Within these dynamos are finely machined bearings and shafts which come from giant steel refineries and machine factories, all products of reforming the earth. Copper wire, plastic covering for those wires, paint, lubrication- all combined to generate electricity which is used to put gigantic intricately modeled ships on the seas and into the air.
Space ships. Computers and computer games. Brain scanners. Medicine. Automobiles. Railroads. Mosques. Stop signs. Skyscrapers. Cities. Everything we see around us. It all comes from the dirt that lies beneath the grass at our feet. Mankind takes this dirt and forms it into that which is of interest to him.
Mankind also creates intangible things. He creates systems. Educational systems. Legal systems. Political systems. Medical systems. Scientific systems. Religious systems. Economic systems. Humans can look at a series of moving flashes of light on a screen and create from those flashes, Sean Connery. A human can, from color, smell and form, create a flower, and then he can "shove" it out into three-dimensional space where he can look at it as separate from his creation. He does the same thing in his dreams when he produces rivers, cars, people, sound, words, and shoves these out into the three-dimensional space he has created in his dream. He creates time there also. Individually and collectively, mankind is a creator of worlds.
We live in a sea of thoughts much as a fish lives in a sea of water, and as a fish is a product of the water in which it lives, so too are we a product of the sea of thoughts in which we live.
Our minds are so constituted that whatever it focuses upon becomes all. While we are reading, we are not aware of the pressure of the chair upon which we are sitting. While we are aware of the pressure, we are not cognizant of the reading before us.
Likewise, we cannot think and be aware of what it is that we are thinking about at the same time. Whenever we have a thought or a fantasy, we are aware of neither the thought itself, nor of the fantasy. We are all quite literally lost in our thoughts. All of us have had periods of time when we were so engrossed in what we were thinking that we were later unable to recall what had been happening around us. We became so entranced in the "living" of what was happening in our head that we didn't notice that it was happening only in our head and nowhere else.
We might see something in a store window, think it would be nice to have, mentally compare our resources with our liabilities, find we can't afford the object, and the disappointment may lead us into thoughts of how many things we have to do without, of how much money we lack, of the unlikely possibility that we will ever have all the money we need. We may then begin to wonder if we are destined to spend the rest of our lives in abject poverty, worrying over what will happen to us when we are old and alone with no one to help us.
A simple wish for something we happened to see in a store window has grown into a worry over a life of poverty, all without our knowledge or consent. What makes it even more difficult for us is that the thoughts in our head seem to be "out there" where there is nothing we can do about it. What seems to be reality is only thoughts about reality. Thoughts are the screen which hides reality.
Thoughts are the sole creators of the world in which we have our existence. This is not to say that a world of reality doesn't exist- quite the contrary. Reality exists, but it cannot be seen until the veil formed by thoughts is pierced, and the veil cannot be pierced until thoughts are seen for what they are.
Thoughts have a magnetic quality about them. They attract other like thoughts. We may, for instance, notice a series of feelings in our body and think, "I'm hungry". This thought will bring forth thoughts of food, where to get fed, or how much longer before we can eat.
If we have a thought that evokes happiness, we will think of other happy thoughts, and conversely, a sad thought will bring similar sad thoughts.
Just as our thoughts and emotions are intertwined, so too is our awareness intertwined with our thoughts and emotions. Is hunger something we have or something we are?
The magnetic quality of thoughts attracts other thoughts, along with their attending emotions, dragging our awareness along, resulting in our awareness- us, being manipulated by the thoughts we have.
When we are in the throes of passion, be it of sex, anger or jealousy, it is difficult for us to remember that it all started with a stray thought that we entertained- never dreaming when we first had the thought that it would soon have us.
Thoughts form themselves into patterns which combine with other thoughts and thought patterns, forming still other thought patterns, all beneath our awareness. A sound outside the window reminds us of similar sounds which we have learned to associate with the sound of a passing car. The sound we now hear creates a thought which attracts other thoughts and thought patterns, forming into a "belief" that a car is passing.
The remembrance of a past slight by a friend forms with other like thoughts and patterns into a "belief" that we have been emotionally injured. We accept the belief without question as "real".
Our belief in a passing car or a slight by a friend forms our apparent reality - a reality that seems extremely REAL, that a passing car or an emotional injury actually exists. We cannot "see" the beliefs, but we can 'see" their results. Since what we "see" is "out there", it appears to us that reality just "happens"- that we have nothing to do with its creation.
Reality arises from our beliefs. Our beliefs arise from our thoughts. We are never aware of the composition of our thoughts, so we are never aware of our thought's creations- our beliefs. All of us believe that we know what we think, or believe, but this itself is a belief system arising from the thought that we are aware. In a vicious and tenacious circle, the belief that we know what we are thinking causes us to minimize the need to observe what we are thinking. We don't observe our thoughts because we think we DO observe our thoughts.
While we are in a belief system we never see it for what it really is. It always appears to be reality itself. All belief systems are self-contained, with no beginning and no end. There is no way to "break in" to see their irrationality. Belief systems can be transcended, however, and therefore what appears to be reality can be transcended.
To transcend something doesn't mean that the "something" is no longer there. When we transcend a belief, we still have the belief, but we realize that a belief is all that it is. It has no power of its own, only that which we give it. When we watch a magic act, we realize that what we are watching is an illusion, that it isn't real. We transcend what our eyes tell us. The magician appears to have cut the girl in half, but we know that he really didn't.
If we close our eyes and "stand back" from ourselves, becoming somewhat detached from our thoughts, and simply watch them rise, slide across our awareness and go off into oblivion, we will be watching a magic show of our own. If we become detached enough so that our thoughts seem separate from us, we will have transcended what our mind had been telling us. These thoughts that we have been watching form what is "out there". Since what is "out there" is nothing more than our thoughts externalized, then when we react to "out there", we are in effect, reacting to our own thoughts.
Our thoughts about "out there" and what is "out there" is the same thing. They cannot be separated any more than a head can be separated from a body. To remove one from the other is to destroy both.
Whenever any of our senses is activated by "out there", a chain of thoughts arises, creating an emotional morass which entraps our awareness, and we become hypnotized by our emotions and thoughts, all the while believing that it is the environment that we are reacting to. If we taste something sour, see something strange or touch something painful, thoughts rise unbidden.
What we read or hear also starts these chains of thoughts and emotions. Sex...War...Ni - - er... Pollution... C - nt.....Nukes... Thoughts, images and beliefs attach themselves to each of these words like permanent waterproof glue.
Continued in next issue!