Consciousness is, among other things, a spontaneous exercise in creativity. You are learning now, in a three-dimensional context, the ways in which your emotional and psychic existence can create varieties of physical form. You manipulate within the psychic environment, and these manipulations are then automatically impressed upon the physical mold. Now our environment is in itself creative in a different manner than yours. Your environment is creative in that trees bear fruit, that there is a self-sustaining principle, that the earth feeds its own, for example. The naturally creative aspects are the materializations of the deepest psychic, spiritual, and physical inclinations of the species, set up in your terms eons ago, and a part of the racial bank of psychic knowledge.

It is also in a way distant from my own environment, for in my own environment I would have some difficulties in relating information in physically oriented terms. You must understand that by distance I do not refer to space.

We endow the elements of our environment with an even greater creativity that is difficult to explain. We do not have flowers that grow, for example. But the intensity, the condensed psychic strength of our psychological natures forms new dimensions of activity. If you paint a picture within three-dimensional existence, then the painting must be on a flat surface, merely hinting at the complete three-dimensional experience that you cannot insert into it. In our environment, however, we could actually create whatever dimensional effects we desired. All of these abilities are not ours alone. They are your heritage. As you will see later in this book, you exercise your own inner senses, and multidimensional abilities, more frequently than it might seem, in other states of consciousness than the normal, waking one.

Your own physical environment appears as it does to you because of your own psychological structure. If you gained your sense of personal continuity through associative processes primarily, rather than as a result of the familiarity of self moving through time, then you would experience physical reality in an entirely different fashion. Objects from past and present could be perceived at once, their presence justified through associative connections. Say that your father throughout his lifetime has eight favorite chairs. If your perceptive mechanisms were primarily set up as a result of intuitive association rather than time sequence, then you would perceive all of these chairs at one time; or seeing one, you would be aware of the others. So environment is not a separate thing in itself, but the result of perceptive patterns, and these are determined by psychological structure.

If you believe otherwise, then you are limited; your environment then represents the sum total of knowledge and experience. As long as you believe your environment to be objective and independent of yourself, then to a large extent you feel powerless to change it, to see beyond it, or to imagine other alternatives that may be less apparent. Later in the book I will explain various methods that will allow you to change your environment beneficially and drastically.

Now: I have spent some time emphasizing the fact that each of us forms our own environment, because I want you to realize that the responsibility for your life and your environment is your own.

I have also discussed reincarnation in terms of environment because many schools of thought over-emphasize the effects of reincarnational existences, so that often they explain present-life circumstances as a result of rigid and uncompromising patterns determined in a “past” life. You will feel relatively incompetent to handle present physical reality, to alter your environment, to affect and change your world, if you feel that you are at the mercy of conditions over which you have no control.

[...] In each life you choose and create your own settings or environments; and in this one you chose your parents and whatever childhood incidents that came within your experience. [...]

[...] Your own physical environment is constantly tended by you automatically. It constantly reflects in its own way the nature of your inner environment. [...] Every least alteration of psychic and emotional existence immediately alters the nature of the physical environment through instant interaction.

The immediate physical environment of your own apartment, for example, is the result of continual inner processes with which you are not acquainted. The existence, maintenance, and appearance of that environment depends upon inner manipulations and automatic transfers that are as natural and as necessary to your existence physically, as breath.

[...] You also then know and develop yourselves through your own creations, and you automatically create and maintain your physical environment in the same manner that you breathe. Your physical image and your physical environment are both materialized extensions of your inner selves.

The physical body itself however has much more to do with the maintenance of environment than is realized, for you use it so that your environment becomes almost like a second body, extending outward from the first, through which you express your inclinations and characteristics. [...]

[...] Legitimate projection environments are as real as the physical environment.

These environments may appear distorted to you, but the distortion is usually your own and not that of the environment. [...]

[...] Some projection environments will not, of course, appear physical in your terms, and in your terms will therefore lack the suitable characteristics of reality.

I am speaking of a deeper relationship to the environment, however, and of the environment’s symbolic as well as practical aspects in relationship to health and illness. Your ideas about your own body, your mind, the universe and your part in it, and your relationship to family, friends, and environment are all connected to your state of health, to your sense of well-being, or your feelings of dis-hyphen-ease. [...]

