Artists From The United States

"In schools, for example, there are courses in the criticism of literature, art criticism, and so forth. The arts are supposed to be 'not real.' It is quite safe, therefore, to criticize them in that regard -- to see how a story or a painting is constructed, or more importantly, to critically analyze the structure of ideas, themes, or beliefs that appear, say, in the poem or work of fiction. When children are taught science, there is no criticism allowed. They are told, 'This is how things are.' Science's reasons are given as the only true statements about reality, with which no student is expected to quarrel. Any strong intellectual explorations or counter versions of reality have appeared in science fiction, for example. Here scientists, many being science-fiction buffs, can channel their own intellectual questioning into a safe form. 'This is, after all, merely imaginative and not to be taken seriously.'"

"What really made me angry though was finding myself agreeing with any of the journal's articles, and I did agree with several. The writers had a keen, if cold intelligence. They did a great deal of seeing through some of the nonsense concerned with the psychic field in general. Of course, they were almost vengefully gleeful when they could legitimately knock down some psychic performance, or show a psychic's predictions to be wrong. Only why couldn't they see their own scientific nonsense? And why couldn't their trained intellects perceive their own emotional vehemence? Because, I thought unhappily, they were scientific witch hunters."

"Framework 2 is connected with the creativity and vitality of your world. In your terms, the dead waken in Framework 2 and move through it to Framework 3, where they can be aware of their reincarnational identities and connections with time, while being apart from a concentration on earth realities. In those terms, the so-called dead dip in and out of earth probabilities by travelling through Framework 2, and into those probabilities connected with earth realities. Some others may wind up in Framework 4, which is like Framework 2, except that it is a creative source for other kinds of realities not physically oriented at all and outside of, say, time concepts as you are used to thinking about them. In a way impossible to describe verbally, some portion of each identity also resides in Framework 4, and in all other Frameworks."

"The fact is that science itself must change, as it discovers that its net of evidence is equipped only to catch certain kinds of fish, and that it is constructed of webs of assumptions that can only hold certain varieties of reality, while others escape its bet entirely."

""Science worships skepticism," I wrote, "unless skepticism is applied to science, its hypotheses, procedures, or methods. What we need are more skeptics who are not afraid to judge the claims of science with the same fine discrimination used to examine other alternate disciplines and fields of endeavor. Like The New York Times, science publishes 'all the news that's fit to print,' meaning all of the news that fits into the officially accepted view of reality. That news is already censored, and yet we're supposed to live our lives in accordance with that official definition of experience."

"It's never pleasant to have your integrity questioned, of course, no matter who you are. But when it's questioned by someone who doesn't even know you, someone who doesn't even have the facts straight, yet whose name carries the authority of science -- well, that's not exactly guaranteed to make your day."

"This 'God of Jane' idea, or 'God of Jim' or whoever, suits me in many ways. It suggests an intensely personal connection between each individual and the universe, for one thing. For another, it makes important distinctions between the private 'God' and the universal All That Is, while still maintaining the personal involvement. For instance, when I use the phrase 'the God of Jane', I'm referring to or trying to contact the portion of the universe that is forming me -- that is turning some indefinable divinity into this living temporal flesh. I want to avoid all other complications. I'm not trying to contact the God of Abraham, for instance, or the Biblical Christ, or the inexplicable power behind all of reality."

"If we are to end our wars, we have to dispense with a threatening, vengeful, bloodthirsty God. If we're to have any kind of world brotherhood, we have to dispense with a God who reserves his favors for a chosen few. Life is given to all. The sun shines freely on each of us. Would a God be less kindly? More than this, we must also dispense with our species God, and extend our ideas of divinity outward to the rest of nature which couches us and our religious theorizing with such a gracious and steady support."

