I'm sitting here perceiving whether I'm a separate self from Al-Nour from this table, from this computer screen. Am I actually seeing this as a relational fabric or am I thing a find to assert my domination over in any given moment?

what we set up is not a binary of here is one side of it and here is the other. But we call this a continuum of auto shifts continuum

prosthetic leg um you have a very difficult time walking because obviously you're not getting any smata Sensation from the leg so we just just put in pressure and angle sensors o sorry we put in pressure and angle sensors and then the person can feel uh what the leg is doing and um an

a lot of people as they get older their vestibular function diminishes and they can't tell when they're tilting they can't tell when they're off axis and the problem is then they end up falling and they break a hip and they end up in the hospital and then things go downhill so um we just we built a little um you know a n axis uh motion detector and IMU and we can tell where they are axis wise and and when they're tilted we just tell them and they feel it on their wrist

we made this thing called the clarify for people with high frequency hearing loss

The Buzz for deafness

little camera on glasses and you turn it into an audio image um and there are very sophisticated examples of this now one is called The Voice v i and it's it's an app that you can just download on your phone

Prof. Smith lives in London and has a brother in Berlin, Dr. Smith. To visit him, balancing time, cost, and carbon emissions is a tough call to make. But there is another problem. Dr. Smith has no brother in London. How can that be?

The vOICe is the most practical and widely used, clearly demonstrated by its 100k+ downloads and around 1300 current active users on Android only.

Visual-to-auditory (V2A) sensory substitution devices are designed to convert images to sound.

it's a new mode of living and perceiving the world

we're not called to like everybody but we are called to love everybody i i have a a practice um and it involves taking the image of two people one whom i love deeply and who i like deeply and i take my son for instance that i love him that i feel one with him goes without saying but i also like him very much i then take a second image of someone who i dislike intensely vladimir putin

don't do this experiment philosophically do it experientially it's like undressing at night we take off everything that can be taken off

i'll start by way of um an analogy everything that all the objects and characters that appear in a movie derive their reality relatively speaking of course from the single screen

one way to make this experiential investigation into the essential nature of our self would be to remove in fact we don't need to remove it would be sufficient to imagine removing everything from us that is not essential to us so i suggest we let's just embark do this investigation for a few minutes

there are universal similarities and effects of music and sound on individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds

One of Seth’s recent projects was called Dreammachine—an immersive art-science hallucinatory experience

the overwhelming majority of our time is spent looking down and as we should have talked about in previous videos we really care about 00:03:57 the hinges that you place in your spine so if you're on a laptop or looking down on your phone there's generally a hinge that we put into our neck and keep it there for a period of time and that 00:04:09 section and it can be right at the top if we're looking at you we've down or it can be lowered down if we're hinging down a lot more towards more of a 90-degree angle the longer in those shapes and the average American at 00:04:22 least can sit you know 10 to 14 hours a day particularly in today's climate without raising an eyebrow it can be just a simple thing that we do and if that's sitting down looking down is a 00:04:33 constant thing then what happens is we take that overloaded tissue to bed and sleep is our recovery time

there's things in the 10th Century in what we think of as now as broadly Western and Central Europe 01:13:46 that are beginning to show up particularly in art and architecture and poetry and music not an accident the musician we know that artists are often people who sense 01:13:59 things and are ahead of a culture they give the first articulation to a set of ideas and so if you today if next time you're in Ottawa I invite you to go to the 01:14:10 National Gallery because the National Gallery in Ottawa has one of the world's best collections of European northern European art and it starts about 1300 01:14:22 there's some before that but their collections of that's old enough to get you into it and it works through historically as you work through the rooms and at least it used to last time I brought it was there it brought you 01:14:36 out into a post-modern into postmodern art as if what's beyond what we think of as Modern Art uh into post-modern art

After I had been searching for ways to flesh out this parallel between contemplative and scientific research, through the common element of a lab method, I finally stumbled upon the Husserlian epoche as a stepping stone or connection piece between the two

What is one of our greatest needs, one of our greatest needs for our brain? And instead of telling you, I want to show you. In fact, I want you to feel it. There's a lot I want you to feel in the next 14 minutes. So, if we could all stand up. 00:00:39 We're all going to conduct a piece of Strauss together. Alright?

Guided meditation: The carbon cycle

guided meditation to help achieve this awareness of our physical connection to the world around us.

The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person. And who seems most expert at dehumanizing other people? And why? Soldiers who have seen a lot of combat learn to do this to the enemy before going back into combat. Murderers do it before going out to commit murder. Nazi SS guards did it to concentration camp inmates. Cops do it. Corporation leaders do it to the workers they send into uranium mines and steel mills. Politicians do it to everyone in sight. And what the process has in common for each group doing the dehumanizing is that it makes it all right to kill and otherwise destroy other people. One of the Christian commandments says, "Thou shalt not kill," at least not humans, so the trick is to mentally convert the victims into nonhumans. Then you can proclaim violation of your own commandment as a virtue.

