The Akashic Records – III
Magic, for example, is a wholly different way of organizing basically the same thought form material as materialistic science. A master magician can fly, read thoughts, communicate over long distances, etc. A materialistic scientist can also do some of these things, but he needs a machine to do them. He needs the prop of a machine thought form to perform these dream tasks because in his conscious, accessible memory humans can only do these things with machines. But there are other possibilities of memory, other lines of memory which can be accessed, in which these feats can be performed as acts of intent, or magic, but still within the basic context of human memory. And there are other levels of memory which can be accessed (that of cellular and even molecular feeling) which are even weirder. But all these memories press upon, or shape, the present moment. The Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, were all reaching out along one particular line of memory; but they were influenced by other lines of memory (the racial memory that humans – albeit magicians – can fly, communicate at a distance, see in the dark, etc.). Which in turn is based upon memories of other possibilities of experience. The whole thing is a turning wheel, with wheels within wheels. And although it’s evolving, it’s not going anywhere in particular.
The collective memory of the human race forms and informs each new thought form created by any individual human; and each thought form gives a little tug to the direction that collective memory is heading in, just as each drop helps fill a bucket. Memory is an anchor that holds us back in a sense, but also stabilizes our experience – grooves it – by providing us with a feeling of familiarity. Without an underlying feeling of familiarity, everything would be truly bizarre. Familiarity is what ties everything together for us, gives us a sense of continuity, etc. Familiarity is to memory what importance is to mind – it stabilizes it. Without a feeling of familiarity everything would be like new every instant. Even a baby has a sense of familiarity to stabilize him, otherwise he’d be completely disoriented.
Master magicians, unlike average people, have no sense of familiarity. They find every minute totally disorienting. They just don’t freak out about it as an average person would since they’ve gotten used to it. They’ve learned to operate without a sense of self or center, in an environment that is totally unfamiliar. In other words, they have familiarized themselves with the unfamiliar. They use familiarity just like everyone else uses familiarity, to steady themselves, to provide a springboard to action. But they don’t cling to familiarity and go bananas when they find themselves in a thoroughly unfamiliar and disorienting situation.
The world is completely new, startlingly new and unrecognizable, every instant. To us it seems that this present moment is similar to a moment ago. But this is a falsehood: every moment is a whole new ballgame, with completely different rules. Familiarity is a gloss or lie we tell ourselves that what is happening at this moment bears any resemblance whatsoever to what was happening a moment ago. It makes us focus upon the features of reality which seem to persist – the thought forms. Thought forms have no persistence either: what they have is a little built-in tape recorder saying over and over “I persist! I persist! Look ma, I persist!” Listening to this tape recording occupies our total attention, so that we never look around and notice that nothing persists, that every passing moment is utterly baffling and ineffable. Familiarity is the basis of our sense of separatedness.
(continued …)