"I'm taking it for granted here that there is a Source or God, but that our visions of such a vast psychological reality are limited, even shoddy and destructive. The idea of a crucified God to me at least is aesthetically appalling, for example. Why not a God who loves earth and life for a change? If we're going to insist upon a superhuman God, then why a distant, tempestuous God 'the father'? Why not a God who has the finest human abilities carried to their fullest; God the superartist, superlover, superartisan or athlete or farmer? At least such designations would upgrade the conventional ideas of a godhead. And of course Christianity leaves out any goddesses, so that along with Darwinian and Freudian theories religion is not just parochial but 'sexist' as well. And no one ever talks about Christ, the lover of women . . ."

"When we believe that science or religion "has the truth," we stop our speculations. While still referring to the theory of evolution, science accepts it as a fact, about existence, and therefore any speculation that threatens that theory becomes almost heretical. So often it seems that there is no other choice in the matter of man's origin than a meaningless universe and an earth populated by creatures who fight for survival, or a universe created by Christianity's objectified God. And to me, at least, the Eastern religions present no acceptable answers, either."

"As to the origin of life, any life, I thought, we remain ignorant. Our science theorizes about the beginning of the cosmos or the birth of life. Our religions postulate endless versions of a man-God, hardly more rational than we are, as the Creator. In the past I have sometimes thought that maybe life is meaningless after all. Then I'd think that maybe the Seth material is a kind of cosmic poppycock -- the chemical composition of my mind somehow intelligent enough to understand the irony of its own meaninglessness, then spinning desperate yarns, as many psychologists would say; futile fantasies leading nowhere. But then I'd think that a brain that could conceive or order somehow had to emerge from a greater order. Besides that, earlier I hadn't realized (I thought, feeling better) that science and religion had spun some pretty weird yarns themselves, and if poppycock was being measured on a scale of one to ten, in my book anyhow they'd each get a twelve and a gold star."

"So I had to face the fact that I was blessed with abilities that were considered symptoms of emotional abnormality or mental derangement by psychology, often thought of as demonic by religion, and whose very existence was denied altogether by science. So in my darker moments I used to think that my psychic initiation and subsequent experiences were a mixed bag, to say the least. But the fact is that I was very sensitive to criticism for the very good reason that often I shared many of the beliefs that stimulated it."

"And I decided that if motherhood turned a "young American beauty" into that unhappy woman, then motherhood wasn't for me, either. That youthful, emotional decision (ill-formed and made for the wrong reasons) kept me from too much early sexual experimentation, and probably turned me into a bit of a tease. I'd "neck" but only go so far, because . . . well, I because I was going to be a writer, "free and unhampered." At the very least. I wasn't going to get pregnant in my teens."

"Looking back now, it's easy to see that I had no models for the socially accepted conventional female role, which was certainly a blessing."

"Some of my ideas certainly came from my mother's father. She and he had a family argument and didn't see each other for twenty years, though we all lived in the same town. Mother wouldn't let my grandfather in the house. She let me visit him though. He was part Indian and part French, a tiny dark-haired man with an Indian hoked-nose; tight-lipped and stubborn. But he talked to me about the spirits of the fire and the wind, and took me for long walks in a nearby woods, while he told me Indian legends."

"Old hates lie in wait for the infant till he grows into a man. Then they leap upon him when he puts his father's coat on. When the father's bones drop into the grave, the lice flock up as the dark earth turns, to feed on a son's guilt-love. No man can look in his son's face, for what was done to him, he does in turn, and he carries the hate in his blood; ghosts of times forgotten, tragedies unseen, unspoken,wait in the past's proud flesh, and nothing will shake them off."

"There aren't any even halfway reasonable dogmas around nowadays, not one that doesn't offend or outrage either the intellect or the intuitions."

"Despite the beliefs and teachings of religion and psychology, impulses are biological and psychic directional signals to nudge the individual toward his or her greatest opportunities for expression and development privately, and also to insure the person's contribution to mass social reality."

"In Framework 2, extra-natural help, energy, impetus, and knowledge are 'naturally' available. . . . But only when your own beliefs are clear enough so that the help is not blocked."

