The Way Toward Health - March 21 and 23, 1984

March 21, 1984

Those who look upon physical life as inferior to some other more perfect spiritual existence do a great injustice to physical existence in general.  Physical life is everywhere filled with the universal energy that is its source, so it can hardly be inferior to it’s own composition.

Again, corporeal reality is a brilliant segment of existence.  It cannot be inferior to existence.  It is because you so often view your world through a system of highly limited beliefs that you so often misread the implications of temporal life.

Such beliefs serve to limit your comprehension, until it seems often that physical life consists of a frantic struggle for survival at every level of consciousness.  Such ideas certainty do not foster feelings of security, health, or well-being, and they distort the nature of your physical environment.

That environment is not something separate from yourself, for you to control.  Instead, you and the environment support, strengthen, and fortify each other in ways that often escape you.  All portions of the environment contain their own kinds of consciousness.  They are aware of their own parts in the body of the world, so to speak, and they are aware not only of their own conditions, but of their relationships to all other portions of the world.  They add to the world’s health, in other words, and your own vitality – and that of your environment – are everywhere interrelated.

Chapter 4: The Broken-Hearted, The Heartless and Medical Technology

March 23, 1984

Many psychiatrists and psychologists now realize that a disturbed client cannot be helped sufficiently unless the individual is considered along with his or her relationship to the family unit.

The same idea really applies to physical illness as well.  It is possible, however, to carry this idea even further, so that a person in poor health should be seen by the physician in relationship to the family, and also in relationship to the environment.  Old-time family doctors understood the patient’s sensitivity to family members and to the environment, of course, and they often felt a lively sympathy and understanding that the practitioners of modern medicine often seem to have forgotten.

I am speaking of a deeper relationship to the environment, however, and of the environment’s symbolic as well as practical aspects in relationship to health and illness.  Your ideas about your own body, your mind, the universe and your part in it, and your relationship to family, friends, and environment are all connected to your state of health, to your sense of well-being, or your feelings of dis-ease.

In the next chapter let us look more specifically at the importance of symbolism in your mind, your body, and your environment.

Modern medical science largely considers the human body to be a kind of mechanical model, a sort of vehicle like a car that needs to be checked by a garage every so often.

As an automobile is put together at an assembly line, so the body is simply seen as a very efficient machine put together in nature’s “factory”.  If all the parts are in their proper places, and functioning smoothly, then the machine should give as excellent service as any well-running automobile – or so it seems.

All of the automobile’s parts, however, are alone responsible for its operation as long as it has a responsible driver.  There are, however, hidden relationships that exist between various parts of the body – and the parts themselves are hardly mechanical.  They change in every moment.

The heart is often described as a pump.  With the latest developments in medical technology, there are all kinds of heart operations that can be performed, even the use of heart transplants.  In many cases, even when hearts are repaired through medical technology, the same trouble reoccurs at a later date, or the patient recovers only to fall prey to a different, nearly fatal or fatal, disease.  This is not always the case, by any means, but when such a person does recover fully, and maintains good health, it is because beliefs, attitudes, and feelings have changed for the better, and because the person “has a heart” again, in other words, because the patient himself has regained the will to live.

Many people who have heart trouble feel that they have “lost the heart” for life.  They may feel broken-hearted for any of many reasons.  They may feel heartless, or imagine themselves to be so cold-hearted that they punish themselves literally by trying to lose their heart.

With many people having such difficulties, the addition of love in the environment may work far better than any heart operation.  A new pet given to a bereaved individual has saved more people from needing heart operations than any physician.  In other words, “a love transplant” in the environment may work far better overall than a heart-transplant operation, or a bypass, or whatever; in such ways the heart is allowed to heal itself.

The Way Toward Health - March 19, 29 1984

March 19, 1984

Each person is a vital, conscious portion of the universe.  Each person’s existence sends its own ripples throughout time.  The universe is conscious at every conceivable point of itself.  Each being is an individualized segment of the universe; then, in human terms, each person is a beloved individual, formed with infinite care and love, uniquely gifted with a life like no other.

No animal considers itself a failure, obviously.  People, however, often identify with their seeming mistakes, forgetting their abilities in other directions, so that it seems that they are misfits in the universe, or in the world.  The conscious mind can indeed have such thoughts because it so often tries to solve all problems on its own, until it begins to feel frightened, overburdened, and a failure in its own eyes.

