Life As Fantasy

THURS., MAR. 15, 1990, 9:35 AM
FARM, STUDY

Let’s commence, you and I, with the obvious: life is real. It commences at conception, goes through a 9 month pregnancy (which is quite real to the woman who shall be the mother), and comes forth as a birth. The baby nurses, eats real food, urinates, and defecates and “spits up”… all real. Oh, I won’t go through the full life process, but as you read the morning paper and watch the evening news you are continuously reimpressed with how real life is.

You take care of real animals, split real wood, and you shall soon mow real grass. The wasp that stung you last evening was real. This paper and this pen are real. The sound from the dryer is real. So, it is not hard to make a case for the clear fact that life is real.

Yet the title I gave you says something else. It says that life is also a fantasy. Is spirit real or is it fantasy? You affirm that it is real, but other humans, more educated than you, would deny it as a reality. Am I, the Holy Spirit real? Most Christians would say, Yes. But is what you write as coming from Me really what I say? Fewer would be sure that this is real. Thus, that which is most real to you would be called fantasy by others, even Christians, who are more comfortable with Me silent and inactive.

You… and all humans… have a brain, which manifests itself in a mind. This mind functions along quite a continuum. I oversimplify when I speak of the mind and spirit as being competitive. Hear an “unsimplification.” You know of the concept concerning right brain and left brain. This is a handy but inaccurate description, for actually the mind works on a continuum of thoughts rather than out of two competing lobes. At one end of the continuum are thoughts that are rational, logical, scientific, “verifiable,” and systematic. At the other end is fantasy, which shades into spirit. And in between are many thoughts that have characteristics of both extremes.

With one “end” of the mind you can remember, accurately, what has happened in the past. Some “inaccuracies” result from poor memory, but others arise from fantasy… you remember what you would have preferred to happen. And the fantasy “end” of your mind can change the past to make it more exciting more threatening, or more pleasant.

In fantasy you can project ahead and create scenarios of what life will be like. In your mind these can be as real as the present or the remembered past. Hence, this “real life” you are living is flavored, sometimes excessively, with fantasy. When spirit is strong these fantasies are rarely harmful. When spirit is lacking, fantasies of strength, power, domination, and cruelty can be converted into destructive actions. For, you see, actions can spring from fantasies just as they can from reasonable, logical thoughts.

Your fantasy mind can create environments, people, and situations that have never been, in reality. Yet you can never be sure that some of such situations have not truly happened, or will happen. Is it reality or fantasy that life, meaning consciousness and spirit, was before your present body and mind and shall be after your “death”? If it is reality, then some of what seems to be fantasy may be remembrances of times “past” or projections into the “future.” (I use these “ ” marks because time and space are irrelevant in non-earthly realms.)

So just as, in terms of physics, this desk is a real piece of furniture, of wood and metal, it also is just a particular manifestation of energy, electrons, protons, and neutrons moving in certain patterns at certain speeds. You are a real person, who can be scientifically studied (well, sort of), but you have a mind that can create, with spirit, experiences of fantasy, which can be enjoyed along with “reality.”