World without end

I live in a far greater world than I used to,a world which I fear is beyond the imagination of my old friends. And surrounding my world are even greater worlds, in which the world where I live is like a bubble. This is the nature of the universe. It has not only quantities but also qualities, and we can hold only so much, each of us. The limit of the world is set by the limit of each mind. What you perceive to be the limit is not the limit of the universe, but of your mind. In the timeless words of Solar: “We fail to imagine and are punished with reality.” (Namely with a smaller, more meager reality that we think is it all.)

Salvation through self-reflection

If I told you that you can save yourself through self-reflection, you would surely believe I had gone over to the Eastern side. After all, this is one of the main topics of Blasphemous Tax-cutting Buddhist. That's not who I first heard it from, though. As unlikely as it sounds, I read it in the Bible.

"Pay attention to yourself and the doctrine, keep doing that; for when you do so, you shall save yourself and those who hear you."

That's actually re-translated from the Norwegian translation of the first letter to Timothy, chapter 4, verse 16. That was how I heard in my heart this morning. Here are some other translations:

"Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers."

"Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee."

"take heed to thyself, and to the teaching; remain in them, for this thing doing, both thyself thou shalt save, and those hearing thee."

Paying attention to yourself and the Truth may be two simple things to do, but I never said they were easy. The average human has actually a pretty low level of consciousness. Even concentrating on a clerical job, as most people do these days, can wear you out. Observing yourself while doing this seems utterly impossible. We tend to forget ourselves when we work, when we socialize, when we eat, when we play, when we read, when we watch movies or even when we listen to music. We tend to even consider this a good thing. Even if we sit down and just observe our own thoughts meditatively, we usually find that within seconds or (in rare cases) minutes, they have wandered off and so has our attention.

Observing ourselves is a lifetime project, I think. It is difficult. It can be boring. And occasionally it can be terrifying. But the strangest thing of all is that it seems to be Biblical.

B influences and WTF influences

I recently responded to a blog post over at One Cosmos that had a brief mention of Boris Mouravieff and his theory of A and B influences. This is something that, when explained simply, made a wonderful take-away when I first saw it. Basically, A influences are those that relate to our life as a smart ape; B influences are those that relate to our being as an eternal spirit.

I have not yet actually bought Mouravieff's books. The reason for this is that even the most glowing reviews tend to cheerfully agree that his thoughts are pretty far outside what most people think of as sanity.

Of course, that is partly the point. Because most people are heavily dominated by A influences, anything that cannot be eaten or mated with is already pretty close to the border of their world. Music and some art is generally accepted, but from there on things get dicey. Religion is OK as long as it does not rock the boat and does not go too far beyond "let's be nice to nice people and hope that we can be apes in our next life too."

So those who want to build a castle keep of the heart from gathered B influences have to fight against an enormous restraining force that tries to keep them within consensus reality. Unfortunately, this struggle is necessary. Unfortunately, the restraining force is also necessary, because it is what keeps ordinary people from going off the deep end. Basically it is the same force that keeps you safe from clinical insanity.

It follows from this that a large number of those who live outside the common ground of A, are actually not in the common ground of B, but floating around in the great void that surrounds them both. Thus my division into A influences, B influences and WTF influences, which are simply insanity with little or no value to either our life in the society of Really Great Apes, nor our life in the Fifth Dimension and above.

What makes this more problematic is that even the individuals who have broken through from A to B, tend to have various degree of WTF residue. And until one is extremely well settled into the B world, it can be hard to keep these apart, especially when they come from someone who has dramatically improved your life and given you some of the most valuable insights ever.

Mouravieff himself seems to have a lot of this, but it is pretty widespread. For instance, the man I usually refer to here as Blasphemous Tax-cutting Buddhist. He has written a large body of very enlightening stuff, most of it eminently practical and with a great positive overlight, like being taken upstairs and shown the rat maze from above. He also thinks he is a god from Venus. I still think I'll sort these claim in the WTF bin until further notice.

Of course, Jesus Christ and Vasudeva Krishna both claimed to be basically God as well, or at least that is the impression people got. And while it was none too well received at the time, a lot of people these days think it adds greatly to their appeal. On the other hand, almost everyone agree that they can't both be right.

Compared to this, the notion that Nancy Pelosi is possessed by demons seems ... almost mundane. Though I am pretty sure she would file that under WTF if she ever heard about it. For now, I'm trying to collect some obvious B influences and leave the rest to the experts.

Cumulative time

If someone spent a day of your precious lifetime saying just one sentence, it better be good.

I have been on the other end of that. When I was young and more naïve (for better and for worse), I would speak to groups of people. Not only in my job, but in religious context. On a couple occasions this was thousands of people. An interesting thing applies when you do this: Each second you use, may use an hour or more of your listeners' time, when you add them together.

Imagine that. One second is an hour. A single sentence the equivalent of a day of human lifetime that never comes back.

Something similar applies to popular books. Thank the Light I have not done that yet, despite writing for decades. At least it is easier to put down a book than to walk away from a speech. On the other hand people have usually paid for books.

"Quick to listen, slow to speak" seems to be a good idea for the karma account.

In other's words...

"The purpose of religion is ultimately to help us grow as human beings. Through that growth, we can overcome and eliminate the problems, strife, frustration and suffering that right now might appear unsurmountable to us. Part of growing involves finding answers to the problems themselves, but another part of it involves all of us developing to a higher level. When we do that, our problems become comparatively smaller."

Yes, that sounds like a rewrite of my previous post. However, I just today found this quote in a magazine (translated from Japanese, so it may have appeared even clearer in original).

Another fascinating data point is that the quote is the first paragraph of the main article in the October issue, which was being read by people around the world shortly before and during the time I wrote my little piece.