what i want you to do is to now imagine somebody whose body you would like to have 00:28:23 as your own either for a few minutes or maybe long term i'm not going to ask you why you want that body i don't want to get that deep into your psyche and that might be very personal um 00:28:35 but i'll tell you whose body i'd like to have and for how long just to give you a warm-up feel for this i really would like to have usain bolt's body of a few years ago for 9.6 seconds 00:28:47 because i would love to know what it feels like to run 100 meters that fast now when i form that does i think it's a coherent desire how do i why do i think that because i really do desire it i would love it i'd pay a lot of money to 00:28:59 do that um but what i don't want is to be usain bolt because usain bolt is already the same bolt and that doesn't do me any good um what i want is to be me 00:29:12 j with usain bolt's body so i can know what it feels like to run really really fast now i'm not claiming that this is a coherent desire i'm not claiming that it's 00:29:24 possible for me to remain jay and have usain bolt's body but i am claiming that i can desire it and if you are anything like me for some body or other you can desire to 00:29:36 have it for some time or other if you can form that desire then you in deep in your gut don't believe that you are your body you believe that you have a body and that 00:29:48 you might have a different body just like you might have a different hat or a different cat and if you believe that then you really do believe that whatever you are you are not your body 00:30:01 now you might think well that's obviously true i've never thought i was my body um but maybe on my mind i don't think you really believe that either and i want to do the same thought 00:30:13 experiment to convince you of that now i want you to think about somebody's mind that you'd really like to have maybe not for a long time maybe only for a few minutes um i'll tell you mine again i'm really 00:30:25 big and divulging you know hyper sharing over sharing personal secrets um i would really love to have stephen hawking's mind when he was still alive of course not now um and i'd like to have it only for about five or ten 00:30:36 minutes because what i would really like is to be able to really understand quantum gravity and i can't really understand it but if i had stephen hawking's mind for a few minutes then i could understand it now i obviously 00:30:48 don't want to be stephen hawking for one thing he's dead for another thing he was already stephen hawking and it didn't do me a damn bit of good what i want is to be me jay with his mind so that i can 00:31:00 use it to understand quantum gravity um i think that'd be really cool again i'm not claiming this is coherent i'm not claiming that it's possible but i am claiming that it's a 00:31:11 psychologically possible state to be in to crave somebody else's mind and if you like me can form that desire then you like me deep in your gut do not believe that you are your mind 00:31:25 you believe that you're something that has a mind just like you have a body um and that you possessed that mind and you could still be you with another mind and another body i mean just imagine having 00:31:37 the same bolts body in stephen hawking's mind that would be totally cool then i could understand quantum gravity while setting a new record for the 100 meter sprint um but that's not going to happen alas 00:31:50 um the moral of these experiments um takes us right back to chandragiri serpent i think the moral of these experiments is that deep down at an atavistic gut 00:32:02 level we believe that we are something that stands behind our minds and our bodies that thing is the self the thing that is not the mind in the body but possesses the mind in the body that's the thing 00:32:14 that sean decurity identifies as the serpent in the wall our arguments are going to be aimed at that not at our bodies not as our minds not as our personal identities they're 00:32:27 going to be aimed at that self that we really atavistically believe stands behind all of those that's the illusion that's the thing that causes us to be incompetent morally that causes us to be 00:32:41 confused about our own identities and to be confused about our role and our place in the world

so i want to convince you now that you 00:27:18 really do think you have a self no matter how many years you've been practicing

i'm going to simply turn our line drawing upside down and then draw from 00:04:20 the upside down reference what's going to happen here is it's going to force my mind to not think about what i'm drawing but instead focus on the lines and shapes that i actually 00:04:33 see so you can see it takes my left brain out of the process almost completely

when we attribute sensory experiences to 00:06:39 ourselves for instance like the experience of red or the experience of seeing blue the model is external properties and we think of there as being inner properties just like those external properties that somehow we are 00:06:52 um we are seeing immediately

cognitive illusion and immediate experience perspectives 00:01:44 from buddhist philosophy

so this is white light passing through a dispersive prison and this is a visible spectrum from about 420 nanometers in the violet through 500 nanometers and 00:00:18 the green 580 yellow 610 and orange and 650 red and some of the slides that have this along the bottom axis so how dependent I'll be in color what do you 00:00:30 think we depend on color a lot a little lots okay

I want to start with a game. Okay? And to win this game, all you have to do is see the reality that's in front of you as it really is, all right? So we have two panels here, of colored dots. And one of those dots is the same in the two panels. And you have to tell me which one. Now, I narrowed it down to the gray one, the green one, and, say, the orange one. 00:00:41 So by a show of hands, we'll start with the easiest one. Show of hands: how many people think it's the gray one? Really? Okay. How many people think it's the green one? And how many people think it's the orange one? Pretty even split. Let's find out what the reality is. Here is the orange one. (Laughter) Here is the green one. And here is the gray one. 00:01:16 (Laughter) So for all of you who saw that, you're complete realists. All right? (Laughter) So this is pretty amazing, isn't it? Because nearly every living system has evolved the ability to detect light in one way or another. So for us, seeing color is one of the simplest things the brain does. And yet, even at this most fundamental level, 00:01:40 context is everything. What I'm going to talk about is not that context is everything, but why context is everything. Because it's answering that question that tells us not only why we see what we do, but who we are as individuals, and who we are as a society.

