Seth: The Personal Sessions, aka as The Deleted Sessions from 12/03/77.) Continued from Part I:
(With gentle irony.) You made a remark earlier this evening to the effect that the individual could do nothing in the face of such organized behavior-a remark that by now I'm sure you regret voicing.
(I laughed.)
Those ideas to begin with began with individuals. The people who make and report the news are individuals. The people who read or view the news are individuals. To some extent through the books you are helping people alter their psychic organizations, to look at the world in a different fashion, and therefore to view a different world-a world in which their experiences are different than they would have been otherwise.
Many people are already beginning to alter their picture of the world, but they are afraid of trusting their own intuitions.
Consider the lengthy letter from the young English gentleman. In a large measure, the world in which he now lives is a highly more enjoyable and productive one than it was before. His experiences are entirely different than they would have been. In terms of probability, he took a new probable road, which means that his individual impact upon the world, and everyone he meets, will also be different and more creative than it would have been before.
Unless Ruburt does, no one will remark about this young man. No one will trace the beneficial change in his life, and their effects upon others. People generally have been taught to play down their own heroism, and to concentrate upon man's weaknesses, and so your newspapers contain categorized fact upon fact, emphasizing man's errors and stupidities.
It has become virtuous to keep track of these, as if concentrating upon errors will do anything but compound them. I am, again, not telling you to be blind to physical events, but to realize that the news media, and your organizations, are not giving you an "objective" view of the world, but a view compounded and composed by Freudian and Darwinian beliefs.
I would also like to remind you both of the difference between direct experience and second-handed tales. Examine your own personal experience with physical reality now and then when you have a moment (with irony), relying only upon your own experience.
It is impossible, I know, and not really beneficial, to try to separate yourselves entirely from the cultural world, but you should understand the makeup of that world, and be able now and then at least to separate your private experiences from it, even though they must occur in its context.
How many crimes have you each personally encountered?
How many people have been generally well-disposed toward you?
How many have been actively vicious?
What has actually been your own experience with war, with prejudice, with hatred?
How much of your view of reality has been formed by direct experience, and now much has been formed through secondary sources, such as communications media, or tales brought to you by others?
This is an excellent exercise because it puts you in touch with your own experience, and at least gives you a point from which you can make judgments of your own. Your neighbor, Joe, had pneumonia, or a cold, or the snivels (upon returning from Florida last week).
To Margaret he had pneumonia, because she organizes reality in a certain fashion, and by slightly exaggerating certain data, she then uses it to reinforce certain beliefs. She then must take steps of course to protect herself against illness, and she is in fear of robbers for the same reason. She does not trust her body nor her fellow men. She watches news for stories of illnesses and robbers.
Those ideas do not exist alone. They have an emotional effect. To some extent, it is because you have accepted the newspapers' view of reality as real, that you have allowed yourselves to dwell upon certain attitudes about your fellows-so that for example sometimes the world does not seem to deserve great art; or that you even feel you do not want to share your work with the stupid bastards (Seth said, staring at me. I laughed again).
I am trying to induce Ruburt to drop his muscular armor. In the world of his experience he does not need it. His direct experience has not included it, the cruel adult world that he must protect himself against.
It certainly does not include a frightening psychic world, actually or otherwise. Any fears he had there he picked up through reading, or through the reports of others, so let him also separate his private experience in that respect.
Collecting such distorted data about inner or outer worlds can only make an individual build up defenses, or want to.
The newspaper world is, then, highly distorted, organized in such a manner that its data reinforce negative beliefs, and constantly give evidence only of negative patterns. These then are taken as an objective picture of the fact world.
All of the heroism, the private and even mass triumph, and the good intent, have been left out.
The world is seen as a patient, sick in body, insane of mind, a thing that needs treatment, a Freudian and Darwinian monster.
Even with your own changed beliefs, the two of you still see that mirror when you read a newspaper, and do not realize the invisible organizations behind the news. It makes it seem foolhardy to relax, doesn't it? (Ironically, leaning forward for emphasis.)
All of these things to some extent stand in the way of Ruburt's recovery. They point precisely to those areas in which both of you heartily agreed, though Ruburt's way of getting work done was not yours.
(I laughed.)
