1 result for (book:notp AND session:780 AND stemmed:do)
(As we sat for the session, Jane reminded me that she thought Seth would do an introduction tonight for her own book on Paul Cézanne. This feeling had first come to her earlier today.
(“Wouldn’t that be a riot?” she laughed. “But I’ve done introductions for Seth’s books, so why shouldn’t he do one for mine?” And yes, the Cézanne material mentioned earlier — see Jane’s introduction for Psyche — had developed into a full-fledged book of its own.
(A note of interest: The area immediately surrounding Elmira had some considerable flooding today, although the city itself wasn’t affected to any great degree. In any case, Jane and I were safe and dry on our little hill this time — a far cry from our experiences in the great flood of 1972, as described in The Nature of Personal Reality. After that event, we decided that a flood was one reality we could do without!)
[... 6 paragraphs ...]
It is easy for you to see how the cells of the body form it — that is, you understand at least the cooperative nature of the cell’s activities. An alteration on the part of one cell immediately causes changes in the others, and brings about a difference in body behavior. It is somewhat more difficult for you to understand the ways in which your own actions and those of others combine to bring about world events. On the one hand, each of my readers is but one individual alive on the planet at any given “time.” It may seem that the individual has little power. On the other hand, each individual alive is a necessary one. It is true to say that the world begins and ends with each person. That is, each of your actions is so important, contributing to the experience of others whom you do not know, that each individual is like a center about which the world revolves.
If you did not do what you did today, for example, the entire world would be in some way different.
Your acts ripple outward in ways that you do not understand, interacting with the experience of others, and hence forming world events. The most famous and the most anonymous person are connected through such a fabric, and an action seemingly small and innocuous can end up changing history as you understand it.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
In metaphysical terms, you have your being in your psyche or soul in somewhat the same manner. Identities are obviously psychic environments, primarily, rather than physical ones. Physical objects cannot move through each other, as a table cannot move through a chair. Mental events behave differently. They can mix and merge, move through each other while still maintaining their own focus. They can interact on psychic levels in the way that events do on physical levels, but without physical restrictions. Though you are a portion of your psyche, then, your identity is still inviolate. It will not be submerged or annihilated in a greater self. It carries a stamp — a divine mark — of its own integrity. It follows its own focus, and knows itself as itself, even while its own existence as itself may be but a portion of another “identity.”
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
(Long pause at 10:01.) You take your breathing, your moving, for granted, though they are unconsciously produced. In certain terms, however, “at one time” you had to learn how to do these things that you are not now consciously concerned with. At still other levels of reality, activities that you now consciously claim as your own have — in those same terms and from another viewpoint — become unconscious, providing a psychic history from which other identities emerge, as it seems that your own identities emerge from unconscious bodily activity.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
I said that languages gain their meaning largely from the pauses and hesitations between sounds. They obviously gain their meaning also because of the sounds not used, so that any one language also implies the existence of all others. To that extent, all other languages reside silently within any given spoken language. The same applies to language written upon a page. The written characters make sense because of their arrangement, and precisely because they are chosen over other characters that do not appear.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
The same applies, however, to every other person. Each of them becomes a primary focus or identity within which all others are implied. In ordinary terms, you do not “make yourselves.” You are like a living language spoken by someone who did not originate it — the language was there for you to use. The language in this case is a molecular one that speaks your physical being. The components of that language or the earth elements that form the body were already created when you were born, as the alphabet of your particular language was waiting to be used.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
You can read the world in a different way, while still maintaining your own identity, or you can move into a different country of yourself that speaks your native language but with a different slant. You do this to some extent or another whenever you tune in to broadcasts to which you usually pay no attention. The news is slightly foreign, while it is still interpreted through the language that you know. You are getting a translation of reality.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
I have said that all events occur at once — a difficult statement to understand. All identities occur at once also. Each event changes every other. Present ones alter past ones. Any one event implies the existence of probable events which do not “emerge,” which are not “spoken.” Physical world events therefore rest upon the existence of implied probable events. Different languages use sounds in their own peculiar manners, with their own rhythms, one emphasizing what another ignores. Other probabilities, therefore, emphasize events that are only implied (as pauses) in your reality, so that your physical events become the implied probable ones upon which other worlds reside.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]