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[... 8 paragraphs ...]
We must unfortunately often deal with analogies, because they can form bridgeworks between concepts. There are units of consciousness,3 then, as there are units of matter. I do not want you to think of these units as particles. There is a basic unit of consciousness that, expressed, will not be broken down, as once it was thought that an atom was the smallest unit and could not be broken down. The basic unit of consciousness obviously is not physical. It contains within itself innately infinite properties of expansion, development, and organization; yet within itself always maintains the kernel of its own individuality. Despite whatever organizations it becomes part of, or how it mixes with other such basic units, its own identity is not annihilated.
[... 12 paragraphs ...]
All matter is based upon the units mentioned, with their unpredictability and their propensity for exploring all probabilities. Even your atomic structure, then, is poised between probabilities. If this is true, then obviously “you” are aware of only one small probable portion of yourself — and this portion you protect as your identity (underlined). If you think of it as simply a focus taken by “your” greater identity, then you will be able to follow what I am saying without feeling puny by contrast, or lost.6 The focus that you have is indeed inviolate.
I have often said that even in your lifetimes, all probable variations of any one event occur, but I never went much further. With your focus, it seems that you have a line of identity from birth to death. Looking back at any point, you are sure that the “self” of ten years ago is the self of today, though perhaps changed in certain respects.
[... 4 paragraphs ...]
Because of the great organizing nature of these basic units, there are also psychological structures that are quite capable of holding their own identities while being aware of any given number of probable selves. Life after death has great meaning in your reality, because death is a part of it. Your greater reality obviously transcends both your births and your deaths. The idea of one universe alone is basically nonsensical. Your reality must be seen in its relationship to others.8 Otherwise you are always caught in questions like “How did the universe begin?” or “When will it end?” All systems are constantly being created.
[... 6 paragraphs ...]
Now: Because your greater identity is aware of its probable existences, you are in matter and out of it at the same time — in time and out of it.
You have a greater identity outside of your context, yet a part of it is inside your context, as you. Your youness is your significance, a focus of awareness, conscious of itself, that seeks out and views experience with its own unique propensities. The existence of probable realities and probable selves in no way denies the validity of your own experience or individuality. That rides secure, choosing from unpredictable fields of actuality those that suit its own particular nature.
(With gestures, emphatically) That selfhood jumps in leapfrog fashion over events that it does not want to actualize (pause), and does not admit such experience into its selfhood. Other portions of your greater identity, however, do accept those same events rejected by you, and form their own selfhoods.
[... 22 paragraphs ...]