Seat Of The Soul

by Gary Zukav

  These changes did not come easily to Gregory. His transition from an angry, manipulative, disdainful person to a more caring and considerate person was a journey through pain that required much courage. Yet, by committing himself to that journey, he changed his life. From the point of view of Gregory’s consciousness, the uniform flow of Gregory’s life was altered significantly by his determination to confront his pain, and was altered further by his determination to cultivate his new perceptions. The “force” that altered the “uniform motion” of Gregory’s life was his decision to enter into his life consciously. Without this decision, Gregory’s life would have continued, as did Hank’s, on the unconscious course that his karma, and his responses to the situations that it generated, would have created for him.

  Is it appropriate to interpret the first law of motion which depicts the idealized movement of a physical object -in this way? Is the first law of motion, when it is interpreted in this way, merely a metaphor that conveniently serves to describe a nonphysical dynamic? It is more than that. It is the reflection in physical reality-in the world of physical objects and phenomena-of a larger nonphysical dynamic at work in nonphysical domains. This is the physics of the soul. When science and its discoveries are understood with the higher order of logic and understanding of the multisensory human, they reveal the same richness that Life, itself, displays everywhere and endlessly.

  The perception of the multisensory personality is not segmented. The multisensory human, for example, sees that the paradigms which form the history of science also reveal a history of the way that our species has seen itself in relation to the Universe: Ptolemaic astronomy reflects a species that sees itself as the center of the Universe; Copernican astronomy reflects a more sophisticated and interdependent perspective of a species that recognizes itself as part of the motion of the Universe; Newtonian physics reflects a species that is confident in its ability to grasp the dynamics of the physical world through the intellect; relativity reflects a species that understands the limiting relationship between the absolute and personalized perceptions of it; and quantum physics reflects a species that is becoming aware of the relationship of its consciousness to the physical world.

  In other words, from the point of view of the multisensory human, the discoveries of science illuminate both inner and outer experiences, physical and nonphysical dynamics. A foundational discovery of optics, for example, is that white and black are not colors, like blue, green and red. White is a combination of all the colors of the visible spectrum of light, and black is the absence of that spec with purity, insight, and Divine inspiration. As we shall see, this type of Light is not merely poetical. It is real.

  A soul can find it difficult to walk the way of Light through the course of an incarnation. It can find that learning to live in Light is a difficult sojourn. Through the choices that it makes while it is incarnate upon the Earth -the choice of anger instead of forgiveness, for example, or condemnation instead of understanding-a soul accumulates negative karma. As it leaves its body, it remains enveloped with the quality of Light that it acquired through the choices that it made while it was upon the Earth. When that soul has to create another personality, it will have to create a personality that is drawn from this well. Therefore, it will create a personality of more limitations.

  A personality with limitations of consciousness will find what we call evil more attractive than will one with a more expanded awareness. The temptation to walk that way will be strong for such a personality. All souls are tempted, but an individual with limitations of consciousness will find it more attractive to walk into the magnetic field of fear because it would not recognize fear for what it is. It would accept it as something else, as something that is normal to Life.

  How we understand evil, therefore, is very significant. Evil needs to be understood for what it is: the dynamic of the absence of Light. It is not something that one should prepare to battle, to run from or to outlaw. Understanding evil as the absence of Light automatically requires that we reach for this thing called Light.

  Conscious Light is equal to Divinity, to Divine Intelligence. Where there is an absence of Divine Intelligence, that darkness itself maneuvers. It is simply that there is darkness, and we stumble in the darkness. The existence in darkness is not permanent. Every soul will eventually be fully enlightened. A soul with no Light will always come to know Light because there is so much assistance provided to each soul at all times. There is much Light, as we shall see, that is continually surrounding such a soul even though it may not be able to directly penetrate it, and there is much assistance for souls that insist upon living in darkness. The encouragement to take even one thought into Light is always available. Eventually, they always do.

  Understanding that evil is the absence of Light does not mean that it is inappropriate to respond to evil.

  What is the appropriate response to evil?

  The remedy for an absence is a presence. Evil is an absence and, therefore, it cannot be healed with an absence. By hating evil, or one who is engaged in evil, you contribute to the absence of Light and not to its presence. Hatred of evil does not diminish evil, it increases it.

  The absence of Light causes the personality to suffer. There is pain. When you hate, you bring that suffering upon yourself. Hatred of evil affects the one who hates. It makes him or her a hateful person, a person who also has absented himself or herself from Light.

  Understanding evil as the absence of Light does not require you to become passive, or to disregard evil actions or evil behavior. If you see a child being abused, or a people being oppressed, for example, it is appropriate that you do what you can to protect the child, or to aid the people, but if there is not compassion in your heart also for those who abuse and oppress-for those who have no compassion-do you not become like them? Compassion is being moved to and by acts of the heart, to and by the energy of love. If you strike without compassion against the darkness, you yourself enter the darkness.

