Modification of
Substance
Eugene Halliday
Concerning the
statement, the statement is “one can only know the modifications of one’s own
substance” that is in the emphatic, does the statement imply individual
substance, human substance or both?
It is a long statement so we will
start drawing immediately. We will anticipate some of the questions by working
out the implications. The paper represents sentient power itself, this is the
absolute cause of all being it is awareness and power to initiate motion, with
waves it is aware that it waves. We use the term substance when we are talking
from outside towards a centre and this we call down, the limiting factor for a
substance is the circumscribing line. Substance is really power, matter is
power, and this power must rotate in order to deserve to take the name matter
and it must have the power rotating round a centre and be observed from above
in order to deserve the name sub stance the under standing.
Now if we imagine for a moment a finite being with a determined edge we could
say that represents an egg like mono celled animal or if we like to complicate
the pattern a bit, say this is the pattern of the human being. We have merely
distorted the outline of it but we have not altered the fundamental principle that
the line is a circumscribing line and therefore everything internal to that
line viewed from outside and offering resistance, as rotating power does, is
called substance.
Now if that being is finite it
becomes immediately obvious that it cannot possibly know anything other than
the modifications of itself. When a stimulus comes, the receiving being knows
nothing whatever about the origin of that stimulus, in that it is a finite
being, it only knows that its surface irritated by it. But if you look at the
light what you actually get is a sensation in your retina, so if there is your
eye and you have got a lens on it and a retina at the back, this retina sends
an impulse and if you point the eye in different directions the amount of
stimulation of your substance varies. And because it varies without willed
intent on the part of your substance then you assume a source external to
yourself. Remember this rule: every
change in one’s substance occurs without
will from within, it is assumed to have an external origin. Here is a
finite being, the being itself is power and this power is sentient, so it is
feeling itself. It is a power, and the nature of motion is cyclic, within this
being and so it is substantiating itself, building power in so that it can
stand as a reference for consciousness.
When a stimulus comes from outside
the change of motion is initiated on the edge of the being it is not initiated
from the centre of the being and because it is not initiated from centre it is
assumed that the change on the perimeter is caused by a being external to this
binding line. The only way we come to believe in an external world for us is
because changes are occurring on our perimeter which we have not ourselves
willed to produce. We have no other evidence for an external world other than
things happen that we do not will, we have to account for these. If we discover
the will centre, the centre of the initiative in ourselves as when we open the
hand and close it from within then we have some sensation of a self, of initiative, of internal spirit, the initiative
centre. A force is going out and producing changes in the substance as when I
send from inside myself a message to make a mark on the paper, centre
initiated. On the other hand if when I am drawing a Mark somebody throws a
banana at me and hit me on the knuckle and makes my line wiggle, because my
line wiggle was not intended by me I assume an external origin for the
stimulus. We see that in the case of a finite being it is perfectly obvious
that it cannot possibly know anything other than the modifications of its own
substance and the this so-called external world is a world projected intellectually to account for
changes in the substance of the being which have not been initiated from the
centre.
Now Lets,
are we going up or down? Let’s look at the field of the absolute and we will
draw a few circles as we know they exist, within, of various sizes. We can go
on drawing as you know these circles wherever we like. The centre of each
circle is the initiating force which starts a ripple of energy going out, the
thing that causes that initiating force in advancing its front to have a
limiting factor is the existence of another centre of another circle. Which
centre pushing out its own energy limits the energy coming forth from another
centre, so that if we remove, for the moment conceptually, all centres from the
universe except one and that one is infinite power the power goes out and never
gets the perimeter it just continuously propagates in all directions but it
never begets a perimeter because there is nothing to oppose it. So it must flow
out infinitely, in that case we would have an infinite progression of power
with no limiting factor and therefore no form. To make a limiting factor we
must set another centre up and the power from this other centre starts coming
out, likewise expanding circularly and at a certain point it will meet the out
flowing energy from the other centre. Now this place where the out flowing
energy from two centres meets is called the firmament in the book of Genesis.
