1 result for (book:notp AND session:799 AND stemmed:time)
[... 14 paragraphs ...]
This requires some unique understanding. I am aware of that — and yet the destructive storms worked by mankind ultimately cannot be said to be any more evil than the earthquake. While man’s works may often certainly appear destructive, you must not blame man’s intent, nor must you ever make the error of confusing man with his works. For many well-intentioned artists, with the best of intentions, produce at times shoddy works of art, all the more disappointing and deplorable to them because of the initial goodness of their intent.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
It is shared by all of the other animals. Each animal knows that under certain conditions the other may fight or posture aggressively, or defend its nest. Each animal knows that in time of hunger it might be hunted by another. Except for those situations, however, the animals are not afraid of each other. They know that each other animal is of good intent.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]
Now: Physically your body has a stance in space and time. I will speak of primary and secondary experience. Let us call primary experience that which exists immediately in sense terms in your moment of time — the contact of body with environment. I am creating certain divisions here to make our discussion — or (with a smile) monologue — easier. Therefore, I will call secondary experience that information that comes to you through, say, reading, television, discussion with others, letters, and so forth.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
At the levels with which we are concerned, the body must primarily react to present, immediate, primary existence in space and time. At other levels it is equipped to handle many kinds of data, in that I have mentioned before the precognition of cells. But the body depends on the conscious mind to give it a clear assessment of precise conditions of the space and time it occupies. It depends upon that knowledge.
[... 9 paragraphs ...]
In your terms, while you live, and in the most pertinent terms of intimate sensation, your reality must be what you perceive in the framework of your time, and what you create within that framework as it is experienced. Therefore, I entreat you not to behave as if man will destroy himself in some future — not to behave as if man is an imbecile, doomed to extinction, a dimwitted, half-crazy animal with a brain gone amuck.
None of the prophesied destruction man so fears is a reality in your time; nor, for all of the critical prophets through the ages, and the forerunners of doom, has the creativity of man destroyed itself in those terms.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
(11:09. My writing hand was tired — one of the few times this has happened in the sessions. Jane’s pace had been much faster than usual, and often much louder than it usually is. I thought the material was excellent. Jane didn’t really want to take a break. In fact, she was ready to resume in a few minutes, but I asked her to wait a bit until my hand rested somewhat. Resume in the same manner, then, at 11:14.)
[... 1 paragraph ...]
Whatever your scientists think, your body and your consciousness and your universe spring constantly into actualization. Therefore, through cultivating the clear experience of your own consciousness and being with time and with the moment as you feel it, you can draw upon the greater vitality and power that is available.
To do this, rely upon your immediate sense data, not secondary experience as described. That primary sense data, while pinpointed in the present, providing you with the necessary stance in time, still can open up to you the timelessness from which all time emerges, can bring you intuitive intimations, hinting at the true nature of the ever-present coming-to-be of the universe.
That kind of experience will let you glimpse the larger patterns of man’s creativity, and your part in it. You have been taught to concentrate upon criticisms and faults in your society; and in your times it seems that everything will work out wrong — that left alone the world will run down, the universe will die, man will destroy himself; and these beliefs so infiltrate your behavior that they organize much of your experience and rob you of the benefits nature itself everywhere provides in direct primary experience.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
I am afraid that I think some of this will still escape you — meaning Ruburt, yourself, and others. But while disasters, imagined or encountered second-handedly, may in fact later occur, they are far different from physically encountered ones. You only add to their unfortunate nature by negatively brooding upon what might happen in the future, and you destroy your own stance. Your stance in time is highly important, for it is your practical base of operations.
You must trust your sense data in that regard. Otherwise you confuse your psychological and corporal stance, for the body cannot be in a situation of safety and danger at the same time. It wastes its resources fighting imaginary battles.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
The natural creature-validity of your senses must remain clear, and only then can you take full advantage of those intuitions and visions that must come through your own private intersection with space and time.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
(“Well, we might as well make it next time.”)
[... 4 paragraphs ...]