From The Archives: Whence wetness?
[First Posted 1/22/06]
"The activity of Ultimate Reality, the Supreme Power, resembles most closely the human experience which we call imagining. When God imagines, He creates. Nothing can exist outside the Divine Imagining . . . Reasoning is a useful creation of human imagining, but on the Divine level it is inconceivable and would be a defect. It is in any case 'about' reality: it can only attend to abstracted aspects and concepts. But the higher Imagining is essentially concrete."*
—Raynor C. Johnson, in Nurslings of Immortality 1
The first sentence of the above quote was also used in The Risen to introduce the main thread, the imaginal, or the sum of who we are—all our activity, individual and collective, including desire, intention and will—which originates and emanates from the I AM. Individually and collectively, we are the I AM.
I AM is the feeling of the realization of who we are, and this is, quite, quite literally, imagination. It is then easily observed— also, quite, quite literally— that to imagine is to live. To be aware of this feeling of life and of living is the beginning of realizing the fact of one's immortality. Quietly sitting with the feeling of I AM —nameless, wordless, timeless — and fearless — allows the ego mind and its many personality disguises to fall away, back into the nothingness from which they came. What remains?
"Pooh!" (or pshaw, or even tcha!) — "You're imagining things!" one may retort.
"Excellent! Exactly!" say we, and "By jove, you've got it!"
As much as I like to assume that the above should be sufficient for anyone to not only grasp but to resonate with fully and immediately, my Risen friends are quietly shaking their heads back and forth, which, in Risen parlance means, "slow down, pardner."
In order for that which is "higher" to be able to reside in that which is "lower," (higher and lower being conceptual states) the lower must be sufficiently prepared to receive it. This takes time—at least, time as experienced within the manifested material world. There is an experience of delay. Some view this process, within the mix of time and space, as "evolution"—which it is in a certain sense—but only within the greater context of the Design. Evolution is a certain type of stitch designed and used to help weave the Great Weaving of our particular universe, as designed by certain Designers.
You are being teased, now, and jarred slightly from the subject. This is not about Intelligent Design—not yet, perhaps—but rather about imagination. Few readers will have in their possession, as do I, the rare copies of R.C. Johnson's works, and even fewer, those of writer-philosopher E. Douglas Fawcett.2 The Risen have utilized both authors as reference sources that best come near an earthly elucidation of the grasp of their collective experience. This is because the Risen had been the inspiration for their work. There are others who received this kind of inspiration and wrote about it as well, to which I hope they will refer at some point. My Risen team members were able to achieve resonance with me through these works (by jove, he's got it!) and they feel that here, we could share some more of mainly Johnson's work to also catalyze beginning resonance. I also hope that Johnson and Fawcett might feel inspired to communicate with us here at some point.
To achieve this resonance is to stimulate a higher—that is, faster, finer, and more sensitive—vibration of focused light—this focus of light is an individual—in order to give way to an expansion that is a receptive quality that will allow more light to be received. This expansion is one's immortality. As one might already intuit here, this is not evolution, but recalibration, transmutation, metamorphosis—which fits much more neatly into a quantum mechanic idea of the nature of how it all works—although quantum mechanics is really what's being pieced into the picture by Divine Imagination.
At one moment, one is here. In the next moment—which is the same moment—one is also there. And now (literally, now) there contains here. When one is consciously aware of this sense of beingness, the result is expansion. New qualities arise—or novelty—and rather than being renewed, one is now anewed. Although there is no such word as the past tense of anew, we are making it here for our purposes. "Anew" itself has two definitions, which both mesh together perfectly to deliver the intent of the meaning of "anewed":
1. Once more; again.
2. In a new and different way, form, or manner.
Put them together and we have "anewed" or novelty.
Transmutation, or anewed, is what happens when one element within the lower field of earthly manifestation is brought into the presence of another such element or elements. Note that anewed is not equal to renewed.
Consider salt. Hmmm. Salty. Or is it really?