so here's a straightforward question what color are the strawberries in this photograph the red right wrong those strawberries are gray if you don't 00:00:12 believe me we look for one of the reddest looking patches on this image cut it out now what color is that it's great right but when you put it back on 00:00:25 the image it's red again it's weird right this illusion was created by a Japanese researcher named Akiyoshi Kitaoka and it hinges on something called color constancy it's an incredible visual 00:00:39 phenomenon by which the color of an object appears to stay more or less the same regardless of the lighting conditions under which you see it or the lighting conditions under which your brain thinks you're seeing it

When we see the world from the vantage point of all-at-oneness, always right here, we can be said to be like a pearl in a bowl. Flowing with every turn without any obstructions or stoppages coming from our emotional reactions to different situations. This is a very commonly used image in Zen — moving like a pearl in a bowl. As usual, our ancestors comment on this phrase, wanting to break open our solidifying minds even more. Working from Dogen’s fascicle Shunju, Spring and Autumn, we have an example of opening up even the Zen appropriate phrase — a pearl in a bowl. Editor of the Blue Cliff Record Engo ( Yuan Wu) wrote: A bowl rolls around a pearl, and the pearl rolls around the bowl. The absolute in the relative and the relative in the absolute.   Dogen: The present expression “a bowl rolls around a pearl” is unprecedented and inimitable, it has rarely been heard in eternity. Hitherto, people have spoken only as if the pearl rolling in the bowl were ceaseless.

I have written previously about the issue of “both”. In one sense, interdependence and total dynamic working implies that everything is both form and emptiness simultaneously. But the problem is that you can’t PERCEIVE both form and emptiness at the same time. They are both there supporting each other but our discriminative thought can only see one or the other; like the front and back foot in walking, like the old lady and young lady optical illusion, or the front and back of a hand. Both sides are always there. We have a whole hand but you can only see either the front of the hand or the back of the hand in a single moment.

So, if some of you are still feeling a bit too certain, I'd like to do this one. So, if we have the lights down. And what we have here -- Can everyone see 25 purple surfaces on your left, 00:15:03 and 25, call it yellowish, surfaces on your right? So now, what I want to do, I'm going to put the middle nine surfaces here under yellow illumination, by simply putting a filter behind them. Now you can see that changes the light that's coming through there, right? Because now the light is going through a yellowish filter and then a purplish filter. I'm going to do the opposite on the left here. 00:15:31 I'm going to put the middle nine under a purplish light. Now, some of you will have noticed that the consequence is that the light coming through those middle nine on the right, or your left, is exactly the same as the light coming through the middle nine on your right. Agreed? Yes? Okay. So they are physically the same. 00:15:56 Let's pull the covers off. Now remember -- you know that the middle nine are exactly the same. Do they look the sa

also true for complex perceptions of motion. So, here we have -- let's turn this around -- a diamond. And what I'm going to do is, I'm going to hold it here, 00:08:53 and I'm going to spin it. And for all of you, you'll see it probably spinning this direction. Now I want you to keep looking at it. Move your eyes around, blink, maybe close one eye. And suddenly it will flip, and start spinning the opposite direction. Yes? Raise your hand if you got that. Yes? Keep blinking. Every time you blink, it will switch. So I can ask you, which direction is it rotating? 00:09:20 How do you know? Your brain doesn't know, because both are equally likely. So depending on where it looks, it flips between the two possibilities

What is color for?" And instead of telling you, I'll just show you. What you see here is a jungle scene, 00:02:08 and you see the surfaces according to the amount of light that those surfaces reflect. Now, can any of you see the predator that's about to jump out at you? And if you haven't seen it yet, you're dead, right? (Laughter) Can anyone see it? Anyone? No? Now let's see the surfaces according to the quality of light that they reflect. And now you see it. So, color enables us to see 00:02:32 the similarities and differences between surfaces, according to the full spectrum of light that they reflect. But what you've just done is in many respects mathematically impossible. Why? Because, as Berkeley tells us, we have no direct access to our physical world, other than through our senses. And the light that falls onto our eyes is determined by multiple things in the world, not only the color of objects, 00:02:56 but also the color of their illumination, and the color of the space between us and those objects. You vary any one of those parameters, and you'll change the color of the light that falls onto your eye. This is a huge problem, because it means that the same image could have an infinite number of possible real-world sources

Here we have that exact same illusion. We have two identical tiles on the left, one in a dark surround, one in a light surround. And the same thing over on the right. Now, I'll reveal those two scenes, but I'm not going to change anything within those boxes, except their meaning. 00:07:11 And see what happens to your perception. Notice that on the left the two tiles look nearly completely opposite: one very white and one very dark, right? Whereas on the right, the two tiles look nearly the same. And yet there is still one on a dark surround, and one on a light surround. Why? Because if the tile in that shadow were in fact in shadow, and reflecting the same amount of light to your eye 00:07:35 as the one outside the shadow, it would have to be more reflective -- just the laws of physics. So you see it that way. Whereas on the right, the information is consistent with those two tiles being under the same light. If they're under the same light reflecting the same amount of light to your eye, then they must be equally reflective. So you see it that way. Which means we can bring all this information together to create some incredibly strong illusions.

