CALISTHENICS NOVEMBER 18, 1980
- SOUL --ASTRAL IS A CONSTRUCT --TAKE OVER FROM NATURE --A FUNCTION --LIVANCE--MONAD -- FUNCTION, NOT LABEL ---WORKING WITH THE BOOK -- LIVE SOMETHINNG NEW
When Djwharl Khul speaks of soul he means a very specific function, so the action starts from there -- preferably it starts from the Monad, which is still higher (in the symbolism of Djwharl Khul). He also speaks of two souls. Now which one is which?
... Djwharl Khul is a spiritual master, his awareness is way beyond soul. If you see awareness as a kind of ladder (it's an old symbolism), he speaks of soul looking down. You speak of soul looking up. Now if you are looking up and he speaks looking down, are you sure you understand each other? Do you see the situation?
I agree that everyone in their life has an inkling of a soul quality, a soul presence, but the acting soul is not an inkling. It is more definite than your awareness of your own personality -- not less. Of course, when you begin to establish a soul relation, your consciousness has to adjust; so you have inklings that become stronger and stronger, there are more evidences and so on. This is perfectly okay, this is how people work. It's simply that when there is a requirement, don't be misled -- the requirement is specific and clear cut.... It is of no use saying that your mind doesn't know what soul awareness is but you sense soul. This is not working from soul level. This is simply consciousness becoming slowly aware of soul.
You are not used to real spiritual work -- I mean the business end of it. It is not a judgment; it is not a criticism; it is simply that real work implies a turn-around and is fully creative. As I have said, it implies a lot of responsibility.Spiritual healing is an outgoing action. It is not an action for the mind that wants to be soul and hopefully act. obviously not -- it is soul acting.
What I am hinting at is actually something very simple. It pertains to your position when you work. If you think that-you- have-to- get-acquainted-with-soul; -you-don't-know-what-it-is; you-have-to-reach-higher-and-higher-and-higher -in-order-to-reach-soul, -then-maybe-one-day-you-can-turn-around-and-act-from-soul-level -- that means you give a direction to all your workings, exercisings and so on that must go along that way. I wonder if you realize that you set yo}ur own path by your beliefs. If you have decided that you have to proceed that way in order to reach soul, you are going to proceed that way and eventually you might "reach" soul. And then what? Reaching soul is still not being soul -- except that the awareness of soul will be a lot clearer --the shift of the center of gravity must still be made.
You can proceed differently. Once in a while quite spontaneously you come out soul-wise. Start from that experience, and work at coming out until it is operational. It is a lot quicker -- but not everyone is mature enough to do that.
There is another point: I came across a sentence that said, "The astral world is not real it is a construct...from man". I was quite happy with that because I tell you all the time that, in the way we work, astrality does not exist -- I mean really does not. I know what it is, and if I have to work on that level, I have to adjust myself to that level in the given individual but for me it does not exist. But all around you they speak of astrality all the time.
This leads me to something that I tell you all the time also: watch your consciousness. The way you know it is reflexive, and like all reflections there is an inversion in it. The strong need to reach up reflects the coming down. The findings you make with your mind are always reflections. You haven't yet discovered the mind that does not reflect. It's a different story, but it exists.
... Usually you start, just as it says in the book -- with the centers of the head because these functions are positive functions. I mean relating to the body with a nature side and a spirit side, they belong to the spirit side. They allow you to take over from nature. (In case you don't know, human beings are supposed to take over from nature -- nowadays it's about fifty-fifty, some a little more, some a little less. This means that one day they will be mature and be able to handle their own body -- so goes the story.) So you have an advantage in dealing with the centers of the head, because nature hasn't become mixed up with them. Nature is mixed with the thorax centers so you might not be able to make the difference. In the head it's much clearer. So you start with the centers of the head and you get acquainted with the function A, U and M. Practice. It has to be experiential and (to make a word) evidential -- self-evident. This is not reached by listening to words or reading words. This happens when you give it out properly.
Participant: Is either the A, U or M stronger in each individual?
Martin: Yes, ... You have basic functions and more superficial functions. You might assume a basic function, let us say A, throughout the whole life, but during the life you might come out with one, two, three different functions closer to the outside. In the beginning you don't usually see these differences, so you find just one dominant note. And don't be confused if you sense a strong head activity, meaning mind/intellect, it does not mean that the A is dominant. This kind of activity belongs to the heart.
And relating to this, to make a fictitious example: Suppose you are a small group studying; you center field-A; then what? Well, perhaps someone has a suggestion that you could do this or that. This would be typical, and it is very typical of the mind perceiving A, not A functioning. If you live field-A you don't think and you don't say, "now we could do..." The A decides and the U function adjusts around the directive impulse of the A, and then something takes shape -- according to that A, and behind the A function the field -- but not according to your brain. A does not think, nor does the field. It does not reflect, nor does the field. So, be ready, when you center A, live A - field-A. Stay is this livance with your consciousness fully open to what step A is going to take. This openness is an active collaboration, there is no passive waiting. If you happen to catch yourself waiting for something you are not A-centered, so go back to being A-centered until the movement comes through. Stay with the function for a while -- don't interfere.
