.  They can and must be trusted.  He knows now he does not have to slow down, and that relaxation leads to motion.

He did indeed pick up from me a partial list of the subject matters to be covered in our new book – which will be called Dreams, “Evolution”, and Value Fulfillment.

The book will necessarily of course include much material on the true nature of creativity and its uses and misuses by civilizations.  You do not have to fight to trust the thrust of your own life.  That thrust is always meant to lead you toward your own best fulfillment, in a way that will benefit the species as well.

When you trust the thrust of your own life, you are always supported.  Tell Ruburt that.

I want you both, then, to understand that in the greater light of creativity, understanding its true meaning, you have taken the right course, and therefore drop from your minds any lingering ideas of conflict and doubt.  Such a stand will automatically clear up all problems involving things like taxes, sex roles, or whatever – on both your parts.

You (both) are studying the nature of creativity as few others have done or can do – and that is bound to make possible new creative frameworks, and to offer new solutions to situations that cause difficulty within smaller frameworks.

Session 881

This book will be my most ambitious project thus far.

It may be said by some that any book at all is an ambitious endeavor, when it originates from a psychological source so far divorced from your ordinary ideas of creativity.  It is one thing, for example, for a physical writer to produce a manuscript – and even that kind of creativity involves vast and hidden psychological maneuvers that never appear in the manuscript itself.

As most of my readers know, I make no claims of now having a physical personhood.  I do claim an independent reality at another level of existence.  My status and origins seem strange only because you have understood so little about your own origins.  I am beginning this book this evening.  I have already given the title, and at another level of consciousness Jane Roberts was able to perceive some glimpses of some of the subject matter that will be included here.  So far, however, physically there is only the page of paper upon which Robert Butts is writing down these words I speak.

Someday, in terms of time, there will be a thick book.  Although the manuscript does not yet exist in a physical book, the book itself, the ideas and words, are in the most important fashions quite real now.  Certain qualities are implied in all kinds of creativity that are generally overlooked, and so they are not apparent.  The kind of creative procedures we are involved in can serve to bring some of those qualities to light, and to shed illumination upon many aspects of the human psyche that usually remain hidden.

I speak through Ruburt – or through Jane Roberts, if you prefer.  Ruburt has his own creative abilities, and uses them well, and it is to a large extent because of those abilities that our contact first took place (in December 1963).  Scientists like to say that if you look outward at the universe, you look backward in time.  That statement is only partially true.  When you move inward through the psyche, however, you do begin to thrust, in your terms, “backward” toward the origins of existence.  Your creative abilities do not simply allow you to paint pictures, to tell or write stories, to create sculpture or architecture.  They do not simply provide you with a basis for your religions, sciences, and civilizations.  They are your contact with the source of existence itself.

They provide the power that allows you to form a belief system to begin with.

While you believe that consciousness somehow emerges from dead matter, you will never understand yourselves, and you will always be looking for the point at which life took on form.  You will always have to wonder about a kind of mechanical birth of the universe – and it will indeed seem as if your own world was made up of the spare parts that somehow fell together in just such a fashion so that life later emerged.

You are filled with questions about when and where the various species appeared, and how the rocks were formed, when some reptiles grew wings, when some fish emerged from the oceans and learned to breathe air, and you are bound to wonder what happened in the times in between.

How many reptiles tried for wings, for example, and failed, or could not fly – or how many millions of reptiles did it take, and how many trials, before the first triumphant bird flew above the landscape?  How many fish died with only half-formed lungs, who were too far from the water’s edge to dip again beneath the waves?  Or how many fish flopped backward to the water, finding themselves in such an in-between stage that they could no longer live in the water nor breathe the air?

So in those terms, how many water dwellers died before the first mammal stood securely with fully completed lungs, breathing earth’s early air?

In this book, then, we will look at the origin of the universe, the origin of the species, the origin of life from another viewpoint.  This viewpoint will, I hope, provide another framework through which you can understand and study physical reality, your part in it, and sense the immense creative complexity that unites each individual with the source of consciousness itself.

To do this, I hope to explore a more meaningful concept of evolution – and that concept must involve a discussion of subjective reality and its effect upon the “evolution” of man’s consciousness.