let me show you how quickly our brains can redefine normality, even at the simplest thing the brain does, which is color. 00:05:29 So if I could have the lights down up here. I want you to first notice that those two desert scenes are physically the same. One is simply the flipping of the other. Now I want you to look at that dot between the green and the red. And I want you to stare at that dot. Don't look anywhere else. We're going to look at it for about 30 seconds, which is a bit of a killer in an 18-minute talk. (Laughter) But I really want you to learn. 00:05:55 And I'll tell you -- don't look anywhere else -- I'll tell you what's happening in your head. Your brain is learning, and it's learning that the right side of its visual field is under red illumination; the left side of its visual field is under green illumination. That's what it's learning. Okay? Now, when I tell you, I want you to look at the dot between the two desert scenes. So why don't you do that now? (Laughter) 00:06:21 Can I have the lights up again? I take it from your response they don't look the same anymore, right? (Applause) Why? Because your brain is seeing that same information as if the right one is still under red light, and the left one is still under green light. That's your new normal. Okay? So, what does this mean for context? It means I can take two identical squares, put them in light and dark surrounds, and the one on the dark surround looks lighter than on the light surround. 00:06:47 What's significant is not simply the light and dark surrounds that matter. It's what those light and dark surrounds meant for your behavior in the past.

we see by learning to see. The brain evolved the mechanisms for finding patterns, finding relationships in information, 00:04:38 and associating those relationships with a behavioral meaning, a significance, by interacting with the world. We're very aware of this in the form of more cognitive attributes, like language. I'm going to give you some letter strings, and I want you to read them out for me, if you can. Audience: "Can you read this?" "You are not reading this." "What are you reading?" Beau Lotto: "What are you reading?" Half the letters are missing, right? 00:05:04 There's no a priori reason why an "H" has to go between that "W" and "A." But you put one there. Why? Because in the statistics of your past experience, it would have been useful to do so. So you do so again. And yet you don't put a letter after that first "T." Why? Because it wouldn't have been useful in the past. So you don't do it again.

(Music) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) (Music) 00:07:16 (Applause) (Cheers) (Applause) Beau Lotto: Ah, how wonderful, right? So right now, you're probably all feeling, at some level or another, awe.

new way of being

OP VAK is a concerted effort to make the hyperthreat visible and knowable across the broad spectrum of society. This has practical, educational aspects, including increasing CEC literacy and improving ecoproduct and services labeling. It also links to the integration of CEC into the remit of mainstream intelligence agencies. To address sensory and affective knowing, as well as the deep framing and meaning-making dimension of hyperthreat “knowing,” it will partner with the communications, arts, and humanities sectors in line with the “60,000 artists” concept.24 It will also harness the potential of virtual reality technologies, which have already proven effective in CEC communication.25 Finally, it will involve fast-tracking relevant research and improved mechanisms for conveying and sharing research and knowledge.

Here, in PLAN E, the concept of entangled security translates this idea into meaning that humanity itself can make a great sudden leap.

Professional musicians, concert pianists get to know this instrument deeply, intimately. And through it, they're able to create with sound in a way that just dazzles us, and challenges us, and deepens us. But if you were to look into the mind of a concert pianist, and you used all the modern ways of imaging it, an interesting thing that you would see 00:11:27 is how much of their brain is actually dedicated to this instrument. The ability to coordinate ten fingers. The ability to work the pedal. The feeling of the sound. The understanding of music theory. All these things are represented as different patterns and structures in the brain. And now that you have that thought in your mind, recognize that this beautiful pattern and structure of thought in the brain 00:11:52 was not possible even just a couple hundred years ago. Because the piano was not invented until the year 1700. This beautiful pattern of thought in the brain didn't exist 5,000 years ago. And in this way, the skill of the piano, the relationship to the piano, the beauty that comes from it was not a thinkable thought until very, very recently in human history. 00:12:17 And the invention of the piano itself was not an independent thought. It required a depth of mechanical engineering. It required the history of stringed instruments. It required so many patterns and structures of thought that led to the possibility of its invention and then the possibility of the mastery of its play. And it leads me to a concept I'd like to share with you guys, which I call "The Palette of Being." 00:12:44 Because all of us are born into this life having available to us the experiences of humanity that has come so far. We typically are only able to paint with the patterns of thoughts and the ways of being that existed before. So if the piano and the way of playing it is a way of being, this is a way of being that didn't exist for people 5,000 years ago. 00:13:10 It was a color in the Palette of Being that you couldn't paint with. Nowadays if you are born, you can actually learn the skill; you can learn to be a computer scientist, another color that was not available just a couple hundred years ago. And our lives are really beautiful for the following reason. We're born into this life. We have the ability to go make this unique painting with the colors of being that are around us at the point of our birth. 00:13:36 But in the process of life, we also have the unique opportunity to create a new color. And that might come from the invention of a new thing. A self-driving car. A piano. A computer. It might come from the way that you express yourself as a human being. It might come from a piece of artwork that you create. Each one of these ways of being, these things that we put out into the world 00:14:01 through the creative process of mixing together all the other things that existed at the point that we were born, allow us to expand the Palette of Being for all of society after us. And this leads me to a very simple way to go frame everything that we've talked about today. Because I think a lot of us understand that we exist in this kind of the marvelous universe, 00:14:30 but we think about this universe as we're this tiny, unimportant thing, there's this massive physical universe, and inside of it, there's the biosphere, and inside of that, that's society, and inside of us, we're just one person out of seven billion people, and how can we matter? And we think about this as like a container relationship, where all the goodness comes from the outside to the inside, and there's nothing really special about us. 00:14:56 But the Palette of Being says the opposite. It says that the way that we are in our lives, the way that we affect our friends and our family, begin to change the way that they are able to paint in the future, begins to change the way that communities then affect society, the way that society could then affect its relationship to the biosphere, and the way that the biosphere could then affect the physical planet 00:15:21 and the universe itself. And if it's a possible thing for cyanobacteria to completely transform the physical environment of our planet, it is absolutely a possible thing for us to do the same thing. And it leads to a really important question for the way that we're going to do that, the manner in which we're going to do that. Because we've been given this amazing gift of consciousness.