The inner ego, however, always identifies with its source-identity as a beloved, individualized portion of the universe.  It is aware of the universal love that is its heritage.

It is also aware of the infinite power and strength that composes the very fabric of its being.  Through being made aware of these facts, the exterior ego can begin to feel a quicker sense of support and nourishment.  The knowledge can let it relax, let go, so that it feels its life couched and safe, and knows itself to be indeed a beloved child of the universe, both ancient and young at once, with an identity far beyond the annals of time.

It is of great value, then, that each person remember this universal affiliation.  Such a reminder can often allow the inner self to send needed messages of strength and love through the various levels, appearing as inspiration, dreams, or simply pure bursts of feeling. The inner ego draws instant and continuous support from the universal consciousness, and the more the exterior ego keeps that fact in mind, the greater its own sense of stability, safety, and self-esteem.

One of the attitudes detrimental to good health is that of self-condemnation, or dislike of the self.  Such attitudes are unfortunately sometimes fostered by parents, schools, and religions.  Feelings of self-worth, self-esteem, and pleasure with one’s abilities promote feelings of well-being, health, and exuberance.

March 20, 1984

The universe actively loves itself and all of its parts.  The world loves itself and all of its parts.  It is not true that energy is neutral or indifferent.  Energy is active, positive, propelled by what can almost be called an instantaneous pleasure with itself and its characteristics.

Despite all concepts to the contrary, energy is indeed at its basis, love.  It is also composed of highly charged consciousness that operates almost in a leapfrog fashion, with great bursts of exuberance and vitality.  The great – the greatest creative force – that force that is the origin for all physical life – did not suddenly appear once in some distant past, sparking the birth of your reality, endowing it with an energy that could only then run down, or dissipate.  Instead, ever-new virgin energy, so to speak, is created constantly, and appears at every conceivable point within your universal system.

Each new rose in the springtime is in truth a new rose, composed of completely new and unique energy, utterly itself, innocent, alive in the world.

In the deepest of terms, while each body has a history, each moment in the body’s existence is also new, freshly emerging into the world, innocent and unique.  While there is indeed pain in the world, it is the miraculous principle of pleasure that propels life itself.

The Way Toward Health - March 16 and 18, 1984

March 16, 1984

Before we can really study the nature of health or illness, we must first understand human consciousness and its relationship with the body.

You know that you have a conscious mind, of course.  You also possess what is often called the subconscious, and this merely consists of feelings, thoughts or experiences that are connected to your conscious mind, but would be considered excess baggage if you had to be aware of them all of the time.  Otherwise they would vie for your attention, and interfere with the present decisions that are so important.

If you tried to hold all of those subconscious memories uppermost in your mind all of the time, then you would literally be unable to think or act in the present moment at all.  You do more or less have a certain access to your own subconscious mind, however.  It is perhaps easier to imagine a continuum of consciousness, for you have a body consciousness also, and that body consciousness is itself made up of the individual consciousness of each molecule that forms all parts of the body itself.

It is sometimes fashionable to say that men and women have conscious minds, subconscious minds, and unconscious minds – but there is no such thing as an unconscious mind.  The body consciousness is highly conscious.  You are simply not usually conscious of it.  Reasoning takes time.  It deals with problem-solving – it forms an hypothesis, and then seeks to prove it by trial and error.

If you had to use that kind of process before you could move a muscle, you would get nowhere at all, of course.  The other portions of your consciousness, then, deal with a kind of automatic thinking, and operate with a kind of knowledge that takes no time in your terms.

You might say that the varying portions of your own consciousness operate at several different speeds.  Translations between one portion of consciousness and another goes on constantly, so that information is translated from one “speed” to another.  Perhaps you can begin to understand, then, that the whole picture of health or illness must be considered from many more viewpoints than you might earlier have supposed.  Many of you have been saturated by conventional, distorted ideas concerning health and illness in general.  You might think, for example, of the body being invaded by viruses, or attacked by a particular disease, and these ideas, then, may make you question.  You might well wonder why the body consciousness does not simply rise up and cast off any threatening diseases: why would the body allow certain cells to go berserk, or outgrow themselves?  The very concept of the immunity system suggests, at least, the disease invader against which the body’s immunity system would or should surely defend itself.

