Transcript of the audio presentation, Reality, compiled, written and read by Richard Matheson, in which he offers basic observations

on the metaphysical realities of life. 1999 Richard Matheson. All rights reserved. Reality Richard Matheson

Reality My name is Richard Matheson. I have been a professional writer for fifty years. I have had published twenty-five books, nineteen novels and six short story collections. I have also written or co-written the scripts for nineteen theatrical films, thirteen television movies, and many television series programs among which are fourteen Twilight Zone scripts. I am telling you this to identify myself so that, hopefully, my writing background will give credence to what I have to say. Most importantly I have been a student of metaphysics for almost sixty years and have read hundreds of books on the subject. This is my primary credential. I will begin this presentation with a venerable clichnamely: unaccustomed as I am to public speaking... Nothing could be closer to the truth. I am not a skilled public speaker. I am not even a passable public speaker. I can answer simple questions; thats about it. On those rare occasions when Ive been called upon to speak at a convention, Ive delivered my speech by reading, word for word, what Ive written beforehand. This presentation will be delivered in the same fashion: by reading aloud what I have already prepared for myself. Which brings up the questionif Im so bad at giving speeches, why am I giving one? The reason is this I feel a needvirtually a compulsion to give this speech, I would say lecture but that sounds pompous. Im not about to lecture you. I intend only to impart what I believeand what many others believeabout what we call Reality. This is the title of my presentation then. Reality. Almost all the words Ill speak were spoken or written by the many others I just mentioned. I once had the palm of my right hand appraised by an East Indian hand reader. He inked my palm in the way a fingerprint specialist would do it, then pressed my palm on a sheet of white paper and examined the print. He told me that he saw, on my palm, the outline of a bumblebee. What I did, he said, was travelmetaphorically speakingfrom flower to flower, removing a bit of knowledge from each source, taking the entirety of what I gathered and combining It Into something homogenized, something new. I believe he was right. This speech is a combination of all the views, opinions and revelations I have placed in two books, one published, one not published. The published book is titled The Path; the unpublished one A Primer Of Reality. Almost every word in The Path came from the inspiration of a man named Harold W. Percival, which he revealed in his monumental book Thinking and Destiny. The statements taken from A Primer of Reality come from innumerable sources; I will credit them all. And I will have included in this CD a bibliography of the books in which I found these quotations. Hopefully, many of the books are still in print.

What I have doneat least, what I have attempted to dois structure these myriad elements into a progression of ideas which presents a coherent picture of reality. A picture which I hope is logical, understandable and convincing. In no way do I claim that any of the ideas presented are original with me. They're not. They are ideas that have been presented and discussed for many centuries. I am merely presenting them to you in specifically designed steps in order to make these ideas as comprehensible as I can. So, to begin. Reality. Reality Reality is not confusing. Complex, yes. There are a lot of details. But confusing? Difficult to understand? No. None of the men and women I will quote believe its confusing either. The quotations are simple and direct. Furthermore, none of them contradict each other. (Very important, that.) Herewith, then, what some very wise, very responsibleand, often very inspired human beings have observed about Reality. The famous author Arthur Koestler wrote the following: Modern, quantum physics has discarded all our classical, common sense notions of time, space and matter. Thus both physics and parapsychology point to aspects or levels or reality beyond the reach of contemporary science. Author Stuart Holroyd observed that: One of Jung's profoundest convictions was that the physical and psychological sciences had been arbitrarily differentiated and must eventually converge. All right. What are we in reality? Brains and bodies and nothing more? No. More. Much more. Duke University's noted parapsychology investigator J.B. Rhine stated that: There is more to the mind of man than physical law can encompass. Parapsychologist Dr. Charles Tart said that: There are aspects of the human mind that simply cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations. Renowned psychic, parapsychologist and author-editor Eileen J. Garrett wrote as follows: Mind, in the universal sense, I know to be without and not within the human body. Philosophy professor-lecturer Dr. Benito F. Reyes wrote: Let us look at man other than as a packet of atoms and molecules, a quantifiable amount of energy, a bundle of nerves and adapting mechanism, a structure of bones and muscles. Let us stop looking at him as merely a body. And Harold W. Percival expressed it in this way: You should know that you are not your body. You should know that your body is not you. The body you are in is not you any more than your body is the clothes that your body wears. Take your body out of the clothes it wears and the clothes fall down. They cannot move without the body. Similarly, when the you in your body leaves your body,