That's a picture of it in the background. And this organism has the special trick that we call "photosynthesis," the ability to go take energy from the sun and transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. And over the course of billions of years, so starting from two and a half billion years ago, little by little these bacteria spread across the planet 00:07:08 and converted all that carbon dioxide in the air into the oxygen that we now have. And it was a very slow process. First, they had to saturate the seas, then they had to saturate the oxygen that the earth would absorb, and only then, finally, could oxygen begin to build up in the atmosphere. So you see, just after about 900 million years ago, oxygen starts to build up in the atmosphere. And about 600 million years ago, something really amazing happens. 00:07:35 The ozone layer forms from the oxygen that has been released in the atmosphere. And it sounds like a small deal, like we talked about the ozone a couple decades ago, but it actually turns out that before the ozone layer existed, earth was not really able to sustain complex, multicellular life. We had single-celled organisms, we had a couple of simple, multicellular organisms, but we didn't really have anything like you or me. 00:07:59 And shortly after the ozone layer came into place, the earth was able to sustain complex multicellular life. There was a Cambrian explosion of life in the seas. And the first plants got onto land. In fact, there was actually no life on land ahead of that. Another way to see this is, this is kind of a chart of pretty much most of the animals that you guys are familiar with. 00:08:24 And right at the bottom in time is the formation of the ozone layer. Like nothing that you are familiar with today could exist without the contributions of these tiny organisms over those billions of years. And where are they now? Well actually, they never really left us. The direct descendants of the cyanobacteria were eventually captured by plants. And they're now called chloroplasts. 00:08:49 So this is a zoom-in of a plant leaf - and we probably ate some of these guys today - where tons of little chloroplasts are still trapped - contributing photosynthesis and making energy for the plants that continue to be the other half of our lungs on earth. And in this way, our breaths are very deeply united. Every out-breath is mirrored by the in-breath of a plant,

today I'm here to describe that everything really is connected, 00:02:02 and not in some abstract, esoteric way but in a very concrete, direct, understandable way. And I am going to do that with three different stories: a story of the heart, a story of the breath, and a story of the mind.

Fundamental features of human psychology can constrain the perceived personal relevance and importance of climate change, limiting both action and internalization of the problem. Cognitive shortcuts developed over millennia make us ill-suited in many ways to perceiving and responding to climate change (152), including a tendency to place less emphasis on time-delayed and physically remote risks and to selectively downplay information that is at odds with our identity or worldview (153). Risk perception relies on intuition and direct perceptual signals (e.g., an immediate, tangible threat), whereas for most high-emitting households in the Global North, climate change does not present itself in these terms, except in the case of local experiences of extreme weather events. Where strong concern does exist, this tends to be linked to care for others (154) combined with knowledge about the causes and possible consequences of climate change (155).

The next day, I assumed we would begin our quest to find signs of hyperobjects in and around the city of Houston

With the aid of the concept of opposing pairs of magnetic poles, we can clearly contribute in a significant way to our expression and understanding of basic relationships in the overall magnetic field. We are proposing to look at soma and significance in a similar way. That is to say, we regard them as two aspects introduced at an arbitrary conceptual cut in the flow of the field of reality as a whole. These aspects are distinguished only in thought, but this distinction helps us to express and understand the whole flow of reality.

Now we are going to talk for a bit about the idea of what it is that you are going to practice on. As your entire Being is becoming consciously integrated as your conscious experience of your Self, it will appear as though the Reality of your Being—to whatever degree you are aware of it—will be brought to bear upon that disowned portion of your experience which is not clear to you is your own Being. It will appear as though that aspect will be “healed,” “improved,” “changed,” or “reversed.” But, the actuality of such appearances is one of the revealing of its true nature as your Being. Every time you have a healing session with anyone, do not believe for a moment that, through your inner growth and development, you are being able to do something wonderful for “them.” It is your Self that you are experiencing, working with, and handling. Figuratively speaking, it amounts to nothing less than your discovery that the piece of the puzzle—which is difficult to identify on its own—is actually some part of the universal portrait of your Self. The Bible quotes Jesus the Christ as saying, “I have overcome the world.” This means that He had come over into the Christ-consciousness of His world, and no longer disowned any part of it as being separate or other than His Being.