The universe did not originate from what you like to think of as an external, objectified source.  Your own physical body provides you with sturdy corporal images, exterior presentations.  Your dreams do not suddenly appear exteriorized upon your images in place of your features, for example.  They remain hidden.  Your dreams appear on the interior screen of your mind.

I never want any of my remarks to be construed in such a fashion that it seems I am in any way negating the fullness, validity, and magnificence of physical existence.  I do want to point out, however, that a state you usually call dreaming is but a dim indication of an inner reality of events, an inner order of events from which the physical world emerges.  I hope to show how the nature of dreams has helped shape man’s consciousness.  I hope to show that consciousness forms the environment, and not the other way around.

I hope to show that all species are motivated by what I call value fulfillment, in which each seeks to enhance the quality of life for itself and for all other species at the same time.

This further unites all species in a cooperative venture that has remained largely invisible because of beliefs projected outward upon the world by both your sciences and religions, generally speaking.  All of your grandest civilizations have existed first in the world of dreams.  You might say that the universe dreamed itself into being.

Generally speaking, the states of waking and sleeping are the only levels of consciousness with which you have been primarily concerned.  It seems to you that this is the result of your evolutionary progress – but there have been civilizations upon the earth that specialized in the use of many focuses of consciousness, as for example you are focused upon the use of tools.

Dreams can be highly specific.  They can be used to provide sources of information.  I hope to show their practical importance, both as a part of man’s “evolutionary development” and their possibilities in what you think of as modern life.  The answers are where you have least looked for them.  The universe is still being created, even as each person is in each moment.

Chapter 1: Before the Beginning

Session 882

The universe will begin yesterday.  The universe began tomorrow.  Both of these statements are quite meaningless.  The tenses are wrong, and perhaps your time sense is completely outraged.  Yet the statement: The universe began in some distant past”, is, in basic terms, just as meaningless.

Private Session 13 Sep 79

Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Private Session 13 September 1979

Observing the antics of your Mitzi gives me an excuse to begin the topic of the evening: animal consciousness.

I want to begin simply by having you question some concepts taken quite for granted – to question much.

It is somewhat fashionable to see man as always nature’s despoiler, as the destructive member of nature’s family, or even to consider him apart from nature, who was given nature as his living grounds.

It is somewhat fashionable to see man as … the creature who dirties his own nest, and I am not condoning much of man’s behavior in that regard.  However, there are other issues, and questions seldom asked.  You ignore the fact that [overall] the consciousness of animals has its own purposes and intents.  It is true that animals are slaughtered under the most cruel of circumstances for human consumption – for then they are treated simply as foodstuff.

Buffaloes do not roam as they did before.  There are thousands of farm-bred animals, however [and have been], all throughout civilization, alive for a time, well-cared-for for a time – animals who in usual terms would not exist except for man’s “gluttonous” appetite for meat.  That is the way the issue is often considered.  It seldom occurs to anyone that certain forms of animal consciousness came in physical form [by choice], that certain species are prized by man and protected, or that the consciousnesses of such animals had anything at all to do with such an [overall] arrangement.

You cannot say that such animals came out ahead of the bargain, but you can say that the species of man and certain species of animals together formed an arrangement … that did have benefits for both.  Man is more a part of nature than he realizes, and in the greater realm of activity he cannot take any actions with which the rest of nature does not agree for its own reasons.

Remember here other material given about cellular communication, for example, and the vast web of intercommunication that unites all species.  Of course animals can communicate with man, and of course man can communicate with other species – with all species.  Such communication has always gone on.  Man cannot afford to become aware of such communication at this point, simply because your entire culture is based upon the idea of the animals’ “natural” subordinate position.  The men who slaughtered animals cannot afford to treat those animals as possessors of living consciousness.