By combining two completely separate elements, an atom of sodium and an atom of chloride, (chlorine) the novelty molecule, sodium chloride (NaCl) manifests. Individually, each substance is toxic to the human body. Neither sodium nor choloride are "salty" when on their own. Neither are they salty when together. They still remain intact, to separated by various means. But when together, something new and miraculous occurs. Suddenly there is a new quality that did not exist before. There is now the quality, the experience of "saltiness." Further, the new substance is no longer toxic to the human body, but an actual source of nourishment.
What accounts for "saltiness"? Where does it come from? Is it there if nobody is also there to experience it? Science not only doesn't know this answer, it doesn't ask this kind of question. It's satisfied enough with the "discovery" of NaCl and how this is useful to them. Quantity, not quality.
Consider water— H2O. Neither hydrogen nor oxygen exhibit "wetness" when apart. When brought together, at once there is "wetness." Whence wetness?
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them."3 This verse is often used to indicate to contemporary Christians that when two or more believers get together, Jesus is somehow more present in that situation than he is when a Christian is alone.
Perhaps so. However, there are many layers in the Bible that are evident to those who "have eyes and ears," depending on their level of awareness of I AM.
At the metaphysical level, this verse reads something like this: "For when one experience of I AM is with at least one other experience of I AM, the two remain two and simultaneously share the additional, new, and expanded experience of the oneness of I AM."
So when two "lower" are brought together, something "higher" is able to "descend" and manifest something entirely unrelated but still connected to the two. Novelty!
It is as Alfred North Whitehead insisted:
"Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly."
Sodium and choloride have no saltiness; oxygen and hydrogen have no wetness. When brought together, unless YOU are there to do the tasting, there will never be saltiness or wetness. The imagination brings them together; not just the imagination heretofore thought of as an aspect of unreality, a person's "flight of fancy"-- but our imagination as the Creator Source, the I AM, and which is who we each and collectively are. We bring all things into manifestation. Just by being who we are.
Raynor's statement that the essence of Higher Imagining is "concrete" (at the beginning of this post) is intriguing. There are several definitions in the dictionary for "concrete," and two of them mesh together to render his meaning:
1. Existing in reality or in real experience; perceptible by the senses; real: concrete objects such as trees.
2. Formed by the coalescence of separate particles or parts into one mass; solid.
This may sound quite alien and even unreasonable to many people for the first or 99th time. Raynor suggests this is because reasoning doesn't work past a certain point. He refers to reasoning as a "defect" — were it even possible for reason to happen on the higher levels. Here, "defect" is meant as a deficiency — the lack of something necessary or desirable for completion or perfection. It's not enough.
There is no observable reason for sodium and chloride to make salt. Reason can only go so far. There is a sort of "rhyme" to this, if one understands rhyme as vibration (sound/light) placed next to another sound/light vibration, and the combined resonance gives something new to the experience and understanding. Another word for this is poetry, or music, or even painting. In essence "art." Life, then, on the level of worldly manifestation, is art.
_____________________
1 R. C. Johnson, Nurslings of Immortality. London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., 1957.
2 Fawcett, Douglas. The Zermatt Dialogues. London: Macmillan & Co., 1931.
Fawcett, Douglas. The Oberland Dialogues. London: Macmillan & Co., 1939.
3 Matthew, Chapter 18, verse 20. (italics mine)
* italics ours.
"The activity of Ultimate Reality, the Supreme Power, resembles most closely the human experience which we call imagining. When God imagines, He creates. Nothing can exist outside the Divine Imagining . . . Reasoning is a useful creation of human imagining, but on the Divine level it is inconceivable and would be a defect. It is in any case 'about' reality: it can only attend to abstracted aspects and concepts. But the higher Imagining is essentially concrete."*
—Raynor C. Johnson, in Nurslings of Immortality 1
The first sentence of the above quote was also used in The Risen to introduce the main thread, the imaginal, or the sum of who we are—all our activity, individual and collective, including desire, intention and will—which originates and emanates from the I AM. Individually and collectively, we are the I AM.
I AM is the feeling of the realization of who we are, and this is, quite, quite literally, imagination. It is then easily observed— also, quite, quite literally— that to imagine is to live. To be aware of this feeling of life and of living is the beginning of realizing the fact of one's immortality. Quietly sitting with the feeling of I AM —nameless, wordless, timeless — and fearless — allows the ego mind and its many personality disguises to fall away, back into the nothingness from which they came. What remains?
