the nature of personal reality by seth

[Guest guest]

Note: I copied out so much from this book that I didn't indicate page numbers consistently before p. 157. In any event, I am reasonably certain that the quotes are sequential.. .)

You cannot escape your own attitudes, for they will form the nature of what you see. Quite literally you see what you want to see; and you see your own thoughts and emotional attitudes materialized in physical form. If changes are to occur, they must be mental and psychic changes. These will be reflected in your environment. Negative, distrustful, fearful, or degrading attitudes toward anyone work against the self.

Telepathy operates constantly. If you continually expect an individual to behave in a particular manner, then you are constantly sending him telepathic suggestions that he will do so. Each individual reacts to suggestion. According to the specific conditions existing at the time, such an individual will to some extent or another act according to the mass suggestions he receives.

These mass suggestions include not only those given to him by others, both verbally and telepathically, but also those he has given to himself, both in the waking and dream states. If an individual is in a state of despondency, this is because he has already become prey to negative suggestions of his own and others...

There are obviously ways in which you mold your own conditions, protect yourself from your own negative suggestions and those of others. You must learn to erase a negative thought or picture by replacing it with its opposite.

What you see in others is the materialization- the projection of what you think you are-not necessarily, however, of what you are.. For example, if others seem deceitful to you, it is because you deceive yourself, and then project this outward upon others.

....If an individual sees only evil and desolation in the physical world, it is because he is obsessed with evil and desolation and projects them outward, and closes his eyes to all else. If you want to know what you think of yourself, then ask yourself what you think of others, and you will find your answer.

....and all of this without his realizing his basic concept of himself, and without recognizing that he projects his feared weaknesses outward unto others.

True self-knowledge is indispensable for health or vitality. The recognition of the truth about the self simply means that you must first discover what you think about yourself, subconsciously. If it is a good image, build upon it. If it is a poor one, recognize it as only the opinion you have held of yourself and not as an absolute state.

....remember to recognize resentment when he feels it, and then to realize that resentment can be dismissed.. The initial recognition must be made, however. Then have him imagine plucking out the resentment by the roots and replacing it with a positive feeling. But he must imagine the plucking-out process.

This is the difference between repression and positive action. In repression the resentment is shoved beneath and ignored. With our method it is recognized, imaginatively plucked out as being undesirable, and replaced by the thought of peace and constructive energy.

If desire for health leads instead to an emphasis upon symptoms to be overcome, you would be better off to avoid all thoughts of health or illness and concentrate in other directions, such as work. Such an emphasis can lead to a focus upon obstacles that stand in the way, and this reinforces the negative condition.

People react to negative suggestions only when their own frame of mind is negative. Then we close ourselves off from the constructive energies we need.

You are a multidimensional personality, and within you lies all the knowledge about yourself, your challenges and problems, that you will ever need to know. Others can help you in their own way... But my mission is to remind you of the incredible power within your own being, and to encourage you to recognize and use it.

....Ideas have an electromagnetic reality. Beliefs are strong ideas about the nature of reality.

(later: Your thoughts have a very definite vital reality. Beliefs are thoughts reinforced by imagination and emotion concerning the nature of your reality.)

Ideas generate emotion. Like attracts like, so similar ideas group about each other and you accept those that fit in with your particular "system" of ideas.

112Ideas represent your psychic intent. They generate emotion and imagination. These activate the interior patterns. They are the motive force of action, the means by which all interior events are exteriorized. They are energy formed and directed, formulations of interior and exterior patterns of reality. They are a part of the creative force from which all realities spring. ... Imagination and emotion are the most concentrated forms of energy that you possess as physical creatures. Any strong emotion carries within far more energy than, say, that required to send a rocket to the moon.

You are a sender and a receiver.. Because ideas have an electromagnetic reality, beliefs, because of their intensity (see above) radiate strongly. Due to the organizing nature of your own psychological nature, similar beliefs congregate, and you will readily accept those with which you already agree...

Limiting ideas therefore predispose you to accept others of a similar nature. Exuberant ideas of freedom, spontaneity and joy automatically collect others of their kind also. There is a constant interplay between yourself and others in the exchange of ideas, both telepathically and on a conscious level.

This interchange follows, again, your conscious beliefs... You react only to those telepathic messages that fit in with your conscious ideas about yourself and your reality.

.... the conscious mind is itself spontaneous. It enjoys playing with its own contents, so I am not here recommending a type of stern mental discipline in which you examine yourself at every moment.

Telepathic communication is constant. This is usually at an unconscious level merely because your conscious mind is in a state of becoming... As an example, if your conscious ideas are relatively positive you will react to telepathically received information of a similar nature, even if you do so on an unconscious level. ....A family... can constantly reinforce its joy, gaiety, and spontaneity by concentrating on ides of vitality, strength and creativity; or it can let half of its energy slip away by reinforcing resentments, angers and thoughts of doubt and failure.

You make your own reality.

You get what you concentrate upon. There is no other main rule.

You will also react... to inner information at an unconscious level that is ... "collected" under the organization of your quite conscious concepts concerning existence in general, and your own in particular. So you are locked into physical situations that are corroborated by the great evidence of sense data...

Core beliefs ... strong ideas about your own existence.. Many other subsidiary beliefs, that earlier seemed separate from each other, should now appear quite clearly as being offshoots of core beliefs. Once the core belief is understood to be a false one, the others will fall away

It is the core belief which is strong enough to so focus your perception that you perceive from the physical world only those events that correlate with it. It is also the strength of the core belief that draws up from the vast bank of inner knowledge only those events that seem to fit within its organization.

I did not want to imply that you make a list of specifically negative ideas, however. IT IS OF SUPREME IMPORTANCE THAT YOU RECOGNIZE THE EXISTENCE OF JOYFUL BELIEFS, AND TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION THOSE ELEMENTS OF YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE WITH WHICH YOU HAVE HAD SUCCESS.

I WANT YOU TO CAPTURE (compare p. 88) THAT FEELING OF ACCOMPLISHMENT, AND TO TRANSLATE OR TRANSFER IT, TO AREAS IN WHICH YOU HAVE HAD DIFFICULTY. BUT YOU MUST REMEMBER THAT THE IDEAS EXIST FIRST AND THE EXPERIENCE PHYSICALLY FOLLOWS.

....here you become involved with one of the most meaningful aspects of the nature of personal reality, as you test your thoughts against what seems to be. There may be a time before you learn how to change your thoughts effectively, but you are engaged in a basic meaningful endeavor.

The truth is then that you form your reality directly. You react consciously and unconsciously to your beliefs. You collect from the physical universe, and the interior one, data that seems to correlate with your beliefs.

Believe, then, that you are a being unlimited by nature, born into flesh to materialize as best you can the great joy and spontaneity of your nature.

Core beliefs are those about which you build your life.. You are consciously aware of these...

Data that seems unrelated to this core belief is then not assimilated but thrown into the corners of your mind, unused, and you are denied the value of the information. ... inactive material. This information will not be a part of the organized structure of your usual thoughts.

A core belief is invisible only when you think of it as a fact of life, and not as a belief about life...

.... you must become aware of your own structures. Build them up or tear them down, but do not allow yourself to become blind to the furniture of your own mind... it will help you, in fact, if you think of your own beliefs as furniture that can be rearranged, changed, renewed, completely discarded or replaced. Your ideas are yours.. They should not control you... Imagine yourself then rearranging this furniture. Images of particular pieces will come clearly to you. Ask yourself what ideas these pieces represent. See how well the tables fit together. Open up the drawers inside.

You must understand that these are not simply dead ideas, like debris, within your mind. They are psychic matter. In a sense then they are alive. They group themselves like cells, protecting their own validity and identity.

You feed them, figuratively speaking, with like ideas.

Information does not exist by itself.. Connected with it is the consciousness of all those who understand it, perceive it or originate it. ... the consciousness that held, or holds, or will hold the information attracts it like a magnet... The information itself wants to move toward consciousness. It is not dead or inert. It is not something you grab for, it is also something that wants to be grabbed, and so it gravitates to those who seek it.

Your consciousness attracts the consciousness that is already connected with the material.

.... the emergence of the inner self, through art, into the physical universe.

Imagination is one of the motivating agencies that helps transform your beliefs into physical experience. It is vital therefore that you understand the interrelationship between ideas and imagination. In order to dislodge unsuitable beliefs and establish new ones, you must learn to use your imagination to move concepts in and out of your mind. The proper use of imagination can then propel ideas in the directions you desire.

Largely, but not completely, your imagination follows your beliefs, as do your emotions. One of the most hampering beliefs of all is the idea that the clues to current behavior are buried and usually inaccessible. This belief itself closes to you the contents of your own conscious mind and prevents you from looking there for the answers that are available.

[to Rob:] Now at various times you made those conscious choices. They escaped your notice but they existed as conscious points of awareness and choice.

You should ...become... aware, and consciously and alertly aware, of the beneficial ideas and their importance in your lives.

IT IS VITAL THAT YOU REALIZE YOU ARE WORKING WITH BELIEFS IN YOUR MIND - THAT THE REAL WORK IS DONE THERE IN THE MIND - AND NOT LOOK FOR IMMEDIATE PHYSICAL RESULTS.

THEY WILL FOLLOW AS SURELY AND CERTAINLY AS THE "BAD" RESULTS FOLLOWED, AND THIS MUST BE A BELIEF: THAT THE GOOD RESULTS WILL COME. BUT THE REAL WORK IS DONE IN THE MIND. IF YOU DO THE WORK THEN YOU CAN REST ASSURED OF THE RESULTS, BUT YOU MUST NOT CHECK CONSTANTLY FOR THEM.

Your emotions and your imagination both follow your belief. When the belief vanishes then the same emotional context is no longer entertained, and your imagination turns in other directions.

Quite deliberately you use your conscious mind playfully, ....game... in which for a time you completely ignore what seems to be in physical terms and "pretend" that what you really want is real.