The original word from which this word is derived and which causes firm to be used
in the translation means to be hammered out, to be hammered out like a metal
smith hammers out a plate of metal. We put it on say a wooden the base and you
hit it with a hammer from above now the wooden base resists the blow of the
hammer and the metal between is made thinner in shape. So being hammered from
two sides is the cause of the firmament. We see that if we get two centres and
they are both sending energy out, at a certain point the energies will meet,
press on each other and produce a line between them, a limiting factor. This
limiting factor is the firmament between energy centres, now apart from centres
of initiative we have the field, the out flowing zone of power and the limiting
factor. The definition of a field is the zone of influence of a force, the zone
of influence is relative because although these two centres produce a firmament
between them the out flowing powers from both sides are hitting on the
firmament and vibrating it, so the firmament is also a reflection point. Now
this reflection is the basis of the possibility of the evolution of any centre
to the level of a self reflexive being, a being of self consciousness. The
being propagating itself infinitely could meet with no resistance and therefore
never become reflexive, reflex means bend back so without two centres there
could be no reflection.
When there are two centres the energy
from one centre goes out hits against
the resistance of the other centre and
bends back. Now this is the ground of reflexive self-consciousness, there must
be resistance, this is why William Blake says opposition is true friendship. If
people will not resist you at all you cannot reflect, you cannot discover what
you have said, you cannot discover the meaning of what you have said unless
somebody will oppose you. So if you make a statement and nobody says anything
whatever you don’t know how it has been received, if you’re very good at
preserving muscle changes you will discover that they have said something
usually even if they have not opened their mouths. You can read it disapproval
on their faces quite easily, the important thing is that without a centre being
opposed by another centre no firmament can arise, without the firmament no
reflection is possible and without this reflection from the opposition, self-consciousness and self-control and self
creativity is impossible. Now if that being knows only the modifications of its
own substance then we have to consider the possibility of identification with a
given zone because if we are considering finite beings in an infinite field we
can only be considering a zone of identification. If there are two centres here
and the paper itself represents the sentient power, that is the power that is
aware of itself, this paper which is sentient power is the absolute substance
of all of us and it is aware of both centres.
It is aware actually of an infinite
number of centres but that same paper has the power through the production of
centres and by centres to the production of firmaments or dividing lines
between centres, where the opposition is. These dividing lines are the lines
where we can if we will identify, finity, the man who identifies with substance
as far as the perimeter of his body say his skin surface is receiving messages
and knowing only things that occur within the boundary of that skin surface.
And he is receiving those and understanding only those mainly because those and
those only are what he is identified with, if he likes to remember a little bit
of elementary science of today and know there is no particle of matter without
a field round it and you will know that he does not finish as a field being
with his skin surface. He then tries to feel and this is to become field aware,
his extension the extension of his power beyond the limit of his skin surface,
the rule still holds, he is still aware of the modification of his own
substance only his own substance now means something beyond the limiting factor
of the skin surface.We can say that his own surface
is the zone of the power which comes from this imminent self. That H I S now I
S H is ISH, Ishval and so on and the same in issue the centre from which issues
the power and the zone of influence of that power is the field. So as far as
you can carry your power out and become aware of the limit to which you go,
that is your substance and that is the zone of your knowledge.
Now, this I think replies to the part
of the question that says when is the limitation of knowing only one substance
removed. The answer is when you break identification with any given limiting
factor, if you scrub out any limiting factor as you come to it your substance
is simply becoming wider and wider and wider because your substance is the
field power which is the very ground of your being. If you scrub out all
limitations whatever, rather a difficult job, you become absolute and your
knowledge is then of the same order.
Now, when does involving energy becomes
substantial? The perimeter of the gross body and the involving energy field
appear to the sensorium as being clearly define whether other considerations
point to a more gradual compacting of energies.
The question of gradual compaction is
not really raised in relation to the use of the term substance it doesn’t
matter whether the energies are not tightly compacted, the point is, is there a
circumscription. If there is a circumscription at all we are justified in using
the word substance, power is involved.
If a lot of power is involved we
would say that the mass of this being is increasing, the more power in the
greater mass. In modern physical sense of mass energy involved in a being,
power is involved in the being, the more power the greater the mass. We can
take a very small volume and pack it very very
densely, as we do in certain solids, we can take the same mass and extend its
volume and it will turn into a liquid and gas so when it has got its greatest
extension as a gas it is still the same mass but the volume is greater.
Question from the audience: is it still substance?