your body falls down and sleeps or is dead. Your body cannot do anything of itself without the conscious you. Your body is a physical organism. A living nature mechanism that you are operating. All right. Evidence of Mind-Matter Connection What evidence is there to justify the existence of this mind-matter co-existence? How does our eternal selfhood (as author Dr. Gina Cerminara calls it) make itself evident? I quote psychiatrist Laurence J. Bendit, author Georges Lakhovsky, metaphysician George W. Meek, yoga Parahamansa Yogananda and world-renowned psychic healer Edgar Cayce, as follows: The living body is a dual structure, part material in the sense that it consists of solids, liquids and gasses, part vital consisting of an interweaving of streams of energy. Every living being emits radiation. All living matter is enveloped in electrodynamic fields. Those fields are invisible and intangible. Until the development of modern vacuum tube voltmeters, it was not even possible to prove their existence. Our physical form is made of molecules. Molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of electrons. And electrons are made of life forcecountless billions of specks of energy. Only through delusion do you see the body as solid flesh. In reality, it is not matter but energy. English, German and American scientists have reported that they have personally witnessed color motion picture films that show the human aura in great detail, reflecting changing thoughts and emotions. Every atom, every molecule, every group of atoms and molecules, however simple or complex, tells the story of itselfits pattern, its purposethrough the vibrations which emanate from it. And quoting Harold W. Percival again: Just as there is an atmosphere of the earth in which, you might say, the earth breathes and lives, maintains its form and has its beingso, too, is there an atmosphere into which, as an infant, man is born and maintains his being. If one could see this physical atmosphere of man (and woman), it would appear as innumerable particles in a room, made visible by a ray of sunlight. These would be seen to be circling or whirling about the body, all kept in movement by his breath. They would be seen to reach out, circle about and return into the body, following it wherever it goes and affecting the particles of other physical atmospheres with which it comes into contact. What is the basic truth behind this phenomenon? Well, for one thing, that there are realities beyond our day-to-day awareness. Realities which, nonetheless, exist. Eminent psychic researcher Dr. Louis K. Anspacher expressed it this way: In a world where apparently dead, inert, impenetrable matter has been volatilized into force points and vortices of swirling ions, protons, neutrons and electrons, revolving at a speed of 186,000 miles per secondthe speed of light in such a world where the very essence of matter has become immaterial, where instantaneous gravitation operates in an unexplained way, where a fourth dimension is already accepted as another environment, our very sense of continuity must make us ready to conceive other invisible dimensions, environments and coexistences. Famed British scientist Sir James Jeans put it this way: Today there is a wide measure of agreement that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Max Planck, the distinguished quantum physicist wrote: Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because in the first analysis, we ourselves are a part of nature and therefore part of the mystery we are trying to solve. Or, as author Rudolf Steiner expressed it:

We are citizens of three worlds. In body, we both belong to and perceive the outer world. In soul, we build up our own inner world. And in spirit, a third world, that is higher than both of the others, reveals itself to us. Honored British cosmologist, Dr. Fred Hoyle, analyzed this mounting scientific awareness by concluding that: When science begins the study of non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the centuries of its experience. Dr. Benito F. Reyes, expressing the situation more bluntly, stated that: In rejecting the soul, humanity, science has committed treason against humanity. Nowto personalize things again: Each one of us experiences a very real psychic event each night. Its called sleep.