March 18, 1984

You usually think of your conscious mind as your ego.  It is directed toward action in physical life.  Many schools of thought seem to have the curious ideas that the ego is inferior to other portions of the self, or “selfish”, and imagine it to be definitely of a lower quality than the inner self, or the soul.

In the first place, it is really impossible to separate portions of the self, and we make such distinctions only in an effort to explain the many facets of the personality.  It is generally understood, then, that you do have an ego, directed toward exterior activity, and in those terms you also have an inner ego.  It is also conscious, and is the director of all automatic interior activity.

Most people do not realize that they can indeed have access to this inner awareness.  This inner ego or inner self should not be thought of as superior to your ordinary mind.  It should not be thought of, really, as something separate from your ordinary mind.  Your ego and your ordinary consciousness bring into focus all of your physical experiences, and make possible the brilliant preciseness of physical experience.

It is true that physical life represents only one condition of being.  You have other kinds of existence, then.  The conscious mind is one brilliant segment of your larger consciousness, but it is composed of the same universal energy and vitality that composes all consciousness.  There are ways of communicating with the inner ego or inner self, however, and we will discuss some of these very shortly.  It is important, again, to remember that this inner ego or inner self uses a process that is far swifter than reasoning.

When such communications are made, therefore, they often consist of inspiration, intuition, impulses, and deal with feeling far more than with usual logical thinking.

The Way Toward Health - March 13 and 15, 1984

Chapter 3: Daredevils, Death-Defiers, and Health

March 13, 1984

At first thought, it certainly seems as if people love life and fear death – that they seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Yet this is not always the case.  There are people who must feel themselves to be at the brink of death before they can fully appreciate the quality of life.  There are people who cannot appreciate or enjoy the satisfaction of life or of happiness unless faced simultaneously with the threat of death or intense pain.

There are other people who firmly believe that the pursuit of pleasure must lead to pain, and there are also others for whom pain itself is pleasure.  There are also individuals whose beliefs cause them to feel very uncomfortable when they are in a state of health – and for these individuals, poor health brings a sense of security and safety.

There are innumerable stages of health, from high, sheer, energetic exuberance to lethargy and discomfort.  There are, in fact, an almost infinite number of stages connected with the state of health.  You could invent a completely different way of regarding human health by numbering and defining each of those stages.  Instead, of course, your society has chosen to recognize and define all of those stages that are detrimental to health – stages that are recognizable because of health’s absence to one degree or another.

In this book, therefore, we will devote ourselves to ways of promoting health, and we will purposely avoid the specific naming of “dis-eases”.

It should be noted before we begin that death itself is the delivery – a deliverer – of your species and all others.  It is not negative in itself, but instead is the beginning of a different kind of positive existence.  It prunes the planet, so to speak, so that there is a room and time for all, energy and food for all.  Because of death, life is possible, so these two seemingly opposite qualities are simply different versions of the same phenomena.

If death disappeared on your planet even an hour all of life would soon be threatened.  And if all life possible suddenly emerged at once, then most surely all would be annihilated.  We must admit, then, that death is indeed a part of life – and even more, we must say that death is healthy.

Aside: Cellular Communication

… There is a cellular communication between or among all of earth’s living cells, as if the earth itself were one large physical body.

March 15, 1984

Individuals who defy death time and time again are actually more frightened of it than most other people are.

Trapeze performers may have several acts a day, for example.  It seems that such individuals perform with great daring, even with a rashness that is unfamiliar to most people.  Most such performers, however, are extremely regulated.  They work with a carefully calculated eye, under conditions in which each detail, however minute, is of supreme importance.  No matter how often certain trapeze acts may be repeated, for example, there is always the threat of instant disaster – of missed footing, a final plunge.  Through testing “fate”, death-defiers try each time they perform to prove to themselves that they are indeed safe, that they can overcome life’s most dire conditions.

Life, then, has the sweetest buoyancy, the greatest satisfaction, because it is contrasted with the ever-present threat of death.  Many such people do not feel at all safe living under life’s usual conditions.  They protect themselves by setting up the conditions of such an encounter, and controlling those conditions, again down to the smallest detail.

Only when they pursue some death-defying career do such individuals feel safe enough to relax otherwise and live a fairly normal life outside of their death-defying careers.

I do not mean to pass any moral judgment upon such activities.  Often, they do permit an extremely keen sense of exuberance and vitality.  It is also true, however, that such people may enjoy excellent health for years, not counting perhaps an assortment of broken bones and bruises – only to fall suddenly prone to some illness if they try to give up their activities.