"I don't feel "possessed" or "invaded during sessions. I don't feel that some superspirit has "taken over" my body. Instead I feel as if I am practicing some precise psychological art, one that is ancient and poorly understood in our culture; or as if I'm learning a psychological science that helps me map the contours of consciousness itself."

"You cannot love someone you do not know -- not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless."

"Many men, labelled homosexual by themselves and others, want to be fathers. Their beliefs and those of your society leads them to imagine that they must always be heterosexual or homosexual. Many feel a desire toward women that is also inhibited. Your male or female orientation limits you in ways that you do not understand. For example, in many cases the gentle "homosexual" father has a better innate idea of manliness than a heterosexual male who believes that men must be cruel, insensitive, and competitive."

"The overly specific sexual orientation, then, reflects a basic division in consciousness. It not only separates a man from his own intuitions and emotions to some extent, or a woman from her own intellect, but it effectively provides a civilization in which mind and heart, fact and revelation, appear completely divorced. To some degree each person is at war with the psyche, for all of an individual’s human characteristics must be denied unless they fit in with those considered normal to the sexual identity."

"There are lost portions of the Bible having to do with sexuality, and with Christ’s beliefs concerning it, that were considered blasphemous and did not come down to you through history."

"Physically, however, the body is quite able to completely regenerate itself as it approaches old age. Indeed, a quite legitimate second puberty is possible, in which the male’s seed is youthfully strong and vital, and the woman’s womb is pliable and able to bear . . . Now, to some extent there is a connection between this innate, rarely observed second puberty and the development of cancer, in which growth is specifically apparent in an exaggerated manner."

"In larger terms, it is as natural for a man to love a man, and for a woman to love a woman, as it is to show love for the opposite sex. For that matter, it is more natural to be bisexual."

"A relatively strong sexual identification is important under those circumstances - but (louder) an over-identification with them, before or afterward, can lead to stereotyped behavior, in which the greater needs and abilities of the individual are not allowed fulfillment."

"A mind is a psychic pattern through which you interpret and form reality. You have physical limbs that you can see. You have minds that are invisible. Each one can organize reality in a different fashion. Each one deals with its own kind of knowledge. These minds all work together to keep you alive through the physical structure of the brain. When you use all of these minds, then and only then do you become fully aware of your surroundings: You perceive reality more clearly than you do now, more sharply, brilliantly and concisely. At the same time, however, you comprehend it directly."

"In dreams you are so 'dumb' that you believe there is a commerce between the living and the dead. You are so 'irrational' as to imagine that you sometimes speak to parents who are dead. You are so 'unrealistic' that it seems to you that you visit old houses, long ago torn down, or that you travel in exotic foreign cities that you have actually never visited. In dreams you are so 'insane' you do not feel yourself locked in a closet of time and space, but feel instead as if all infinity but waited your beckoning."

"To one extent or another, then, you learn to constantly monitor your behavior, so that it conforms to the established criteria set up for sane or rational experience. You are social creatures, as the animals are. Despite many of your cherished, erroneous beliefs, your nations exist as the result of cooperation, not competition, as do all social groupings."

"Emir said: "This way everyone lives in a body of a kind for a while, and then leaves its body behind so that it can be remade for someone else. That's a very simple explanation, but it will do for now. Then all new life has a chance to live, and lots of room. Then we each take turns, so we can come back on new bodies when there's room available."

"The spirits of people and creatures and plants don't take up any room at all. But their bodies do. Bodies are like houses our spirits live in, only they're far nicer, of course. There's only room for so many bodies in the kingdom, whether they're plant bodies or creature bodies or people bodies. After a while, we have to leave our body-houses to make room for new things."

"The message of the God of All Life is in all of nature, everywhere. If you really listen, you'll hear it."

"The God of All Life was really more like a light than anything else, and the whole divine arena just lit up as if a universal spotlight was turned on from the inside of things, bathing every visible object. Everything Emir saw was lit up as if even the blades of grass had bulbs inside them, though bulbs hadn't been invented yet or spotlights either. Still, a new kind of superlight splashed out over the arena. More than this, the light itself was somehow kindly and alive, as if the God of All Life was everywhere at once, made of light, but with a presence inside that was invisible."

