CALISTHENICS SEPTEMBER 1984
REFLECTED/DIRECT –DYNAMICS OF THE WHOLE – TEACHING/PRACTICE – ORDER OF MAGNITUDE – THE SEER HAS NO IMAGE –“NOW” – BRINGING OUT – “IT” –
Time is running short and we have to go ahead as fast as we can, but there are a few points that ought to be burned into your memory so that you cannot forget them.
First, there is one principle that you have to observe related to how you function. As you know, sensory awareness leads your life, rather more than less. Sensory perception, or to make it simpler, visual perception, is based on perceiving the surrounding world. You see objects because of reflected light, this means your sensory perception is based basically on reflection. The mind, as you know it, is also based on reflection. Everything on the level of consciousness is based on reflection. I have told you this many times. What we hope to trigger is a bit of serious maturing in which you do not listen to what is said and then immediately forget it, but that you act according to the situation.
In photography there are two ways of measuring light: the incident light, meaning the light coming on the object and the reflected light. If you have an automatic camera it's going to work only on reflected light, exactly like your eyes, but if you have an independent photometer, then you can choose to measure reflected or incident light. Following this line, are you at liberty to choose to work on what is reflected or on what is acting the direct way? on direct action in the mind or reflected action? From school on you have learned to work along the reflected way, you haven't learned to work the direct way, but this does not mean that you cannot.
I have to remind you that when you enter a room, when you meet a person, or you meet a situation, you always have that first impression that grasps the whole in a flash, it's simply that you are not trained to take it into account. What you are trained to do is sort out the reflections and thus abstract some features from the whole and deal with them instead of the whole.
What is required is that you use every available moment your everyday life to become aware of the differences and to bring out the ability to work in both the reflected and !the direct ways. Learn to recognize the direct action that exists in you anyway.
I'm truly surprised how many students for higher consciousness (not only in these groups but throughout the whole world) constantly forget that they actually live not only in the reflected way, but in another way too. This happens all the time and it is simply a matter of habit. So if you want to break the habit, the way to do it is to adopt a discipline. It has to be done. The way of the comedian is the direct way, not the reflected way. If you want to be aware comedian-wise, and you want that awareness to come down to the level of the mask (persona), then discover the direct way. Dis-cover: take the covering off.
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...... I want to come back to some technical points about what you said. what you feel coming through belongs to what is in the square diagram in the book relates to subconscious and superconscious, it's not yet the comedian. we could say it's a reflection of the comedian in a range that is beyond consciousness. But there is one point that is very important in what you felt and it is that continuity. There is that continuity instead of the usual dissociation.
.... . You express it, you don't invite. In order to move you move. Don't try to be ready first. if you invite you try to be ready first. The comedian is here anyway, so give out. Give the deepest out. When it comes out, the "deepest" will express itself. You are a musician so you might realize that when a composer composes something he sometimes explains what he sees in his mind, but actually there is always a lot more than that. It's the same with expression. You know there is more. There is that continuum -- the whole of it expressing itself, not just what the mind abstracts.
But then we have other points to observe. Let's take what you said in the context of The Statement of Purpose. You read it and find it's fine and so on, but is it done? You spoke of moving. As a group, your duty is to cycle what is given, what is awakened, what is activated. It's not done.
We have told you many times of the discoveries in physics, like the particle being an event triggered by the dynamics of the whole. Now this is a proposition that is very hard for the mind, because, as we have already said, we come from a period of time when people believe you build the whole piece by piece. This is gone, but your system of education is still based on adding piece by piece. You have to get rid of that. We work along the dynamics of the whole. If you try to use your persona in order to perfect yourself, in order to become more whole, you won't be able to give out what we do, because it doesn't work that way.
Or we have, on a more philosophical or psychological side, the proposition of David Bohm, who makes a difference between the explicate order and the implicate order, and makes you aware that the usual education trains you only along the line of the explicate order and forgets about the implicate order. So you have minds that have an awfully hard time realizing what is implied. You try to apply formulas, you follow "Martin's teaching"... I would like you to be a lot more serious about the work being done. More serious means more mature. I wonder if you have ever realized that I use the word "teaching" in three sentences only.
When we speak about the hologram I say that there is a teaching that goes with it:
When the Pilot dwells in the All-Encompassing Condition, He is said to be the Seer.
When the Pilot dwells in the All-Encompassing Love, He is said to be the Knower.