It is still substance as long as you
are considering it to be circumscribed that the B in substance tells you that
the spirit power, the S U has gone into being and is standing underneath. The B
is the operative factor, the spirit power binding and standing in that place so
no matter how tenuous it is, it is still a substance. A gas is a substance, a
liquid is a substance, a solid is a substance only because they are bound and
what it is bound is power and it is viewed as something on which one can stand.
Something underneath oneself on which one stands and one calls it sub stance,
if one likes to think of it the other way and look at the etymology of the
prefix in substance we find it has got an alternative SUB, SUP, it can also be
superstance because use can stand in the middle of it and look up, it is then
superstance. It is still the same thing, power posited, power housed and we are
concerned entirely with this question of is it closed or not. If it is not
closed we do not call it substance you can call it sustance if you want without
the B in it but as soon as you say the B
in it you have closed it. You pronounce B with closed lips and plode it
to show that power is involved in it, it is this involvement of power and the
closure of the rotation that justifies calling it a substance.
So that when we are talking about
Aristotle’s substance there should be very great care about the handling of it,
if we say God is substance we are talking about a God really, called the second
God, the demiurge, the creator after the God. Whereas theologically even in a
modern existentialist thinker like the theologian Tillich or somebody like him
you will find that beyond the God, logos, which is a substantial being with a
body called the body of the logos, the body of Christ or the cosmic mind body
and so on. Beyond that there is the God beyond God in the Gospel of John this
is The God. The God, God the word God without any article in the Gospel of John
refers to this logos which is the word or ordering substance power. Beyond this
closed God is the unclosed God or infinite but this unclosed God is not an
object of worship because it is not an object at all, because it is not OB, to be OB one must close and therefore
the mystics all say we transcend the worshiped God if we find the God beyond
God because in finding the infinite we find that which transcends all
boundaries whatever, all limiting factors and therefore discover something not
different from our self, absolutely. The imminent spirit and the transcendent spirit are not different if
we scrub out the action band between them, rub out the firmaments that have
developed between the two.
There is a little personal thing
added on here, an example of this principle in action. A being of bad temper is
accused by B, is that A being a bad temper accused by B? A being in such
condition is in a bad temper I suppose that’s the condition, in a bad temper
condition and he does so from many (Nemic)
association with the type of field disturbance he has sensed. Which means that
A senses bad temper in B he does so from (Nemic) associations
means that he himself internally when he feels this condition knows himself to
be in a bad temper. So he feels a sensation of motions such as he himself
experiences when he is in a state of bad temper but the moment he is not in a
bad temper he feels he is not initiating it but he can still feel it and it
seems to him to be emanating from B. So he says to B “you are in a bad temper”.
Now the person accused of being a bad temper denies it and the person making
the accusation is sure of his diagnosis, what has happened? Well the man
denying it may or may not be in a bad temper of course. Sometimes the situation
is slightly more complicated, we will say for the moment that two beings are
aware of each other’s existence and they are relation, they are unaware of the
third being, that being can be in the same room or elsewhere. We will say that
A and B are in relation and they are conducting an animated conversation and
suddenly B becomes aware of a change inside himself of irritability, he does
not know that anybody else’s about and knows he has not started it so he
assumes that somebody is being bad
tempered and he then he focuses on the only person present, namely A and
says to A “ you are in a bad temper”. A feeling his own substance can feel the
irritation in B, denies that A is the originator of this motion so called bad
temper. B is absolutely certain that he is not responsible so he is certain
that his judgement about A is correct, it may not be, it may be, but it may not
be.
There may be a third entity getting
very annoyed because they are having a conversation at all, this can happen in
the same room or it can happen anywhere.
As a matter of fact the other day
when I was talking to a, qualified gentleman I will call him, and when I was
talking to him I suddenly got a very rapid beating my diaphragm he hadn’t felt
it because he was busy with the conversation and I said I must go within 10
minutes and he said why and I said because you have a visitor and when a
visitor comes the visitor will not like to see me here so I will go, and as
soon as I said this he picked this feeling up. Now at first he thought it
picked it up from me but he hadn’t picked it up for me he had picked it up from
the visitor and this visitor was very very concerned
about the health of the qualified gentleman and was saying I wonder if he’s all
right, I wonder if he’s all right, I wonder if he’s all right, I wonder if he’s
all right and that (woman) was rushing rapidly in a car to find out. So I
withdrew from the situation and the other person came in, now if I had thought
that the source of this diaphragm beat was my immediate companion I would have
been wrong, it wasn’t. This was from were very wilful being rushing to protect
him and hoping that would be nobody there to stop the protection process when
it started.