So you will notice the requirements appear very difficult but, as I said, the difficulty stems mainly from the position. Change the position, train a bit, and it will be easier. But the position is always, due to the whole society around, acquisitive. you want to acquire some abilities. The function is outgoing, it's creative not acquisitive. Outpouring if you want, not in pouring. All soul experiences are always, always, always outgoing. Check for yourself.
....because the mind has it's use. But there are functions you can perform with or without the mind. If it is without the mind you are not dependent upon the mind understanding or cooperating, you just do it. Soul action is possible with or without the mind. Monadic action is even freer of the mind.
To give you a reference, if you have studied the book, you have an inkling of what the Monadic level implies. You've heard me speaking of livance. Live nice is an all-encompassing awareness. For us, technically, the lowest level of livance is on the Monadic level. You have a reflection of it on soul level. Now, everyone experiences a sort of all-encompassing awareness. It's simply that from school on you are trained not to acknowledge it. Because you are supposed to acknowledge something according a system which fits the linearity of your thoughts. If you, for instance, come in this room and sit down, there is first encompassingness, undifferentiated -- apparently. And from this you gather impressions: sensory, feeling, or mental. These functions come second not first. You learn to dwell with the overall, or if you prefer all-encompassing, awareness. It might not be all-encompassing technically, but it's a training you need. Because you underestimate the ability of that awareness for the benefit of a more limited awareness.
Seen from the limited awareness, the all-encompassing awareness is kind of vague -- there is a sense of unity, possibly some sort of beauty, but totally undifferentiated and thus very vague. When you learn to dwell in it, there is a fullness that your thoughts, thinking ability, or even intuitions cannot match --cannot. they just cannot. In that fullness there is a precision that your mind cannot match -- cannot.
You are trained in self-reflexiveness and haven't yet learned to acknowledge that all-encompassing awareness. This you have to do. Train yourself to acknowledge it, and, once it is more evident, dwell in it. If this becomes effective you can work from there on.
I have always told you that in livance (livance is all-encompassing), whatever information you need you find it there. If your mind has to see something in a certain direction it can approach livance in that direction and find the answer. If you need to come out in a certain direction, livance gives you the possibility.
Remember I said that the lowest level of livance is the Monadic level. Livance is all-encompassing. There is a reflection on soul level, and that reflection is involved in field-awareness; it's simply that it doesn't have the label "soul". If we work we don't use the word "soul", neither do we use the word "Monad". I come up with it because you studied the book. These are labels and we need the facts that means the functions going on. The function is not the label. Your understanding of the Monadic level and the fact of Monadic functioning is very different. Obviously.
You will notice that the field awareness is strangely related to everything, so is soul awareness -- but field awareness is something practical, operative and soul awareness is tinted by lots of concepts, emotional feelings toward soul and so on, so we try to avoid that. Soul is no reality in itself. It's not a thing.
Incidentally, when you work with functions, you will learn to see/sense/feel/think function-wise instead of thingness-wise.Thus providing to yourself the proposition of the physicist: a particle is an event not a thing. For your ordinary mind it's an impossibility. You cannot see yourself as an event you see yourself as a thing. This changes. All your relation toward the thingness of the world changes.
......I was asked yesterday by those who want to work seriously with the book if they could have someone knowledgeable to guide them and I said "no". For one reason: you have to learn to work by yourself. Although it is easier and sometimes more beneficial to work in groups (although it's not true for everyone), because you have different approaches. And if you are caught in a certain trend, which happens easily, you see others doing differently and this might open up a narrowness of the way you are going.
One point about the study of the book that you might overlook. The mastery of the technical side requires a lot and there is a tendency in the mind to approach the book as "it". The book is only an introduction -- no more than that. The way we actually work now is way beyond the book. It's simply that you have the beginning steps in the book that allow you to adjust -- but remember that the books ends with something totally different. You have to remember that. You have to limber your patterning to the point where you can stop making patterns at will, at least for a few seconds. In other words you have to be able to dwell with field awareness, or livance, or all-encompassing awareness -- really.
If you are ready for more, then the technical side of the book will be very easy. It's not as difficult as it looks to some of you. The only trouble has been that up to now we didn't find people who just did it. Always you do a little bit, you understand, and you are happy. Remember we don't care about your understanding. I say that quite bluntly. You might be happy to understand something -- the point is not this. The point is what can you do?" We are involved in some work. We need qualified help. People who can do something.
Questions?