Sleep For approximately a third of our lives, we experience this event. Without ever being aware of its true significance. An aspect of reality extending far beyond what we believe it to be. Dr. Louis S. Anspacher: The best scientific opinion today maintains that sleep, in its essential state, is nearer to the rooted reality of all life. That it is the primal phase of all organic existence. Dr. Benito F. Reyes: It is more empirically justifiable to regard sleep from the standpoint of consciousness, and hence to define it, not as a loss of consciousness by the body but rather as simply an altered state of consciousness resulting from the temporary withdrawal of that consciousness (or personality) from the body. Harold W. Percival: In order that nature may be allowed to recondition your body without the interference of your thoughts and emotions, it is provided that you periodically let go of it. Nature in your body provides that the bondwhich holds you and the sensesis, at times, relaxed partially or completely. This relaxationor letting go of the sensesis sleep. Respected parapsychologist Hereward Carrington: Sleep is that physiological condition of the organism in which the nervous system of the individual (in precisely the same manner as the electric storage battery) is being recharged frequently from without by the external allpervading cosmic energy in which we are bathed and in which we live and move and have our being. Probing a little deeper into the phenomenon of sleep, theosophy author-lecturer Geoffrey Hodson had this to say: Sleep has aptly and truly been called the twin brother of death. We may go further and call them the same thing; for while the physical body sleeps, we are awake in the body which we shall use after death. Or, as Harold W. Percival expressed it: Sleep and death are very much alike. When you slip away to let your body rest, you go through an experience very similar to that which you go through when you leave the body at death. Or, as expressed, more colorfully, by author J. Bigelow: The difference between sleep and death is nothing more than thisthat, in one case, our carriage is left standing at the door to take us back againwhile in the other, having reached home, we have no further use for our carriage and it is dismissed. If he wrote that today, the vehicle would be a limo. But the point would be the same. We move now into a deeper area.

Other than in sleep, is there evidence regarding the experience of death available to us prior to death? There is. Do we literally have to die to find out whether afterlife truly exists? We dont. There is evidence available prior to the death experience Simple, unconfusing evidence. Consistent evidence Convincing evidence. It is called the N.D.E.

Near-Death Experience The near-death experience. A most meaningful part of reality. The rationale for using the out-of-body experience as a life-after-death handle is this: If the human consciousness can be shown to leave the physical body during this experience, is it not possible that the body is not essential to consciousness? If it is found that consciousness can and does exist independently and apart from the human body, it would follow that the end of the bodythat is, physical deathwould not spell the end of consciousness. Sociologist, Dr. Laile E. Bartlett If you project our findings into the national population, about twenty-three million people have had a verge-ofdeath or temporary death experience and, of that number, about eight million have experienced some sort of mystical encounter along with the death event. George Gallup, Jr. The Gallup Poll 1982 Stages of the Near-Death Experience: 1. Peace and a sense of well-being 2. Body separation: leaving the body behind 3. Entering a darkness 4. Seeing a light 5. Entering the light 6. A life review 7. A decision to return to life Psychology Professor Dr. Kenneth Ring Despite the wide variation in the circumstances surrounding close calls with death and in the types of persons undergoing them, it remains true that there is a striking similarity among the accounts of the experiences themselves. Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D. The Swiss Psychologist Carl G. Jung described his experience as the greatest event of his life until thenhis late sixtiesand it marked a major turning point in his work. Karlis Osis, Ph.D., and Erlendur Haraldsson, Ph.D. Harvard-educated philosopher, Philip L. Berman, makes the following observations about the near-death experience: 1. There is little question among those who have undergone MDEs, that a nearly indescribable something floats up and away from our bodies at the moment of death. 2. I have not met, heard or read about a single person who has had a near death experience who has not come away from his or her experience convinced that God, or some form of ultimate transcendent reality, exists. And,