So we do have to be very careful we
can stay statistically that it is highly probable when you accuse a person of
being in a bad temper that you will be right, it is highly probable that if
they are they will deny it. But that does not mean to say that it is
necessarily so and we are not really concerned with statistics and probability
is we are concerned with immediacy so that if we do get the feeling of
irritation or even a feeling of non-irritation, a feeling of pleasant warmth
and appreciation of one’s own personality it may be a mistake to assume that it
is the present person who is doing it, it might have another source. And
therefore it is a good idea to refine one’s feeling and this we can do only by
using our (??????) mind more and more clearly. The field will give a response
to a properly formulated question, it will not give a true response to a badly
formed question because it can’t. You remember the fellow who was in court and
his wife was suing him for divorce and will judge said to him have you stopped
beating your wife answer yes or no. Now he couldn’t answer yes or no because if
he said yes it implied that he had been beating her and if he said no it
implied he was still at it. In actual fact he never, had so the question was
not one he could answer yes or no to if you want a yes or no reply to a
question you must formulate the question in such a way as that is what you can
get.
Remember the field itself is full of
centres of impulse all over it and they are all vibrating and they are
vibrating equally, unless some stimulus originated in a certain point
formulates itself and goes out. So that whatever the stimulus says it goes to a
limit and the limit is defined by the term you start with and it produces by its
resonance, its internal form, its own firmaments within the infinite field and
it then returns from defined limiting factor with the information that you
want. In Jakob Boehme’s terms the soul gives the lift, nature executes, you
have to be able to define exactly what you want, if you want to get it. To
define what you want clearly is to create a tuning device, a conceptual group,
which tuning device goes out and impinges upon the forms correspondent with
itself and then returns with that information. All magic is based on correct
formulation.
While we are at it we can see another
aspect of this, all motion is cyclic and therefore from a centre a motion
initiates and goes out to a limiting factor, its firmament, and then falls on
the centre. The illustration that we can use is the hand closed is a potential
of work, it can indicate, it can punch, it can grasp it can wave about and
conduct, fiddle and do all sorts of funny things. Now on the outgoing curve
this hand is starting as a fist, a seed, it’s leaving centre going out and
gradually opening itself, reaches its full extent optimal function when it has
done so the owner of it is fully aware of its significance as a functioning
structure. When he is fully aware of it then he can start coming in again and
again it becomes a seed. So here we have the outgoing that’s the Jupiter
function the hand expressing itself and when fully expressed falling in the
Saturn the function which returns it into the equilibrium from which it
started.
Now modern neurosis is caused in a
very very simple way, when the hand is going out to
express itself we insert an inhibiting factor on the way out. So the hand
starts to open and we grab hold of it and we don’t let it open there is a seed
here the potential movement of the hand, the totality of work possibilities of
the hand, opening up and the whole of the energy from the centre is behind it
and then there comes a command from society “ you can’t do that their Leo” an
inhibiting factor is put on and the hand cannot open. And that moment all the
energy from the centre piling against the barrier hits the barrier and begins
to turbulate. Now the energy from centre, from imminent spirit, is not going to
stop. It just goes on powering into that inhibited centre this which is what
produces those sudden out flashes of rage or insanity and so on depending on
how strong the inhibiting factor and how long the inhibition has been going on.
Now the peculiar thing is that if the energy that is going out does not reach
its term that is it optimal functional expression it cannot return to centre so
that if we inhibit an outgoing energy the energy trying to express itself turbulates on the underside of the inhibiting wall and
generates a zone of congestion, a Saturnine zone which is the same as a
contraction zone, a bad circulation zone an organic breakdown zone. The only
way we can release that is by removing the inhibiting factor sometimes when a
person is inhibited over a long period, if we take the inhibitor away very quickly
they rush out in a wild apparently hysterical outburst of strange activities.
If at that moment you put them into a straitjacket you inhibit them again
before they have got full expression whereas if you give them the whole field
to play in they will run about and discover what they are doing and eventually
go home for tea. But society is so afraid of these demonstrations of unlocked
inhibited powers that it always tries to put the straitjacket on you before you
have time to finish your expression.