There is, beneath it all, an important unity, a sense of communion, as one portion of earth’s living consciousness dies to insure the continued life of all nature.  That natural sacrament, however, turns into something else entirely when the gift is so misunderstood, and when the donor is treated so poorly …

Basically [many farmers love] animals for themselves, and delight in their ways – but by itself “delighting in animals” is not considered particularly virile enough.  In your society, if you like animals you must not like them for themselves, but for other reasons.  If you want to be with animals then you must become a farmer, or a veterinarian, or a cattleman, or whatever …

Many animals enjoy work and purpose.  They enjoy working with man.  Horses enjoyed the contributions they made to man’s world.  They understood their riders far more than their riders understood them.  Many dogs enjoy being family protectors.  There are deep emotional bonds between men and many species of animals.  There is emotional response.  Dolphins, for example, respond emotionally to man’s world.  The animals on a farm are emotionally aware of the overall psychological content of the farmer’s life and [that of each member of] his family …

Consciousness is filled with content – any kind of consciousness.  [The farmer’s] animals understand that in a certain fashion he is a midwife, responsible for some of their births.  Food comes from his hands.  The animals understand, on their own, that life on any terms that are physical ends with death – that the physical properties must be returned to the earth from which they came …

[Animals] do not blame [human beings] for anything.  If as a species you really found yourselves communicating with the animals, you would have an entirely different culture, a culture that would indeed bring about an alteration of consciousness of the most profound nature.

You have forgotten, conveniently, how much you learned from all of the animals, as I have mentioned in past sessions.  You learned a good deal of medicine from watching animal behavior: You learned what plants to avoid, and which to cultivate.  You learned how to rid yourself of lice by going into the water.  You learned social behavior by watching the animals.  At one time, you could identify with animals, and they with you to a remarkable degree.  They have been your teachers, though they did not choose your path.  Obviously, you could not have gone your way [as a species] had it not been for animals.

Domesticated animals have their own reasons for choosing such a state.  It is, for example, usual enough to think that your cats should ideally run outside in the open, because in the wild that is what cats would do.

Cats in the wild were, in those terms of time, exploring one kind of nature.  In that kind of nature, with a natural population taken care of in the environment, there would be far fewer cats than there are now.  Your cats would not exist.  Why does it seem antinatural, even slightly perverse, for a household cat to say, prefer fine cat food from a can, when it seems he should be eating mice, perhaps, or dining upon grasshoppers?  The household cat is exploring a different kind of nature, in which he has a certain relationship to human consciousness, a relationship that changes the reality of his particular kind of consciousness.

Your cats are as alive in all ways inside of the house or out.  They understand their relationship with your human reality.  They enjoy contributing in your life as much as any wild animal enjoys being a part of its group.  Their consciousnesses lean in a new direction, feel about the edges of concepts, sense openings of awareness of a different kind, and form alliances of consciousness quite as natural as any other.

Session 873

Mass Events, Session 873

In a manner of speaking, you must be a practicing idealist if you are to remain a true idealist for long.  You must take small practical steps, often when you would prefer to take giant ones – but you must move in the direction of your ideals through action.  Otherwise you will feel disillusioned, or powerless, or sure, again, that only drastic, highly unideal methods will ever bring about the achievement of a given ideal state or situation.

Life at all levels of activity is propelled to seek ideals, whether of a biological or mental nature.  That pursuit automatically gives life its zest and natural sense excitement and drama.  Developing your own abilities, whatever they may be, exploring and expanding your experience of selfhood, gives life a sense of purpose, meaning, and creative excitement – and also adds to the understanding and development of the society and the species.

It is not enough to meditate, or to imagine in your mind some desired goal being accomplished, if you are afraid to act upon the very impulse to which your meditations and imaginings give rise.  When you do not take any steps toward an ideal position, then your life does lack excitement.  You become depressed.  You might become an idealist in reverse, so that you find a certain excitement in contemplating the occurrence of natural disasters, such as earthquakes.  You may begin to concentrate your attention on such activities.  You may contemplate the end of the world instead, but in either case you are propelled by a sense of personal frustration, and perhaps by some degree of vengeance, seeing in your mind the destruction of a world that fell so far beneath your idealized expectations.

None of the unfortunate situations discussed in this book have any power over you, however, if you understand that events do not exist by themselves.  All events and situations exist first within the mind.  At the deepest levels of communication no news is secret, whether or not you receive it by way of your technological gadgets.