This need not be the case, of course.  Self-understanding and self-knowledge may be able to change the individual’s lives for the better, regardless of their activities or conditions of life.  It is true that these individuals do choose for themselves a carefully planned and regulated style of life, in which the threat of death is encountered personally and regularly; each day becomes an odyssey, in which death and life are purposefully weighed.

Children may come down with many childhood diseases, and still be very healthy children indeed.  Adults may break a bone skiing, or indulging in some other sport, and still be very healthy.  People “come down” with colds, or the flu, or some other social disease that is supposed to be passed from one individual to another – yet overall these may be very healthy individuals.  The body has its own self-regulating system.  This is often called the immune system.

If people become ill, it is quite fashionable to say that the immunity system has temporarily failed – yet the body itself knows that certain “dis-eases” are healthy reactions.  The body does not regard diseases as diseases, in usually understood terms.  It regards all activity as experience, as a momentary condition of life, as a balancing situation.  But it possesses a sense of wholeness and of overall integrity, for it knows that it continues to exist, though under different conditions, and it realizes that this change is as natural and necessary as the change of seasons if each individual is to continue to exist, while the earth itself possesses the nutriments necessary to the survival of physical life.

The Way Toward Health - February 22 and March 10 1984

February 22, 1984

In this book, we do want our readers to look at body and mind in a different fashion.

Do not think of the mind as a purely mental entity, and of the body as a purely physical one.  Instead, think of both mind and body as continuing, interweaving processes that are mental and physical at once.  Your thoughts actually are quite as physical as your body is, and your body is quite as nonphysical as it seems to you your thoughts are.  You are actually a vital force, existing as a part of your environment, and yet apart from your environment at the same time.

It is obvious that you impress a room with your characteristics as you furnish it, but you also mark what seems to be empty space in the same fashion – that is, you turn empty space into the living matter of your body without ever realizing that you do so.  Your health and the daily weather interact with each other.  This happens on a personal and mass basis.  I admit that some of this material quite contradicts your usual ideas, but the health of your body is intimately related not only to the state of world health, but to the physical climate as well.

You do not “catch” a drought.  You do not catch a cold, either.  In a fashion a drought is partially caused by the emotional states of the people who experience it – yet a drought is not a disease.  It is part of a process.  It is a necessary portion of the larger process of the world’s physical stability.  As unfortunate as a drought might seem, it is in its way responsible for the balanced portion of moisture of the entire planet’s surface.  In the same way, diseases in their fashion are also often parts of larger processes whose greater purpose is the body’s overall balance and strength.

You cannot see the wind directly – you see only its effects.  The same applies to your thoughts.  They possess power as the wind does, but you only see the effects of their actions.

March 10, 1984

In any case, magic is everywhere in the operation of your body, and in the operation of the world.

My definition of magic is this: Magic is nature unimpeded, or magic is life unimpeded.  It is true that your thoughts and emotions and beliefs form the reality that you experience – but it is also true that this creative construction is, in a manner of speaking, magically formed.  That is, the construction of your body and construction of a world are produced with the greatest combination of order and spontaneity – an order and spontaneity that seems hidden rather than apparent.

You think, for example, without consciously knowing how you do so, and you speak long sentences without consciously being aware at the beginning of the sentence what the conclusion will be.

You think, for example, without consciously knowing how you do so, and you speak long sentences without consciously being aware at the beginning of the sentence what the conclusion will be.

This does not mean that you must forever reman in ignorance, but it does mean that there are different kinds of knowledge, and that all of your information does not come by reasoning alone.  You grew from a fetus into an adult, for instance, so obviously, some part of you does know how to perform such an amazing activity as the growth and care of the physical body.  The reasoning mind alone, however, cannot by itself grow even the smallest cell, or activate the life of even one molecule, yet the growth and maintenance of the body is constant.

The same hidden ability that promotes your body’s health and vitality also fulfills and preserves the world in general.  All of this is done playfully, and yet emerges with the greatest display of order and design.

When you become too serious you overwork your intellect and tire your body, for then it seems that your entire life depends upon the reasoning of your intellect alone.  Instead, of course, your intellectual abilities are supported and promoted by that inner mixture of spontaneity and order that so magically combine to form both your reality and the reality of the world.