Now we had another question which is
related to this.
Audience question: what happens if
the expression is very destructive to society is it not justified in(?????)part
of his action.
If it is destructive to society it
can only be that society has inhibited it to that point, so society has asked
for it (?????) The question of justification is the question of the restatement
of an equilibrium that has been lost. There is an individual within society and
here is society around the individual the correct size for this individual is
we will say X. Society presses on it and reduces it considerably to X -12 or
something, now society is actually destroying this individual but the imminent
spirit which is the supreme justifier is pressing out and determined to break
those inhibitors. If society does not press, there are no inhibitors there to
break if it does press at some stage there will be a breakout, because of this
fact there is a peculiar dynamic equilibrium. Society presses on the individual
who opposes its inhibiting walls and at a certain point the individual breaks
out and hits back at society and kills a few. Society then hits back again and
this goes on for a few hundred years until finally the back and forward
conflict produces a new theory of the generation of psychopathic states.
Freud is a kind of brick thrown into
the psychological field when he actually suggests there are forces, he says
sexual forces, try to express themselves and society is trying to stop them and
there is a fight, and he warns society about this kind of thing and then goes
pessimistic on it. Nietzsche before him makes the same thing about it there is a fight between the inhibiting forces
surrounding any given being and the imminent power of that being. This power
exists, as the fight progresses it becomes gradually conscious in society as a
whole, that means all the individuals involved in the fight. That there must be
a better way than knocking a man back into a padded cell every time he breaks
out. Because one never knows who’s going to be knocked in the next so that even
high government officials breakdown occasionally, and when they do immediately
they start saying time we were informed the nut houses, because we are going in
so we want better feeding.
We have a question about a statement
made that love never let go of the object which first stirs it. We know that in
Plato’s theory a person falls in love in the time process with something he has
seen outside the time process. He has seen a perfect form outside the time
process in this infinite field, he then enters the time process, and he has
inside him and memory of this perfect form now the perfect form in Infinity is
a special kind which will deal with at the moment. But the one in the time
process is a compound, it is a compound of many things desirable and
undesirable to a given being, so that when a man enters the time process and
brings with him and his vision of perfection from eternity. And then he sees a
girl with a nose just like the one that he saw in Infinity but unfortunately
she got fallen arches as well, this is already a compound structure. The
delight with the nose shape obscures the fact that the flat feet for the time
being and he marries the nose, on their nuptial night he discovers that her
feet are flat and he feels slightly upset and let down, she should have said
it, she should have taken her shoes off. He has been let down, now it is the
nature of the time process to present you not look at your perfection of
eternity but with a series of complex structures elements of which will please
and elements of which will annoy any given individual and this is the function
of time. Time is a device to force I nearly said human beings, to force
evaluators, to force men, to come to decisions about what they really want, it
is a mode of forcing decision.
it removes time process completely, it removes
the circumscribing factors completely and choice becomes impossible but as soon
as we bring together a desirable and undesirable in the same vehicle then the
person who takes it in the name of the desirable discover something he did not
want to know, and this he didn’t want to know is an essential part of the total
knowledge of the absolute. So by putting together the perfect forms of eternity
in certain configurations in the time, men who come into time looking for their
eternal perfections find that they get with them some things they do not
consider to be perfect. But these things they get are essential parts of absolute knowledge and to gain total
perfection one must understand all things including the things one doesn’t
love. That is the function of the time process now let’s see what the original
object of any being is, the original object that it loves. The being knows only
the modifications of its own substance so if a given being here represented as
a circle is considered as finite, the original state of its substance, a kind
of peculiar equilibrium is a balance of powers which is far as it is concerned
are the balance of powers of its own being. It is a peculiar balance and this
balances is its own peculiar balance and this peculiar balance of its being is
the perfection that it loves. If we complete the diagram we see that all the
stimulus points here are really centres of other circles. Every one of those
stimulus points is the centre of another circle and so to identify with a
finite being as finite is to forget that the motions internal to that finite
being originate in the points round it of other centres.