Your thoughts and beliefs and desires form the events that you view on television.  If you want to change your world, you must first change your thoughts, expectations, and beliefs.  If every reader of this book changed his or her attitudes, even though not one law was rewritten, tomorrow the world would have changed for the better.  The new laws would follow.

Any new law always follows the change in belief.  It is not the other way around.

There is no civilization, no system of science, art, or philosophy, that did not originate in the mind.  When you give lip service to ideas with which you do not agree, you are betraying your own ideals, harming yourself to some extent, and society as well, insofar as you are denying yourself and society the benefit of your own understanding.  Each person is an idealist.  I simply want to help you practice your idealism in the acts of your daily life.

Each person alive helps paint the living picture of civilization as it exists at any given time, in your terms.  Be your own best artist.  Your thoughts, feelings and expectations are like the living brush strokes with which you paint your corner of life’s landscape.  If you do your best in your own life, then you are indeed helping to improve the quality of all life.  Your thoughts are as real as snowflakes or raindrops or clouds.  They mix and merge with the thoughts of others, to form man’s livingscape, providing the vast mental elements from which physical events will be formed.

As you learn to allow your impulses some freedom, you will discover their connection with your own idealized version of what life should be.  You will begin to discover that [those spontaneous urges] are as basically good and life-giving as the physical elements of the earth, that provide the impetus for all biological life.

Beyond that, however, those impulses, again, connect you with the original impulse from which all life emerges.

You will discover the natural, cooperative nature of your impulses, and you will no longer believe that they exist as contradictory or disruptive influences.  Your impulses are part of the great multi-action of being.  At deeper levels, the impulsive portion of the personality is aware of all actions upon the earth’s surface.  You are involved in a cooperative venture, in which your slightest impulse has a greater meaning, and is intimately connected with all other actions.  You have the power to change your life and the world for the better, but in doing so you must, again, reevaluate what your ideals are, and the methods that are worthy of them.  Science and religion have each contributed much to man’s development.  They must also reevaluate their ideals and methods, however.

In larger terms, there are really only scientific and religious men and women, however, and fields of science and religion would be meaningless without those individuals who believe in their positions.  As those men and women enlarge their definitions of reality, the fields of science and religion must expand.  You must be reckless in pursuit of the ideal – reckless enough to insist that each step you take along the way is worthy of that ideal.

You will understand, if you are a practicing idealist, that you cannot kill in the name of peace, for if you do so your methods will automatically undermine your ideal.  The sacredness of life and sprit are one and the same.  You cannot condemn the body without ultimately condemning the soul.  You cannot condemn the soul without ultimately condemning the body.

I would like each of my readers to be a practicing idealist, and, if you are then you will automatically be tolerant of the beliefs of others.  You will not be unkind in the pursuit of your own ideals.  You will look upon the world with a sane compassion, with some humor, and you will look for man’s basic good intent.  You will find it.  It has always been there.  You will discover your own basic good intent, and see that it has always been behind all of your actions – even in those fitted to the pursuit of your private ideals.

The end does not justify the means.  If you learn that lesson, then your good intent will allow you to act effectively and creatively in your private experience, and in your relationships with others.  Your changed beliefs will affect the mental atmosphere of your nation and of the world.

You must encounter the selves that you are now.  Acknowledge your impulses.  Explore their meanings.  Rely upon yourselves.  You will find far greater power, achievement, and virtue than you suppose.

Conclusion

You are individuals, yet each of you forms a part of the world’s reality.  Consciously, you are usually aware only of your own thoughts, but those thoughts merge with the thoughts of all others in the world.  You understand what television is.  At other levels, however, you carry a picture of the world’s news, [one] that is “picked up” by signals transmitted by the cells that compose all living matter.  When you have an impulse to act, it is your own impulse, yet it is also a part of the world’s action.  In those terms, there are inner neurological-like systems that provide constant communication through all of the world’s parts.  If you accept the fact that man is basically a good creature, then you allow free, natural motions of your own psychic nature – and that nature springs from your impulses, and not in opposition to them.

There is no event upon the face of the earth in which each of you has not played some part, however minute, because of the nature of your thoughts, beliefs, and expectations.