Oversoul Seven's Little Book

Oversoul Seven’s Little Book

The Charmed Life. 1

The Body and Creaturehood. 4

The Power and a Special Sumari Song. 5

Sumari Time. 6

The Beginning. 7

On Methods. 7

And Oversoul Seven sat by Tweety’s bedside each night, reading from the special book he’d written just for her. But he also knew that it was written for all children, those young in years, and those hidden within adults. He also knew that the book would automatically rearouse the children within the adults so that they could be comforted in the present for the misunderstandings of the past.

He said to Cyprus, “And my little book is magical. That’s the beauty of it! Whoever really understands what I’m saying will have a charmed life. In fact, I have a whole chapter on that alone …”

So, Seven read to Tweety, a bit at a time …

The Charmed Life

Each life is charmed (Seven said), yours, and everyone else’s, and you must never forget it. The instant you’re born, you’re charmed, because life itself is a charm. Each being is charmed into existence in whatever reality it finds itself, and given everything it needs to operate in the environment. Your body is charmed, too: It’s a magic part of everything else; springing up from all the things you see about you. Atoms and molecules go singing through the miraculous air, forming themselves into rocks and trees and dogs and cats and people, too. You are magic. You charm the air so that it thickens into your body wherever you are.

When you want to move, you think the air ahead of you into becoming your body, and the air behind you then stops being your body … all very magical indeed. You move your arm just one inch to the right, and the air to the left one inch stops being part of your arm. But it all happens so quickly, your snatching of the air and making it turn into your body, that you never notice it at all, and take it quite for granted. Which is why it works so well, you see.

But your life is charmed. And there is a secret, a very simple one. Really, it’s not a secret. But you have to remember that your life is charmed. People who forget can’t use their magic nearly as well as they did before, and they have a tendency to get angry at those who can. So, often, they pretend that no magic exists at all. Then they evolve great philosophies to prove it, which is itself magical, of course. But they can’t see that, because they’re so convinced that magic doesn’t exist.

And many people forget how simple and natural magic is, so they evolve long theories, and methods that are supposed to make it work, when you and I know, and everyone else really knows, that magic happens by itself, because that’s what magic is.

But people are also very creative … magic again! … so they make up gods of this and that, and realms and spheres, and maps to chart out in advance where magic might be taking them so they don’t get surprised, which is silly because magic goes where it wants to, which is everywhere. And when you try to map it out in advance, you really cut yourself short.

Because a characteristic of magic is that it automatically turns into whatever you want it to be. You create your own reality with it, so whatever maps you make are real. And if you forget what magic is, then you’re liable to think that your map is the only real one, and all others are false. You get in a terrible bind, fighting over which way is right, which road or map, while all the time magic is what makes the maps. And a great variety of maps can appear in the twinkling of an eye!

Particularly when you grow up, many people will tell you that there is no magic. If you believe them, then you’ll forget too, and you’ll act as if you aren’t charmed and bring unmagic into your life … which is magic too, you see, but magic that doesn’t know itself. Then you’ll create things that go with unmagic, like sorrow or sickness, and you’ll have to deal with them at that level until you remember that your life is charmed again.

So, in the meantime you’ll feel nasty and unloved and angry, way beyond what is natural, and have to worry about sad or fearful emotions and what to do with them, when magically, you’d know: They’d just come and go exuberantly like summer storms. But anger and hate and sorrow are all magic too, and left alone, they’d lead you back to the knowledge that your life is charmed. Because hate is love looking for itself every place but where love is; and love is what you feel for yourself when you know that you are where you’re supposed to be in the universe, and that you’re lovely just because you are, and, of course, charmed.

Not only that, but you’re also the magic maker; the inner living part of you that forms your life. But consciously you have to know this, accept and acknowledge it, and let the magic of yourself happen. That way, you’re directing the magic of yourself.

But it’s even more fun just to let the magic happen as it wants to, because it’s your magic, and that way it keeps telling you more and more about your magical self. Then the magic flows through you with unimpeded delight. If you keep saying, “I want it this way and no other,” then you may be limiting your physical experience, because there’s no doubt that your inner magical self knows more about your potentials than you do. And it will tell you quite clearly, if you only listen.

To many adults, all of this sounds too simple and unintellectual, because unfortunately many of them think that the mind is just something to say “no” with, and to keep out magic. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But if you use your mind to say no to magic, then it’s like closing doors to your own charmed existence, and refusing to use the full power of your life.

