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.