3. If there is one thing that near death experiencers are adamant about, it is this: Death is not an end. Dr. Kenneth Ring writes as follows: I believebut not just on the basis of my own or others data regarding near-death experiencesthat we continue to have a conscious existence after our physical death, and that the core experience does represent its beginning, a glimpse of things to come. I am, in fact, convincedboth from my own personal experiences and from my studies as a psychologistthat it is possible to become conscious of other realities, and that the coming close to death represents one avenue to a higher frequency domain, or reality, which will be fully accessible to us following what we call death. Rocket Scientist, Dr. Werner von Braun, writes: Everything science has taught meand continues to teach mestrengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace. Or, as Dr. Gina Cerminara expresses it: The body is not primary, either in time or in causation The mind has existed before this body came into being, and it will continue to exist after this body dies. Which leads us to the death experience itself. The bible refers to it as the last enemy to be destroyed. Can anyone deny that? Death is inescapable. The single mystery which man has always attempted to solveyet never really has. Or has the mystery been solved? I believe it has. I am not alone in this belief. The sheer volume of evidence for survival after death is so immense, that to ignore it is like standing at the foot of Mt. Everest and insisting that you cannot see the mountain. Prominent author Colin Wilson Nearly every ancient culture promoted the belief that death is not the absolute and irrevocable end of human existence. That consciousness, or life, in some form or another continues on after the demise of our physical bodies. Award winning author-lecturer Phillip L. Berman In the course of our research, we quite often encountered reports of a sudden rise in the patients mood shortly before death. They light up, it was frequently reported. Some inexplicable peace and serenity comes over them, others said. Karlis Osis, Ph.D., and Erlendur Haraldsson, Ph.D. Eminent author-illustrator, James Scudday Perkins describes the death process as follows: Death is the final withdrawal of consciousness from its outermost form, the physical body. Tissues continue, as usual, to decompose, but they are no longer being repaired and replaced. Organic material begins to disintegrate into chemical elements. Molecules set off upon individual courses; Atoms fly apart. And there, in one direction, go the multitudes of particles and miscellaneous items that compose the body. While in another direction has disappeared the mysterious integrative power that united the whole and governs the bodys empirethe unit of consciousness that, altogether with its higher principles, constitute the immortal soul. In other words, those of Harold W. Percival: Dying is the withdrawl of the astral body from the physical body. Or, as psychiatrist Dr. Stanley R. Dean puts it: Thought fields survive death and are analogous to soul and spirit.

Acclaimed author, Stewart Edward White: Death is much simpler than birth. It is merely a continuation. Dr. Laurence J. Bendit: Death is nothing new, but an event we have met before. Something as often repeated over the ages as going to sleep at night. The immortal poet, Longfellow, wrote: There is not death. What seems so is transition. And Geoffrey Hodson: It is only the body which dies and not the true self of man; the real individuality behind the bodily veil. The celebrated scientist-psychic-author Emmanuel Swedenborg wrote: Man, when he dies, only passes from one world into another. And poet John Oxenhans expressed it this way: Thou are not death? The end? In accents winning came the answer. Friend, there is no death! I am the beginning, not the end.

Afterlife And so we move into the more tenuous reality of afterlife. Tenuous only because it is a reality difficult to validate by customary means. Its validation comes from two different sources: 1. Those numerous men and women empowered by a psychic ability to communicate with the so-called other side. And, 2. Those rare men and women who, becoming conscious of consciousness as its called (like Harold W. Percival, for instance) know the realities of afterlife by means of inspiration. This, too, is Reality. James Scudday Perkins expresses it as follows: It is a modern superstition that nothing can be known about our after-death states of being. There has always existed a definite body of knowledge about the super-physical regions that are entered at the time of death. Such information has been accumulating for ages from many sources. Studies of comparative ancient and modern sciences and religions have yielded rich stories of knowledge that have been further confirmed by direct observation through the use of powers that are latent in all men, and are awakenedin somepowers such as extrasensory perception, and even subtler kinds of direct knowing. Dr. John Christopher-Daniels put it this way: The earth personality, who goes through that experience of death, continues as himself or herself, continues as a personality on the other side, and there is very little change at first. There is no change effected by the death experience itself, except that the personality has no body to work with or live in. Metaphysical author Ann Ree Colton: Death is not magic, making persons instantly good and pure. The emotions and the mentality are the same after death as they were in the physical world. Psychic Grace Cooke: Life in the spirit world is as real as your earth life, only infinitely more beautiful.