Everyone works with magic, whether they realize it or not. Beliefs are magic, too, you see. Many people think that one particular belief makes everything right; or makes magic happen. And as long as they believe that, they’re all right for a while. But if they start doubting that belief, and don’t find another one to replace it, then they think that they’ve lost their Magic, or that life has. Instead, of course, the magic is there all along.

But people love systems, so they use all kinds of beliefs … some of them quite handy … as aids. And they travel through belief systems, sometimes going to considerable trouble to do so, when all they really have to remember is that they are magic themselves, and their lives are charmed without their having to do anything about it at all.

And your conscious mind is magic, too. Its workings are mysterious and complicated, and simple and clear at once, like air is. Your conscious mind looks out through your eyes, and knows parcels of air as its body, and smiles through cheeks and skin the same way that the moon shines through the wide skin of the heavens. See how clear and mysterious it all is? So, in a way, it’s silly for the conscious mind to question magic, because— well, it’s so magical itself.

But systems of magic are silly, too, and all of them are really based upon doubt. Magic is considered so tenuous that someone has to be at it all the time, making spells or paying someone else to do it. And the spells all have to be done just right, so people concentrate on how to do this spell or another. This gets very complicated, and many adult books deal with the subject.

But everything is a spell. Your words and thoughts are spells. Science is just another system that tries to discover what certain spells cause certain effects. Usually, of course, scientists don’t understand magic any more than priests do; and they all get caught up in their own complicated methods.

There isn’t much basic difference between muttering a lot of different phrases or drawing magic circles to protect yourself against illness, and taking handfuls of pills given to you by doctors. Both methods work if you believe in them, though the practitioners of one method will never agree that the other way works at all, of course. And unfortunately, neither side really understands magic, which is behind all of the spells and methods and formulas.

Spells work if you believe in them; only you don’t need spells at all. Everything happens by itself. You happen by yourself, so does the world. And the principle behind it all is magic. And magic is the beingness within and behind all things.

The Body and Creaturehood

Within your creaturehood, you have all kinds of freedom. And all of the freedom you can ever enjoy in your lifetime must come through your creaturehood. Some people spend a good deal of time trying to ignore their own bodies, or trying to pretend that they only have minds, or that minds alone are important. Some people even try to ignore their bodies almost entirely in an effort to be more spiritual, or to be “better” people, which is like a bird trying to fly better than any other bird alive … all the time refusing to use its wings, or pretending that they weren’t there. He’d never get off the ground. A bird would never think of such foolishness, of course, and often other creatures are smarter than people.

In fact, whenever you’re in trouble, it’s a good idea to watch the animals, for they bask in their freedom and don’t worry about their limitations. A cat or dog can teach you a lot. A cat really enjoys its catness, just as you should enjoy your creaturehood. Even a fly buzzing around the ceiling loves its own reality and is free in it. If it stopped to wonder whether or not it could really fly— well, it would fall down in a minute or never go fast enough to outwit your mother’s flyswatter.

So, trying to be religious or “good” or “better” by ignoring your body doesn’t make much sense either.

Actually, each person has a private kingdom for his or her very own, because your body is the one part of earth that is really yours, that no one can take away during your lifetime. It’s the part of earth, moving and alive, that belongs to you and nobody else. In a way, it’s your portion of the planet, sprung up in a living, moving statue of earth-stuff, for you and no one else. So how you treat your body is important.

You just don’t live in it, either. You live through it; there’s a difference. You flow through it, moving in all of its parts. The body is your own magic country. Your conscious mind is like a monarch. Now, a good king or queen is loving and gives the people freedom to move about the country. In this case, your own feelings and thoughts and desires are like the people in your kingdom. So, you should treat your own feelings graciously, and you and your kingdom will flourish. Some monarchs are dictators, setting up all kinds of impossible laws and taboos, because they’re really afraid of the people who make up their own kingdom.

If you’re a good king or queen, you’ll realize that your kingdom is a good one, and you won’t be afraid of your own people … your thoughts and feelings and desires … but will encourage them. And you and your body will have all the freedom necessary to flourish and grow.

