All of Everything Connected

A Sweeping and Broad Session

I’d like to differentiate between the name of this session
and the name of the work by Gurdjieff called All and Everything.
At one point in the text, I’ll particularly point out the difference and distinction
between ‘All of Everything Connected’
and Gurdjieff’s concept of  ‘All and Everything’.

This session is not just the synopsis of four or five or even ten recent sessions.
This session is the bringing together of the large number of pieces of thinking
that we did out of the Castenada series, particularly that last book
of the Castenada Series, The Power of Silence.
His session is the result of the prior sessions that we have had
on the theories of the manifest and unmanifest, the discontinuous
and continuous and the sessions we’ve had on presence.
It is a very, very sweeping and broad session.

The other thing that we need to take into account is
that it is going to introduce a new method of meditation.
So this becomes a milestone occasion.

We have considered the manifest and what we have called the unmanifest
as two quadrants each formed with the continuous and discontinuous.

Let’s make sure we remember that diagram.
The manifest and the unmanifest are two quadrants each, in a diagram
formed with the continuous and the discontinuous.
Everything above the line is manifest, everything below the line is unmanifest.
To the left is the continuous. Everything to the right is discontinuous.

Other References

One of the pieces of work that I mentioned,
when I said the session was a sweeping integration, goes back
to the work of Betty and Stuart White in The Unobstructed Universe.
That work is foundational to what we are dealing with.
But I am composing this session
between The Unobstructed and Obstructed Universe
with the sense of the nagual and tonal by Castenada and a lot of other ideas
that are in the Seth material, by Jane Roberts.

Remember, we have considered the discontinuous and manifest
to be physical reality, ordinary matter.
We have considered the unmanifest and discontinuous
to be the realm of ideas and ideals.

We’ve considered the realm of the manifest and continuous
to be the realm of energy.
But remember, we had a session on how energy and pattern are always related.
So we can begin seeing that these energies with pattern and ideas and ideals
precipitate as they cross the boundaries.

The realm of the continuous and unmanifest is a realm to which
we want to be open again.
When I say “we want to be open again”, I don’t mean in the course of this lifetime
or any other lifetime, but I mean as a soul.
We were, at one time, open to this.
Our grand cycle is to return in the harvest to this particular state.
That return to the continuous and unmanifest does not mean lacking uniqueness.
That does not mean lacking order.
There is a kind of intelligibility related to uniqueness and complementarity
and the kind of order of the unmanifest and continuous.
The kind of intelligibility that transcends the ordinary intelligibility
that we will be considering.

I’ll recite one of the opening sentences again.
We have considered the manifest and what we have called the unmanifest
as two quadrants each, formed two above: the manifest,
and two below: the unmanifest, formed together
with the continuous and discontinuous.
The continuous on the left and the discontinuous to the right.

We have considered what we have called presence.
We’ve talked about divine presence.
We’ve talked about greater presence.
We have considered consciousness as a type of knowing, a “knowing with”,
where the knower and what is known constellates or shines together.
Remember the loops in the domains of knowing.
The knowing by connection.

Intelligibility

We have considered what we have allowed Jerzy Wojciechowski
to define as intelligibility, and I provided one contrast with that
just a few minutes ago, which requires distinction and differentiation,
in other words, object-like separateness, the defining surfaces of form
or the composition of substances.
That definition of intelligibility is the product of a philosopher’s use of reason.
Reason uses metaphor, analogy, allegory – to show similarities and parallels,
resemblances and likenesses, but with the distinction and definition
of differentiation.

Progression

As soon as we see the universe as being an array of connections and dependencies,
we see relationships and interactions abounding.
We see coevolution as an interdependent progression. There is change.
There is a direction for change. Things evolve.
They evolve in this direction, and we call this direction progression.
We call this progression a co-evolutionary progression
or an interdependent progression.

Connected

Why is everything connected to everything? How is it connected?
What happens as a result of everything being connected?
Is all of everything connected to all of everything else?
Yes, by means of networks, with sequences, sequences
we often perceive in space and in time.
But we can transcend those spatial and temporal sequences.
That subject will be developed in a moment.

Morality, Self Realization and Enlightenment

What follows from the one discovery
of having all of everything connected to all of everything else is morality,
self realization and enlightenment.

We do unto others as we would have them do unto us,
because we are connected, we co-evolve, we interdependently progress.
Space and time combines with substance or mass, in a sequence, to manifest,
to provide the discontinuous nature of ordinary matter
and the object-like world of the discontinuous and manifest.