If you are poor, you purposely pretend that you have all you need financially. Imagine how you will spend your money. If you are ill, imagine playfully that you are cured. See yourself doing what you would do. If you cannot communicate with others, imagine yourself doing so easily.

....As it took a while for the unsatisfactory beliefs to become materialized, so it may be a time before you see physical results; but the new ideas will take growth and change your experience as certainly as the old ones did. The process of imagining will also bring you face to face with other subsidiary ideas that may momentarily bring you up short. you may see where you held two quite conflicting ideas simultaneously, and with equal vigor. In such a case, you stalemated yourself... so you will try to be healthy and not healthy at the same time, or successful and not successful.. .

Feeling and conscious thought.... actually go together but your conscious thinking largely determines your emotions, and not the other way round. Your beliefs generate the appropriate emotion that is implied. A long period of inner depression does not just come upon you. Your emotions do not betray you. Instead, over a period of time you have been consciously entertaining negative beliefs that then generated the strong feelings of despondency. As you think so you feel, and not the other way around.

.... The belief in illness itself depends upon a belief in human unworthiness, guilt and imperfection, for example.

The mind does not just hold active beliefs. It contains many others in a passive state. They lie latent, ready to be focused upon and used; any of them can be brought to the fore when a conscious thought acts as a stimulus (this is why you should do the suggestions thing)

If you are focusing upon ideas of..., illness or lack,...., your conscious mind also holds latently concepts of health, vigor and abundance. If you divert your thoughts from the negative ideas to the positive ones, then your concentration will begin to alter the balance. The vast reservoir of energy and potential within you is called into action under the leadership of your conscious mind.

....your consciousness expands as you use it. You become "more" conscious as you exercise these (reasoning) faculties.

Conscious mind is a vehicle for the imagination in many ways. The greater its knowledge the further the reach of imagination. ..

The conscious mind is a vehicle for the expression of the soul in corporeal terms. It is your method of assessing temporal experience according to the beliefs that it holds about the nature of reality. It automatically causes the body to react in certain ways. I cannot say this often enough: Your beliefs follow your reality, your body and its condition, your personal relationships, your environment, and en masse your civilization and world... The conscious mind gives its orders and the inner self carries them out.

All of the powers of your inner self are set into activation as a result of your conscious beliefs. You have lost a sense of responsibility for your conscious thoughts because you have been taught that it is not what forms your life. You have been taught that regardless of your beliefs your are terrorized by unconscious conditioning. And as long as you hold that conscious belief you will experience it as reality.

Some of your beliefs originated in your childhood, but you are not at their mercy unless you believe that you are.

Because your imagination follows your beliefs you can find yourself in a vicious circle in which you constantly paint pictures in your mind that reinforce "negative" aspects in your life. The imaginative events generate appropriate emotions, which automatically bring about hormonal changes in your body or affect your behavior with others, or cause you to interpret events always in the light of your beliefs. And so daily experience will seem to justify what you believe more and more. The only way out is to become aware of your beliefs, aware of your own conscious thought, and to change your beliefs so that you bring them more in line with the kind of reality you want to experience. Imagination and emotion will then automatically come into play to reinforce the new beliefs.

The first important step is to realize that your beliefs about reality are just that - beliefs about reality and not necessarily attributes of reality. You must make a clear distinction between you and your beliefs. You must then realize that your ideas are physically materialized. What you believe to be true in your experience is true. To change the physical effect you must change the original belief-while being quite aware that for a time physical materializations of the old beliefs may still hold.... however, your new beliefs will-and quickly-begin to show themselves in your experience. But you must not be concerned for their emergence, for this brings up the fear that the new ideas will not materialize, and so this negates your purpose.

Know that all events are mental and psychic first and that these will happen in physical terms, but do not keep watching yourself.. Continue with the game [see above].

You are doing the same thing now constantly and automatically with whatever beliefs you have, and they are being as constantly and automatically translated. It is the separation of self from beliefs that is so important initially, however.

Examine all of your beliefs about yourself and the nature of reality; and one belief, if you let it, will lead you to another. Imagination and will power are never in conflict. Your beliefs may conflict, but your imagination will always follow your will power and your conscious thoughts and beliefs.

Example: you are overweight. ....tried diets to no avail. You follow what I have said so far. You change the belief. You say "because I believe I am overweight, I am, so I will think of myself at my ideal weight.

But you find that you still overeat. ... You may, for instance, find that you believe you are not worthy, and hence should not look attractive.. . you may find that you feel - and believe that your are - so vulnerable that you need the weight so people will think twice before they shove you around. In all of these cases the ideas will be conscious. You have entertained them often and your imagination and emotions are in league with them, and not in conflict.

People with like ideas reinforce each other's beliefs.

You are setting out to experience the most fulfilled reality that you can. To do this you have, hopefully, begun to examine your beliefs. See other people react to you in the new way. This is highly important because telepathically you are sending them interior messages. You are telling them that you are changing the conditions and behavior of your relationship. You are broadcasting your altered position. You must accept the idea completely, however, that your beliefs form your experience. Discard those beliefs that are not bringing you those effects you want. In the meantime you will often be in the position of telling yourself that something is true in the face of physical data that seems completely contradictory. You must realize that you are the one who produced that "physical evidence" that still faces you, and you did so through your

beliefs. ... physical evidence will gradually begin to "prove" your new belief as faithfully as it did your old one.

You are mainly concerned now with physical orientation and the corporeal materialization of inner reality. Therefore the conscious mind holds in ready access the information that you require for effective day-to-day living. As soon as the need for such data - aid, information, or knowledge - arises, then it is immediately forthcoming unless your own conscious beliefs cause a barrier. It is because of (the concentrated focus) of your conscious mind that you can "tune into" the particular range of activity that is physical.

In your present life the conscious mind assesses physical reality and has behind it all the energy, power and ability of the inner self at its disposal. Any information that it requires will be available.... The inner self sends to it only the information it asks for or feels necessary. To a very large extent then conscious beliefs act as great liberators of such inner data, or as inhibitors of it. The conscious mind is itself expanding and developing. It is not a thing. It learns through experience and through the effects of its behavior. The inner self brings about whatever results the conscious mind desires.

.... [body?] is not cut off from the inner self. The inner self keeps the physical body alive even as it formed it. The miraculous constant translation of spirit into flesh is carried on with inexhaustible energy by these inner portions of being, but in all cases the inner self looks to the conscious mind for its assessment of the body's condition and reality, and forms the image in line with the conscious mind's beliefs. ...To change your body you change your beliefs, even in the face of physical data or evidence that conflicts.

You send a barrage of beliefs and instructions to the inner self that affect your physical image.

I will call... inner sound the sound of your thoughts within your own head. Inner sounds have an even greater effect than exterior ones upon your body. They affect the atoms and molecules that compose your cells. In many respects it is true that you speak your body, but the speaking is interior... The sound exists connected with but quite apart from the mental words you use in thinking. ...When you say, "I am tired," mentally you are not only giving silent messages to yourself - I say messages rather than message because the general statement is broken down; many portions of the body must be affected before you feel tired-but beside this the inner sound value of the messages automatically affects the body in just that way... The inner sound value of the countering suggestion automatically begins to refresh the body.

[poor vision:] You must discover the reason for the belief behind the physical poor function or nonfunction, and if this is done the condition will automatically clear up... Your muscles believe what you tell them about themselves. So does every other portion of your physical body

Each of the atoms and molecules that compose your body has its own reality in sound values that you do not hear physically. Each organ of your body then has its own unique sound value too. When there is something wrong the inner sounds are discordant. The inharmonious sounds have become a part of that portion of the body as a result of the inner sound of your own thought-beliefs. That is why it is vital that you not reinforce these inner sounds through repeating the same negative suggestions to yourself. Verbal suggestions are translated into inner sound. This passes through your body in somewhat the same way that some kinds of light do.

.... [body] also has "structures" of sound, light, and electromagnetic properties that you do not perceive. These are all connected with the physical image that you know. Any physical disabilities show themselves in these other "structures" initially.

The sound, light, and electromagnetic patterns give strength and vitality to the physical form that you recognize. They are more mobile than the physical body, and even more susceptible to the changing pattern of your own thought and emotion.

....thoughts are translated into this inner sound, but thoughts always attempt to materialize themselves also. As such they are incipient images, collectors of energy. They build up their own embryonic form until it is in one way or another physically translated.

Mental images therefore are extremely powerful, combining inner sound and its effects with a clear mental picture which will seek physical form. Your imagination adds motivating and propelling power to such images, and so you will find that many of your beliefs are entertained by you in an inner visual manner. They will have mental pictures connected with them.

One such image may represent one particular belief or it may stand for several. As you make lists of your beliefs you will find some of these pictures coming into your mind. Look at them as you would a painting you have created. If you do not like what you see then quite consciously change the picture in your mind.

In quiet moments the word "O-O-O-O-O-M- M-M-M-M," said slowly, mentally or aloud, will be of benefit in toning up your general physical condition. The sounds contain within them a built-in impetus toward energy and well-being, as I will explain shortly.

A mental image... is composed of the same properties .... a pattern of internal sound with electromagnetic properties imbued with certain light values. In a sense, and a very real one, the mental image is incipient matter, and any structure so composed, combining the electromagnetic sound and light values, will automatically try to reproduce itself in physical existence, or materialization.