  Understanding that evil is the absence of Light challenges the perception of power as external. Can an absence be defeated? An evil person can be arrested, but can evil be arrested? An evil group can be imprisoned, but can evil be imprisoned? A compassionate heart is more effective against evil than an army. An army can engage another army, but it cannot engage evil. A compassionate heart can engage evil directly-it can bring Light where there was no Light.

  Understanding evil as the absence of Light requires you to examine the choices that you make each moment in terms of whether they move you toward Light or away from it. It allows you to look with compassion upon those who engage in evil activities, even as you challenge their activities, and thus protects you from the creation of negative karma. It permits you to see that the place to begin the task of eliminating evil is within yourself. This is the appropriate response to evil.

  The higher order of logic and understanding that characterizes the multisensory human permits it to learn more quickly than the fivesensory human is able to learn from what its senses alone tell it, and what its intellect makes of that. We have evolved as far as the intellect will take us. We have explored the scope and depth of fivesensory reality, and we have discovered the limitations of external power.

  The next phase of our evolution will take us into the experiences of the multisensory human and the nature of authentic power.

  This requires the heart.

  CHAPTER 5: INTUITION

  The central perception of the multisensory human is that he or she is not alone. The multisensory human does not need to rely solely upon his or her own perceptions and interpretations of events for guidance, because he or she is in conscious communication with other, more advanced intelligences. This does not mean that the multisensory human is relieved thereby from choosing, in each instant, the course of his or her life, but it does mean that the multisensory human has conscious access to compassionate and impersonal help in the analysis of his or her possible choices, their probable consequences
, and in the exploration of the different parts of himself or herself.

  The fivesensory human is not alone either, but the five sensory human is not aware of the assistance that is continually being given to him or her, and, therefore, cannot draw upon that assistance consciously. The fivesensory human must learn primarily through his or her physical experiences, and this learning takes longer because lessons that are learned in this way must come through the density of physical matter. A person that needs to learn the lesson of trust, for example, will experience a distrust of others. This distrust will create misunderstandings, and these will lead to tensions and unpleasant experiences. A fivesensory human will continue to experience the unpleasantness that result from his or her distrust of others until, in this lifetime or another, he or she realizes through interactions with others the source of these unpleasantnesses and takes steps to change it.

  If a person is not able to trust, for example, he or she will interpret erroneously the words and actions of others. If a wife tells her husband that she must attend a business meeting, although she would like to be with him, and if her husband is unable to trust, he may take her meaning as a rejection, or as a signal that her work is more important to her than he is. This misunderstanding results from his inability to accept what his wife has told him, from his inability to trust her. As the wife continually experiences her husband’s misunderstandings, they generate within her feelings of surprise, sorrow, frustration, anger, resentment, and, eventually, the rejection that her husband mistakenly perceived. Thus the husband, through the dynamic of distrust, creates his most significant fear.

  The loss of a mate, or a friend, or a colleague through distrust is not a punishment for distrustfulness. It is the result of refusing to look consciously within oneself at the issue of trust. It is an experience that results from choosing repeatedly to distrust instead of to trust. A distrustful person will create unpleasant or painful situations until, at last, they bring him or her to the issue of trust. This may take five painful experiences, or five lifetimes of painful experiences, or fifty, but, eventually, this path will lead to and through the great lesson of trust.

  The same dynamic applies to every personality characteristic that is not an expression of compassion and harmony. An angry personality, for example, will create unpleasant, or even tragic situations, until its anger is faced and removed as a block to its compassion and love, to the energy of its soul. The same is true for greedy personalities, selfish personalities, manipulating personalities, and so forth. This is the way that we have evolved until now.

  A multisensory human can learn more rapidly than a fivesensory human. With the help that is available to it, the multisensory personality can understand more quickly the meaning of its experiences, how they come into being, what they represent, and its role in creating them. It does not need to experience twelve or twenty or two hundred painful experiences to learn a major lesson of trust, or responsibility, or humbleness. This does not necessarily mean that multisensory personalities do not experience painful situations, but that they have the capability of learning more quickly from them than fivesensory personalities, and, therefore, are more quickly able to choose more wisely, and with more compassion.

  It is not necessary to be capable of voice-to-voice communication, so to speak, to be able to draw upon the sources of guidance and assistance that surround you. This way is available to the advanced multisensory human, but the road to that ability is a joyful one of developing an awareness that wise and compassionate guidance is always available to you, and learning to incorporate it consciously into your life.

  How does this happen?