So the total equilibrium of a being
we could say is set. Around every circle there are six circles and each one of
those sixes giving a characteristic stimulus and the being itself has a central
initiating one we will call the seventh and this seventh one and the six
stimuli exist in eternity in a peculiar balance, and this peculiar balance
constitutes its first loved objective state. So that in eternity it is really a
self lover of the absolute order and this equilibrium in eternity is at once its
beginning, origin, source and its aim when it’s lost it. As soon as we throw
such a being into the time process which we do by simply super stressing it, it
cannot see the centre’s roundabout it that other sources of six of its
characteristic motions. It feels it will inside itself and it feels the other
six as interferences with this central will, so instead of accepting these six
external originating motions it tries to stop them or to interfere with them.
It tries to impose on those six the seventh, now as soon as it does this, as
soon as it starts rejecting stimuli that are coming to it from its perimeter
believing them to be from beyond itself and not from the absolute substance, as
soon as it begins to reject those it has flung itself into the time process. It
has it has also lost its eternal equilibrium and the loved object.
It then proceeds to move through
space in certain characteristic directions determined by the nature of the
stimuli round him, he moves on a line of least resistance towards centres that
appear to be equilibrating. Whatever centre offers a temporary equilibrium he
moves towards it and thinks he loves it, he tries to appropriate that centre
but while he is moving towards he is also moving away from other centres and
his correct position his only internally equilibrating position is eternally
fixed. So as long as he thinks he has to keep moving in time to find his
equilibrium by adding to himself beings from outside he is producing the very
disequilibrium he is trying to avoid. His first loved object is simply himself
in his state of absolute equilibrium, his second loved object in the time
process is any other centre which appears to help him to equilibrate and to such a centre he will tie
himself.
Such a wandering being trying to
evolve if he finds himself weak in one place’ that is to say it if it finds
itself weak in one place, a strong one will appear to it to be a male and it will
try to absorb that energy to balance itself out and it will play woman to that
invading strong energy. If it goes near a weak one so the stimulus isn’t strong
enough then it will start acting as a male on that weaker centre near it. Again
it’s a hermaphroditic being, in given relations, it can change polarity change
relatively it sexual attitude to another being. So when Plato talks about a man
looking for his eternal other half he is rather reducing the thing to a naive
and external level, he actually knew better himself, because he always thought
geometrically. It wasn’t a question simply of a circle splitting into two
halves, of being separated in the time process and having to find each other in
that way, it was something else. The two halves of the being of will and the
idea, or the intellect, now there is a certain amount of form in a person and a
certain amount of will awareness in the person. The form in the person is the
male aspect the will in the person is the female aspect, these two have to be
married together inside any single individual.
That is to say you have to make the
will exactly coincident with the idea and you have to make the idea exactly
conform to the purpose of the will, when these two agree completely then you
have the perfect hermaphrodite, the perfect self knowledgeable being who has
become not a negative Narcissus but a self realised being whose self has become
the object of his own love. And he is then able because of this identity to
love all things because he cannot attain it in the time process. He can only
attended at the eternal level, the time process by the nature of it serialising
is always disequilibrated so temporal love is necessarily dissatisfying. One
can pretend it isn’t the certain reasons of comfort on cold nights when the
east wind blows but in fact because time is are serialising process it is in
disequilibrium. Because of that fact you can never attain this perfection of
satisfaction in the time process the only way it can be gained is by no
identification with the serialising process what you then gain is the marriage
of the idea and will in yourself at the absolute level. The two halves of the
being of will and the idea, or the intellect, now there is a certain amount of
form in a person and a certain amount of will awareness in the person. The form
in the person is the male aspect the will in the person is the female aspect,
these two have to be married together inside any single individual.
That is to say you have to make the
will exactly coincident with the idea and you have to make the idea exactly
conform to the purpose of the will, when these two agree completely then you
have the perfect hermaphrodite, the perfect self knowledgeable being who has
become not a negative Narcissus but a self realised being whose self has become
the object of his own love. And he is then able because of this identity to
love all things because he cannot attain it in the time process. He can only
attended at the eternal level, the time process by the nature of it serialising
is always disequilibrated so temporal love is necessarily dissatisfying. One
can pretend it isn’t the certain reasons of comfort on cold nights when the
east wind blows but in fact because time is are serialising process it is in
disequilibrium. Because of that fact you can never attain this perfection of
satisfaction in the time process the only way it can be gained is by non identification with the serialising process, what you
then gain is the marriage of the idea and will in yourself at the absolute
level.