The Mind: Function & Reality

From these commencing considerations, we can begin to understand the mind
and the mind’s function, the mind’s reality.
We can consider the mind from the viewpoint of a mobile centre,
which can follow its connections to and through the universe,
beyond the dependence upon the few dimensions of ordinary matter,
of space and time.

The mind can follow the connections using dimensions that transcend space
into the unobstructed orthic counterpart we’ve called conductivity
and the dream relations of resonant connections.
These connections show in the transformations of the dream world.
Conductivity and the counterpart of space.
Conductivity considered as orthic space.

The mind can follow the connections, using dimensions
that transcend space into the unobstructed orthic counterpart of space:
conductivity, and the dream relations of resonant connections.
These connections show in the transformations of the dream world.
The mind can follow the connections using dimensions
that transcend time into the unobstructed orthic counterpart of time: receptivity.

Space and Time

What is the difference between space and time?
What is the difference between conductivity and receptivity?
It can be understood by dreaming. It can be understood by relativity.
There is no absolute motion. There is only relative motion.
There is only relative mobility.
There is the mobility of the knower and the mobility of that which is known.
Conductivity is the quality or property of mobility of the knower.
It is the conductivity of orthic space to the motion of the knower.
Receptivity is the quality or property of mobility of that which is known.

It is the receptivity of the knower
which is the path of connection through transcendent dimensions.

Receptivity is the letting go of the knower which is the path of connection
through transcendent dimensions.
Receptivity is the letting go of the bound, the constrained, the defined self
and allowing the edgeless connection of the unique centre of self
to that which is known.
The scale of mobility determines whether the mind connects
through the transcendent dimensions of orthic space: conductivity,
or the elimination of the sequencing of space,
whether the mind connects through the transcendent dimensions of orthic time:
receptivity, the elimination of the sequencing of time.
The cohesive and defined self knows by means of conductivity.
The open and edgeless self knows by means of receptivity.

Dreams

Dreams are not of one kind. Dreams are not of only one reality.
In the six or seven dream sequences we have each night, we may find
that we progress from one of these kinds of dream to another kind,
from one level of dreaming to another level of dreaming,
from one dream reality to another dream reality.
And each case can be identified by the levels of mobility of the mind.
In each case, the dream form will be different.
On the one hand, we talk about the first dream of the night being slow wave sleep.
We talk about it being the calibration period
where the metabolism of the body is calibrated to the experiences of the day,
to the environment it has encountered.
But of course it only looks at what is happening to the body.
It does not look at what is happening to the mind.

We might say that at that point, the mind has its greatest level of discontinuity
with the body.
Its greatest level of dissociation would be the best word.

Progressively, the nearer we get to the wakening of the body,
the more nearly we move towards familiar experience.

The more nearly we move towards the kind of experience we have
in ordinary everyday physical reality.
Dreams may be staged at a number of levels of manifestation,
continuity and reality.
The nagual, in the terms of Don Juan, gains the relative mobility,
the relative motion, the orthic motion which is the counterpart of frequency
to connect or to follow the connections of perception
by means of the cognitive processes of the mobile centre of self,
the receptive mind or conductive state of the mobile self.

In our meditations we have learned to leap.
We have learned to release our accountability
to the obstructed reality of ordinary matter, but we have not yet learned
to transform the residue of the highly defined self
into a more mobile and conscious, integrated counterpart.

Our challenge today, from today, is to integrate, to make whole,
to redeem the physical consciousness, to expose the physical consciousness
to the fertile realms of a greater scheme.
Almost the way you expose the seed to the soil.
You want to expose the physical consciousness to the fertile realms
of a greater scheme.
And it’s going to grow, it’s going to germinate.
That is what we commence today.

It requires a change in our meditation.
Right here, I am asking you to sit rather than lie.
I am asking for a quieting of the mind, a calming of the mind,
but with a letting go, with a release, with an openness.
Abandon the game of defined self.
Abandon the constraints. Lets just take on the mechanisms of Zen meditation.
We have normally closed our eyes, but what we should do is to fix our eyes,
with our chins down on some downward gaze,
and not allow anything to break that gaze, to fill our mind with one thing.
We want to still our bodies, we want a calm, quiet, still mood.