There is no public act in which you are not in that same manner involved.  You are intimately connected with all of the historic events of your time.

To some extent you participated in putting a man on the moon, whether or not you had any connection at all with the physical occurrence itself.  Your thoughts put a man on the moon as surely as any rocket did.  You can become involved now in a new exploration, one in which man’s civilizations and organizations change their course, reflecting his good intents and his ideals.  You can do this by seeing to it that each step you personally take is “ideally suited” to the ends you hope to achieve.  You will see to it that your methods are ideal.

If you do this, your life will automatically be provided with excitement, natural zest and creativity, and those characteristics will be reflected outward into the social, political, economic, and scientific worlds.  This is a challenge more than worth the effort.  It is a challenge that I hope each reader will accept.  The practical idealist … When all is said and done, there is no other kind.

Session 872

Mass Events, Session 872

It may seem to some readers that the subject matter of this book is far divorced from any discussion of the specific development of psychic abilities.

Many people write requesting that I outline the proper methods for achieving astral projection, for example, or psychic advancement, or spiritual understanding.  In its fashion, however, this book is geared to bring about the development of such abilities, for it is not a lack of methods that inhibits such activities.  Instead, “psychic progress” is hampered by those very negative beliefs that we have tried to bring to our attention.

Many of you keep searching for some seemingly remote spiritual inner self that you can trust and look to for help and support, but all the while you distrust the familiar self with which you have such intimate contact.  Yous set up divisions between portions of the self that are unnecessary.

Some correspondents write: “I realize that I am too egotistical”.  There are many schools for spiritual advancement that teach you to “get rid of the clutter of your impulses and desires”, to shove aside the self that you are in search of a greater idealized version.  First of all, the self that you are is ever-changing and never static.  There is an inner self in terms of those definitions, but that inner self, which is the source for your present being, speaks through your impulses.  They provide in-built spiritual and biological impetuses toward your most ideal development.  You must trust the self that you are, now.

If you would know yourself in deepest terms, you must start with your own feelings, emotions, desires, intents and impulses.  Spiritual knowledge and psychic wisdom are the natural result of a sense of self-unity.

Again, impulses are inherently good, both spiritually and biologically.  They emerge from Framework 2, from the inner self, and they are based on the great inner webwork of communication that exists among all species on your planet.  Impulses also provide the natural impetus toward those patterns of behavior that serve you best, so that while certain impulses may bunch up toward physical activity, say, others, seemingly contradictory, will lead toward quiet contemplation, so that overall certain balances are maintained.

Some people are only aware of – or largely aware of – impulses toward anger, because they have inhibited those natural impulses toward love that would otherwise temper what seemed to be aggressive desires.  When you begin trusting yourselves, you start by taking it for granted that to some extent at least you have not trusted yourself or your impulses in the past: You have thought that impulses were dangerous, disruptive, or even evil.  So, as you begin to learn self-trust, you acknowledge your impulses.  You try them on for size.  You see where they lead you by allowing them some freedom.  You do not follow urges through that would hurt others physically, or that seem in direct contradiction to your present beliefs – but you do acknowledge them.  You do try to discover their source.  Behind them you will almost always find an inhibited impulse – or many of them – that motivated you to move in some ideal direction, to seek a love or understanding so idealized in your mind that it seemed impossible to achieve.  You are left with the impulse to strike out.

If you examine such troublesome stimuli, you will always find that they originally rose after a long process, a process in which you were afraid to take small positive steps toward some ideal.  Your own impulses naturally lead you to seek creative fulfillment, the expansion of your consciousness, psychic excursions, and the conscious knowledge and manipulation of your dreams.

No methods will work if you are afraid of your own impulses, or of the nature of your own being.  Most of you understand that All That Is is within you, that God is within creation, within physical matter, and that “He” does not simply operate as some cosmic director on the outside of reality.  You must understand that the spiritual self also exists within the physical self in the same fashion.  The inner self is not remote, either – not divorced from your most intimate desires and affairs, but instead communicates through your own smallest gesture, through your smallest idea.

