1 result for (book:tma AND heading:"session two august 11 1980" AND stemmed:reason)
[... 21 paragraphs ...]
Now when you understand that intellectually, then the intellect can take it for granted that its own information is not all the information you possess. It can realize that its own knowledge represents the tip of the iceberg. As you apply that realization to your life you begin to realize furthermore that in practical terms you are indeed supported by a greater body of knowledge than you consciously realize, and by the magical, spontaneous fountain of action that forms your existence. The intellect can then realize that it does not have to go it all alone: Everything does not have to be reasoned out, even to be understood.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]
(9:36.) The intellect is a great organizer — along certain lines, now — so if this concentration is continued it begins to organize its perceptions and experience along the same lines. It is a kind of misguided attempt to find order by finding data that agrees with itself. It collects evidence, then, to prove its point, because the rational mind, as you understand it, must have an acceptable reason for everything (underlined) (all intently).
[... 31 paragraphs ...]
“The insight that flashed into my consciousness was that human beings haven’t changed either, really, that our more complicated mental processes only make it seem that we have. Coupled with this is the idea that magic, as we call it, reflects a basic part of our natural mental equipment and abilities, but that our present course of action, our focusing upon the material and the intellectual — the ‘reasonable’ portions of our psyche — has created artificial divisions, in which magic seems quite ‘unreasonable’ or unreal. Actually, our need for magic is a very real, vital, and integral portion of our psyches.
“The conscious idea of magic, then, is a mask, or contrived version, of the psyche’s innate clairvoyant, telepathic, and precognitive abilities. We permit distorted versions of those attributes to surface as magic, as entertainment — which thus relieves us of the need to take them seriously. That’s the course our species has chosen during much of our recorded history, so far, and for many reasons.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]