When the Pilot dwells in All-Encompassing Beauty, He is said to be the Doer.
That's the whole teaching. There is no other teaching in what we do. Just plain none. We simply propose practices you can do in order to help you bring out. If you take it as a teaching, it simply means that you haven't yet understood that's a lack of maturity. In the beginning of the book I speak of maturity in a very simplistic way, but in a way that you can easily understand. The child asks for, the adult gives out in the world. We ask you to be adults.
Of course you have made progress. If we look at what you have done here, along the usual way, the psychological way and so on, undeniably you have made progress. You have become more sensitive to aspects that are very abstract. You can feel different conditions that are not explicate yet. Your range of ability to feel has grown, so there is progress, but I'm sorry to say this is not the point. We speak of participating. Unless there is comedian awareness you do not know how to participate, in the direct meaning of participation (not reflected).
When we work together there is the faint awareness of you as comedian in a surrounding that is the world of the comedian. You can feel it, but you cannot formulate it. This has to become operative. But this is another order of magnitude. So then, we have to deal with another order of magnitude. Suppose you make a sum of your qualities and you decide you are so and so, then you go into life situations with that, you soon realize there is more to you than the sum of all the qualities you can abstract. Then you realize that all the motivations that you can come up with consciously cannot explain the way your life is going, because there is more than those motivations directing your life. There is more to your life than the parts. You hear me say this, why don't you live it right away?
This is another point I wanted to make. There is the habit of taking what is said as a teaching. You go home and ponder over what I've said, you mature it, train with it, and then see what happens. No, our action together is built so that the experience is here, now. The action is going on here, now. Whatever the words are, the experience is now. You have to be geared to the now.
I want to make something plain. When you use references, references stem from experiences of the past. Whatever the past, ten seconds, ten centuries, it doesn't matter, by definition, a reference is from the past. Now according to Patanjali a Seer sees without image and memory. without image in one point, but the other one, without memory, means you don't have references. It means you see now. You approach the situation as of now, not according to past history. But the point is not the position of past history, you might deny yourself the past history and still keep the same position. The Seer has no image. He sees without image, without memory, without references. This is very real. For the limited sensory awareness, to see without image and without memory is not understood. How can you see without form and color? You see in the so-called physical world: form and color. Astral world: form and color. Mental world: form and color. In each world the forms will change, the colors will change, the quality of colors will change, but these are simply degrees of the same function that is called seeing. Then when you have someone like Patanjali who comes to say the Seer sees without image and without memory, you don't understand. I've already said it, but I'll repeat it, I'm not speaking of theory. We see without image and memory. This is the way we see. There is no clairvoyance, etheric, astral, mental, or whatever. There is no shape, no color, and still it is perfectly clear. We deal with another order.
We need you to recognize that now is now. If you want to connect now with what is going on, do it now. It sounds silly, but watch the processing in your consciousness. "That's interesting, I will think about it, and maybe next time I will be able to do it." You immediately set in motion a processing that is not linked to the now, it's linked to the past. When you meet someone who has a problem and you want to deal with that problem, you do as doctors or psychologists do and ask for the past history. You begin by relating to the past and try to understand the present according to that past. Then you have the history and this is in sequence so you can follow the sequence and it makes a lot of sense. Maybe it makes sense, but it doesn't mean the therapy is good. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't because you hit on aspects that are here, now.
The simpler or more primitive a person, the easier it is to go along with sequentiality. The more advanced a person is, spiritually speaking, the less easy it is, because things tend to work in different ways, and the past is not the reference for the present. So, learn to face any person as of now. You will notice that one of the difficulties is precisely your memory. You have known the person, possibly for many years, so you have a hard time removing the static of the images you have of the past, and thus you are prevented from seeing what is working now.
Participant: It has become easier and easier over the past year to acknowledge another position. I don't know if its the other order you are speaking of or a field-centered position, but it's a very different centering. Then, this summer someone asked me a question that I've been asking myself and it is: What do we do now?