Participant: The dilemma I face with what I try, even if I can put aside a need to understand it, is that I need to have a minimal control of it to be able to practice. The problem I find is that if you say "go home and practice field awareness" I start with zero and I don't know the first step.
Martin: It's never true that you start with zero, because the field is active anyway -- whether you know it or not. A body does not exist without the field. One day you will realize that the field is creating the body and not only the body, the whole personality. So it's there all the time. You don't start with zero. What you might start with is zero relationship between your conscious mind and the field, and the biggest mistake everyone makes is wanting to create the field -- whereas, in fact, you create the relationship between the already existing field and consciousness. When the relationship is established the field shows a lot more strongly -- it's more obvious, more evident. The function comes closer to consciousness, but the function is there anyway.
.....Incidentally, if you come to the end of the book, that is, preparing yourself for something different, one of the trainings is to drop all known references -- whatever is known is not interesting, you are looking for something unknown. And every time a known proposition comes up you drop it. You don't refuse it, it's there, but it's not what is interesting you. This kind of training allows you little by little to consciously live something new (I mean new for consciousness). Otherwise you are always limited to the perfectioning of something that already exists but is not really new. What exists might become more sophisticated but this is not what you want.
Learn to stick with what you want. There are some points that are very valid -- stick with them. At other times you drop whatever you recognize because consciousness has to adjust to something which is utterly new. This means it has to adjust to working without reference.
And as far as requirements go, remember, historically speaking, Pantanjali spoke about the Seer seeing without image and without memory. I come up with that example because it's 2,500 years back, and the ability to live without reference was already there.
Now look in your own mind. For your mind to see without image and memory (which actually means without reference) is inconceivable. For your own reference we do that all the time. We are Seers. And I can witness what he says. it is true. When you see in that way, whatever references you have are perfectly useless. Really.
Just to give you an opening to what can be done when you train. Nearly every experience can be turned into something very fruitful. You have lots of things going on all the time. Now some of them are interesting for you at the moment. They might be shaped but you might want to dwell with these. If you dwell with these, you just forget about the other things. The ability of dwelling with a proposition is absolutely needed. In other instances you want to see what's new so you drop everything that you recognize, every movement, every aspect, until you face a kind of livance, that is utterly new and you cannot say a thing about it.
Participant: Is it really, truly so utterly new that it will be utterly new?
Martin: Worse than that. As far as words go, something new is new. Something utterly new is usually not fully new because you can add the label "utterly" and utterly is
known.
Georgette: "Utterly" implies a reference. With "new" you don't have a reference.
Martin: I know that we have a tendency to say something is "really" new, or "utterly" new, or "totally" new, or "fantastically" new, or whatever, but when you experience it, the labeling or qualifying of the newness is a known qualifier and you cannot apply a known qualifier to something new -- so all the labels fall away -- and the end result is that something new happens to be new, simply that. It's simply that the mind always wants to hook up to something known so you add the second label.
Now something different.
We are going to play a piece of music that we played last time as the middle part of the session. Did any of you sense something special when we played this music?
Participant: If that's the one -- all I recall is the experience. There was a great effect in here. It was like an opening.
Martin: Did you notice that after that all of you reacted to the next music differently than you did with the first music? It was not the same position as with the first piece, and the change happened with.the second piece of music.
Incidentally, relative to this kind of change, when we play music you participate, consciously or unconsciously, to a movement going on -- a play -- not a thing, a movement. We often call it a structuring. Technically, the word is not really correct -- it works for the consciousness which sees it as a structuring, but actually it's the introduction of new possibilities of movement -- whatever movement means. It pertains to creativeness (new ways).In this instance we have introduced, and will continue with, a type of movement that has a healing effect. Every time you will feel a bit more whole. But there is a requisite: When you live it you don't think about it, because when you think you imply a directionality for something that is whole. This means you allow only one aspect to work, instead of living whole.
I don't know how to put it into words. You face the play going on (and actually it's not a facing because it goes throughout), and aware it whole. That means that every aspect is working as one with all the others -- there is a simultaneousness in the whole works. The simplest way for you might be just to live it field-wise. Of course, you will have impressions popping up -- these are reflections, they are not the movement itself. You accept them as reflections, but you are not interested, so you drop them. Allow yourself to be whole with the music -- every aspect simultaneously, known and unknown both --because little by little you realize that the known is very narrow, the biggest part of your self is still unknown for your consciousness.
And when you observe around, you will notice that you will show a quality that doesn't show now. So there is obviously something going on, whether you understand it or not.
I repeat: The best way to "tune in" is whole-istically. There is a wholeness and the easiest way to live this wholeness is field-wise until you have trained your consciousness. And if you don't know what field-wise means, you simply put your awareness all around instead of enclosed in the head -- until you become field-aware. First it's simply a feel, a sensitiveness all around, okay, you start with this -- it's better than being enclosed. It's meant as a training for healing and some other aspects.