[...] It is possible, however, to carry this idea even further, so that a person in poor health should be seen by the physician in relationship to the family, and also in relationship to the environment. Old-time family doctors understood the patient’s sensitivity to family members and to the environment, of course, and they often felt a lively sympathy and understanding that the practitioners of modern medicine often seem to have forgotten.

With many people having such difficulties, the addition of love in the environment may work far better than any heart operation. [...] In other words, “a love transplant” in the environment may work far better overall than a heart-transplant operation, or a bypass, or whatever; in such ways the heart is allowed to heal itself.

In the next chapter let us look more specifically at the importance of symbolism in your mind, your body, and your environment.

[...] Our existence takes us into many other environments, and we blend (gesture) into these. We follow what rules of form exist within these environments. [...]

You can learn to change your physical environment, therefore, by learning to change and manipulate your dream environment. [...]

My environment, as I told you, changes constantly, but then, so does your own. [...]

You are constantly changing the form, the shape, the contour, and the meaning of your physical body and most intimate environment, although you do your best to ignore these constant alterations. [...]

That environment is not something separate from yourself, for you to control. Instead, you and the environment support, strengthen, and fortify each other in ways that often escape you. (Pause.) All portions of the environment contain their own kinds of consciousness. [...] They add to the world’s health, in other words, and your own vitality — and that of your environment — are everywhere interrelated.

[...] Such ideas certainly do not foster feelings of security, health, or well-being, and they distort the nature of your physical environment.

I must explain this before I can clearly give you an idea of my environment, or of those other systems of reality in which I operate. There is no space between my environment and yours, for example, no physical boundaries that separate us. [...]

My environment, as I mentioned earlier, is not one of a personality recently dead in your terms, but later I will describe what you can expect under those conditions. One large difference between your environment and mine is that you must physically materialize mental acts as physical matter. [...]

You will continue to grow and develop, and you will become aware of other environments, even as you left your childhood home. But environments are not objective things, conglomerations of objects that exist independently of you. [...]

(9:25.) Each such personality, however, comes with a built-in idea of the reality in which it will operate, and its mental equipment is highly tailored to meet very specialized environments. [...]

[...] Your environment is not simply the world about you as you know it, but also consists of past-life environments upon which you are not now focusing. Your real environment is composed of your thoughts and emotions, for from these you form not only this reality but each reality in which you take part. [...]

Your real environment is innocent of space and time as you know them. In your real environment you have no need for words, for communication is instantaneous. In your real environment you form the physical world that you know.

[...] It changes its form to suit its expression, and it forms environments like stage settings, and worlds to suit its purposes. [...]

The settings in your physical environment, the sometimes lovely paraphernalia, the physical aspects of life as you know it, are all camouflages, and so I call your physical reality a camouflage. [...]

[...] In normal consciousness, the immediate environment will be perceived in a far different manner than it would be, say, if an individual were in a state of depression. [...] In feedback fashion, the environment then seems to reinforce his joy.

[...] Any exterior move that you make is made within the interior environment, within all the interior environments with which you are involved.

[...] Various states of consciousness seem to have their own environments in which these symbols appear, again, as objects appear in a physical environment.

[...] Therefore your past, present and future exist within it, but only as portions of that interior environment. You have to learn your way about, for the states of consciousness and their environment stretch out in their own way as your world stretches out, say, in space. [...]

[...] The will to live is strengthened in your own environment more than it is in this (hospital) one, and can be revived to a remarkable degree. Refreshed in your home environment. [...]

The medical environment is highly detrimental at this point in time. [...]

You are otherwise in the middle of a syndrome, which can take considerable time to unravel, and in the home environment this can be achieved quicker than it might appear—that is, this advice is not as arbitrary as it might appear. [...]

We shall however consider those aspects of consciousness which are present within the dream environment, and absent in the physical environment. [...]

[...] It is true that the ego’s responsibility is with the relationship between the self and the physical environment. [...]

Our ego must have its feet upon the solid earth, it is out of its element, naked and in an unfamiliar environment, outside of the normal characteristics of physical existence. [...]

This provides necessary balance and necessary control, and results in the sturdy anchorage of the personality in the environment in which it must survive. [...]

Now your closest environment, physically speaking, is your body. [...] Instead your physical form, your corporeal personal environment, is the physical materialization of your own thoughts, emotions, and interpretations.

