Exercises - Senses vs Understanding  #138

[I recently began listening to some past workshops of Dr. Bob’s which I received from Donna Lancaster.  Dr. Bob talks about us as using the “senses” to navigate through life which  usually results in reaction.  So what are the senses? I always thought of them as just sight, hearing, touch, taste and such, but he eludes to words and language.  Perhaps it’s much more.  He says that we can use “understanding” and that would be seeing the relationship of things, and that this is using the higher mind.  What a challenge.  But transcribing helps me to ponder from day to day and to observe and see if I can understand more of “what’s going on” in my life with relationship to these wonderful teaching ideas that have come my way.  And so here we go.]

(Audience participation in parenthesis)

We can see that the senses report something, but behind that something, there is a reality—a reality of relationships of a spiritual nature.

So first off, we look around and we sense lovely bodies all over the place.  So we say, that is the person.  Are you that body?

(Seemingly so.)

Ok, then seemingly if we go down to the mortician’s place this morning, he’s probably got a few bodies laying around there.  Is that the person, or does most everybody agree that that is only a trace—they call it the remains of the person. 

So would you say that you are an invisible being inhabiting that body? 

(I would, yes.)

So you are not the body, you are an invisible being that inhabits the body?  So Spirit is invisible.  So you have never seen a person.  You have only seen their house.  And you attempt to communicate to the person inside the house.

Now if I look at you and say I know you—I looked at you and saw this feature and that feature, or I don’t like you because you remind me of someone who hurt me long ago, and I never did like them, I’ve got you tagged, huh?  Now I can’t stand you anymore. 

So we never stop to know the person.  So we’re going to talk about the invisible man.  So everyone you see is invisible.  We have houses (bodies) that we live in and those are visible and we can sense those.  But the Spirit within the body does much to that.  So you’re inside the house and this is the one we’re going to talk about-- not the sensory body.  The invisible being in there can destroy that body awfully easy, or it can generate it, or it can renew it, or it can tear it down.  That invisible body in there is very very powerful if we but recognize it as power.

(What do I accept for my authority?  Is there a way of finding my authority within myself?—or what to believe?)

We hope you don’t need an authority, but if you do, you will have to get it by experimentation, sir.  Ok?  And you cannot experiment with the “sensory mind”—you will have to experiment with the “understanding mind”.  And with using the understanding mind, you can experiment with it, and I certainly would not want any one to accept anything Bob had to say about it.  But possibly it would open the door for you to run an experiment.

So we certainly do not consider ourselves an authority because if you have one authority then you have another one over here on the other side anyway.  So what difference would it make.  If you said, “Well, Bob said so and so.” And then you went over and talked to Chuck and then you’d say, “Well, Chuck said so and so.”  So what are you going to do now?   Now we have to go out and find somebody else with an opinion. 

So with that, our reality would only consist of agreement on “sensory” words, and it would be entirely worthless.  This is what most people have accepted as reality is “agreement”.  And somebody comes along and disagrees, and you feel like your falling through space, and you have nothing to hang on to.  Agreement is a very poor thing to build one’s house on.  The Christ said that was like unto a foolish man that built his house upon sand, and when the winds came--(somebody comes along with an opinion or disapproval or rejection)—that’s the wind—then the house gets torn down. and great and mighty was the fall thereof. 

Another man built his house on a rock and the winds came and rain fell and the house stood because it was built on a rock.  A rock signifies truth or fact—and in this you have to have a psychological fact, not sensory fact, ok?  Don’t accept what I say, only as a possible experiment.

(How can I distinguish when I’m experimenting with my sensory mind or my understanding mind?)

Is it a fair question for you, “What Am I Doing?” 

So first off we’re going to look at a few of the facts that have been mentioned about integration or the
Kingdom of Heaven.  We’ll  use a few statements we are quite familiar with. 

One of those statements is the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  Now, obviously if something is at hand, it’s not far away.  The word hand refers to the anatomical little gizmo like this.  And everything that is in reach of the hand in the “sensory” world could then be conceived as heaven—that could include a person, a thing or whatever was in the “physical” world.  So if we use it as a “sensory” situation, then everything we could touch would have to be heaven—right here at hand. 

Then “at hand” means it’s available from a psychological standpoint—it is not something that you can’t have—it is available.  And when is it at hand—it’s not available in the far off future—it’s here and now.  That’s a start on it.

Then, of course, we wanted to know where it was—and it’s within you and me.  Now if it’s within you, it’s not somewhere outside—then it must relate to the inner state of man.  Generally speaking, if you were hungry, you’d think the Kingdom of Heaven is in your tummy.  It’s been related in many places that it will make you comfortable—make you satisfied, be very pleasurable and all these good things. 

Many people have made the stomach more or less the sign of the Kingdom of Heaven because they’re very concerned  with what goes in it and what doesn’t go in it as though it was the very thing that got contaminated.  So it’s very easy to think that that’s all that’s within us because if you’re going to put some little something in it that’s going to tear it all up--oh that must be terrible.

