1 result for (book:notp AND session:797 AND stemmed:natur)
[... 16 paragraphs ...]
While you believe in and experience the passage of time, then such questions will naturally occur to you, and in that fashion. Within that framework they make sense. When you begin to question the nature of time itself, then the “when” of the universe is beside the point.
Almost anyone will agree, I should hope, that the universe is a most splendid example of creativity. Few would agree, however, that you can learn more about the nature of the universe by examining your own creativity than you can by examining the world through instruments — and here is exquisite irony, for you create the instruments of creativity, even while at the same time you often spout theories that deny to man all but the most mechanical of reactions.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
These are creative distortions on your part, directly related to specializations of consciousness that cut you off from the greater concourse existing at other levels between the species and the land. Again, consciousness everywhere pervades the universe, and is aware of all conditions. The balance of nature upon your planet is no chance occurrence, but the result of constant, instant computations on the part of each most minute consciousness, whether it forms part of a rock, a person, an animal, a plant. Each invisibly “holds space together,” whatever its station. This is a cooperative venture. Your own consciousness has its particular unique qualities, in that like other comparatively long-lived species, you associate your identity with your form far more rigidly. Other kinds of consciousness “leap in and out of forms” with greatest leeway. There is a biological understanding that exists, for example, when one animal kills another one for food. The consciousness of the prey leaves its body under the impetus of a kind of stimulus unknown to you.
I want to be very careful here, for I am speaking of natural interplay among the animals. This is not anywhere meant to justify the cruel slaughtering of animals by man under many circumstances.
[... 9 paragraphs ...]
(To me:) Since your birth a probability has occurred that you could have followed, in which your wars did not happen. There is another probability in which the Second World War ended in nuclear destruction, and you did not enter that one either. You chose “this” probable reality in order to ask certain questions about the nature of man — seeing him where he wavered equally between creativity and destruction, knowledge and ignorance; but a point that contained potentials for the most auspicious kinds of development, in your eyes. The same applies to Ruburt.
In a way, man is trans-species at this point in probability. It is a time and a probability in which every bit of help is needed, and your talents, abilities, and prejudices made you both uniquely fitted for such a drama. At the same time, do not dwell too much upon that world situation, for a concentration upon your own nature and upon the physical nature of your world — the seasons, and so forth — allows you to refresh your own energy, and frees you to take advantage of that clear vision that is so necessary.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]