The atoms and molecules that compose your cells and your flesh, for instance, do not react to the physical sounds that you hear or the light patterns that your physical eyes perceive. s.108/9 ... The nerves are also composed of the same kind of interior structures as mentioned earlier: around, or rather from which, the physical nerves form. Here the exterior data is translated and broken down into inner terms. That is, it is decoded in terms of the internal sound, light, and electromagnetic patterns discussed before. It then becomes usable information, even in terms of the atoms and molecules that compose the cells. The physical lapse that occurs between an incoming message and its intended destination does not occur on these other levels. The "interior message" gets to its destination ahead of the physical one. ...Therefore the invisible body pattern, composed of its interior light, sound and electromagnetic properties, reacts first,

and actually initiates the later physical response... before you see anything physically, you do so through these inner pathways. The interior perception activates the outside one. When you experience physical motion or activity,... or phenomena, you are becoming aware of the tail end of a long "series" of interior comprehensions. ...all exterior events, including your own bodies with their insides, all objects, all physical materializations, are the outside structures of ... ones that are composed of interior sound and invisible light, interwoven in electromagnetic patterns.. Beneath temporal perception, then, each object and event exists in these terms, in patterns that interact with each other. On a physical level you seem to be separated from everything that is not yourself. This is not true... On the interior level... all happenings and objects are connected. A movement or change in one affects others. You will physically respond to and recognize

some of this alteration, as in the example of the near accident. But whether or not you are consciously aware of such activity, it changes the interior environment of your body through these inner pathways.

Your own thoughts and beliefs, having the same kind of inner reality, also transform the interior environments of others. ... a physical event... was initially a mental one. It existed in this nontemporal reality then before, in your terms, it was physically materialized, perceived and reacted to. It was propelled from inner reality to outward reality through belief, emotion and imagination.

Ideas represent your psychic intent. They generate emotion and imagination. These activate the interior patterns. They are the motive force of action, the means by which all interior events are exteriorized. They are energy formed and directed, formulations of interior and exterior patterns of reality. They are a part of the creative force from which all realities spring. ... Imagination and emotion are the most concentrated forms of energy that you possess as physical creatures. Any strong emotion carries within far more energy than, say, that required to send a rocket to the moon.

Emotions, instead of propelling a physical rocket... send thoughts from this interior reality through the barrier between nonphysical and physical into the "objective" world-no small feat, and one that is constantly repeated.

....These invisible structures preceded the emergence of the physical body. They also exist after the body's death. While the condition of the body is directed by the conscious mind in life, then, the idea or mental pattern for the body existed before the conscious mind's connection with the physical brain.

The general framework, properties and characteristics of the body exist, therefore, before its formation... . The conscious mind directs the so-called involuntary system of the body, and not the other way around. No idea slips insidiously past your awareness to affect your involuntary system unless it fits in with your own conscious beliefs. ...you will not be sick if you think you are well-but there may be other ideas that make you believe in the necessity for poor health. ... involuntary functions perfectly mirror your consciously held ideas and beliefs.

.... the conscious mind is not any one event; it represents various portions of the inner self that "surface" at any given time [i..e. as the "ego"]

The form is... a mirror of beliefs, and will accurately materialize in flesh those ideas held by the conscious mind. That is one of the body's primary functions. A sick body is performing that function then, in its way, as well as a healthy body. It is your most intimate feedback system, changing with your thoughts and experience giving you in flesh the physical counterpart of your thought. So it is futile to become angry at a symptom... when it is presenting you with the corporeal replica of your own thought, as it was meant to do.

Your environment and your experience in the physical world also provide you with the same kind of feedback.. It is just as useless to berate your environment or your experience in it as it is to deride your body, for the same reasons.

You are... in physical existence using your body as a medium for learning and expression.. . later we will discuss other kinds of existence in which you are also involved; and these to some extent color your intents and purposes in physical life as you now understand it.

If all of your beliefs, not just your "fortunate" ones, were not materialized, you would never thoroughly understand on a physical level that your ideas create reality. If only your "positive" beliefs were materialized then you would never clearly comprehend the power of your thought, for you would not completely experience its physical results.

[before physical birth] you tune yourself into a highly specific dimension of reality. You form a physical structure that will have existence within that intensely concentrated area, ... that will come alive within those "frequencies" . ... the other portions can be called the inner self. Now all of this inner self cannot become expressed even with its connection with the brain, since the brain must sift perception through the physical apparatus... Therefore a seeming division occurs (p. 118), in which a portion of the invisible conscious mind is connected with the physical brain, and a portion of it is free of that connection. That part forms what you think of as the involuntary system of the body.... There is constant interplay and communication between the areas of consciousness that are connected to the brain and those that are not. The "deeper" purposes of the consciousness involved "circulate", sometimes arising in the awareness

that is joined with the brain. Information coming from those deeper sources of the self, reaching the areas connected to the brain, will be interpreted according to the beliefs of that most physically focused segment of the self. To some degree, such inner data will be colored by the current beliefs of that part of the self most directly confronting the physical world. Those beliefs, however, are also constantly being examined by the inner self.

[about believing that hearing will fade after a certain time of life:]

Functions in this particular regard are habits. You simply forget how to hear properly, following your belief. All of the minute manipulations necessary to hearing are unconsciously repressed. The actual physical deterioration then does indeed follow... the belief would work to insure the materialization of that state. ... You must understand that your ideas and thoughts do not exist as phantoms or shadow images without substance. They are electromagnetic realities. They affect your physical being and they are automatically translated by your nervous system into the stuff of your flesh and of your experience.. . All energy at the inner self's disposal is then concentrated to bring about the results asked for by the conscious mind... When you rail against an unfavorable environment or a situation or condition, basically you are not acting

independently, but almost blindly reacting. You are reacting to events that seem to happen to you, and always in response to a situation.

To act in an independent manner, you must begin to initiate action that you want to occur physically by creating it in your own being.

This is done by combining belief, emotion and imagination, and forming them into a mental picture of the desired physical result. Of course, the wanted result is not yet physical or you would not need to create it, so it does no good to say your physical experience seems to contradict what you are trying to do. (p. 121)

Ideas and beliefs do feed upon themselves. There is within them a built-in impetus toward growth, development and fulfillment.

Since it is the beliefs of the conscious mind that regulate the involuntary bodily motions and the entire physical system, then contradictory beliefs obviously set up adverse physical reactions and imbalances.

[....a case in point, strongly contradictory beliefs:]

His beliefs in his unworthiness prevented him from using his abilities, or even pursuing a course of effective action. ..a situation in which an individual, through beliefs, put his power and energy literally beside himself. ... His chemical makeup varied considerably.

.... a method of cure, in which portions of each conflicting side of the personality break off to form a clearer psychological structure which can communicate with the other two, act as a referee, and reconcile the opposing beliefs held by each.

This is done many times without the main personality realizing what is really going on.

In all cases of this nature... the problem is one of unassimilated beliefs. ... such beliefs can be expressed through various parts of the body. ... a system of medicine that largely deals with symptoms only encourages a patient to project such beliefs on new organs, ..after already sacrificing others in operations.

While the most basic work must be done by the individual, help is always available from a variety of sources, both within and without. You will literally interpret and use almost any data that comes to you as helpful, and it will be highly effective-unless your beliefs lead you to think, perhaps, that everyone is against you, or that you are beyond help, or that you do not deserve it. (which I consider the most hampering beliefs). Other such ideas can also close you off from help, of course, but you will instinctively look for it and use it when possible.

The stuff of the body should not be considered as some metaphysical result, then, but as a living gestalt of responsive flesh. Your body is composed of other living entities, in other words. Though you organize this living material it has its own right to fulfillment and existence... Your perception is merely that which you are aware of. Even the atoms and molecules have their own fine vision and appreciate their environment in their own way. There is no difference between the energy that shapes your ideas and the energy that grows a flower, or that heals your finger when you burn it. The soul does not exist apart from nature.

The body is often closer to the soul than the mind is because it automatically grows as a flower does, trusting its nature.

Physical existence is valuable for many reasons, one being that the flesh is so responsive to thought and yet so resilient. There are built-in guidelines so that the body consciousness itself, while mirroring your negative images at times, will also automatically struggle against them. ... Thoughts interact with the body and become part of it as viruses do. ... Put simply, they... can be regarded as invisible viruses, carriers, sparks setting off reactions not only within the body but the entire physical system as you know it. Your thoughts are as natural as the cells... and as real. They interact with one another as viruses do. While you are in this reality there is no division between the mental, the spiritual, and the physical. If you think there is, then you do not sufficiently understand the spirituality of the flesh or the physical reality of your thought... All portions of the body's reality are versions in flesh of the soul's

reality, even as all segments of the exterior universe mirror an internal one... Physical phenomena is only a portion of what nature is, and all realities are natural.

In your terms, probabilities are extensions and variations on the growth principle that is quite obvious in your daily reality.

[Cells:] Each cell remembers its past though all of its parts have been and are being continually replaced..

Think of your thoughts... as living electromagnetic cells, differing from the physical cells in your body only in the nature of their materialization. Your thoughts direct the overall functioning of your body's cells, even though you do not consciously know how those cells operate. That work is unconscious.

Each physical cell is in its way a miniature brain, with memory of all of its personal experiences and of its relationship with other cells, and with the body as a whole. In your terms this means that each cell operates with an innate picture of the body's entire history-past, present, and future.

Now this picture is ever-changing and mobile. An alteration in just one cell is instantly noted by the body consciousness (the combined consciousness of the cells), and the future effect perceived. This information is used together with all other data from the body, and a prediction made. (p.145)

This body prediction is then assessed, and on more levels than it is possible for me to explain. Briefly, the picture is "shown" in the invisible arena where flesh and spirit meet. This arena is not a place, of course, but an inner state of gestalt consciousness. The state is brought about through certain interactions that occur deep within the body. Magnetic structures are formed. They are created on a physical level through certain activations, of the nerves in which the normal patterns are jumped, so to speak, and images are formed. The nerves and the cellular structures at their tips take pictures. These are all assembled and used to form the larger picture of the body's condition.

These are not images as you think of them but highly coded information, electromagnetically imprinted ... ...they cannot be perceived except by the body. But this procedure is so far superior to anything that you know that the body, therefore, actually takes precognitive pictures of its future condition-as if the body situation at the time were projected into the future.

There is a built-in equilibrium to some extent. The body is so responsive to conscious thought that it has its own innate system of self-preservation and its own guiding image of fulfillment.

["Past" events:) Your conscious thoughts and habits regulate which of them will intermix into the maelstrom of the present.