Abandon the rules which define what you are and who you are.
Allow the connections to be made.
Get in touch with the context of being, the greater scheme,
the one in whom we live, the one in whom we move,
the one in whom we have our being.
It involves an awareness, an alertness, a transformation.
Now let’s think for a moment in this meditative state
upon the way we normally leap, because we are not leaping today.
We are maintaining this awareness, this alertness.

Think about what takes your attention, what is taking your attention.
What you are giving your attention to.
What makes you move. What makes it possible for you to be still?
Think about the turn of your eyes, the turn of your attention, what you think about.
Get in touch.
Now, normally, what is happening is we are using our closed eyes,
in order to diminish what has access to our attention
and if there is difficulty in being able to control what we give our attention to,
we are better off with our eyes closed,
until we can learn to fix our gaze and not have our attention taken.

In a way, we are better off if we are having difficulty
in controlling what we give our attention to from within the mind
because we have so subscribed to our senses that anything our senses find,
we give our attention to.
We are better off to allow that dimming and numbing to occur with closed eyes.
That may be what it takes for now, closed eyes.
It may be what it takes for us to be here, in silence.

It may be what it takes, for now, for us to get control
of what we give our attention to.
To not have this uncontrolled and pell-mel accountability to our senses
and this posture of consciousness which says ‘what am I experiencing?’
But instead, to gain that kind of calm and control that says
‘what am I creating every moment?’
Regardless of what converges upon us.

The strategy for changing our experience is to hold our attention
in the mode of asking the question ‘what am I creating now?’
‘What am I creating by means of what I give my attention to?’
This is the meditative mode.
You are like a package being unwrapped.
Your personality is like the wrapping.
Your defined identity is like the box.
The box is defined identity. It disguises your shape.
There is packing. It must be removed too.
So in the silence of these following minutes, let go of the wrapping,
let go of the defining container of identity, release the packing,
perhaps there are protective coatings.
Remove them too.
Peel away until the centre is clear, open, revealed, connected.
It starts like being in the dark.
We are in the darkness of an obstructed world.
We are in the darkness of a shadow, a shade.
We are in the darkness created by obstructions we have created,
we are in the centre of the package.

It is like being in the dark, in the centre.
With the mind, you unravel the bows of the persona, the personality.
We want to remove the wrapping. We want to open the box.
As we do so, it gets brighter in the centre. It gets lighter.
The light penetrates, it gets through. Keep going, until it is clear.

Use your breath to carry the energy and pattern of the mind.
With every sigh of out-breath, reach.

With every in-breath take the energy captured
in the constraints of an overclad self and disentangle it.
As you breathe in, probe, loosen, gather, your ever mingled and manifest layers.
Strip away the disguise. Take away the camouflage.
Reveal the core of your unique nature.

Now, breathe, alert, awake, aware, letting go, loosening the packaging
with every breath.

Our attention is so skilfully fastened, to that all held, so able to be controlled
because we have withdrawn this subscription of our attention to our senses,
because we have cancelled this game, these rules, these constraints,
these bounds of a scheme called ‘what am I experiencing?’
We have allowed this control to be gained.
We have said that every moment ‘what am I creating?’
Our experience may tell us what we have created.
But when we posture our consciousness, when we live hour by hour,
when we go through the mobile Zazen of mobile life,
every moment requires this mindfulness.
What am I creating? It is the way out.
The way out of the package requires that we hold the mind in this posture
‘what am I creating?’

When we say ‘what am I experiencing’, we are believing that someone else
and something else is determining what we are experiencing solely.
We are abdicating responsibility. We are maintaining this illusion of separateness.

We are not understanding that all of everything is connected,
and that experience is just a carry forward from those connections
and much of what we can experience is the residue of our neglect.
It is a result of the abdications we have made.
It is the result of a kind of irresponsibility.
We can enter into a dreaming state with this control.
We can move from one dreaming state to another as we improve our control.
Some measure of our success at being awake and alert can be found
in the sense of timelessness, your ability to sense the sequence
for the period of time that we’ve taken in silence.
In the same way some sense of our success can be found in the spacelessness,
the loss of awareness of where we are, and marked probably
by a dream-like quality.

But it can be marked by a feeling of well-being, a sense that what we are
is a centre of consciousness; that its uniqueness and its intelligibility
has to do with our openness and connection,
allowing convergence of the emanations and being-level patterns upon us,
and this relativity of the consciousness where there can be no determination
about whether we are in motion or that which we touch is in motion.

[ meditation session transcription ]

copyright 2011, 2013, ECOhealth / Eve Revere