Now at that level there are no other
selves to fall in love with, all the selves there are, are internal to that
absolute, and then you can love them all for they are not other selves they are
simply selves within the absolute. So the peculiar nature of this positive
fellow as opposed to the negative Narcissus, the negative Narcissus is a being
like the Mr Universe who is a very strange being to watch on a TV screen or
elsewhere because he is not a bit like a woman and a Miss Universe is always aware
that she is the centre and she is trying to make a relationship with a being
outside herself and this is perfectly obvious the whole of her motions her
awareness are beyond herself to create a relation so she is essentially
transcendent of the finite and particular, in her will. But the negative Narcissus the Mr Universe type
if you observe him you will see him looking at his own muscles with profound
admiration and his attention never goes outside his own existence, so he
doesn’t want a relation and therefore he is quite useless to anybody except
himself and the commercial gentleman who likes to make???? on a cine camera.
The absolute self lover is the exact
opposite of the negative time bound Narcissus, because the absolute one counts
all beings as within his own field of awareness, counts them all as his
properties, all equally under his care. So that he cannot favour any of them he
can only give to each one of one that which that one wants, that one needs,
that one can utilise best and that will help that one towards the same absolute
realisation. So the original object seen in eternity for any being is simply
the absolute object, he needs must love the highest when you see it, it’s the
same thing as saying I can never be satisfied with any finite terrestrial time
bound lover. You see this in certain churches where they train surplus women to
develop themselves to this absolute concept, to some of them it’s very very helpful it actually helps them to forget some of these
terrestrial gentlemen whose nationality I shall not mention and in so doing
attain a kind of happiness of a non-individual order.
Factually in terms of exercise,
practice for the individual, the only way this strange lover can be gained,
this absolute lover, is by the making coincident within oneself of one’s will
and one’s idea, which is the same thing again as absolute self consistency. We
have to have an idea of what ought to be done and then we must have or will to
do it and if we have an idea of what ought to be done and will that does
something else we are not coincident and we are in a state of disequilibrium in
ourselves, and therefore we are still in the time process. Bit it ever, even
for a moment we can balance the idea and the will perfectly at that moment we
leap out of the time process into the absolute, and gain that strange lover
that the mystics like to find.
Have we any short questions? Before
we retire
Question from audience: Am I correct
in saying this? Any operation of an individual from any of the two centres is
substantial, substantial activity, he is thinking or he is feeling or he is
urging. They are all equally substantial activities.
In so far as you are considering them
within a boundary yes. You are referring to some field, thinking, feeling.
Yes!
Relating to all states, one only
knows the modifications of ones own substance. They
are all substantial activities.
They are all substantial activities
so that feeling within a being, spiritual experiences within a being is
substantial. Remember there is no substance other than power substantiating
itself to think there is a substance other than power would be to be dualistic
we are looking for cause and the cause is power and when the power is
considered to be functioning within any zone whatever it is called substance,
which is still power. If you identify with a given zone and call that my zone
then you are talking about substantial power in that place, so that when you
are talking about spiritual phenomena welling up, or psychic states, feeling
appreciation or physical activity it is all substantial. There is a certain
amount of inertia that will persist in equating substance with matter, but it
need not be matter is only a behaviour of power where it is rotating it is Ma Rota, Ma Tora, and this Tora function the rotation is what makes power into matter.
So the body is a system of tiny rotations and because of these rotations into
power we call it matter but it is actually power and this power is absolutely not different from ones will. And if it weren’t for the
pressure of stimuli from outside, this will would express itself and it would
go out seeking to develop its own potential, but if it didn’t have a finiting
factor somewhere the will be no return to centre and therefore no reflection.
Comment from audience: If as an
exercise I took somebody and in the exercise I identified with them, what would
I experience if I apply the law that I can only know the modifications of my
own substance.
Then you will experience an extension
of the definition of my, in my own substance.
Member of the audience: I see, to
include their substance.
Of course, if you are identified, you,
is the Observer the consciousness. You
can do it now when you’re sitting, there is someone on your right, there is
someone behind you. If you identify with the someone on your right without looking
round and just feel and the same with the one behind you and just feel you will
get a qualitative difference in the feeling.
Member of the audience: yes
Now anybody can do this, if you feel
your own organism as pure feeling experience, and then identify with another
and feel that you will get a totally different feeling. And if you practice
doing this the inner form of that being you identify with springs up into your
consciousness. Because there is no reason at all why the awareness in that
place should confine itself to that place. It doesn’t have to, it is doing so
for a specific purpose of reflexive development but it doesn’t have to do it,
you can break it by act of will.