So it’s within you is your psychology, your inner make up.  We have it, but we don’t use it.  We were talking in our first discussion that we use the “sensory” mind and we don’t use the study of the mind that does the “understanding” of what the senses use.  But it’s at hand--here—right now.  And you can begin to experiment with it—don’t take my word for it and begin to see everything in the world as a symbol.  And you can begin to get an understanding behind it.  Then you begin to understand parables.  And then you begin to get a whole lot of doors opened to you all of a sudden.  And then you have your own inner truth—you don’t need mine—you don’t need anybody else’s—you can find it for yourself.  But you must open that door.  It is at hand—right here—we just haven’t used it.  We’ve been using the sensory mind to approach everything with. 

In answer to your question, do we need information in running our business?  Certainly, but don’t you also need, in that business to use your understanding of relationships for more than just sensing?

 I could walk through your plant and sense every beautiful printing press you have in there.  And I could walk over and sense all those piles of paper and inks.  But you, sir, see the relationship and can turn out beautiful work.  So in our everyday affairs, we’re apt to use the psychological mind.   But when we go to spiritual affairs where it really matters, we desert it entirely and go back to the senses and take everything literal.

So use that same one that you see relationships in your business with just a little understanding—as a parable, you can see relationship that if you put this and this and this together and stir it up right and throw it in an oven and after a while with a little heat it turns out to be something altogether different.

Another thing that says the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a pearl of great price (like unto)—in other words there’s a story told about a pearl of great price.  A merchant sold all he had (all that he put value on ) in order that he could buy the pearl of great price that he had found somewhere around. 

So what have we put value on?  We want all the senses being gratified at all times, and not only do they want to be gratified, we want to be assured that they will be gratified tomorrow, and the next day and forever.  And then we want it not only assured, we want to be guaranteed that all these senses are never going to disturb  us—and that they’re always going to be more than gratified—an ever expanding amount.  We don’t have to walk on soil or carpet—it has to be gold. 

So always the “senses” have to have more gratification.  The pearl of great price is likened unto what man can conceive as the greatest value.  When his “senses” say what is the greatest value, he runs into riches, and he begins to imagine the thing.

But if he finds that within himself there is an awareness and a comprehension of this, he could dispose of his present set of values on having his  senses always satisfied.  Dr. Lynn says that he’s finally learned to eat for nutrition rather than to “tickle his senses” all the time.

It says also that the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a buried treasure—it is a treasure when we begin to use it.  We don’t have to have anybody tell us.  When you begin to use it, you’ll know it’s a treasure.  When you don’t use it, you can only experiment and see if you can dig it out.  It is within the man behind the clutter and the dirt and the filth of the sensory mind.  And all you got to do is scrape off a little of the mud and there’s the beautiful chest of gold—it’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.   But don’t try that one literally—I’ve tried that one and it didn’t work.  It is a buried treasure deep within man.  It is his “soul” if you please.  So it is to our advantage to find the use of it and not neglect it, otherwise we’re only living out here in the outer senses. 

It’s also like the lump of leaven.

There’s the story of a woman who buried a lump of leaven in three measures of meals. Pretty soon the whole three measures was leaven.  When you start out with it, it’s a little bitty lump, a parable  like a point of awareness which is beginning to see relationships of “what’s going on”—beginning to see this and that; and that all this “stuff” out here that we have made so important is only symbols.  There’s no reason to be concerned with it except that it gives us something to relate to like the cocoon stage of the butterfly.

So when this begins to be used, it leavens the whole three measures including the sensory portion of it.  It goes through the whole thing, but you start with it; and it goes through the whole three measures or the complete being of the man—the aspects of all of his mind—he cleans it all up. 

(How do I do that?)

Look at the little picture of man.   We’ve used it quite a long time.  But if you put the lump of leaven in there, it brings it all into one after a while.  It begins to be used as an understanding rather than the senses and it unifies or integrates or makes “one:” of all the fragmented portions of the mind—also the number 3 is used for individual completeness—so something is complete if it’s three.

(Would you go over that number 3?)

The number 3 is used quite frequently as saying all of something in symbolic language.  I do not know why they use 3 , but it’s the same idea of a triangle—that 3 is the only geometric figure that you can make an enclosure—the shortest number of lines to make an enclosure.   

Now you probably read this as a mustard seed, but somebody kind of crossed up there—doesn’t make any difference what it was except that it said the smallest of all seeds that can be put in the ground grows into a great tree that the birds can nest in the branches and the cows can sleep in the shade and so forth.  The word I got was it was a fig seed.  I never saw a mustard plant that a cow could sleep under.  I’ve seen plants they could eat.  A seed grows into something very large—again, as the understanding of what happens with a seed, we start with a tiny point of awareness and not using it for sensory purposes, but to understand—to see relationships, and to comprehend what’s going on from a psychological basis rather than to be concerned with whether it’s going to “make me comfortable” or “uncomfortable”.  So this extends very quickly like the seed does into a very large tree.  The seed starts to grow as soon as you put it in the ground which means as soon as you activate it—it’s the same with awareness--you begin to use it.  A seed is entirely dormant as long as you don’t put it in the soil, is that right?  And so the soil is a parable of comprehension.  So when we put it there and begin to use it, it will begin to grow.