You consciously give the signals for reaction. ...Past events do not intrude in this manner unless they are beckoned by the conscious expectations and thoughts that exist within your mind. Those unconscious memories will be activated according to your current beliefs. You will be replenished and renewed as your thoughts motivate joyful body sensations and physical events, or you will be depressed as you bring into your awareness unpleasant body happenings.. . constant unpleasant thoughts put the body into a state of turmoil that is "unrealistic" , and, in turn, force it to reactivate such old patterns.

At one level of your being there is a common ground where body consciousness merges with that higher consciousness from which your own identity springs. This is the ground of your being where soul and flesh meet, both in time and out of it.

You may have dreams urging you to move in such and such a direction, or pointing out areas in which corrections should be made. Often such dreams bring about behavior changes whether or not you remember them in the morning. You may request dreams in which proper direction is given, and you will receive them. ... You must remember that ideas are as alive as the cells within your hand. ... when good thoughts from an individual's present life are activated, they draw upon similar ones from his or her reincarnational personalities.

[Einstein: mass and energy are equivalent to each other-when one is "destroyed" the other is "created"].

A simple experiment with self-explanatory results: Think of a sad event of your life. Similar feelings will soon follow, and with them memories of other such unpleasant episodes strung together through association. Scenes, odors, words, perhaps half-forgotten, will suddenly come upon you with new freshness.

Your thoughts will activate the appropriate feelings. Beneath your awareness, however, they will also trigger the cells' everpresent memory imprints of stimuli received when those events occurred. There is, to some extent now, a cellular memory playback-and on the part of the entire body, the recognition of its state at that time..

If you pursue such sorrowful thoughts persistently you are reactivating that body condition. Think of one of the most pleasant events that ever happened to you and the reverse will be true, but the process is the same. This time the associated memories are pleasant, and the body changes accordingly.

Remember, these mental associations are living things. They are formations of energy assembled into invisible structures, through processes quite as valid and complicated as the organization of any group of cells. Comparing them with cells, they are of briefer duration, generally speaking, though under certain conditions this does not apply. But your thoughts form structures as real as the cells. Their composition is different in that no solidity is involved in your terms.

As living cells have a structure, react to stimuli and ... according to their own classification, so do thoughts. Thoughts thrive on association. They magnetically attract others like themselves, and like some strange microscopic animals they repel their "enemies", or other thoughts that are threatening to their own survival.

Using this analogy, your mental and emotional life forms a framework composed of such structures, and these act directly upon the cells of your physical body.

Imagine the successive thoughts and feelings that you possess. When you feel weak you are weak. When you feel joyful your body benefits and becomes stronger. (p. 157) So inhibiting what you consider as negative thoughts, or assuming that they are so terrible, is no answer.

Your beliefs about what is desirable and what is not, what is good and what is evil, cannot be divorced from the condition of your body. Your own ideas of values can help you achieve good health or bring about disease, can bring into your experience success or failure, happiness or sadness. Yet each of you will interpret that last remark in line with your own value system. You will have definite ideas about what success or failure means, or what good or evil is.

Your own value system then is built up of your beliefs about reality, and those beliefs form your experience. Suppose you believe that to be "good" you must try to be perfect... Trying to be perfect all the time can be far more than a nuisance: It can be disastrous because of your misunderstanding.

The word "perfect" holds many pitfalls. In the first place it presupposes something completed and done beyond change, and so beyond motion, further development, or creativity. ... Your thoughts are perfectly themselves. Left alone, they come and go.

"Negative thoughts": You with your conscious mind are to discriminate among your thoughts as to which ones you want to form into your system of beliefs, but in so doing you are not to pretend blindness. You may at times wish that a rainy day were a sunny one, but you do not stand at the window and deny that the rain is falling, or that the air is cold and the sky dark.

Because you accept the rain as a present reality does not mean, either, that you must believe that all days are stormy, and make that obvious misconception a part of your beliefs about reality. So you do not have to pretend that a "dark" thought doesn't exist. (p. 159)

Some are afraid of certain thoughts, and so are oblivious to their beauty and their place in mental life.

Since you have all kinds of thoughts there are reasons for having them, as you have all kinds of geography.. Within your reality it is as foolish to deny the existence of certain thoughts as it would be, say, to pretend that deserts do not exist. In following such a course you deny dimensions of experience and diminish your reality. This does not mean that you have to collect what you think of as negative thoughts, any more that it means that you should spend a month in a desert if you do not like them. It does mean that within nature as you understand it, nothing is meaningless or to be pretended out of existence.

Usually if you regard a thought as bad or beneath you, or if you are ashamed of it, then you try to deny it, stop its motion and hold it back. You cannot restrain energy, although you may think you can. You simply collect it, whereupon it grows, seeking its fulfillment.

161... I simply want to point out the difference between healthy natural aggressiveness, and the explosive, distorted emergence of repressed aggression.. ..areas in which you strongly repress your thoughts, for many energy blockages will be found there.

.... man began to believe in demons when he started to feel a sense of guilt. The guilt itself arose with the birth of compassion.

162The birth of a conscious mind, as you think of it, meant that the species took upon itself free will.

164Guilt is the other side of compassion. Its original purpose was to enable you to empathize on an aware level with yourselves and other members of creaturehood, so that you could consciously control what was previously handled on a biological level alone. Guilt in that respect therefore had a strong natural basis, and when it is perverted, misused or misunderstood, it has that great terrifying energy of any runaway basic phenomenon.

165... in your fear of negative thoughts you often attempt to deny all normal aggressiveness, and at the first glimpse of it bring up your mental antibodies prepared for action. In so doing you try to repudiate the validity of your own experience. If you do not feel your individual reality, then you can never realize that you form it, and so can change it. It is this denial of experience, and the energy blockages involved, that build up the accumulation of unnecessary "unnatural" guilt. The body itself cannot understand these blocked messages, and cries out to express its own corporeal knowledge of the moment as it experiences it. You mentally shout in such situations that you do not feel what you feel.

Over a period of time, the conscious mind, because of its position, can override the body's messages. Yet the backed-up accumulation of energy will seek outlet. The smallest, most innocent symbol for the repressed material may then bring about behavior on your part that seems out of all proportion to the stimulus.

166... You try to be so good precisely because you believe you are so bad and unworthy.

167Generally speaking, you are here to expand your consciousness, to learn the ways of creativity as directed through conscious thought. The aware mind can change its beliefs, and so to a large extent it can alter its bodily experience.

Thou shalt not kill more than is needed for thy physical sustenance.

Thou shalt not violate ... leeway had to be left for your own interpretation.

An outright lie may or may not be a violation... Having normal aggressive thoughts is not a violation.

Doing violence to your body, or another's, is a violation. Doing violence to the spirit of another is a violation-but. .. because you are conscious beings the interpretations are yours.

Killing while protecting your own body from death at the hands of another through immediate contact is a violation. Whether or not any justification seems apparent, the violation exists... You could counter such an attack in several ways that do not involve killing. You would not be in such a hypothetical situation to begin with unless violent thoughts of your own, faced or unfaced, had attracted it to you. ... aggressive-forceful , active, mental or spoken-commands for peace could save your life in such a case.

When you consider aggressive thoughts wrong, using this analogy, you do not even begin to allow the system to clear itself. Instead you shut up the "poisons" inside.

As an accumulation would occur in the flesh, so the same thing might happen in your mental experience. Physically you could end up with a very serious condition; and mentally and emotionally such a clamping down on natural forces can result in "diseased" idea structures that are isolated from other more healthy concepts. These can be like growths-not lacking oxygen... but free access and flow with other portions of your conscious experience.

170Controls were needed lest the conscious mind, denied full use of the animals' innate taboos, run away with itself. Guilt, natural guilt, depends upon memory then.

The collection of unrecognized artificial guilts, built up through the centuries, has led to such an accumulation of repressed energy that its release has resulted in violent action..

In those terms overpopulation is a violation. In the case of both war and overgrowth, the species has ignored its natural guilt.

172Many of your problems result from the fact that you do not accept the responsibility of your own consciousness. It is meant to assess the reality that is unconsciously formed in direct replica of your thoughts and expectations.

When you do not embrace this conscious knowledge, but refuse it, you are not using one of the finest "tools" ever created by your species, and you are to a large extent denying your birthright and heritage.

When this happens, the species by default must fall back upon vestiges of old instincts-that were not geared to operate in conjunction with a conscious reasoning mind, and do not comprehend your experience; that finds your "moment of reflection" an impertinent denial of impulse. So man loses full use of the animals' regulated, graceful instinct, and yet denies the conscious and emotional discrimination given him instead.

172The "demons", your projections, are then placed upon a national enemy, or the leader of another race; sometimes whole masses of population will project upon other large groups the images of their own unfaced frustrations. Even in Augustus you find the hero and the villain, separate and diversified. As a man can be so divided, so can a nation and a world. So can a species... so... can a family be so divided, and one member always appear as a hero and one the villain or the demon.

173Natural guilt is a creative mechanism, meant to serve as a conscious spur in the solving of problems that, in your terms, no other animals ever had. By taking advantage of it you leap still further through unknown frontiers, and break through into dimensions of awareness that were always latent since the birth of the conscious mind.

Natural guilt, followed, is a wise guide that brings along with it not only biological integrity, but triggers within consciousness aspects of activity that must otherwise remain closed.

175 ["natural grace":] You can ignore it. You can hold beliefs that blind you to its existence. You will still be graced but unable to perceive your own uniqueness and integrity, and blind also to other attributes with which you are automatically gifted.

176The dog may remember where he saw his master last, but without being able to summon the memory, and operating without the kind of mental associations that you use. His connections will be of a more biological nature and will not provide the leeway, that your own mental conditions allow you.

With the large freedom provided by the conscious mind, however, man could stray from that great inner joy of being, forget it, disbelieve in it, or use his free will to deny its existence.

! When man did not violate, he was aware of his own state of grace. When he violated, it fell back into cellular awareness, as with the animals, but he felt consciously cut off from it and denied.

