The past, in the present, would appear so brilliantly that man could not react adequately in circumstances of time that he had himself created. The future was blocked, practically speaking (long pause), to preserve freedom of action and to encourage physical exploration, curiosity, and creativity. With memory, however, mental projections into the future were of course also possible so that man could plan his activities in time, and foresee probable results: “Ghost images” of the future probabilities always acted as mental stimuli for physical explorations in all areas, and of all kinds.

New paragraph (and more rapidly): As egotistical consciousness expands to include hereto largely neglected data, then it will experience, practically speaking, a new kind of identity; knowing itself differently. Its concepts of godhood will significantly alter, as will the dimensions of emotion. Your heritage includes vastly richer veins of love, yet your concepts of self and godhood have severely limited these. You often seem to hate those with different beliefs than your own, for example, and you have perpetrated cruelties upon others in the name of religion and in the name of science, because your limited ideas about the nature of the self led you to fear your emotions. Often you are afraid that love will overwhelm you, for instance.

Now: Here, and throughout this book there will be sections dealing with Practice Elements — in capitals — where to some extent you can see how certain of these concepts can be practically experienced, and receive at least a hint of their application.

PRACTICE ELEMENT 1

Your theories of time are connected with your usual neurological pulses. It is one thing to play with concepts of multidimensionality, or probabilities, and quite another to be practically presented with them, even briefly, when your thought patterns and neurological habits tell you that they cannot be translated. So Ruburt felt frustrated, and he told me in no uncertain terms (see Appendix 4) that his consciousness could not contain the information he was receiving.

5. A note added within the week: The specific exercise connected with this first Practice Element appears in the next, 687th, session.