Now, I want to correct a misconception on your part. Your ability to reason and think is not the equivalent of the three-dimensional frame of reference. Your thought processes and reasoning processes are not to be ignored. We would not be communicating at this very moment if you did not have the means to translate the meanings I am communicating into words and phrases. It is only by virtue of the fact that you have imagination, reason, perspicacity—all of the various capacities and functions of Consciousness—that you are able to correctly translate that which unfolds to you. This is true whether it is coming from me, or from that Place wherein you directly experience the Reality of Being. We run into trouble when we stand away from the Door, and begin our thinking or thought processes from their standpoint, and then extrapolate and come to conclusions without going within and being as Conscious Being. You see, Being unfolds Itself as meaning, not as language. It is through the function of Reason and Imagination that language is brought into play, for the purpose of verbalizing these infinite meanings which Being is unfolding. You do have a right to answers which will identify the Absolute Oneness of Being throughout your entire experience of Being.

RAJ: Paul, you are suffering from your “should” system. You are experiencing how difficult it is to lay down conceptualized processes and theories. I will not leave my position that this conceptual thinking relates in no way to what is Actually going on—which is the infinitude of your Being unfolding Itself perfectly, properly, and nondestructively—except of course, in terms of these concepts which are binding you. They will be destroyed. They no longer serve to move you to a new base. As you are discovering, the concepts are actually impeding your growth. You must lay them down. The growth will occur. The growth is occurring. This is why you feel shoved into the corner right along with the concepts. Figuratively speaking, this is why you feel that you are going to be blown up in the blowing up of your concepts.

We need to remember that all of Life, infinitely speaking, is unfolding Itself at every moment, and not just an isolated part of that infinity. It is essential for you to realize that your thinking processes do not in any way have any effect, whatsoever, on this infinitely detailed, yet harmonious unfolding of Being. This does not mean you have nothing to do with it, but it simply means that you have no three-dimensional control over it. You must come to the realization that it is your Being which is unfolding Itself infinitely on the basis of Its Nature as Intelligence, as Life, and as Mind. Therefore, It is—before you think a single thought about it—unfolding Itself (your Self) with all the precision, Intelligence, and Principle which constitutes Itself. It is this infinite unfolding of your Self that you must learn to bring your thought in line with. You cannot use your thoughts to bring your Being into line with them. This is a part of the letting go which is necessary for you in order for you to experience the unfolding of your Being as complete Harmony. Until you are willing to let go of this concept—that you must in some way be able to control your environment and your life experience with your thought—you will seem to suffer from the unfoldment of your Being.

If “form follows function,” then it is imperative that your attention be on the function and not the form. What is the Function which you see as the unfolding of daily activities? It is the unfolding of Your Being, identifying and fulfilling Itself as Itself. Activity, money and profit are all aspects of that identification. Money—income—is not the end goal of it all. Every aspect of your day identifies your Being, and not any one is more important or less important than another. Work does not generate income. Being generates work and income and leisure and growth. Yet, not any one of these things exist for their own independent purpose or identity. They identify Being, and Being is the Alpha and Omega—that which is and is identifying Itself completely and successfully. It is the flow of Being which is the Function. It is identified by the forms which constitute your daily activities. Your need is to identify yourself as Being and not as form.

RAJ: Don’t add that “but.” Stay with the simple Fact you have just stated. The “but” is the hooker! “All is infinite Mind and Its infinite manifestation.“1 There aren’t any “buts” about it! Being is “neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it. It is at that point and must be understand therefrom.“2 It will never be understood from the standpoint of the three-dimensional frame of awareness (ego). You must stop looking for clues, helpful hints, or reassurances objectively. Being doesn’t need them, and “ego” only needs them in order to hook you. Remember, as you “do battle,” that there is no battle going on at all. It is a process by which you are becoming less slipshod in your self-identification. It seems as though it is an attempt to influence you in the direction of misidentification, but you are at a point where the thrust truly cannot reach you because you are hidden in the Secret Place of the Most High. You have experienced It.

You must be willing to stand with things the way they are unfolding in and as your conscious experience of Being. Reality does not exist to fit into or coordinate with partial views of Reality. As long as you are expressing clear explanations of Reality, you must fully expect those seeing with a partial view to attempt to discredit Truth if It doesn’t agree with or come in the form that they conceive that It must come.

Essential to being able to break the partial view, is the shifting of the “point of awareness” from being within that which is observed to that subjective Place wherein It is that which is what is observed—the all-inclusive, infinite experience of being as Conscious Being. It is only the intuitive perception of our Infinity as Conscious Being—prior to our “expansion”—which gives us the guts to expand. That intuition gives us the perspective to see that we are expanding into what we already Are, and that we are not expanding into the unknown at all! True, we may not know the details of our Infinity, but it’s the details that we cannot see until the Universal Nature of our Self becomes an accepted Fact and basis from which to be. This is so essential to understand, and you are beginning to see this. Excellent!

RAJ: Good morning, Paul. You are beginning to grasp that there truly is a more infinite and accurate view of what you are experiencing, and yet you feel you have no basis upon which to wake up to that larger, more accurate perception. You recognize the demand for something, and I have told you that the three-dimensional situation will not be relieved until you wake up. Thus, you find yourself in a bind from which you see no escape. The fact is that Being has no dead ends. It is only the finite view which would make Infinity appear to be blocked off. You are sitting, right now, as the Omnipresence of infinite Good, actively, Omnipotently unfolding and fulfilling Itself without exception. It is the intuitive perception—it is the desire, faith, and intuition of there being something to wake up into—which must remain the focal point of your conscious experience, regardless of the illusion of being boxed in. Then you must desire to wake up. Do not waste any energy in attempting to overcome any facet of the dream, since the way things appear is imaginary. It, therefore, cannot be dealt with in any way other than waking up!