The simplicity of natural guilt does not lead to what you think of as conscience, yet conscience is also dependent upon that moment of reflection that in a large measure sets you apart from the animals. Conscience, as you think of it, is caused by a dilemma and a misunderstanding of the conditions set upon your physical existence.. Conscience arose with the emergence of artificial guilt.

177The conscious mind is a maker of distinctions. It brings to the surface of awareness whole gestalts of previously unconscious material, then assembles and organized it in ever-changing form. Through purposeful focus, a literally infinite amount of such data can be unconsciously sorted; then only the desired elements will emerge... ...the aware mind's capacity to play upon, mix and merge, and rearrange perception and experience.

178In a simultaneous time, punishment makes no sense. The punishment as an event, and the event for which you were being punished, exist at once; and since there is no past, present and future, you could just as well say that the punishment came first.

[reincarnation: ] The theory is a conscious-mind interpretation in linear terms. On the one hand it is highly distorted. On the other hand it is a creative interpretation, as the conscious mind plays with reality as it understands here. But in the terms used here there is no karma to be paid off as punishment unless you believe there are crimes for which you must pay.

In larger terms there is no cause and effect either, though these are root assumptions in your reality... we return once more to that moment of reflection, for it is here that both causes and effects first appear. ...animals.. . each in its own degree - far less than yours - shows that reflection. In some, for all intents and purposes, it does not exist at all. Yet it is there, latent.

180These multiple existences, ...are simultaneous and open-ended. In your terms the conscious mind is growing toward a realization of the part it has to play in such multidimensional reality. It is enough that you understand your part in this existence.. When you fully comprehend that you form what you think of as your current reality, all else will fall into place.

Your beliefs, thoughts and feelings are instantly materialized physically. Their earthly reality occurs simultaneously with their inception, but in the world of time lapses between appear to occur. So I say one causes the other, and I use those terms to help you understand, but all are at once. So are your multiple lives occurring as the immediate realization of your being in the natural extension of its many-faceted abilities.

"At once" does not imply a finished state of perfection nor a cosmic situation in which all things have been done, for all things are still happening. You are still happening-but both present and future selves; and your past self is still undergoing what you think is done. Moreover, it is experiencing events that you do not recall, that your linear-attuned consciousness cannot perceive on that level.

....youth can be physically "prolonged" far beyond its present duration...

(like breath) Just so your lives go in and out of you-you and yet not you. And a portion of you, while letting them all go, remembers them and knows their journey. ... So the lives you have lived are not you, while they are of you.

181Close your eyes. Think of your breaths as lives, and you the entity through which they have passed and are passing. Then you will feel your state of grace, and all artificial guilts will be meaningless. None of this negates the supreme and utter integrity of your individuality, for you are as well the individual through whom the lives flow, and the unique lives that are expressed through you.

As your breath leaves you and becomes part of the world, free, so do your lives leave you and continue to exist in your terms. You cannot confine a personality that you "were" to a particular century that is finished and deny it other fulfillments, for even now it exists and has fresh experience.

182Think of the greater you-call it the entity if you want to-as forming a psychic structure quite as real as your physical one, but composed of many selves. As each cell of your body has its position within your corporeal space and boundaries, so each self within the entity is aware of its own "time" and dimension of activity. The body is a temporal structure. The cells, however, while a part of this body, are not aware of the entire dimension in which your consciousness dwells. They do not perceive all of the elements that are available even in three-dimensional experience, yet your present consciousness- seemingly so much more sophisticated- physically rests upon cellular awareness.

So the entity or "greater" psychic structure of which you are a part is aware of a much larger dimension of activity than you are, yet in the same way its more sophisticated consciousness rests upon your own, and one is necessary to the other.

In physical life there is a lapse while messages leap the nerve ends (see 625th session in Chapter Five). In other terms and on other levels, this was represented in that "moment of reflection" that took place as man's consciousness emerged that of the animals.

In still other terms and at different levels this lapse occurs-this moment of reflection extends itself-as the self leaps clear of physical form (even as the cell at one time deserts the body).

In this regard now, and for the sake of our analogy only, think of the life of the self as one message leaping across the nerve cells of a multidimensional structure-again, as real as your body-and consider it also as a greater "moment of reflection" on the part of such a many-sided personality.

I make these analogies because they are pertinent, yet I am aware that they can make you feel small or fear for your identity. You are more than a message, say, passing through the vast reaches of a superself. You are not lost in the universe... such analogies can... conjure up within your imagination some feeling of your intimate relationship with all other reality. To some extent, the feeling of grace is your emotional recognition of the necessity, purpose and freedom, the innate appreciation, of your rightness and your place in existence.

Remember also, in your terms now, the great gulf that separates you as a self from those cells that physically compose you. Your own present identity contains the knowledge and "memory" of all those simultaneous existences (i.e. I am dead for other I's who carry m e as a "memory"), even as the cells in their way retain memory of all those physical structures which they (have) formed. Consciously, because of your time concepts, you will interpret those simultaneous lives in reincarnational terms, one seemingly before the other.

Your conscious ideas, expectations and beliefs direct the health and activity of the cells... In terms of consciousness, the entity or greater you knows as much more than you know, as you know more than your cells.

You however do have free will (as opposed to the cells [added by me]), for while the entity's psychic structure can be compared to the body, it is a part of and inhabits far greater dimensions. All of this may seem to have little to do with your personal reality. Yet your daily experience is as connected with your self or entity as it is with the cells of your physical form.

184You are a part of your soul... The entity ... or greater self is composed of souls. ... The entity has its existence in multitudinous dimensions, its souls (? hard to read) free to travel within boundaries that would seem infinite to you. As the smallest cell within your body participates to its degree in your daily experience. so does the soul to an immeasurably greater extent share in the events of the entity.

.... The cell does not need to be consciously aware of you in order to fulfill itself, even though your expectations of health largely influence its existence, but your recognition of the soul and entity can help you direct energies from these other dimensions into your daily life.

You are in the process of expanding your psychic structure, of becoming a conscious participator with the soul, in certain terms, of becoming what your soul is. As cells multiply and grow-within their own nature and the physical framework-so do selves "evolve" in terms of value fulfillment.

Souls are also creative psychic structures, ever-changing and yet always retaining individual integrity, and all are dependent one upon the other. Souls make up the life of the entity in those terms. Yet the entity is "more" than the soul is.

186When you are aware of the existence of the entity and of the soul, you can consciously draw upon their greater energy, understanding and strength.

It is inherently available, but your conscious intent brings about certain changes in you that automatically trigger such benefits. The results will be felt down to the smallest cells within your body, and will affect even the most seemingly mundane events of your daily life.

You are growing in consciousness; therefore using it expands its capabilities ... your understanding and desire are so important. The processes initiated are beyond your normal awareness. They occur automatically with your intent if you do not block them through fear, doubt or opposing beliefs.

[EXERCISE]

Imagine yourself as a portion of an invisible universe, but one in which all the stars and planets are conscious and full of indescribable energy. You are aware of this. Think of this universe as having the form of a body. If you want to, visualize its outline brilliant against the sky. The suns and planets are your cells, each filled with energy and power but awaiting your direction.

Then see this image exploding into your own consciousness, which is unbelievably bright. Realize that it is a portion of a far greater multidimensional structure, spread out in an even richer dimension. Feel the entity sending you energy as you send energy to your cells. Let it fill your being and then direct it physically any place within your body that you choose.

If instead there is a physical event that you strongly desire, then use that energy to imagine its actual occurrence as vividly as you can. If you follow these directions and understand the meaning for them as given, you will find the results most startling and effective. Energy may be directed to any portion of the body, and if you do not block its actions by disbeliefs, [unreadable] will be cured. Remember, however: If you hold the belief that you are a sickly person, that can hinder you.... change that particular kind of belief is your first concern.

....Your health is an extension of your creativity. So is your relationship with your mate, your boss, and the kinds of events with which you are uniquely familiar.

196When you are fairly happy and content in your daily life, you can be said to be in a state of grace.. On those occasions where you feel at one with the universe, or come upon an exceptional experience in which you seem to go beyond yourself, you can be said to be in a state of illumination, and this has many degrees and levels. In any such state your physical health benefits.... though there may be some beliefs blocking in that direction...

According to the state of illumination or grace, those mass memories may be activated that do not necessarily involve your personal experience

Any event of your life is written in the memory of the universe,... as you think of it (basically senseless statement since any idea is physically materialized at its inception even if not experienced later)

[massive doses of LSD]:..represents the enactment, through terrible encounter, of the species' birth into consciousness, and its death as consciousness falls back annihilated; followed by its rebirth as the individual patient struggles to emerge again from dimensions not native under these conditions.

198... self-changes happen naturally as life progresses, and when the self modulates at any given time, it is different from what it was. When this occurs "all by itself" it is an innate reflection of the psyche's creativity and happens with its own rhythm-connected to seasons of the mind and blood and consciousness and cells in ways that you do not as yet understand.

.... Such massive doses of LSD chemically activate all levels of cellular memory to such an extent that in certain terms they are no longer in charge of themselves, and the memories can then emerge unpredictably when the system is under stress. The fine biological and psychological alliance is now weakened.

199Beneath this a definite, though distorted, landscape of the psyche can be glimpsed in symbols. These are consciousness' s attempt to portray cellular memory. Psychic motion always excites the molecules. The latent, easily flowing innate "knowledge" of the molecules builds up the "knowledge" of the cells. They work smoothly together. Under the enforced psychic assault of massive doses of LSD, the very comprehension of the molecules tries to split open. Now this is not something you can physically perceive. Cellular integrity itself can be threatened. Ruburt [this is how Seth called Jane ] is quite right in thinking that this is far worse than any physical shock therapy.

200...the body is equipped to deal with ingredients that come from the earth. Great doses of such "artificial" drugs are not easily assimilated, and bring about biological confusion.

202Your ideas themselves follow certain laws of creativity. They have their own rhythms. The associative processes of your mind, working through the brain, have great connection with the minute behavior of your cells. As you learn to use your thoughts, or even as they naturally change, resulting alterations take place within the cells. There is an orderly progression, an intimate relationship.

