“Altering Consciousness”

SAT., JUNE 10, 1995, 6:40 AM
FARM, STUDY

In general, I liked what you did yesterday with this concentrated class in relation to altering consciousness. The left and right brain idea makes it sound scientific, and there’s some value in that. However, as you might suspect, I’d like to have you do a reprise on that, with mind and spirit as your variables. If you’ll pay attention I’ll be glad to help.

The brain paradigm suggests that consciousness is, finally, a physiological phenomenon, with manifestations that can be polar… and balanced in quite different ways in different individuals. This is a secular explanation, of one of My acts of creation. In this paradigm the human mind just evolved, over many years of time, and, strangely, ended up with different “balances” in relation to the rational and the artistic/intuitive. But what do I say has happened.

The fundamental reality of human life is spirit. Each of you is a spirit… that has the unique opportunity of occupying a body, in time, for some number of years. That body has a brain, and that brain produces consciousness, which does have some variability, but is, essentially, the rational mind, the intellect. I also have told you that spirits vary in experience and in development. A baby, just born, looks quite “new”, but actually its tissues are composed of atoms that have been around in the earth in many other forms. Carbon atoms, parts of many human tissue molecules, could have been in the soil, in trees, in insects, in other humans, and now are part of a new structure. But this structure sheds its cells and continuously produces new ones, so these atoms travel on to become part of something else, physical.

Spirit is more like these atoms than like the whole human body, that develops, functions, ages, and dies. Except… that spirit can develop positively or can regress in its time of inhabiting a body. Thus, My explanation for the differences in right and left brain dominance is the balance between mind and spirit. There still is some variation in minds, so a person who is intuitive and artistic may not have a very well developed spirit, but this is rare.

Some university students are well balanced, with minds that can comprehend complex academic words and thoughts… can learn and apply these. But they also have well developed spirits that bring them to me in worship, prayer, and study, and turn them toward service for the benefit of others… toward vocations and professions that represent spiritual expression.

Teaching is such a profession. I guided you into it through your interests in athletics and in coaching. But then I led you to a school situation where you also had to teach in the classroom. Then I helped you move on to this university setting where you could most easily develop courses and teaching styles that utilized spirit and that could help develop spirit in learners.