The Kingdom of Heaven is apparently guarded by “demons,” “evils,” “devils,” because that is the only way ego can see the impersonal existence of Being. It is very EVIL because it means the demise of ego. Ego is the only baggage that cannot go through the eye of the needle. Since it can’t go through, it applies fearful images around the eye to ensure that one will not proceed through it. You may think what has been happening is rugged, but hindsight will show you that you are coming through almost unscathed. This is because of the strength of your perceptions of what’s Real, and your conviction in its Reality. No one can do this for you. That’s why you seem to be alone in this—without communication, without understanding of what’s happening to you, et cetera.

RAJ: I know you feel like you need help, but no one can help you at this point. There is no other One but You, and you had better be sure that you have no other “ones” before You, You Self, God. Your entire Being, in all Its infinitude, is harmonizing with You, loving You, and supporting You because of the Integrity of your Being. No one but You can relinquish consciously your hold on the false sense of self—the misidentification which feels it can’t do it. At this point I want to terminate the conversation. I will be instantly available if you need to talk, but I want you to be consciously and quietly alone with your own Being and the Reality of things. This is your baby!

Only if you are willing to be alone with your own Being will you be alone with the Reality of “things.” It is the undistorted awareness of the Reality of “things” which will constitute the resolution of the conflict that seems to be going on “out there.“ If you try to work it out from the standpoint of the Many, as though It were separate from You, you will be operating within “ego’s” bailiwick. You must remain steadfastly and abidingly with the Fact that your Being is One and that that One is You. That One, being Omnipresent, is Omnipotently Omniactive as every last little detail of Its Infinitude—including every bill collector, every dollar owed, every process server, and every dollar paid. It is fulfilling Itself perfectly in identifying Its completeness with absolute success. It is, Paul! No matter what the three-dimensional insinuation is. You see, it’s the whole dream we’re talking about waking up from! And you can do it. You are able.

Only if you are willing to be alone with your own Being will you be alone with the Reality of “things.” It is the undistorted awareness of the Reality of “things” which will constitute the resolution of the conflict that seems to be going on “out there.“ If you try to work it out from the standpoint of the Many, as though It were separate from You, you will be operating within “ego’s” bailiwick. You must remain steadfastly and abidingly with the Fact that your Being is One and that that One is You. That One, being Omnipresent, is Omnipotently Omniactive as every last little detail of Its Infinitude—including every bill collector, every dollar owed, every process server, and every dollar paid. It is fulfilling Itself perfectly in identifying Its completeness with absolute success. It is, Paul! No matter what the three-dimensional insinuation is. You see, it’s the whole dream we’re talking about waking up from! And you can do it. You are able.

You have been concerned in the last few days that you are not making the connection between what I have been discussing with you and your daily experience. The simple fact is that you have been trying to relate infinite ideas to finite beliefs. There is no connection. There is no connection between Mind and Its manifestation. They are one. It is only from the standpoint of ego—of finite, three-dimensional misperception—that there can seem to be a “connection.” Since ego separates itself from what it sees, it divides things into subject and object, “in here” and “out there,” me and thee, and all the rest of the dualism. This prompts the attempt to manipulate all of these disconnected aspects, so that they will harmonize in such a way as to not destroy the basic illusion of the existence of “ego.” Thus, from the three-dimensional standpoint, it seems obvious that the misidentification of Identity called “ego” must become, do, initiate, manipulate, and achieve. One cannot bring these endeavors into that Place where Self is properly identified and experienced as Conscious Being or Fourth-dimensional Man, since the basic illusion of separateness has no existence there.

Your opportunity for activity is as infinite as your Being. You do not need to concern yourself about the ability of your Being to fulfill Itself completely as that which will be recognizable to you as the meeting of your every need—unless, of course, you wish to indulge in the misidentification of your Self as “ego.” Such misidentification will not affect the Reality of your Being in any way, but, as you know, it will seem to engage your conscious awareness in an ongoing blindness to the Reality and an uphill climb which is really downhill all the way.

You are afraid that if you let go and stop “doing,” everything will fall apart. This is because you are still caught in the belief that what you have “done” in the past has succeeded in getting you where you are. This is foolishness, and you are beginning to see this. You haven’t gotten anywhere, because Infinity has no place to go. Nevertheless, Infinity—your Being—has unfolded Itself in spite of what you thought you were “doing,” and where you thought you were getting to.

You have been concerned in the last few days that you are not making the connection between what I have been discussing with you and your daily experience. The simple fact is that you have been trying to relate infinite ideas to finite beliefs. There is no connection. There is no connection between Mind and Its manifestation. They are one. It is only from the standpoint of ego—of finite, three-dimensional misperception—that there can seem to be a “connection.” Since ego separates itself from what it sees, it divides things into subject and object, “in here” and “out there,” me and thee, and all the rest of the dualism. This prompts the attempt to manipulate all of these disconnected aspects, so that they will harmonize in such a way as to not destroy the basic illusion of the existence of “ego.” Thus, from the three-dimensional standpoint, it seems obvious that the misidentification of Identity called “ego” must become, do, initiate, manipulate, and achieve. One cannot bring these endeavors into that Place where Self is properly identified and experienced as Conscious Being or Fourth-dimensional Man, since the basic illusion of separateness has no existence there.