203In normal daily life, considerable natural therapy often takes place in the dream state, even when nightmares of such frightening degree arise that the sleeper is shocked into awakening. The individual's conscious mind is then forced to face the charged situation-but after the event, in retrospect. The nightmare itself can be like a shock treatment given by one portion of the self to another, in which cellular memory is touched off much as it might be in such an LSD session.

But the self is its own best therapist. It knows precisely how many such "shocks" the psyche can take to advantage, which associations to animate through such intense experience and imagery, and which ones to leave alone.

Nightmares in series are often inner-regulated shock therapy...

Other dream events, though forgotten, may also cushion the individual to withstand the effects of such "nightmare therapy." In the same way that some LSD treatment finally results in a feeling of rebirth..., so a period of such nightmares often leads quite naturally to dreams in which the self finally makes new and greater connections with the source of its own being.

206... like any event it is not completed.

207Know that later you will still operate through another form, but that the body and the material world are your present modes of expression.

What you think of as the self dies and is reborn constantly, as the cells of your body do. Biologically and spiritually, new life relies upon these innumerable changes and transformations, deaths and births that occur naturally both in the seasons of the earth and those of the psyche.

208If you believe, however, that the chemicals in certain foods will harm you drastically and bring about disastrous consequences, then even small doses of these can do you harm..

211... In the normal cycle of the death and rebirth of cells, and the usual pattern in which the ego constantly changes, there is a smooth flow and no loss of orientation. Previous cellular memory is carried along easily from one cell generation to another.

212... what you call the ego is a portion of the inner identity that rises to face the world of physical existence.

215In man, conscious thoughts are highly important as the directors of unconscious activity. You become more responsible, then, in a particular way for physical effects that, comparatively speaking, are "instinctive" in the animal. This gives you both a conscious and unconscious feedback system against which to test your experience and alter its nature.

Therapeutic systems are an important part of this interrelationship, and they operate constantly. In one way a state of grace or illumination happens where there is the greatest poised balance of the conscious mind with other levels of the psyche and body-a biological and spiritual recognition of the individual's wholeness within himself and his relationship with the universe at large.

Such states lead to a condition of mental, psychic and physical health and efficiency. The aware mind's great leeway through the intellect, and its connection with the senses, makes it possible for any singly insignificant event to trigger such experience. Intense focus is a characteristic of the conscious mind, and you can call it narrow because it includes only the physical dimension; but within the scope of that corporeal field it has great freedom to interpret the given dimension in any way it chooses.

The conscious mind can, for instance, see a rose as a symbol of life or death, or joy or sadness, and under certain conditions its interpretation of a simple flower can trigger deep experiences that call up power and strength from the inner resources of being. Since the attributes of egotistical consciousness have been so misinterpreted, you usually consider it only in its analytical breaking-down functions. These are very important as it separates larger fields of perception into smaller ones that can be physically understood. But the conscious mind is also a great synthesizer. It brings together diverse elements from your experience and unites them in new patterns.

These organizations then serve as awakeners or stimulation to inner portions of the self, always providing it with fresh experience. The inner self responds through the richness of its own psychic fabric, sending up, so to speak, ever-new particularized abilities to meet the exterior circumstances.

.... Your feelings follow the flow of your beliefs (s. a. 614th session) and if this does not seem true to you it is because you are not aware of the contents of your conscious mind. ... You can close the eyes of your conscious mind also, and pretend not to see what is there. It is because you do not trust your own basic therapeutic nature, or really understand the conscious or unconscious mind, that you run to so many therapies that originate from without the self.

.... the great therapy of music; this activates the inner living cells of your body, stimulates the energy of the inner self and helps to unite the conscious mind with the other portions of your being.

Music is an exterior representation, and an excellent one, of the life-giving inner sounds that act therapeutically within your body all the time (see chapter five). The music is a conscious reminder of those deeper inner rhythms, both of sound and of motion. Listening to music that you like will often bring images into your mind that show you your conscious beliefs in different form.

The natural healing of sound can happen also when you do such a simple thing as listen to the rain. You do not need drugs, hypnotism or even meditation. You only need to allow and direct the freedom of your conscious mind. Left alone, it will flow through thoughts and images that provide their own therapy.

You often avoid this natural treatment, however, and run from frightening conscious thoughts that would in their turn lead you to the source of "negative" beliefs, where they could be faced; you could then travel through them, so to speak, into feelings of joy and victory. Instead, many of you accept the way of drugs, where such feelings and thoughts are thrust upon you, or forced out of you while you are denied the stabilizing comforts of the conscious mind.

Dreams are one of your greatest natural therapies, and one of your most effective assets as connectors between the interior and exterior universes.

218The great interconnections between waking and dreaming experience.. . You do not realize the many physical problems that are solved for you, and by you, in your dreams.

This happens very frequently when you consciously set the problem before yourself, state it clearly, and then drift into sleep. The same thing happens, however, even without such a conscious set. Dreams give you all kinds of information concerning the state of your body, the world at large, and the probable exterior conditions that your present beliefs will bring about.

219... natural doorways to self-illumination and states of grace... teaching it (ego) to use those great abilities of assimilation that is does possess.

Your nature, beside possessing natural, general healing abilities, has its own unique and particular private triggers arising from your experience. They can be learned, recognized and utilized by you.

In this area certain events really matter. Singular circumstances, meaningless to others, can be used to open your own storehouse of energy and inner strength. These will include both waking and dreaming events. If you remember having certain dream experiences and waking refreshed, then before sleep consciously think about those dreams and tell yourself they will return.

If any activity, odd or silly as it might seem, brings you a sense of satisfaction, pursue it. Any of these natural healing methods can even lead beyond feelings of well-being and strength, physical health and vitality, to those sublime experiences of illumination and grace.

The most rejuvenating idea of all, and the greatest step to any ... illumination, is the realization that your exterior life springs from the invisible world of your reality through your conscious thoughts and beliefs, for then you realize the power of your individuality and identity. You are immediately presented with choices. You can no longer see yourself as a victim of circumstances. Yet the conscious mind arose precisely to open up choices, to free you from a one-road experience, to let you use your creativity to form diversified, varied comprehensions.

220Your dreams and the physical events of your lives constantly alter the chemical balances within your body. A dream may be.... experienced to provide an outlet of a kind that is missing in your daily life. It will mobilize your resources and fill your body with a rush of needed hormones,...

Such dreams will be greatly effective, but only for a short period of time unless the conscious mind faces the beliefs that have been causing the imbalance.

The source for all of this creativity springs from your own inner identity, which is never completely materialized in flesh, and so you always have unused portions of creativity at your command. You react to the body even though you form it.

....You create not only the body, then, but its entire experience, the context in which it takes place.

223If there are chemical imbalances they are often corrected quite automatically in the dream state, as you act out situations calling up the production of hormones...

By such constant dream therapy, both body and mind regulate themselves to a large degree. So your flesh is affected by your dreams.

225...interpretation involves but one part of the task as you try to consciously assess a dream's meaning. The real work of the dream is done during the event itself, on deep psychic and biological levels.

The dream's happening affects your entire physical condition, and so has this constant therapeutic effect. This result stems from the psychic situation set up within any dream drama, and in it the problems or challenges of your existence are worked out. Many probable actions are taken; these are then projected into the probable future.

As you come to understand the nature of your own beliefs, you can learn to use the dream state more effectively for your conscious purposes. It is one of the most efficient natural therapies, and the inner framework in which much of your physical body building actually takes place.

Some of the drugs given to "mental" patients impede the natural flow of dream therapy to varying degrees.

226...naturally and left alone, the chemical upsets in the body will right themselves after the initial problems causing them are worked out through any of a variety of innate healing methods.

The new balance signals the organism that an inner problem has been resolved. The body, mind and psyche are then more or less operating together. When new psychic challenges arise, another round of natural therapy begins in rhythmic pattern. When imbalances of a physical nature are removed by the introduction of drugs, however, the body signals say that the inner dilemma must have been taken care of also - while this may not be the case at all.

The whole organism is not at one with itself under such conditions. The problem manifested itself in a given way, and the drugs then block that normal expression of the psychic disorder. Other pathways of demonstration will be sought.

If these are blocked in the same manner also, then the entire mind-body relationship becomes alienated from itself. The inner mechanics are disturbed. The basic challenge not only is not faced, but is constantly denied the physical expression that, left alone, would bring about its natural solution.

.... if you have faith in medical help, this alone will bring therapeutic benefit.

This can only go so far, though, if the inner problems are not dealt with. Often they are resolved regardless of what you do or believe, simply as a result of the vast creative energies within your being, and the system of checks and balances with which you provided your body at birth.

....You will often become "allergic" to a drug simply because the body realizes that if the drug was accepted, all recourse to the solution of a particular problem would be cut off, or another more severe illness would result from the physical "cover-up" of the dilemma.

228It is important to note that regardless of the mental or physical illness adopted, it is chosen for a reason, and is a natural method that the individual himself knows he is physically and mentally equipped to handle.

Now the inner problems that you encounter are always constructive - challenges leading you toward greater fulfillment.

A problem caused by guilt... physically materialized as a malady, is meant to lead you to face and conquer the idea of guilt, the belief in it that you hold in your conscious mind. The body is always in a state of becoming.

229You will alter the chemical composition of your body according to your beliefs about its activity through the various portions of your life.

230The nature of your personal beliefs in a large measure directs the kinds of emotions you will have at any given time. You will feel aggressive, happy, despairing, or determined according to events that happen to you, your beliefs about your self in relation to them, and your ideas of who and what you are. You will not understand your emotions unless you know your beliefs. It will seem to you that you feel aggressive or upset without reason, or that your feelings sweep down upon you without cause if you do not learn to listen to the beliefs within your own conscious mind, for they generate their own emotions.

One of the strongest general causes of depression,. .. is the belief that your conscious mind is powerless either in the face of exterior circumstances thrust upon you from without, or before strong emotional events that seem to be overwhelming from within.