The Power and a Special Sumari Song

Now, here’s a Sumari song, to help you remember that your existence is a charmed one. A Sumari song is one that speaks to your ordinary self and to your magical self at once. It’s a charmed song, of course. But it isn’t a spell or a sign or even a symbol, because all those things can be very tricky indeed. For example, if you believe that your magic comes from a medal or a cross or a necklace, and you lose your luckpiece, then you’re in trouble, and you think that your magic is gone. Then you can spend a lifetime trying to find it.

And if you think that spells make magic, then you aren’t secure either, because you might forget the words to the spell, since no one is infallible. Besides, people who believe in spells guard them very jealously, and often think that they alone have “the power,” and if you want to learn their methods, then you must endure trials to prove your courage. And, of course, you must promise to follow the rules, and prove that you are worthy of “the power.” Again, all of this is very silly because flowers and birds and frogs have the power too, and without having to prove themselves to anyone, or pass any tests.

So, the Sumari song is just a reminder. It’s been translated from an inner language into one that you can understand, but the magic is still in it. It will jog your memory when you’re in danger of forgetting that your life is charmed. Of course, you might forget the song. But even then, you’d only lose a valuable reminder— which would be a pity— but you wouldn’t believe that your magic had gone with your memory. Still, I hope that you’ll always remember that your life is charmed, and that your magic is you; and you don’t have to prove anything to yourself or anyone else to get it!

Here is the Sumari song:

My mind is like a frog

On a lily pad,

Knowing, alone,

But never lonely.

My mind is green

And glowing,

Leaping without slipping

From lily-pad-thought

To thought.

My mind sits smiling

On the pond of my being,

In morning and evening,

Always knowing the time,

Yet not needing

A clock.

Sumari Time

There are special moments that are open channels in which a different kind of time emerges; an inside-Sumari kind of non-time. And in that time, everything is miraculous. One hour of it is worth— well, days of ordinary minutes. In Sumari time, you can learn something in a twinkling that might otherwise take years, and insights spring up, brilliant as fresh fruit, for the picking.

This Sumari time is the special heart of time, and contains its real meaning. Again, it’s really a non-time, always new and shiny, and it contains secrets that are secrets only because so few people realize that this glittering time exists, and right in the middle of the regular time that they know.

Now, in earth time, so many minutes add up to so many hours, and when you’re living in that framework alone, then so much time is needed to get things done. But inspiration is quite different. It seeks out those special moments when magic leaps from one world to the other with such ease.

And each person has his or her own key to Sumari time. All you have to do is use it. You can write or paint or learn things or solve problems or just be supremely happy ten times as well in one hour of Sumari time as you can in ten regular hours.

Of course, Sumari and earth time coincide, which is tricky, I admit. And earth time springs out of Sumari time, but people divide up usual time so much that they never realize that time is really whole.

So, Sumari time is whole time, since we’re using the term “time” at all. Later we’ll dispense with it entirely. But right now, the trick is to recognize Sumari time and use it.

If time were a fruit, then Sumari time would be its nectar and essence, and if time were a holiday, then Sumari time would be Christmas.

When most people bump into a corner of Sumari time, they’re delighted, but they don’t know how to find it again, when it’s there all the while.

Stacks and stacks of the wrong kind of hours won’t give you even one minute of good Sumari time, though. Because in a strange way, a Sumari hour is the other side of an earth hour. I mean, all of a sudden, for example, 11 o’clock becomes transparent; it is what it is, on top, but it’s something else too, underneath. And you can peer through— well, time itself.

The Beginning

It’s deceptive to say that thus and so “happened in the beginning,” or that “in the beginning was the word,” or whatever, because there was no official Beginning when God suddenly came parading out of nothingness, bearing the ingredients of mountains, oceans, and land, and trailing sky banners proclaiming the opening of the universe, or the creation of life from a sea of gasses.

There are multitudinous beginnings. “The Beginning” is only the one you came in on, so to speak, which is rather like coming into a dream in the middle and wondering what happened earlier. In dreams, everything really happens at once, even though there seems to be a beginning and ending … the past and present and future merge … and the universe is like that in a way. You’re bound to wonder what went on or how long it’s all been going on, not realizing that in a matter of speaking, it just started when you got there. And in another way, it really isn’t there at all.

If you dream that you’re in a jungle, for instance, no vines or tangled undergrowth climb up the bedpost, and no exotic animals prowl between the window and the door. Yet the jungle certainly seems real. Where did it come from, or when did it begin? The universe is like the dream jungle. It exists quite properly, yet in the most profound way it makes no sense to ask when it began. It begins each day, each moment, at each point of our contact with it.