Martin: I'd like to answer with a quote from a book: "Be God and give it out." If you have reached something, from that point you have to be of service. You speak of changing the center of gravity -- if the center of gravity has changed, from now on you have to act from that new center and not lower. I would say economy asks that you always work at your highest capacity. You can always find people who can work lower than that. The higher you work, the more isolated you are, meaning if you bring out a definite higher quality there are possibly ten or a hundred others who can do it too. If you want to do social work you may not even need to be qualified except to have a desire to work with people, and on the ordinary level you find millions of people who can do that. Now, let's say you work to bring out the comedian, how many are able to do that? You come into a rarefied situation. If you don't do it, then you leave a big hole in the texture, because there are not so many people who can do it. If you have, let us say, 20 million people who can do a job, and one is missing it's no big deal, but if there are ten people for the whole earth who can do a job and one is missing then something is really missing. See what I mean? So the duty is to work to the highest level, all the time. There is just no doubt about it. So the longer time you spend doing something that everyone does anyway, the bigger the loss of time, the bigger the loss of energy. It's a lack of understanding of the importance of why you are here. You are here to do something. It has to be done.
...... I'd like all of you to make an experiment. Tune to the position that you are here to do something -- not survival, to do something. Now tune to the situation that you are actually here. Can you do that? Do it right now. It's not a matter of thinking, it's just plain evident. Do you see that your mind has not realized it? You have thought about it, but thinking about it is not living it. You, whatever that is, is right here, now. I'm not speaking of the small ego of consciousness, the fullness of you is here -- to do some work.
In relation to this experience, when you say "when it comes out you know," I have to say no, you know and you give out knowingly. When you say "when it comes out you know," it means because that "something else" called the comedian is coming through, and somehow, you, the persona, realize it comes. This is not the Doer position. See what I mean? There is still another order of magnitude.
Participant: So, on the comedian level then there is a knowing of what the work is. You're here anyway and that comes from that level.
Martin: "The comedian “level" you said, but you are here, now.
Participant: I hear you. I see it. I see it.
Martin: I wish everyone did. This is what I am trying to push ahead for you to realize. You have to take your consciousness in hand, it's playing awful tricks on you, it's denying the fact that you are here. For instance, you have the experience of that continuum, no broken lines. The broken lines are just in your mind that's all, the fact is that you are here.
We have tried to say this since we have known you by saying that we see you differently. We see the comedian, we actually do. And then you have those minds here not acknowledging it, not realizing that it is here, now. So you go home and you think about it, then you wonder why it doesn't go faster. The reaction has to be here, now. The here, now is an experience, an expression that is happening now. The event is now. Does your consciousness realize it? Your sensory awareness registers the words and possibly they make sense, but this is not the point, this is an abstraction from the mind. When will consciousness get into the situation of the here, now and act accordingly. It's another order of magnitude.
It's evident. You don't have to look for it, it's not elsewhere, it's here, now. When you are in the here, now you stop that usual movement of wanting to reach up for yourself, there is work to be done and you do it. It has to be done, someone has to do it. If you are qualified for whatever work you have to do, do it. You cannot wait until your consciousness understands. When you start understanding, you have that typical condition about which I joke all the time where you suddenly feel that you are under the situation instead of level with it. Understanding is much too small for what is happening.
You must remember that when you deal with a greater order of magnitude, everything is seen differently, lived differently everything. If you are here on earth to do some work, you know what you do, your consciousness is no longer the limited consciousness of this incarnation. The mode of expression, persona-wise, belongs to this incarnation, and the form is so that others may understand, but you realize that you are trained in a certain way, you work in a certain way, and you do what has to be done and that's it. You are not here to gain something.
Then you might begin to realize that the The Statement of Purpose is very honest. It says in substance that if you are here for your own benefit you can forget it. Suddenly one day, and it could be today, you will realize that it is true. Participating in the work means working, bringing out, not hoarding for yourself -- in order to be spiritual for instance. So train yourself to deal with a higher order of magnitude.
Just a word about a higher order of magnitude. It's kind of like a mathematical expression. It's not the same as the three different orders of life that you have in the square diagram (conscious, subconscious, and superconscious). In the square diagram things can become a lot bigger than you are used to -- you begin to become aware of the implicate order instead of just the explicate one -- but you are still in the same world. When you really deal with a higher order of magnitude, it means a discipline, you do not want to process in the usual way because this is not what you live.
Another thing I want to say, because it might come around the next corner: Do not go out and read the book to others, unless it is the form through which you can give your life. What you give is your life -- whatever form it takes. You have to be able to really live what you speak of. It has to be reality for you. I do not want to hear people say "Martin said ..." Quoting a teaching is of no use, and, as I told you, there are only three sentences of teaching, so saying "Martin said ... " is not valid as a teaching. He said it in a given situation, when you go out and meet someone else it's not the same situation, so the quoting might be inadequate. Having fun repeating things outside and feeling important because you do it is not work. When you give life to what you give, then something happens.