Rudolph Steiner: Souls who belonged together during physical life meet again in the spiritual world and continue their lives together under the circumstances of that world. Harold W. Percival: There is nothing tame, colorless, or inane about heaven. The pulse of life and enjoyment runs higher than it does on earth. And author-philosopher Dr. Filippo Liverziani: The spiritual dimension of the other side appears to be a world constituted solely by thought. Thought creates it directly without any instrumental mediation. It is also thought that knows it, experiences it directly and without any mediation of bodily senses. The last quotation leads to a question: What is the purpose of afterlife? What is its ultimate reality? Is it a final resting place? The last stop in existence? Not at all. The conditions in which a person finds himself after death depend largely upon his temperament, and upon the nature of the life he has led on the physical plane. Geoffrey Hodson. Or, as Cardinal Newman put it succinctly: Where we go hereafter depends on what we go after here. Moving into more detail. One day, when you return to the invisible world, you will find yourself confronted by the film of your earthly life. You will see the smallest details and notice the tiniest errors. And you will have to reform yourself. - author Peter Deunov. After death, the soul reviews the earth life. It reviews the lessons learned. It sees where it achieved and where it did not achieve. And in the light of that understanding it goes on to further learning. -Dr. John Christopher Daniels. Eileen J. Garrett has this to say about the reality of afterlife: The state of death is no more than a breathing spell, in which the soul which has passed out of this life, may take time to extract the essence of that experience before it enters into another phase of being. Or, as Ann Ree Colton puts it: Death is a life between existences. Consider this. Does life after death make any sense unless it is coupled with multiple existences? One life? One afterlife? Period? How pitifully inefficient. What would be the point? What would be gained? What would be learned? Nature, however, if anything, is truly efficient. Nothing is lost. It is a working system. And a working system impliesindeed requiresrepeatability as well as the potential for improvement. Fortunately for us, this is exactly what reality offers us. Thought fields are eternal.

Reincarnation

Hence, past existence is as valid a concept as future immortality. - Dr. Stanley R. Dean Death and re-birth are two phases of a single cycle, re-birth being the other half of death. A person dies to be reborn. - James Scudday Perkins Life on earth is only one phase of a recurring evolutionary cycle which we all undergo, experiencing and learning in our physical bodies on earth, then leaving the physical plane to assimilate the essence of what we have learned, rebuild our bodies, rest and return to earth to repeat the cycle. Author Max Heindel Of those adults we polled, 23 percent, or nearly one quarter, said they believe in reincarnation. George Gallup, Jr. Dr. Gina Cerminara writes: Reincarnation means that there is an immortal essence or soul which comes back to earth many times for the sake of experience. Much as a student returns many hundreds of times to the same school building. She adds: Many great Western intellects have thoroughly accepted the idea of reincarnation: Plato. Pythagoras. Virgil. Qvid. Schelling. Leibnitz. Schopenhauer. Lessing. Flamarion. Emerson, Walt Whitman. Carlyle. Edison. Luther Burbank and Henry FordTo mention a few. Reincarnation is not a theory, novelist-playwright Noel Langley wrote. It is a practical code of ethics directly affecting human morality. Detailed by George W. Meek as follows: In its simplest form, reincarnation is a belief that: 1. Each person has a soul. 2. The soul survives death of the physical body. 3. The soul then spends time in other realms of existence. 4. Next the soul is re-born into a new physical body for the purpose of further mental and spiritual growth. Or, as Benjamin Franklin put it: Finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall in some shape or other always exist. And, with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine, hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected. The ancient and noble concept of reincarnation, of the spiraling growth of the soul, level by radiant level, toward some far-off perf'ect day-that-is-to-be, has a beauty of design, a grandeur of proportion, that appeals to the highest intuition and reason of man. That, beautifully expressed, was written by James Scudday Perkins. All right. How does reincarnation work? What are the details of its operation? Its functional reality? Dr. Gina Cerminara wrote: The unconscious includes the record or the buried memory of every experience the entity has ever been through, in all its existences. Put another way: The birth of the body represents a budget of debit and credit accounts created by thoughts. Harold W. Percival