The gods exist in the same manner, like a giant species of consciousness, striding psychological paths of vast proportions that never really physically appear in the world at all. The gods and the universe really begin everyplace and everywhere at once, at every point. Our psychological reality rises from an inner inconceivable divine mind that’s invisible to us, since we are It, earthized, individualized. We’re the gods in camouflage.

On Methods

(“This small chapter is very important,” Oversoul Seven said, “so do pay attention, Tweety, and anyone else who might be listening.”)

The whole thing about techniques is the idea that you need certain methods to make things work for you, when all you have to do is let things alone: Then they “work” for you automatically. If you forget that fact, then you’ll always be looking for better and better methods … which will never really work … because Nature and your own nature work best when left alone.

If you’re going to study such issues at all, then look for what you do right, and you’ll always find that in those areas you let yourself alone and do what comes naturally, because you are inclined in that direction.

When you concentrate on what’s wrong, you almost always try too hard, look for methods that will work better than the ones you’re using now … when the truth is that the methods themselves stand in the way, whatever they are. Because Nature doesn’t use methods. It “works” because it is what it is.

Methods presuppose the opposite, in whatever area of your concern. They show your belief that nature doesn’t work right on its own.

Roberts, Jane. The Oversoul Seven Trilogy: The Education of Oversoul Seven, The Further Education of Oversoul Seven, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time

(Jane Roberts Seth Books)

Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc.

The Way Toward Health - February 15, 17 and 21, 1984

February 15, 1984

There are styles of thinking, just as there are various styles of dress.

The official line of consciousness is a certain mental stance, a kind of convention.  When you were a child you thought in a freer fashion, but little by little you were educated to use words in a certain way.  You discovered that your needs were met more quickly, and you received approval more often, when you thought and spoke in that particular manner.  Finally, it seemed to be the only natural mode of operation.  Your entire civilization is built around that kind of inner framework.  The way of thinking becomes so automatic as to be mentally invisible.  With creative people, however, there are always intrusions, hints or clues from ways of thinking that certainly appear foreign, and creative people use those hints and clues to construct an art, a musical composition or whatever.  They sense a surge of power beneath.

You and Ruburt have had the feelings many times – but what we are trying to do is change over completely from one mode of operation to another, and to construct, say, new inner blocks of meaning that will give rise to the next era.

What you are involved in then is really, of course, a completely new educational procedure, so that you are at least able to distinguish one style of thought from another, and therefore be freer to make choices.

I did want to give you this material, and in a fashion this will help you understand about the platform that Ruburt imagines, and the inner procedure required for a session without a session.

February 17, 1984

I wanted to remind Ruburt of some material given several times in the past.

When an idea for a book or a poem comes to him, he “tunes into it” immediately.  It never occurs to him to wonder how many vowels or syllables, words and sentences, paragraphs or pages might be involved.  He takes it for granted that his intent will be executed.

That is the natural, creative way to function, and it has provided him with many excellent books and poetry.  When he is writing, he does not think in terms of impediments.  What impediments there may be, he brushes aside.

Now his health can be handled in the same fashion, without wondering how many nerves or muscles or stages must be activated, without worrying about how much time will be involved.  In a fashion, the body is a living book, being produced in every moment.

Again, it may seem too simple – but by applying the same methods to the body, the body’s health will be written with health and vitality, using blood and corpuscles, joints and ligaments and so forth instead of syllables, consonants, words and sentences.

February 21, 1984

Apropos the material I mentioned yesterday (about Jane’s symptoms, particularly her eyes).

Most such material is indeed given at a later date, though not always under the same heading or category, and often wound into another body of material.

Specifically, I wanted to make the point that the body’s actions are unfortunately often misread and misunderstood.  The body often clears out, or tires out, its own processes – perhaps by being feverish for several days, and then by lowering the temperature once unwanted materials are burned out, so to speak.

It may store urine to retain minerals at one time, and urinate seemingly to excess in another.  When the body is basically held in distrust, however, all such behaviour is considered dangerous and suspect.  Ruburt’s “cold”, the bothersome eyes, are all connected with unusual muscular activity of the jaws, head, shoulders, arms and hands.  In your terms, the conditions will right themselves, with the eye muscles being both more flexible and more elastic as needed.