  The fivesensory personality accepts every impulse and insight as his or her own, as originating within his or her psyche. The multisensory personality knows that this is not always the case. Impulses, hunches, sudden insights and subtle insights have assisted us on our evolutionary path since the origin of our species. That we have not recognized the guidance that has come to us in this way is a consequence of seeing reality through only five senses. From the fivesensory point of view, there is no other place from which insights and hunches can come.

  From the multisensory point of view, insights, intuitions, hunches and inspirations are messages from the soul, or from advanced intelligences that assist the soul on its evolutionary journey. The multisensory personality, therefore, honors intuition in a way that the fivesensory personality does not. To the fivesensory personality, intuitions are curiosities. To the multisensory personality they are promptings from, and links to, a perspective of greater comprehension and compassion than its own.

  To the fivesensory personality, intuitive insights, or hunches, occur unpredictably, and cannot be counted upon. To the multisensory personality, intuitive insights are registrations within its consciousness of a loving guidance that is continually assisting and supporting its growth. Therefore, the multisensory personality strives to increase its awareness of this guidance.

  The first step to this is becoming aware of what you are feeling. Following your feelings will lead you to their source. Only through emotions can you encounter the force field of your own soul. That is the human passage in a word.

  The husband who was not able to trust, for example, may have felt anger, or shame, or resentment, or coldness toward his wife when she told him of her business appointment. If he had been able to experience his feelings consciously, to detach from them, to observe them as energy currents running through his system, he would have been able to ask himself, “Why does the news of this business meeting affect me in this way?” This would have allowed him to discover that his feelings were reflecting a sense of rejection, or of being less important to his wife than her meeting.

  If he then had reviewed his wife’s message, he would have seen that she had told him that she would have preferred to be with him, but could not. This would have allowed him to ask, “Then why do I still feel so disturbed?” and this would have led him to the answer, “Because I do not trust that she actually would prefer to be with me.” In this way, becoming aware of his feelings, rather than unconsciously acting them out, would have led him to his issue of trust.

  Having unearthed so much, he then could have asked himself, “Does my experience with my wife support this suspicion that she is not being honest with me?” If the answer to this question had been, “No, my experience is that she is a person of integrity,” the husband could have come to see that the dynamic in motion within him did not relate to his wife, although her words triggered it. It would have allowed him to see the actual intention of his wife, and his feelings toward her would have softened. Her response to him would have been one of closeness toward a loving husband, instead of hurt caused by the rejection of her intimacy by a hostile husband.

  Had he followed this course, he would not have had to ruin his afternoon, or his marriage. He would have been able to learn from his emotions, and his questions about them, the same lesson that he eventually would learn through the unpleasant experiences that resulted from his lack of trust. He would have been able to see within the framework of one instance the effects of distrust, and the effects of trust.

  Each question that a person asks, such as, “Why does news of this business meeting affect me this way?”, “Why do I feel so disturbed?”, and “Does my experience support my suspicion?”, invokes guidance. Every time you ask for guidance, you receive it. Every time you ask yourself, “What is my motivation?”, you ask the Universe, “Help me to see,” and help comes. You may not always be capable of hearing the answers to your questions when you ask them, and the answers may not always come in the ways that you expect, but they always come. Sometimes an answer occurs in the form of a feeling-ayes feeling or a no feeling-sometimes in the form of a memory, or a thought:. that, at the time, seems random, sometimes in a dream and sometimes in the form of a realization that is prompted by an experience that will occur the next day.

  No question is unheard, and no question goes unansw
ered. “Ask and you shall receive” is the rule, but you must learn how to ask and how to receive. The intellect is meant to expand perceptions, to help you grow in perceptual strength and complexity, and not to do harm. The experiences of the intellect are experiences of knowledge. Knowledge is power, and for each level of knowledge, you are held responsible for how you use it. Knowledge that simply comes into your being and does not in some way or form become processed and used to the benefit of others can have a seriously detrimental effect upon your body. Karmic obligations that are created by deliberate misuse of knowledge, by knowingly harming or creating discord in another, are greater than those that are created in ignorance.

  In a world that understands power as external, the intellect often functions without the compassionate influence of the heart. This creates situations in which intellectual power is used as a weapon to harm others, to exert willpower without tenderness. When the intellect is used to design or develop or produce weapons, for example, it is not being used as it was intended. When an industry, or a plant, is designed or built or operated without convivial. It prompts you to pursue that which has no apparent reason in order to survive. Hunches about danger, for example, about what is risky and what is not, about which street is safe to walk and which is not, or about checking the car under the hood, help you to remain in the physical world.

  Intuition serves creativity. It tells you what book to buy for your project. It tells you where to meet the colleague that you need to meet, and which ideas from one field will complement which ideas from another. It is the hunch that a certain painting should be done in gray, and that another should be done in purple. It is the sense that an idea that has never been tried before might work.