[positive thinking schools] ... many... make you cower at the idea of entertaining "negative" thoughts or emotions. In all cases the clues to your emotional experience and behavior lie in your systems of belief: some more evident to you than others, but all available to you consciously.

What do you think of yourself, your daily life, your body, your relationships with others? Ask yourself these questions. Write down the answers or speak them into a recorder. But in one way or another objectify them.

When you feel the rise of unpleasant emotions, take a moment and make an effort to identify their source. The answers are far more available than you may have previously believed. Accept such feelings as your own in the moment. Do not shove them underneath, ignore them or try to substitute what you think of as good thoughts.

First be aware of the reality of your feelings. As you become more aware of your beliefs over a period of time, you will see how they bring forth certain feelings automatically. A man who is sure of himself is not angry at every slight done him, nor does he carry grudges. A man who fears for his own worth, however, is furious under such conditions. The free flow of your emotions will always lead you back to your conscious beliefs if you do not impede them.

You feelings always change the chemical balance of your body and alter its hormonal output, but the danger comes only when you refuse to face the contents of your conscious mind. Even the intent to know yourself, to face the reality of your experience, can be of great benefit, generating emotions that will provide an energy, an impetus to begin.

.... your inner sense of balance..

233You cannot will yourself to be happy while believing that you have no right to happiness, or that you are unworthy of it. You cannot tell yourself to release aggressive thoughts if you think it is wrong to free them, so you must come to grips with your beliefs in all instances.

....anger ... can be the most arousing and therapeutic emotion under certain circumstances. You can then realize that you have cowered before contradictory beliefs for years, rise up in anger against them, and quite literally begin a new life of freedom.

235Violence is basically an overwhelming surrender, and in all violence there is a great degree of suicidal emotion, the antithesis of creativity. Both killer and victim in a war, for instance, are caught up in the same kind of passion, but the passion is not aggressive. It is its opposite - the desire for destruction.

Know that yearning is made up of feelings of despair caused by a sense of powerlessness, not of power. Aggressiveness leads to action, to creativity and to life. It does not lead to destruction, violence or annihilation.

236Violence occurs only when the natural expression of aggression has been short-circuited.

The fear of your own emotions can do far more damage than their expression, because the apprehension builds up a charge that intensifies the energy behind them.

237It is not a matter of rising above your nature, but of evolving from the full understanding of it. There is a difference.

You can learn more from watching the animals than you can from a guru...- or from reading my book.

.... you find a hidden and distorted sense of power that says, "I am so powerful that I could kill you with my thought, and yet I refuse to do so." No one, and no one thought, is that powerful.

Each person has his own built-in energy and protection.. You accept only those ideas and thoughts that fit in with your own system of beliefs, and even then there are various safeguards.

...suicide... and war... are equally the result of passivity and distorted aggression, and of natural pathways of communication not used or understood.

240Conscious beliefs focus your attention, channel it and direct your energy so that you can swiftly bring the ideas into your physical experience. They also act as blinders, throwing aside data that cannot be assimilated while preserving the integrity of the beliefs. So our did not see, or ignored, the smiles that came her way, or the encouragement; and in some cases she even perceived some potentially beneficial events as "negative" - these then were used to further reinforce the belief in her own inferiority.

241She was lost in self-pity and self-condemnation.. These brought about the weakened body state.

Ruburt advised to accept the validity of such feelings as feelings - not to inhibit them, but to follow their flow with the understanding that they are feelings about reality.. As themselves they are real. They express emotional reactions to beliefs. The next time feels inadequate, for example, she is to actively experience that feeling, realizing that even though she feels inferior this does not mean that she is inferior. She is to say, "I feel inferior," and at the same time to understand that the feeling is not a statement of fact but of emotion. A different kind of validity is involved.

Experiencing your emotions as such is not the same as accepting them as statements of fact about your own existence. is then supposed to ask, "Why do I feel so inferior?" If you deny the validity of the emotion itself and pretend it away, then you will never be led to question the beliefs behind it.

At this point believes that her life must be difficult.

.... her beliefs put her in a state of crisis. Change them and no crisis exists. The body would then cease reacting to such stress, and almost immediately the exterior situation itself would be altered.

At the same time all beliefs are communicated to others, not only through quite unconscious bodily mechanisms, but telepathically.. You will always try to correlate your ideas with exterior experience. All of the abilities of the inner self will be brought to bear to materialize the image of your beliefs, regardless of what they ought to be. The "proper" emotions will be generated, bringing about those body states that exist in your conscious mind.

243...All of these ideas obtain their charge from a basic belief in the powerlessness of the conscious self to form and regulate its experience.

.... so she feels and acts less attractive-when that belief holds sway.

Often, of course, those who try the hardest to be "good" do so because they fear for their basic worth.... many who shout about independence are afraid that they are basically helpless. In most instances these opposing beliefs are held quite consciously, but kept apart from each other. Therefore they are not reconciled.

No feeling brings you to a dead end. It is in motion, and that always leads into another feeling. As it flows it alters your entire physical condition, and that interchange is meant to be consciously accepted. Your emotions will always lead you into a realization of your beliefs if you do not impede them. Emotional states are always impetuses for action, meant to be physically expressed. Each has a basis in natural aggression..

244Natural aggression provides the charge for all creativity.. . Natural aggression is the creative loving thrust forward, the way in which love is activated, the fuel through whose agency love propels itself... Such beliefs have a strong depressing characteristic that can lead you to shut down powerful feelings by immediately considering them negative.

You are at the mercy of your emotions only when you fear them. They are the motion of your being. They go hand in hand with your intellect. But when you are unaware of the contents of your conscious mind, and not fair with your emotions, you run into difficulty.

246Belief systems are as necessary and natural as physical organs are. In fact, their purpose is to help you direct the functioning of your biological being.... Left alone, your thoughts will come and go through your belief systems just as naturally; and ideally, they will balance out, maintaining their own health and directing your body so that its innate therapies can take place.

Your systems of belief will of course attract certain kinds of thoughts, with their trails of emotional experience. A steady barrage of hateful, revengeful thoughts should actually lead you to look for the beliefs from which they are gaining their strength..

The "negative" subjective and objective events that you meet are meant to make you examine the contents of your own conscious mind. In their way the hateful or revengeful thoughts are natural therapeutic devices, for if you follow them, accepting them with their own validity as feelings, they will automatically lead you beyond themselves; they will change into other feelings, carrying you from hatred into what may seem to be the quicksands of fear - which is always behind hatred.

By going along with feelings you unify your emotional mental and bodily state. When you try to fight or deny them, you divorce yourself from the reality of your being... thrust toward a therapeutic solution.

When you refute such emotions or become terrified of them, you impede the flow of feeling from one moment to the other. You set up dams. Any emotion will change into another if you experience it honestly. Otherwise you clog the natural movement of your entire system.

Fear, faced and felt with its bodily sensations and the thoughts that go along with it, will automatically bring about its own state of resolution. The conscious system of beliefs behind the impediment will be illuminated, and you will realize that you feel a certain way because you believe an idea that causes and justifies such a reaction.

If you habitually deny the expression of any emotions, to that degree you become alienated not only from your body but from your conscious ideas. You will bury certain thoughts and put up biological armor to prevent you from physically feeling their effects upon your body. In each case the answer lies in your personal system of beliefs, in those strong concepts you hold on an intimate level that brought about the inhibitions to begin with.

The body and mind together do present a united, self-regulating, healing, self-clearing system. Within it each problem contains its own solution if it is honestly faced. Each symptom, mental or physical, is a clue to the resolution of the conflict behind it, and contains within it the seeds of its own healing.

248There are two ways to get at your conscious beliefs. The most direct is to have a series of talks with yourself. Write down your beliefs in a variety of areas, and you will find that you believe different things at different times. Often there will be contradictions readily apparent. These represent opposing beliefs that regulate your emotions, your bodily condition and your physical experience. Examine the conflicts. Invisible beliefs will appear that unite those seemingly diverse attitudes. Invisible beliefs are simply those of which you are fully aware but prefer to ignore, because they represent areas of strife which you have not been willing to handle thus far. They are quite available once you are determined to examine the complete contents of your conscious mind.

If this strikes you as too intellectual a method, then you can also work backward from your emotions to your beliefs. In any case, regardless of which method you choose, one will lead you to the other. Both approaches require honesty with yourself, and a firm encounter with the mental, psychic and emotional aspects of your current reality.

249By... honestly following the feelings through - in other words, by riding the emotions - you will be led to the beliefs behind them. A series of self-revelations will inevitably result, each leading you to further creative psychological activity. At each state you will be closer to the reality of your experience than you have ever been.

The conscious mind will benefit greatly as it becomes more and more aware of its directing influence upon events. It will no longer fear the emotions, or the body, as threatening or unpredictable, but sense the greater unity in which it is involved.

250Whenever you refuse to accept the reality of your creaturehood, you also reject aspects of your spirit... Your changing image is supposed to tell you something. When you pretend alterations do not occur you block both biological and spiritual messages.

251 [physical symptom:]Feel its reality in your body. Let the emotions follow freely. These will lead you, if you allow them to flow, to the beliefs that cause the difficulty. They will take you through many aspects of your own reality that you must face and explore. ... it arouses your own creativity. Followed, it will seek the answers to your problems.

254...it may seem to you that you hold so many different beliefs at different times that you cannot correlate them. They will, however, form into clear patterns. You will find a grouping of core beliefs about which the others gather.

Questions you cannot seem to answer as you study your own ideas, ...may lead you to suspect the existence of such invisible core beliefs. Let me emphasize that they are consciously available. You can find them through the approaches mentioned earlier, working from your feelings or by beginning with the beliefs that become most readily available.

This subject leads to what I will call bridge beliefs.... As you examine your ideas you will discover that even... contradictory ones have similarities, and these ... may be used to bridge the gaps between beliefs - even [? - hard to read] those that seem to be the most diverse. Because you are the individual who holds the beliefs you will stamp them, so to speak, with certain characteristics that you will recognize. These aspects will themselves emerge as bridge beliefs. They contain great motion and energy. When you discover what they are, you will find a point of unity within yourself from which you can with some detachment, view your other systems of belief.

