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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
How To Sit Quietly
In A Room Alone
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There are some forms of knowledge which come to us by experiencing an array of opposites: the good and evil, the light and dark, the happiness and joy. But there is another, higher, form of knowledge which cannot be accessed this way because the greatest virtues of God’s mind have no opposite.
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The ancient Spirit Guides inform us that we came to this world to individuate, to “wake up,” to become persons in our own right. Our planet, with its jarring-and-jabbing social interaction, provides classroom well suited to this lesson plan.
The stark contrasts of Earth – the happiness and suffering, the light and dark, the good and evil, the hot and cold, the abundance and poverty, the injustice and good-will; on and on – do even more than individualize us and “crystallize the spirit,” as the Guides use the phrase.
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the purpose of the brain is to filter out, from universal consciousness, anything not correlating with the body’s perspective; in this ‘step-down transformer’ process, separate egos, with separate personal identities, emerge
Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, PhD philosophy, PhD computer science, for many years worked at CERN, the large hadron collider in Geneva.
“… the function of the brain is to localize consciousness, pinning it to the space-time reference point implied by the physical body. In doing so, the brain modulates conscious perception in accordance with the perspective of the body.
a brain that filters implies the existence of unbound mind, a universal consciousness
"When not subject to this localization and modulation mechanism, mind is unbound: it entails consciousness of all there is across space, time, and perhaps beyond. Therefore, by localizing mind, the brain also ‘filters out’ of consciousness anything that is not correlated with the body’s perspective… like a radio receiver selecting [a particular station], among the variety [with] all other stations being filtered out and never reaching the consciousness of the listener…
"[T]he filter hypothesis implies that consciousness, in its unfiltered state, is unbound. As such, consciousness must be fundamentally unitary and non-individualized, for separateness and individualization entail boundaries.
Editor’s note: Father Benson from the afterlife speaks of a being, formerly mortal, five billion years old, so advanced as to enjoy awareness of all life-forms in the universe; in this, we see the future of the ‘unfiltered’ mind. Read More on the “500 hundred tape-recorded messages from the other side” page.
the filtering brain creates the illusion of separateness, of disconnected personal egos
"The emergence of multiple, separate and different conscious perspectives or egos, is a consequence of the filtering and localization process: different egos, entailing different perspectives on space-time, retain awareness of different subsets of all potential subjective experiences, the rest being filtered out. It is the difference across subsets that give each ego its idiosyncratic vantage point, personal history, and sense of personal identity.
Editor’s note: A brain designed to filter, and reduce to a trickle, experience does not substantively support a theory of reincarnation which exalts much experience. We do not come to this planet to gain experience, as such, but to individualize, to transform one’s tiny sub-set of universal consciousness into a personal ego. With this, we become ready for what comes next in the afterlife, even if we are not yet “good” persons, which can be accomplished later, but only after one becomes a person in one’s own right. Read More on this need for individualization.
"The subjective experiences that are filtered out become the so-called ‘unconscious’ mind of the respective ego. Since each ego allows in only an infinitesimally small part of all potential experiences … the ‘unconscious’ minds of different egos will differ only minimally… As such, the filter hypothesis, unlike materialism, predicts the existence of a ‘collective unconscious’; a shared repository of potential experiences that far transcends mere genetic predispositions of a species…
the likely origin of the mystical experience
"[A]nd most importantly, the filter hypothesis predicts that one can have experiences that do not correlate with one’s brain states. Since here the brain is seen merely as a mechanism for filtering out experience … when this [filtering] mechanism is interfered with so as to be partially or temporarily deactivated, one’s subjective experience could delocalize, expand beyond the body in time and space, and perhaps even beyond time and space [giving rise to what is called the mystical experience]…”
READ MORE of Dr. Kastrup's work on the “quantum mechanics” page
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In this discomfiting process – to borrow a metaphor from Genesis – of “eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” we gain depth of understanding, insight into the nature of things, and -- if we allow ourselves to be taught, if we avoid a victimhood mentality, if we are open to the lessons God would have us learn -- even a measure of wisdom.
But all this is true enough. There is a form of knowledge which cannot be obtained as by-product of the stark contrasts, the clashing opposites, the “hot and cold,” the “up and down,” the “in and out.” This is so because some things have no opposites.
In fact, the best things of life, all of the things we desire with utmost yearning and longing, the things “we stay alive for,” as the poet has it, have no opposites. All of the virtues of God – love, joy, peace, goodness, truth, and others – have no opposites.
Everything that has a beginning is also subject to an ending.
But there exists a domain beyond the reach of time’s degradation. There, things simply exist, eternally, have always been, have no opposite, no duality, and do not suffer loss.
And now the question will be asked, “How can this be? Is not ‘hate’ the opposite of ‘love’? Is not ‘falsity’ the opposite of “truth’?” We could list others. The answer to this seeming conundrum is discussed at length in “The Wedding Song.” However, let us understand that “love versus hate,” “truth versus falsity,” and all the rest, occur only on the level of the dysfunctional ego. The ego, the “false self,” believes in separation, in “I don’t have enough,” in “me against them.” But these perceptions constitute illusion and have no place in ultimate reality. The form of love known by the ego is not love in any meaningful sense but only one more version of neurotic wanting and needing. It is the love which, if threatened, if unable to get what it wants, can turn to hate at the flip of a switch.
But God’s mind knows nothing of this base and checkered so-called love. The love of God is all-pervasive, expresses itself in all of God’s plans, purposes, and actions, and has no opposite. Everything God does is good, that is, serves our highest and best developmental needs and long-term happiness. There is no such thing as “evil” in the economy of God.
There is no universal opposing force of Evil that can affect God, or the plans of God, in the slightest. Or another big one -- life. Life has no opposite. Death is not the opposite of life, birth is the opposite of death. Death is an illusion. Life continues on, seamlessly, obviating clear distinctions between "this life" and "afterlife," as we feel the same immediately after transition. Views to the contrary, for all of these, exist only in the fearful insanities of the dysfunctional ego.
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contraries
English philosopher-writer William Blake referred to our world’s clashing opposites as “contraries.” As he saw it, humankind cannot advance without this jarring interaction. His assertion would anticipate the “dialectic” teaching of Hegel and Marx: thesis versus antithesis, resulting in synthesis.
There is some merit to this view – but only in a world managed by the dysfunctional ego. As we grow into more elevated levels consciousness, we no longer live by “contraries” or “dialectism.” We trade all of that for “God as singular pervasive reality.”
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But most of us do not yet perceive these unopposed virtues of God. To say that love has no opposite, that evil does not exist, that joy suffers no competition, makes no sense to us. And this confusion will continue until we – not learn about God, not believe in God, not pray and hope for God, but – begin to actually know God. And how shall we know God? How shall we accomplish this when so many, the billions of history, have failed in this quest?
Well, they’ve been looking in all the wrong egoic places, haven't they? God will be found by “going within,” by mining the depths of one’s own “made in the image” riches, by investigating one’s own soul. And how shall we commence this existential journey? How shall we discover, experientially, in a real and direct way, the unopposed and all-pervasive virtues of God?
It’s not that hard, really. A good place to start our quest is in a small quiet room.
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