"Pooh!" (or pshaw, or even tcha!) — "You're imagining things!" one may retort.
"Excellent! Exactly!" say we, and "By jove, you've got it!"
As much as I like to assume that the above should be sufficient for anyone to not only grasp but to resonate with fully and immediately, my Risen friends are quietly shaking their heads back and forth, which, in Risen parlance means, "slow down, pardner."
In order for that which is "higher" to be able to reside in that which is "lower," (higher and lower being conceptual states) the lower must be sufficiently prepared to receive it. This takes time—at least, time as experienced within the manifested material world. There is an experience of delay. Some view this process, within the mix of time and space, as "evolution"—which it is in a certain sense—but only within the greater context of the Design. Evolution is a certain type of stitch designed and used to help weave the Great Weaving of our particular universe, as designed by certain Designers.
You are being teased, now, and jarred slightly from the subject. This is not about Intelligent Design—not yet, perhaps—but rather about imagination. Few readers will have in their possession, as do I, the rare copies of R.C. Johnson's works, and even fewer, those of writer-philosopher E. Douglas Fawcett.2 The Risen have utilized both authors as reference sources that best come near an earthly elucidation of the grasp of their collective experience. This is because the Risen had been the inspiration for their work. There are others who received this kind of inspiration and wrote about it as well, to which I hope they will refer at some point. My Risen team members were able to achieve resonance with me through these works (by jove, he's got it!) and they feel that here, we could share some more of mainly Johnson's work to also catalyze beginning resonance. I also hope that Johnson and Fawcett might feel inspired to communicate with us here at some point.
To achieve this resonance is to stimulate a higher—that is, faster, finer, and more sensitive—vibration of focused light—this focus of light is an individual—in order to give way to an expansion that is a receptive quality that will allow more light to be received. This expansion is one's immortality. As one might already intuit here, this is not evolution, but recalibration, transmutation, metamorphosis—which fits much more neatly into a quantum mechanic idea of the nature of how it all works—although quantum mechanics is really what's being pieced into the picture by Divine Imagination.
At one moment, one is here. In the next moment—which is the same moment—one is also there. And now (literally, now) there contains here. When one is consciously aware of this sense of beingness, the result is expansion. New qualities arise—or novelty—and rather than being renewed, one is now anewed. Although there is no such word as the past tense of anew, we are making it here for our purposes. "Anew" itself has two definitions, which both mesh together perfectly to deliver the intent of the meaning of "anewed":
1. Once more; again.
2. In a new and different way, form, or manner.
Put them together and we have "anewed" or novelty.
Transmutation, or anewed, is what happens when one element within the lower field of earthly manifestation is brought into the presence of another such element or elements. Note that anewed is not equal to renewed.
Consider salt. Hmmm. Salty. Or is it really?
By combining two completely separate elements, an atom of sodium and an atom of chloride, (chlorine) the novelty molecule, sodium chloride (NaCl) manifests. Individually, each substance is toxic to the human body. Neither sodium nor choloride are "salty" when on their own. Neither are they salty when together. They still remain intact, to separated by various means. But when together, something new and miraculous occurs. Suddenly there is a new quality that did not exist before. There is now the quality, the experience of "saltiness." Further, the new substance is no longer toxic to the human body, but an actual source of nourishment.
What accounts for "saltiness"? Where does it come from? Is it there if nobody is also there to experience it? Science not only doesn't know this answer, it doesn't ask this kind of question. It's satisfied enough with the "discovery" of NaCl and how this is useful to them. Quantity, not quality.
Consider water— H2O. Neither hydrogen nor oxygen exhibit "wetness" when apart. When brought together, at once there is "wetness." Whence wetness?
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them."3 This verse is often used to indicate to contemporary Christians that when two or more believers get together, Jesus is somehow more present in that situation than he is when a Christian is alone.
Perhaps so. However, there are many layers in the Bible that are evident to those who "have eyes and ears," depending on their level of awareness of I AM.