"There was a god or goddess of wind, rain, lightning, thunder, clouds, stars, sun, and of course, the moon goddess, and they all more or less worked under SkyMaker."

"It doesn't matter," WisestFrog answered. "You knew that the thoughts were beneath you and you felt small. And here in the Land of the Gods, everything is so creative that your thoughts may give results you don't expect at all. But you really have no problem. Just think big yourself bigger. Go ahead, think a big thought."

"I know that the earth was new, but I didn't realize that it wasn't finished yet."

"I thought you understood," he said. "The world is your teacher. It will be all around you. The ocean and the wind and the stars and the moon will all teach you many things."

"You are not a miniature self, an adjunct to some superbeing, never to share fully In its reality. In those terms you are that superself - looking out of only one eye, or using just one finger. Much of this is very difficult to verbalize. You are not subordinate to some giant consciousness. While you think in such terms, however, I must speak of reincarnational selves counterparts, because you are afraid that if you climb out of what you think your identity is, then you will lose it."

"In terms that I admit are difficult to describe, the creative solutions will change the course of history in the past, so that variations are taken, and technology does not progress in the same way that it has in your experience."

"However, suicides and would-be suicides often have such a great literal lust for life that they constantly put it into jeopardy, so that they can experience what it is in heightened form."

"You take it for granted that interpretations of events change, but that certain definite events occurred that are beyond alteration. Instead, the events themselves are not nearly that concrete. You accept one probable event. Someone else may experience instead a version of that event, which then becomes that individual’s felt reality."

"Ruburt’s life as he knows it is not in my memory -- because I did different things when I was Ruburt. And he is not bound by that reality that was mine."

"I have memories of being Ruburt - but the Ruburt I was is not the Ruburt that Ruburt is in his reality."

"Again, your being is never annihilated, but continues to develop its own existence in other ways. A portion of you has lived many lives upon this planet, but the "you" that you know is freshly here, and will never again encounter space and time in precisely the same way. The same applies to each life lived either before or after. Biologically you rest upon a heritage, however, and psychically the same applies. The soul, or this greater personage, does not simply send out an old self in new clothes time and time again, but each time a new, freshly-minted self that then develops and goes its own way. That self rides firmly, however, in the great flight of experience, and feels within itself all of those other fully unique versions that also fling their way into existence."

"Part of the unknown reality, then, is hidden beneath language and the enforced pattern of accustomed words-so, for an exercise, look about your environment. Make up new, different 'words' for the objects that you see about you. Pick up any object, for example. Hold it for a few seconds, feel its texture, look at its color, and spontaneously give it a new name by uttering the sounds that come into your mind. See how the sounds bring out certain aspects of the object that you may not have noticed before. The new word will fit as much as the old one did. It may, in fact, fit better. Do this with many objects, following the same procedure. You can instead say the name of any object backwards. In such ways you break up to some extent the automatic patterning of familiar phrases, so that you can perceive the individuality that is within each object."

"It is fashionable to say: You must not eat meat because you are killing the animals, and this is wrong. But in deeper terms, physically and biologically the animals are born from the body of the earth, which is composed of the corpses of men and women as much as it is of other matter. The animals consume you, then, as often as you consume them, and they are as much a part of your humanity as you are a part of their so called animal nature."

"I have told you that upon physical death the ego becomes the subconscious in the next existence, and that its conscious knowing is retained electromagnetically."

"Every action changes every other action. We return to our ABC's. Therefore every action in the present affects those actions which you call the past. Ripples from a thrown stone go to in all directions."

"I may say that Buddhism does indeed come closer in essence to reality than other religions. However, the Buddhist either have not gone far enough, or have gone too far, according to your viewpoint. If they have gone too far, then they have been so concerned with inner reality that they have become too tolerant of physical disease and disasters. If they have no gone far enough, then they have not followed through sufficiently so that these physical disasters could truly be suffered without pain."