You try to maintain a constant, relatively permanent physical and subjective self in order to maintain a relatively constant, relatively permanent environment. [...] Those that you refuse to acknowledge are precisely those that would give you a much better understanding of the true nature of reality, individual subjectivity, and the physical environment that seems to surround you.

[...] You do not realize that you create your larger environment and the physical world as you know it by propelling your thoughts and emotions into matter — a breakthrough into three-dimensional life. [...]

[...] I thought she was reacting to our own environment. [...]

[...] You want to make your own people, and you want to make their environment. The people will come first, but then you will feel that their personality extends also into their environment.

[...] The environment portion will come later, and you will sense the environment something like a mystic arrangement that a given personality throws about the world around him.

[...] Subconsciously he also chooses his environment, and throws his own character about it so the basic mood, the underlying mood of a personality beneath all the shifting moods, will also be expressed in color that is reflected in the entire painting, the environment as well.

This is also reflected in the environment. By environment I mean those portions of the painting called background. [...]

(Pause at 9:23.) As the body became physical, however, the inner self formed the body consciousness so that the physical body became more aware of itself, of the environment, and of its relationship within the environment. Before this could happen, though, the body consciousness was taught to become aware of its own inner environment. [...] The body’s pattern came from the inner self, as all of the units of consciousness involved in this venture together formed this fabric of environment and creatures, each suited to the other.

[...] It is perfectly formed to fit into its environment—and the environment is perfectly formed to have such creatures.

At that level environment, creatures, and the elements of the natural world are all united—a point we will return to quite often. [...]

[...] A twist on an old quote, I believe—but the fact is, you are physical creatures because you do like to live on earth, you do like the conditions, you do enjoy overall the particular kind of challenge and the particular kind of perception, knowledge and understanding that the earthly environment provides.

My work in this environment provides far more challenge than any of you know, and it also necessitates the manipulation of creative materials that are nearly beyond your present comprehension. [...] So my environment is a reality of existence created by myself and others like me, and it represents the manifestation of our development.

MY PRESENT ENVIRONMENT,
WORK, AND ACTIVITIES

While my environment differs in rather important respects (humorously) from that of my readers, I can assure you, with ironic understatement, that it is as vivid, varied, and vital as physical existence. [...]

My environment, now, is not the one in which you will find yourself immediately after death. [...]

My environment includes, of course, those other personalities with whom I come in contact. Communication, perception, and environment can hardly be separated. Therefore the kind of communication that is carried on by myself and my associates is extremely important in any discussion of our environment.

They are activated again of course upon the next usual impact of ego consciousness with the environment. [...] It is only with the impact of body and environment, of course, that he has difficulty. [...] His intentness then is translated or transferred away from the normal environment.

[...] Beliefs are strongest at precisely the point of conscious impact upon the physical environment. [...]

Each person responds far more to the environment, that they also create, than is realized. [...] A good move physically represents an inner change that then seeks a new environment in which it is materialized.

He went like a squirrel, trying to satisfy his love of environment, changing this place about in a fury of frustration, and finally gave it up. Briefly, the new environment next door aroused him, but the apartment, while representing expansion, as I told you then, also carried a built-in boomerang—the public hall, the lack of coordination, a divided place. [...]

[...] The environment therefore becomes highly important, as the living medium in which you work. This is one reason why you were not as affected as Ruburt, because you were away from the environment part of the day. [...]

[...] The environment has gone down; the garden apartment here that he once thought of no longer exists. [...]

[...] There is as much motion, stimulation, and reaction in the interior bodily environment as the body meets through its encounters with the exterior environment. [...]

(Still quietly, but at a good pace:) When a skunk is frightened, it throws off a foul odor indeed, and when people are frightened they react in somewhat the same fashion at times, biologically reacting to stimuli in the environment that they consider alarming. They throw off a barrage of “foul viruses”—that is, they actually collect and mobilize from within their own bodies viruses that are potentially harmful, biologically trigger these, or activate them, and send them out into the environment in self-protection, to ward off the enemy (more vigorously).

[...] In the interior physical environment there is far greater traffic flow. There are decisions made in periods of time so brief you cannot imagine them—reactions that are almost over before they begin, reactions so fast you cannot perceive them as the body responds to its inner reality, and to all the stimuli from the exterior environment. [...]

[...] In a fashion viruses—in a fashion—again, are a way of dealing with or controlling the environment. [...]