This sense of division within the self forces you to think that there is a remote, spiritual, wise, intuitive inner self, and a bewildered, put-upon, spiritually ignorant, inferior physical self, which happens to be the one you identify with. Many of you believe, moreover, that the physical self’s very nature is evil, that its impulses, left alone, will run in direct opposition to the good of the physical world and society, and fly in the face of the deeper spiritual truths of inner reality.  The inner self then becomes so idealized and so remote that by contrast the physical self seems only the more ignorant and flawed.  In the face of such beliefs the ideal of psychic development, or astral travel, or spiritual knowledge, or even of sane living, seems so remote as to be impossible.  You must, therefore, begin to celebrate your own beings, to look to your own impulses as being the natural connectors between the physical and the nonphysical self.  Children trusting their impulses learn to walk, and trusting your impulses, you can find yourself again.

Aside: Origin of the Physical Universe

Consciousness predates physical forms.  Consciousness predates the physical universe.  Consciousness predates all of its manifestations.

The impulse to be, in any terms that you can understand, is without beginning or end.  What you have in your physical species are the manifestations of inner species of being, or creative groupings originated by consciousness as material patterns into which consciousness then flows.  In those terms, the world came into being and the species appeared in a completely different framework of activity than is imagined, and one that cannot be scientifically established – particularly within those boundaries with which science has protected itself.

The patterns for the earth and for its creatures were as real before their physical appearances, and far more real than, say, the plan for a painting that you might have in your mind.  The universe always was innately objective in your terms, with its planets and creatures.  The patterns for all of the species always existed without any before or after arrangement.

I am not pleased with those analogies, but sometimes they are all I can use to express issues so outside of normal channels of knowledge.  It is as if, then, the earth, with all of its species, existed in complete form as a fully dimensioned cosmic underpainting, which gradually came alive all at once.  Birds did not come from reptiles.  They were always birds.  They expressed a certain kind of consciousness that sought a certain kind of form.  Physically the species appeared – all species appeared – in the same way that you might imagine all of the elements of a highly complicated dream suddenly coming alive with physical properties.  Mental images – in those terms, now – existed that “in a flash of cosmic inspiration” were suddenly endowed with full physical manifestation.

To that extent, the Bible’s interpretation is correct.  Life was given, was free to develop according to its characteristic conditions.  The planet was prepared, and endowed with life.  Consciousness built the forms, so life existed within consciousness for all eternity.  There was no point in which chemicals or atoms suddenly acquired life, for they always possessed consciousness, which is life’s requirement.

In the terms that you can understand, all species that you are aware of appeared more or less at once, because the mental patterns had peaked.  Their vitality was strong enough to form differentiation and cooperation within the framework of matter.

I understand that it appears that species have vanished, and that those species simply “developed” along the patterns of probable earths.  You are not just dealing with a one-line development of matter, but of an unimaginable creativity, in which all versions of your physical world exist, each one quite convinced of its physical nature.  There are ramifications quite unspeakable, although in certain states of trance, or with the aid of educated dreaming, you might be able to glimpse the inner complications, the webworks of communications that connect your official earth with other probable ones.  You choose your time and focus in physical reality again and again, and the mind holds an inner comprehension of many seemingly mysterious developments involving the species.

Even the cells are free enough of time and space to hold an intimate framework of being within the present, while being surrounded by this greater knowledge of what you think of as the earth’s past.  In greater terms, the earth and all of its species are created in each moment.  You wonder what gave life to the first egg or seed, or whatever, and think that an answer to that question would answer most others; for life, you say, was simply passed on from that point.

But what gives life to the egg or the seed now, keeps it going, provides that energy? Imagining some great big-bang theory gives you an immense explosion of energy, that somehow turns into life but must wear out somewhere along the line – and if that were the case, life would be getting weaker all the time, but it is not.  The child is as new and fresh today as a child was 5,000 years ago, and each spring is as new.

What gives life to chemicals now?  That is the more proper question.  All energy is not only aware-ized but the source of all organizations of consciousness, and all physical forms.  These represent frameworks of consciousness.  There was a day when the dreaming world, in your terms, suddenly awakened to full reality as far as physical materialization is concerned.  The planet was visited by desire.  There were ghost excursions there – mental buildings, dream civilizations which then became actualized.