Comment from audience: could the
magical process need mechanicality in order to
manifest
Mechanicality is merely the former
motion aspect of will, there are not two worlds the worlds the mechanical world
and the world of will. When you consider that formal behaviour of will as form
you are talking mechanically.
Comment from audience: but a magical
stimulus, cannot manifest without a reaction to the stimulus can it?
You mean the limiting factor that
causes it to return, it can’t begin to define itself unless there is such a
return point.
Comment from audience: that’s what I
mean, it can’t manifest in that case.
That’s right it can’t make itself
fast in order to evaluate itself, manifest means evaluation fast, secure which
means defined and you can’t define unless you send the thing out from centre, hit
against a limiting factor and it comes back. In the act of reflection you know
what you have said.
Comment from audience: I was thinking
in terms of the ?????? one person experiencing temper and it having come from
say a third vehicle, it couldn’t come from a third vehicle unless the one that
felt the temper had reacted, if he if he, where is something that is taken
place I would not allow it, I couldn’t.
Are you saying that centres cannot
throw themselves of their own volition into bad tempers. It sounds as if you
are denying the freedom of other beings
to be in a bad temper if they will it.
Comment from audience: No, no I was
not thinking of that. I was thinking of the fact that somebody becomes?????
Where the temper rises in him and he says this is not mine and I’m not going to
allow it, so then it can’t manifest.
It can’t manifest through him but
that depends upon his power level
Comment from audience: If he has got
to the level where he will say something is arising that I have not initiated
he, I mean I should have thought that he could prevent it.
No that would be to get on the level
where he could prevent it, you can feel things long before you can prevent
them. A man can feel confused in the head without being able to sort it out,
although to feel confused is the first step to begin to sort it out, it isn’t
actually sorting it out. A man can be talking to say the girl over the shop
counter and she happens to 15 years younger than his wife a very charming and
very helpful and the wife is at his side we can feel the wife being aware that
he has seen what a charmingly helpful assistant this is, and he can feel that
she is a bit mad at him and she is going to wig him in about 10 minutes over
coffee they are going to have. That doesn’t mean he can actually control it, we
can feel it that is one state to control it is extra. A being can be at any
level, of awareness, but that level does not confer upon him power over the
next higher level, it is quite an early level to become aware that people are
hammering at you that people are displeased with you, long before you can
control your own reaction to their displeasure. You are at a very low level if
you can’t tell that people are a bit mad at you
Comment from audience: Is there a
level where you can control this? Is it possible
Oh yes, you can either control it,
disperse it to Infinity so that the originator of it finds it disappearing as
if it has been absorbed in the void and thinks that the temper has subsided
when it has been taken away. Also you can contract of the field and return it
to source; it isn’t a very nice thing to do. It’s called heaping coals of fire
on somebody’s head, it is a much nicer and cleaner exercise whenever you feel
somebody’s really mad at you to get hold of the feeling and send it not back to
the originator, but send it to Infinity. Now when it subsides in them they feel
a lot better they have not chalked one up against you for it, because they
don’t know that you have seen it, meanwhile they have had time to recover to
equilibrate and to consider better how to behave next time. Now that if once
you spot it and say this belongs to you and I’m giving you back, it opens in
all or nothing issue because you have proved them in the wrong.
Indistinct audience comment.
As we have said before, the field
itself will do anything whatever that you order it to do by a proper formal
stimulus, that is a proper magical word. You have to have any exact coincidence
between your will and your idea, you must understand the situation that is the
idea side and you must have the will to use what you understand. So if you want
anything to go to Infinity you must know what Infinity is, obviously a man who
does not know what Infinity is can’t send anything there. He can only send it
into something he doesn’t know about but if we understand that Infinity is the
removal of all these conceptual barriers to throw it into that is to throw it
into a non conceptualised continuum, then nobody gets it.
Comment from audience: and this is a
shift of identification again
Yes the word is the instrument
whereby you identify, the word is still the single most powerful stimulus in
the world. World politics, world religions, world science, everything else is
completely (???????) by the available vocabulary in each field.
End of Recording.
Transcribed by Richard Freeman
October 2013.