When a soul enters a new body, a door is opened, leading to an opportunity for building the soul's destiny, everything that has been previously builtboth good and badis contained in that opportunity. There is always a way of redemption but there is no way to dodge responsibilities which the soul has itself undertaken. Edgar Cayce Or, as Harold W. Percival expressed it: The thoughts of one life which have not been adjusted are carried over to the next life. Or Noel Langley: As your soul dies at the end or a life, "to be continued in our next issue" is parenthetically added in small print to that installment. When you appear again in a new body, you don't start from scratch. You pick up exactly where you left off. The entity Seth, speaking through the acclaimed mediumship of Jane Roberts had the following statements to make: 1. The most important idea to be remembered is that no one trusts the experience of any given lifetime upon you. It is formed faithfully according to your own emotions and beliefs. 2. When you arrive, or emerge, into physical life, not only is your mind not a blank slate, waiting for the scrolls that experience will write upon it, but you are already equipped with a memory bank far surpassing that of any computer. 3. You face your first day upon the planet with skills and abilities already built in, though they may or may mot be used. And they are not merely the result of heredity as you think of it. 4. The responsibility for life and your environment is your own. Harold W. Percival had these statements to make (take note of the fact that, although he refers only to man, the references are equally applicable to woman): 1. Consciously or unconsciously, Man determines that part of his destiny, which he will suffer or enjoy, work out or postpone. All receive the destiny they have made for themselves. 2. This self, this you, which is conscious throughout your present life, is the same self, the same you, that was conscious of continuing day after day through each of your former lives. 3. You are always the same you. In your body or out of it. Awake or asleep, day after day. Through life and through death and all states after death. From life to life through all your lives. 4. The chief events in your life are usually predestined because they reflect things from the past that must be dealt with. They are either things wished for or submitted toor things unwished for that can no longer be avoided. Or from Oregin De Principius: Every soul comes into this world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous life. Its place in this world is determined by its previous merits or debits. Its work in this world determines its place in the world which is to follow this. Or, as Schopenhauer expressed it: The will is my real self. The body is the expression of the will. As to details: The time for the beginning of a certain body must be selected so as to allow the cycles of its own life to intersect cycles in the lives of others with whom it is to be connected.Harold W. Percival A soul is magnetically drawn, so to speak, to parents who can give it the bodily heredity and the environment it reeds for the fulfillment of its new life task. Physical heredity exists but it subservient to psychic heredity. Dr. Gina Cerminara Each inner self, adopting a new body, imposes upon it and upon its entire genetic makeup, memory of the past physical forms in which it has been involved. The present characteristics usually overshadow the past ones. They are dominant, but the other characteristics are latent and present, built into the pattern. The physical pattern or

the present body, therefore, is a genetic memory of the self's past physical forms, and of their strengths and weaknesses. Seth through Jane Roberts Features and forms of the body are records of the thoughts which made them. Each line is a letter, each feature a word. Each organ is a sentence, each part a chapter. All of these make up the story of the past fashioned by thinking. Harold W. Percival The purpose of reincarnation, then, is one of simple reality. 1. To learn. 2. To enjoy self-earned rewards. 3. To honor self-acquired debts. 4. To progress, through Karma.

Karma Karma has been variously described as the law of compensation. The law of balance. The law of ethical causation. The law of action and reaction. Harold W. Percival Karma is the unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical, mental and spiritual planes of being... intelligently and equitably, each effect to its cause. Renowned metaphysician-author H.P. Blavatsky Or, to state it as simply as possible, the Book of Galatians in The Bible: Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. Dr. Laurence J. Bendit describes Karma in this way: Karma is no punitive or rewarding moralistic law. It is, in modern scientific terms, a constant balancing up of the forces between ourselves and the world in which we exist. Nor is it a fixed process comparable to bookkeeping, with entries of debit and credit on opposite pages. It is a dynamic, cybernetic or self-adjusting system in which there is a constant feedback, due to the manner in which we accept or refuse experience from moment to moment. Or again, stated simply by noted author and metaphysical explorer, Richard Sutphen: Everything you think, say, and do, creates or erases Karma. Harold W. Percival expressed it with equal simplicity when he wrote: Any destiny for man is not arranged for him by some arbitrary, extraneous power but is offered to him, made easy or forced upon him by his own past thoughts. In other words, Percival concludes: The individual is solely responsible for whatever happens to him. Or to her. My own addition. A few brief comments regarding Karma: Through memory, the soul preserves yesterday. Through action, it prepares tomorrow. Rudolph Steiner The purpose of Karma is to teach... to give the individual soul the opportunity to learn lessons, to gain wisdom, to grow in spiritual stature. Grace Cooke All that happens to the human for good or ill is of his or her own thinking and doing for which he or she must be responsible. Harold W. Percival We ourselves and our present circumstances are the result of what we have done and thought in the past. E.H. Shattock