The reason you find yourself feeling challenged is because you are not yet totally secure with the ideas which your Being is unfolding to Itself, and which appears to be a conversation between yourself and myself. The result, inevitably, will be a strengthening of your standpoint through experience—that is, as long as you continue to remain in contact with your experience of your Self as Conscious Being. I reiterate: Do not be discouraged. you are not lost, and you should not indulge in the imagination that you can somehow get outside the infinitude of your own Being and become isolated from your God.

April 29, 1982 Thursday

t seems to you as though you have had a strenuous and purposeless day today. However, these are the idiotic ravings of ignorance, which would fool you into believing the exact opposite of what is unfolding in and as your experience as purposeful, dynamic, fulfilling and intelligent manifestations of your Being. As I have said before, you must learn to recognize that your Being is unfolding Itself at all times in perfect harmony with Its Nature. You must begin to accept this as the Fact, rather than what your imagination can come up with based upon what it sees, hears, tastes, smells, and feels. The Absolute Facts of your Being have never for an instant ceased operating, and never will. Therefore, anything other than this Fact is pure fiction, and you should not waste one moment on it. The only reason you don’t see it is because you are looking through your preconceptions about what is right for you. Then, when your Being unfolds Itself in a direction in which you are not consciously looking, it seems as though unfoldment has ceased altogether.

I want to remind you that your Being is constituted of infinite Love. That Love constitutes the Substance of your total experience. I want to remind you of that, because the apparently external demands which you have been faced with have caused you to withdraw your attention from your awareness of that fact. As a result, you have not been feeling the loving kindness and the totally constructive and harmonious Nature of your Being as It is unfolding Itself as your conscious experience. Objectively speaking, Love is all around you, because Love is what constitutes your subjective Being. Whether or not you are temporarily caught up in the three-dimensional appearance of things, you are never removed from the ability to perceive the omnipresence of Love, because It is the warp and woof of all four dimensions. I want you to consciously and conscientiously open yourself up to the perception and the experience of the Love that constitutes your infinite Being, no matter from what apparent point or dimension you seem to be experiencing that infinitude.

As I said to you on the way back from Spokane, the necessity here is for you to learn to flow. The only thing for you to flow with is your Being as It unfolds Itself universally and specifically. As I said earlier, you will be more willing and able to do this as you begin to trust the absolutely constructive, loving, perfect, principled, and cohesive manner in which your Being unfolds Itself. Its very Nature is infinite Intelligence, Mind, Consciousness, Life, Principle, et cetera. This is the demand of the moment, no matter what steps come to you to take physically or objectively. Just remember that no matter what objective steps you take, be sure they are being done from a subjective standpoint wherein you are being at and as that Place where your Being is flowing through and as your conscious experience of Being. This is, you might say, the big secret.

RAJ: Paul, you must realize that you are not “in the woods” in the fist place. The “woods” are in you. You are that omnipresent conscious experience of Being which constitutes Fourth-dimensional Man. You will always feel trapped when you are seeing yourself as being inside that Omnipresence which constitutes your Being. You will always feel uncomfortable because you are believing something which is not true. I see that you have gotten the point that you can utilize your ability to think and reason when it is based upon what you have learned when you have been experiencing your being as Conscious Being.

You were incorrect yesterday when it occurred to you that the only way you can tell you are growing is if you are feeling some discomfort. Discomfort can be an indication of growth, but it is not the only indication of growth. We are entering a new phase of these conversations, and in this phase we are going to be dealing with the Light energy that constitutes your Being.

However, as long as you are blinded by the belief that it is not You, and that it is “out there”—separate, apart, and existing on its own—it is not available to you for you to experience as your Self. This is a key point in the unfoldment of one’s conscious experience of being as Conscious Being or Fourth-dimensional Man.

You see, Paul, Being is not complex, hard to get at, or hard to understand. Half of the problem we have is our belief that it is not easy. We believe that it is bound up in complex religious or occult rituals or mental structures which we must pass through, like mazes, in order to prove our worthiness. It is not true.

Paul, I know I am relentless with you on these points, but if I were not, you would not make the shift. Yet the shift must be made. The shift must be made, because it is the unfoldment of your Being, and because it is the unfoldment in a more universal aspect—it is a change line for your world. It is the age old question of whom you are going to serve. The question is being put before you by your very own Being. Do not mistake what is happening and feel that it is I who is making these demands. I am bound to support only that which your Being is bringing to the level of your conscious experience. I can only help facilitate you in overcoming your ingrained fears, and your habits and patterns of limited thought. I cannot make you give them up. I cannot make you drop them. And, I cannot make you make the shift. You will make it, come hell or high water, because that is where your Being is. But, if you are willing to continue to follow the leadings of your own “upward, individual convictions,“1 as Mrs. Eddy so beautifully put it, then you will continue to experience this shift with no more dissonance or suffering than you have so far. It is finally up to you.