Those ideas to begin with began with individuals. The people who make and report the news are individuals. The people who read or view the news are individuals. To some extent through the books you are helping people alter their psychic organizations, to look at the world in a different fashion, and therefore to view a different world-a world in which their experiences are different than they would have been otherwise.
Many people are already beginning to alter their picture of the world, but they are afraid of trusting their own intuitions.
Consider the lengthy letter from the young English gentleman. In a large measure, the world in which he now lives is a highly more enjoyable and productive one than it was before. His experiences are entirely different than they would have been. In terms of probability, he took a new probable road, which means that his individual impact upon the world, and everyone he meets, will also be different and more creative than it would have been before.
Unless Ruburt does, no one will remark about this young man. No one will trace the beneficial change in his life, and their effects upon others. People generally have been taught to play down their own heroism, and to concentrate upon man's weaknesses, and so your newspapers contain categorized fact upon fact, emphasizing man's errors and stupidities.
It has become virtuous to keep track of these, as if concentrating upon errors will do anything but compound them. I am, again, not telling you to be blind to physical events, but to realize that the news media, and your organizations, are not giving you an "objective" view of the world, but a view compounded and composed by Freudian and Darwinian beliefs.
I would also like to remind you both of the difference between direct experience and second-handed tales. Examine your own personal experience with physical reality now and then when you have a moment (with irony), relying only upon your own experience.
It is impossible, I know, and not really beneficial, to try to separate yourselves entirely from the cultural world, but you should understand the makeup of that world, and be able now and then at least to separate your private experiences from it, even though they must occur in its context.
How many crimes have you each personally encountered?
How many people have been generally well-disposed toward you?
How many have been actively vicious?
What has actually been your own experience with war, with prejudice, with hatred?
How much of your view of reality has been formed by direct experience, and now much has been formed through secondary sources, such as communications media, or tales brought to you by others?
This is an excellent exercise because it puts you in touch with your own experience, and at least gives you a point from which you can make judgments of your own. Your neighbor, Joe, had pneumonia, or a cold, or the snivels (upon returning from Florida last week).
To Margaret he had pneumonia, because she organizes reality in a certain fashion, and by slightly exaggerating certain data, she then uses it to reinforce certain beliefs. She then must take steps of course to protect herself against illness, and she is in fear of robbers for the same reason. She does not trust her body nor her fellow men. She watches news for stories of illnesses and robbers.
Those ideas do not exist alone. They have an emotional effect. To some extent, it is because you have accepted the newspapers' view of reality as real, that you have allowed yourselves to dwell upon certain attitudes about your fellows-so that for example sometimes the world does not seem to deserve great art; or that you even feel you do not want to share your work with the stupid bastards (Seth said, staring at me. I laughed again).
I am trying to induce Ruburt to drop his muscular armor. In the world of his experience he does not need it. His direct experience has not included it, the cruel adult world that he must protect himself against.
It certainly does not include a frightening psychic world, actually or otherwise. Any fears he had there he picked up through reading, or through the reports of others, so let him also separate his private experience in that respect.
Collecting such distorted data about inner or outer worlds can only make an individual build up defenses, or want to.
The newspaper world is, then, highly distorted, organized in such a manner that its data reinforce negative beliefs, and constantly give evidence only of negative patterns. These then are taken as an objective picture of the fact world.
All of the heroism, the private and even mass triumph, and the good intent, have been left out.
The world is seen as a patient, sick in body, insane of mind, a thing that needs treatment, a Freudian and Darwinian monster.
Even with your own changed beliefs, the two of you still see that mirror when you read a newspaper, and do not realize the invisible organizations behind the news. It makes it seem foolhardy to relax, doesn't it? (Ironically, leaning forward for emphasis.)
All of these things to some extent stand in the way of Ruburt's recovery. They point precisely to those areas in which both of you heartily agreed, though Ruburt's way of getting work done was not yours.
To Be Continued...
Next time you read a newspaper or view the news on TV, realize that only the sensational aspects are being published. I wish media professionals will learn to concentrate more on reporting the good things that humans are trying to accomplish in their lives and the lives of others. And help manufacture a better world by providing more hopeful and joyful images of man's future potential.
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