Each soul is its own judge and its own jury and passes sentence only on itself. Noel Langley Positive and negative conduct in earlier lives actively affect behavior patterns in the present. Edgar Cayce And commenting on the apparent contradictions in Karma, Harold W. Percival explains as follows: Law and justice do prevail in human affairs. But effect does not always immediately follow cause. Sowing is not immediately followed by harvesting. The results of an act or a thought may not appear until after a long, intervening period. The mystery of the world is created by the separation of cause and effect. Although what Percival wrote is absolutely true, Karma should not be thought of only in terms of lifetimes, centuries or endless time. The reality of Karma should be regarded as a day-by-day opportunity. Only a fool would want to be reincarnated because the opportunity for re-birth exists each day. Phillip L. Berman The only thing that matters is the present, because if we can leave behind our regrets over the past, or fears for the future, we can awaken more easily to the beauty of what is in front of us each moment. author Lynn PielageKissel With regard to Karma, immediate understanding means immediate resolution of a situation. Hence the importance, not of past or future, but of the actual present moment, as the dynamic point in life. Dr. Laurence J. Bendit In my daily life, I carry out activities which help or hinder my mental and spiritual growth and that of others. These actions by me are labeled causes. The results of these actions are called effects. George W. Meek Once he understands that he has to work upon himself during his ordinary lifeand that not a day passes but that he makes some mark upon his own beinghe will then learn to control and master his mind and his emotions. Grace Cooke The creative forcecall it God, Mind, Spirithas one inviolable law with regard to Man. Man must sink or swim as a species, and succeed or fail as an individual purely by his own intellect. Help is available but must be asked for. Under no circumstances will the higher power take sides, intervene or impose its will on Man, collectively or individually. George W. Meek During every moment of our present Earth life, we are making ourselves in the next Earth life. Theosophical author Geoffrey Farthing And finally, a most important point to remember, made by Harold W. Percival: This is the crux of everything. Remember this. The earth... and the earth only... is the place for learning. You have now heardrepeatedly the words intellect. Mind. Thought. Awareness. Consciousness. Which brings us to the very foundation of reality. Thinking. Thinking Rudolph Steiner: Thinking is the highest of the faculties we human beings possess in the physical world. Author-Speaker Herbert B. Puryear, Ph.D: The mind is the builder and the way. Edgar Cayce: Thought is the builder.

