Excerpts - How We Got Here

[I'm not quite sure which workshop this story was in, but it was told many times. As a teenager, I talked many times with my peers about how we came to be here. Dr. Bob told us several little stories on the subject which I always enjoyed--and--which gave some meaning to the question.]

There is an ancient story told that a man, a great man, decided to put on a party one day. Of course he decided several weeks ahead. He sent out invitations to people to come a certain day, and he put on a mighty feast. He killed the oxen and had a bar-b-que that wouldn't quit. So when all the bar-b-que was about done with all the potato salad and coleslaw; he sent his slaves out to tell the guests to come to the party. Dinner was ready.

Without exception, it said that all of his peers turned him down. One said "I just bought a new John Deere and I got to go try it out." Another one said he just got married and he had to take his new wife down to Miami on a honeymoon. Another one said that his father just died so they had to have a funeral and he couldn't fiddle around going to parties. This went on and on with the excuses. So when the runners came back and reported to the man who was putting on the party what had happened [in their endeavor], he got very "ticked off". He got all upset. He said, "I won't invite any of them."

"I will send you out the hedgerows, and the alleys and the lanes and on skid row; and you get all those bums and "off" people and crippled people and etc, and bring 'em in because my house will be full."

I think that's us. So here we are and we had no reason to even have been invited to the party in the first place. But we got to the party; and then of course, we didn't believe it; so we felt somebody had shanghaied us and pulled us in here and we've been griping about it ever since--cause it's not different.

(Different than what?)

Than it is.

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And here's another rendition of how we got here from the Tampa Workshop November 13, 1985

Dr. Bob begins:

I'll tell you a bedtime story that was told to me many years ago. We'll let the story answer it.

It said that eons upon eons ago before there was any time, the Infinite Spirit was sitting in infinite space feeling ecstatic. He sat there for…….there was no way to measure time because there was no time--there wasn't anything else because time is interchanged with distance. There was no distance because there nothing to put two points on.

But it says he sat there with endless ecstatic condition for, what we would say, billions of years because we know about time and we have to think in time, but there was no time then so it was either an instant or forever, doesn't make any difference.

Now one day in It's meditation and It's ecstatic state, It said to Itself; so I'm ecstatic. So I'm the whole of everything--so big deal. I don't have anybody to talk to. I have nothing to play with.

So like most kids It wanted to play with balls. So it made an endless number of balls and threw them out there. Now there is time, because there was distance between two balls. And so It played with the balls spinning to and fro over another billion years. One day It said, so I am the ruler of these balls and I made them all and I can dissolve them if I want to. I got 'em all balanced and spinning--big deal. I don't have anybody to talk to.

So after cogitating on this for a few centuries, It decided that the way to have it was to divide itself into many and forget that it had done so. So this Infinite Being divided itself in order to multiply. You see you divide in order to multiply--so It pulled a little trick of arithmetic and divided Itself into many and agreed to forget it.

So now there is many and now He could talk to Himself without feeling "nutty" by talking to himself. He had a million ways to do it, but you had to forget that you did this.

Now if at one time, all these infinite pieces running around here, that It divided Itself into, should remember at the same time that we agreed to forget it, it's all over. So keep on forgetting it.

That was the whole subject of the story the one or many. It's both. So the One divided itself into many and then chose to forget that it had done so. Now there's many isn't there? But there really is only One. But don't let everybody remember that at one time, or it's all over with. It will be back to that Infinite Being in infinite space for billions of years feeling ecstatic and so what? Ok. I like this game better even though we have to forget. I like all the feeling of many.

It's better than being an Infinite Being in infinite space with nothing else to do or see. It might be more fun this way with all the agonies and everything else.