At the metaphysical level, this verse reads something like this: "For when one experience of I AM is with at least one other experience of I AM, the two remain two and simultaneously share the additional, new, and expanded experience of the oneness of I AM."
So when two "lower" are brought together, something "higher" is able to "descend" and manifest something entirely unrelated but still connected to the two. Novelty!
It is as Alfred North Whitehead insisted:
"Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly."
Sodium and choloride have no saltiness; oxygen and hydrogen have no wetness. When brought together, unless YOU are there to do the tasting, there will never be saltiness or wetness. The imagination brings them together; not just the imagination heretofore thought of as an aspect of unreality, a person's "flight of fancy"-- but our imagination as the Creator Source, the I AM, and which is who we each and collectively are. We bring all things into manifestation. Just by being who we are.
Raynor's statement that the essence of Higher Imagining is "concrete" (at the beginning of this post) is intriguing. There are several definitions in the dictionary for "concrete," and two of them mesh together to render his meaning:
1. Existing in reality or in real experience; perceptible by the senses; real: concrete objects such as trees.
2. Formed by the coalescence of separate particles or parts into one mass; solid.
This may sound quite alien and even unreasonable to many people for the first or 99th time. Raynor suggests this is because reasoning doesn't work past a certain point. He refers to reasoning as a "defect" — were it even possible for reason to happen on the higher levels. Here, "defect" is meant as a deficiency — the lack of something necessary or desirable for completion or perfection. It's not enough.
There is no observable reason for sodium and chloride to make salt. Reason can only go so far. There is a sort of "rhyme" to this, if one understands rhyme as vibration (sound/light) placed next to another sound/light vibration, and the combined resonance gives something new to the experience and understanding. Another word for this is poetry, or music, or even painting. In essence "art." Life, then, on the level of worldly manifestation, is art.
_____________________
1 R. C. Johnson, Nurslings of Immortality. London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., 1957.
2 Fawcett, Douglas. The Zermatt Dialogues. London: Macmillan & Co., 1931.
Fawcett, Douglas. The Oberland Dialogues. London: Macmillan & Co., 1939.
3 Matthew, Chapter 18, verse 20. (italics mine)
* italics ours.
posted by August Goforth @ 13:52
5 comments
5 Comments:
I fully concur with your analogies.
'Wetness' and 'Saltiness' require the engagement and assessment of the beholder, and there are many levels of 'beholding' beyond a chemical formula or material valency! I also feel that much of our reasoning and justification are based upon flawed premises - and that our ego tries desperately to wrap itself in the pseudo-security of distorted rationalizations in order to quickly fill the spaces and voids in our lives. rob
Dear August,
An excellent post about Divine
Imagining.What I particularly like
about Fawcett is his emphasis on the
need to relate to a very concrete
world,which is supported and maintained by Divine Imagining.There is no room for illusion.I extract information from this background,and
give it a personal meaning,but this
background is here whether I am here
or not.
It is unfortunate his original idea of us being centers of consciring,rather than consciousness never seemed to take off,and yet as a way of living I have found it very practical in the sense it helps position ego-mind and simulate-selves all within a single context which brings these
concepts up and help maintains them.
When I visualize myself as an agent of consciring I allow for myself a flexibility which the concept of being a consciousness does not give.
The only place I part company with
Edward is that I really see the
growth and development of an agent
of consciring as a cooperate adventure in which there is a reaching out and an embracing of the other.I am part of a group effort.I really don't feel comfortable with his "survival of the fittest" idea.
Thank for all your good work
Sydney
It is mentioned in The Risen: “Survival of the fittest” does not mean that certain beings have to destroy others in order to live, although that is how the ego-mind justifies its own beliefs. It means that all components of Nature are in a continual process of experiencing how all living things fit together. The Energy of Nature, which is also our energy, does not play any mind games in order to survive, for Nature simply is—and we simply are, too.
Thanks August for your reply.
It helps me put the Darwinian model
in a better perspective.
Sydney
This is a wonderful essay to help me sit in my I am ness. I love the thought that our imagination contributes to combining what seemingly ordinary elements into inconceivable phenomenon.
"Slow down, pardner" and the reminder that it takes time.....
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