The emotions connected with these bridge beliefs may indeed surprise you, but standing upon such unifying structures you are also free to let the emotional flow sweep past, feeling it, but aware for the first time, perhaps, of the origin of these feelings in your beliefs, and no longer afraid of being swept away by them.

256You can suggest to yourself the emergence of such bridge beliefs. The conscious idea itself represents a statement of intent. Various core beliefs, not well assimilated, will give you conflicting self-images.

.... find a bridge to unite the seeming contradictions.

257... how a bridge belief appeared to assimilate what seemed to be diametrically opposed ideas.

259...objectifying personal beliefs in a dialogue form...

262When you allow your emotions their natural spontaneous flow they will never engulf you, and always return you refreshed to "logical" conscious-mind thought.

Again, while the conscious mind is meant to direct the flow of your experience through your beliefs, and to materialize them, the actual mechanics are taken care of automatically by other portions of the self. You must indeed trust that your new beliefs will work as completely for you as your old ones.

263... if you are freely able to accept life with all of its conditions and to feel its full dimensions, for that alone will rejuvenate your spiritual and physical self. 264...Unconsciously. ..you chose a situation in which a crisis was precipitated, rousing all the greatest elements of heart and soul...

267 [original sin:]Let us consider the idea of original sin, all of the colorful forms it may take within your body of concepts, and the ways in which these will affect your behavior and experience.

The concept itself existed long before Christianity' s initiation, and was told in various forms throughout the centuries and in all civilizations. On the side of consciousness, it is a tale symbolically representing the birth of the conscious mind in the species as a whole, and the emergence of self-responsibility . It also stands for the separation of the self who perceives-and therefore judges and values-from the object which is perceived and evaluated. It represents the emergence of the conscious mind and of the strongly oriented individual self from that ground of being from which all consciousness comes.

It portrays the new consciousness seeing itself unique and separate, evolving from the tree of life and therefore able to examine its fruits, to see itself for the first time as different from others, like the serpent who crawled upon the surface of the earth. Man came forth as a creature of distinctions. In so doing he quite purposefully detached himself, in your terms now, from the body of the planet in a new way. A part of him very naturally yearned for that primeval knowing unknowingness that had to be abandoned, in which all things were given-no judgments or distinctions were necessary, and all responsibilities were biologically foreordained..

269The serpent is the symbol of the deepest knowledge within creaturehood.

270Good and evil then simply represented the birth of choices, initially in terms of survival, where earlier instinct alone had provided all that was needed.

Satan represents.. . the part of All That Is, or God, who stepped out of Himself, so to speak, and became earthbound with His creatures, offering them the free will and choice that "previously" had not been available.

271Man's mind then struggled to contain many images-past, present, and future imagined ones - and was forced to correlate these in any given moment of time. A vast acceleration took place.

The birth of imagination initiated the largest possibilities, and at the same time put great strain upon the biological creature whose entire corporeal structure would now react not only to present objective situations, but imaginative ones.

272...readers may have certain ideas about good and evil that are very hampering. These may be old beliefs in new clothing. 275The mind is a system of checks and balances even as the body, and so often a set of beliefs that can be seen as highly negative will often serve beneficial ends in countering other beliefs.

The people alive within the world come into it with their own problems and challenges, and this will have much to do with the kind of national and worldwide beliefs that are generated an that dominate. The beliefs, of course, are frameworks in which various kinds of experience are tested. This also applies to religions, and political and social situations as well. There is always a give and take between the individual and the mass system of beliefs in which he has chosen his environment.

277There are as many luxuriant and diverse kinds of psychological movement as there are species...

278...using an analogy, it is as if ideas are built up not through sentence structure reinforced by inner visual images, but by like "mental" patterns structured through touch and scent-in other words, thinking, but within a framework entirely different and alien to you.

Animals... comprehend the nature of stress as a necessary stimulant to physical activity. ...animals in captivity will fight to provide themselves with necessary health-giving stress factors.

280Man's imagination made him a great maker of myths. Myths as you know them represent bridges of psychological activity, and point quite clearly to patterns of perception and behavior through which, in your terms, the race passed as it traveled to its present state.

281 [disease:]...the condition is still a healthy attempt on the part of the body to maintain balance.

Your free will allows for the freedom of any belief, including one that says you are unworthy, with no right to your existence.

In order for consciousness to develop in your terms, there must be freedom for the exploration of all ideas individually and en masse. Each of you are living entities, growing toward your own development. Each of your beliefs, therefore, has its own unique origin and feeling patterns, so you must for yourself travel back through your beliefs and your own feelings until intellectually and emotionally you realize your rightness, your completely original existence in time and space as you know it.

282Because you have free will you have the responsibility and the gift, the joy and the necessity, of working with your beliefs and of choosing your personal reality as you desire

283...there is no evil in basic terms ... as you each move individually through the dimensions of your own consciousness, you will understand that all seeming opposites are other faces of the one supreme drive toward creativity.

.... worlds that you initiate and then inhabit.

284Remember that ideas are as natural as the weather. They follow patterns, then, and obey certain laws even as more strictly physical phenomena do.

.... at birth ... you emerge into a rich natural psychological environment in which beliefs and ideas are every bit as real.

294Certain earth experiences. .. are dependent upon duration in time, and result as a consequence of the mind playing upon its experience through long earth seasons.

296This era could be more advantageous to the individual and to the race than any other period, were it recognized for what it is and understood.

298If they ever did, they no longer trust the integrity of their bodies. They begin to act out the drama in a script written by others - to which, however, they have acquiesced.

299Nations, like individuals, can have split personalities at times. So there was a give-and-take involved in which the blacks expressed certain tendencies for the country as a whole, while the whites expressed other characteristics.

Both groups acquiesced to their roles. In larger terms, of course, each has belonged to other races in other times and places; or to be more accurate, in simultaneous existences one plays to the other's role.

302 [shorter sleep periods:]The conscious mind is better able to remember and assimilate its dreaming experience, and in dreams the self can use its waking experience far more efficiently..

....Both the conscious and unconscious would operate far more effectively. ..under an abbreviated sleeping program, and for those involved in "creative" endeavors this kind of schedule would bring greater intuition and applied knowledge.

Individuals following such natural behavior would feel much greater stability in themselves.. ..the flow of vitality would be heightened.

....the patterns will have their own flow at certain points in your life. Following your own rhythm, longer or shorter periods will naturally ensue. Your consciousness as you think of it will be expanded through such practices. Generally speaking, eight-hour sleep periods, or longer ones, are not beneficial, nor in larger terms are they natural for the race.

There is a give-and-take chemical reaction, or rather chemical rhythms of reactions, that are far more effective in the shorter sleep periods. Many of you sleep through periods that should be those of your greatest creativity and alertness, in which the conscious and unconscious are most beautifully focused and at one. The conscious mind is often drugged with sleep just when it could be deriving its greatest benefits from the unconscious, and be able to poise most meaningfully in the reality that you know. In these instances the beauty and illumination of your dream state can be clear in the conscious mind, and used to enrich your physical life. Contrasts in your experience will appear to you in their united clarity.

Such a change in your waking and sleeping patterns very nicely helps cut through your habitual ways of looking at the nature of your own personal world, and so alters your conception of reality in general.

On the other hand, areas of ordinary behavior that may have seemed opaque before, cloudy or dark - personal characteristic behavior that was not understood, for instance - may suddenly become quite clear as a result of this transformation, in which the shadowy aspects of the unconscious are perceived as brilliant.

Barriers are broken down, and with them certain beliefs that were based upon them. If the unconscious is no longer feared, then the races that symbolized it are no longer to be feared either.

.... changed wake-sleep habits can ... bring about a transformation in which it is obvious that dreams contain great wisdom and creativity, that the unconscious is indeed quite conscious, and that in fact the individual sense of identity can be retained in the dream state.

305When you find yourself as alert, responsive, and intellectual in the dream state as you are in waking life, it becomes impossible to operate within the old framework. This does not mean that in all dreams that particular kind of awareness is achieved, but it is often accomplished within the suggested wake-sleep pattern.

A certain beneficial and natural situation is arrived at, in which the conscious and unconscious minds meet. This occurs spontaneously whatever your sleep patterns, but is very brief and seldom remembered. The optimum state is so short because of the prolonged drugging of the conscious mind.

Animals...know exactly when to alter their patterns to longer or shorter sleep periods, therefore adjusting the adrenalin output and regulating all of the bodily hormones.

In humans, the idea of nutrition is also involved. With your habits the body is literally starved for long periods at nights, then often overfed during the day. Important therapeutic information that is given in dreams, and meant to be recalled, is not remembered because your sleep habits plunge you into what you think of as unconsciousness far too long.

The body itself can be physically refreshed and rested in much less than eight hours, and after five hours the muscles themselves yearn for activity. This need is also a signal to awaken so that unconscious material and dream information can be consciously assimilated.

Many of your misconceptions about the nature of reality are directly related to the division you place between your sleeping and waking experience, your conscious and unconscious activity. Opposites seem to occur that do not exist in actuality. Myths, symbols and rationalizations all become necessary to explain the seeming divergences, the seeming contradictions between realities that appear to be so different.

Individual psychological mechanisms are activated, sometimes, in terms of neurosis or other mental problems; these bring out into the open inner challenges or dilemmas that otherwise could be worked out more easily through an open give-and-take of conscious and unconscious reality.

In the natural body-mind relationship the sleep state operates as a great connector, an interpreter, allowing the free flow of conscious and unconscious material. In the kind of sleep pattern suggested, optimum conditions are set up. Neurosis and psychosis simply would not occur under such conditions. And in the natural back-and-forth leeway of the system, exterior dilemmas or problems are worked out in the dream situation, and interior difficulty may also be solved symbolically through physical experience