Eileen J. Garrett: Thought is the fundamental process of creation and nothing that has once manifested in this world is ever lost. Dr. Stanley R. De : Thought is a form of energy; it has universal field properties which, like gravitational and magnetic fields, are amenable to scientific research. Psychology and mysticism investigator Paul Burnton: Sir James Jeans writes in The Mysterious Universe: All those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world have not any substance without the mind. This conclusion is reinforced by Sir Arthur Eddington, the eminent physicist who likewise pictures the universe as an idea in the mind of God. He even denies actuality apart from consciousness. Sir Oliver Lodge's work in physics, as well as his investigation into spiritualism, also points to mans mind as the reality in a world of vanishing matter. Seth through Jane Roberts: Scientists are finally learning what philosophers have known for centuriesthat mind can influence matter. They still have to discover the fact that mind creates and forms matter. Consciousness creates form. It is not the other way around. Edgar Cayce: The spirit is the life, mind is the builder and the physical is the result. Harold W. Percival: Every act and object and event is the exteriorization of a thought which, at some time, was conceived and gestated and born through the heart and brain of man. The entire physical world is made up of exteriorized parts of human thought. How does thinking function? How are thoughts produced? What, for that matter, is a thought? What is the reality of how we think and what our thinking creates? A thought is a being conceived by thinking with a purpose and a plan. It is like an invisible blueprint to be exteriorized as an act or an object. This process of exteriorized thoughts is man's physical destiny. Harold W. Percival A thought-form is exactly what its name suggests, a form created by concentrated thought, yet lacking the solidity of mundane matter. On all mental levels other than conscious mind, thoughts are things, and thus a thought-form, once it is created, is as real and tangible as the mind which created it. Noel Langley In the not far-distant future, people will become more consciously aware of the tremendous power which is contained in thought and of how it acts throughout the universe, incessantly charging and re-charging the current of our daily lives. Thought is an active force, forth from man's mind like a flash of lightning which strikes and affects other minds as it moves and travels through space. If we realized the inherent and compelling power of thought to direct and control, or create and destroy, we would think deeply and constructively before allowing ourselves to be drawn into much of our useless living. Eileen J. Garrett You must understand that each mental act is a reality for which you are responsible. That is what you are in this particular system of reality for. Seth through Jane Roberts We must not only try to understand the power of the mind but we must also assume responsibility for its effect. We must, with great diligence, utilize this ability to pattern and direct energy only for constructive purposes. With our minds, we have built what we are and what we are presently experiencing. This future includes not only our remaining days in this incarnation but also those levels of consciousness which we will experience when we are released from the earth plane. Herbert B. Puryear, Ph.D.

Each one of us is continuously making his after-death conditions by his (or her) daily thoughts, motives, feelings, words and deeds. Geoffrey Hodson By thoughts and their exteriorization, the destiny of men and nations is created. Events continue to come to a person until he or she learns the lessons required by the stage of his or her growth, gets a certain amount of knowledge and so balances the thoughts which caused those events. Harold W. Percival Or, as Ann Ree Colton expressed it: Man is not on the earth for aimlessness. He lives to create. Finally, in light of all these separate realities, what do they add up to?

Purpose What is the purpose of it all? The meaning of life? The basic reality? There is, in every human being, the germ of a unique and discrete selfhood. The purpose of evolution is to develop that selfhood and bring it to fruition. Dr. Laurence J. Bendit The fundamental purpose of Man's life is that he may find truthtruth which will be unveiled to him by his own inner-self. Grace Cooke Each human soul is on a journey of return to its source, which is God. This journey of perfection cannot be accomplished in one short life span on earth. Definite laws, rather than chance, operate to determine progressively the circumstances of every lifetimeor every stage of the journey. Dr. Gina Cerminara The purpose of each individual life (or soul) is to grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually back toward the level of creative intelligence from which it originally issued. George W. Meek We are, everyone of us, spiritual beings gone astray from God and on a journey of return. Each of us is a pilgrim on the spiritual path. Herbert B. Puryear The undying soul of man is evolving to perfection through the experiences of many lives on earth. Geoffrey Hodson Multiple lives give us one chance after another. Through continuity of life, the soul can at last attain the perfection needed. author Juliet Brooke Ballard The past, present and future are but aspects of one continuous process in the universe. In such an evolution, birth and death fall into place as necessary phases of an eternally chancing cycle which strives toward the perfection of man's soul. Eileen J. Garrett There is but one reality. It is all-inclusive, but in decrees. Its highest expression on earth is consciousness, the self-aware I-am of man. Consciousness, in degrees, is the one and only reality. Stewart Edward White The spiritual evolution or a soul in earth-living is not in the pattern of a spiral but rather in what we like to call a jigsaw puzzle path. The soul may put together several pieces of the puzzle in one corner and, in another lifetime, may be working on another corner of the puzzle. Gradually, all the pieces are put together. All the attainments of the soul in various patterns of earth living are brought together. And, at they are brought together, the whole picturethe whole puzzleis put together. Dr. John Christopher Daniels Or, as Edgar Cayce expressed it most simply:

All souls were created in the beginning and are finding their way back to whence they came. The essence then? The bottom line'? Simple. We were once perfect. We surrendered that perfection. We've been trying ever since to regain that perfection. This is reality. The rest? Details. Good luck on your journey home.

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