Now we are going to play music, and I would like you to be careful. It happens in the now. What is lived is in the “Now”. What is important is the dynamics of what is going on. The dynamics -- all of them -- are playing on a higher order of magnitude, so whatever abstractions your usual mind brings out are not valid. They have possibly a limited validity, but they are not representative of the dynamics that go on -- usually not at all. Now if you want to help, you have to able to tune into those dynamics. It means another order of magnitude. The world of the comedian is not the world of the persona as of now. And in the world of the comedian are other comedians, incarnated or not, and this means it's crowded. It always amazes me to see how you can be self-centered in this room when there is so much going on. We are not alone. One of the best ways to change this self-centeredness is to give, go out and give. And when you meet situations, you really meet them, not for yourself, for the other, then things begin to change, then you begin to be useful, individually, and as a group. Then obviously more can flow through.
Speaking of orders of magnitude, for instance, your usual mind deals with your immediate surrounding -- that's the order of magnitude in which you live. Of course you know that the United States is rather big -- three thousand miles on the other side you have other people. So you think about that, you think about it, but you don't deal with it. Then if you go 3,000 miles further you have people in Europe and so on, and then the whole earth. You think about it, but it's not part of your dynamics. When we work, the dynamics work for the whole earth and more than that. As I say all the time, there is a "we" that covers the whole earth, and what is done is done for mankind as a whole -- not mankind as you know it, mankind as it is. God created man in his image and likeness. Your minds do not realize it. The dynamics in which we are involved work along that line.
So let's play the first piece.
When you participant in the music, all the body vibrates. You might feel some aspects flowing out of the body -- most of the time you feel the surface, you feel the flowing out, but you don't feel the inside. When the body is vibrated by the music, it's vibrated all through -- the inside as well as the outside, as well as around it.
Do not try to do anything, be focused on another order of magnitude. If you want, be focused on comedian, or be focused on "Other," so that you may not have too much room for the usual processing. Of course, you will feel things. Remember the things you feel are abstractions, not the fullness of what you live. As abstractions they create static that stand in the way. They prevent you from living the fullness of what is going on.
I repeat, the whole action is on comedian level -- the comedian starting to act on the persona in order to integrate it -- which is part of the bridging of the gap we have already spoken of. There is a lot more than comedian, but there is at least that, on it's own level, and the continuum, so that it touches and changes the structure, or awakens some structure within the persona. All the terms we use are inadequate because what is going on is of a higher order of magnitude. When we try to express it along the known lines, it's only more or less adequate. Seen from a certain angle it's always inadequate, we have no way of covering the whole. Learn to live it and live the wholeness of it without trying to abstract it.
Remember, live it now. The action is now, it's not an action for the future.
(music)
You might notice that when the music is playing there is a kind of vibrating throughout the body that is your very life. Stay with the wholeness of that.
But if we look at your minds we have a problem. Your minds tend to act as spectators. In other words, the minds look at what is going on instead of "looking it" -- which is the direct mode. The experience is “it” not "at it." Try to stay with the experience itself. You live it in spite of the mind looking at it. It's the same thing when you bring out. You can speak of your experience or you can speak it. When you speak it, the life is such that everything vibrates, including the sounded words.
It's another order of magnitude. But another order of magnitude implies other functions -- respect them. Something obviously is happening, and it is happening all over the place, including in the feelings, the sensations, and the mind. it is not something that comes through the body but not the mind. The mind is part of the same instrumentation, so it undergoes the same change. If this is not clear for you, live it especially in the head, this is the place you most often forget.
(music)
Another comment for your consciousness: If you need to, have the image of yourself as comedian, being here, now. Now. Not you personally trying to ... Don't try to shape it. Don't try to understand it. You are here, now, and that life vibrates throughout -- and that includes throughout all the functions in the personality.
Be here in another order of magnitude.
(music)
By now you begin to realize that it would be worthwhile to change your perspective and realize that you are a comedian in training, rather than a person trying to reach something. You happen to be here -- in training -- whatever your mind says. It's a simple change of perspective. Have the maturity and the courage to face that you are here on earth now -- with a purpose.
(music)