draft notes (1989)

Theosophical Thoughts Of Douglas Peden

We are one.

We are each other unfolding. We are humanity unfolding. We are God unfolding.

We are because we are not.

We are because we are not God.

What I do, have done, and will do, you do, have done, and will do.

We are living all lives at once, and are everything that is, has been, and will be.

The sooner our realization that we are one, or the sooner our experience of oneness, the sooner will be our realization of God.

Past, Present, & Future

We are at once the past, the present, and the future.

The past and future determine the present and are made manifest to us within the limits of our abilities to perceive and understand.

The present is the unfolding of the reality of God.

To know all the past is to know the past and future of all things.

To know all the future is to know the future and past of all things.

To know all the past and all the future is to know God absolutely.

We can predict the future to the degree we can be that future.

We can know the past to the degree we can be that past.

Understanding

We are what we comprehend. We are what we comprehend of reality. We are what we comprehend of God.

We can understand anything only to the degree that we understand ourselves.

We can understand anything to the degree that we become that thing.

We can understand a person only to the degree that we become that person.

We can understand an event only to the degree that we become that event.

We can understand God only to the degree we become God.

Consciousness & Reality

Reality is our sense of God.

We are the consciousness and reality of God unfolding.

Consciousness is the awareness of other realities – of things and events and their relationship to each other and us – it is the awareness of God.

Expanding consciousness is the growing awareness of self and the relationship with things apart from self – it is the growing awareness of a greater being. The more our awareness expands into the past and future, the more we become aware of ourselves, reality and the awareness of God.

At the present, ours is a linear reality; that is, our perception of reality, our questioning and answering is moving forward by a sequence of events. This approach of perceiving and defining reality may be the first stage in the evolution of consciousness and understanding of self, purpose, and God. Absolute reality is necessarily multi-dimensional; indeed, dimensionally infinite, given the concept of a limitless reality such as God. However, the evolved state of our present perceptual and intellectual abilities limits us in realizing more than a primitive awareness of higher dimensions.

We have reached a state of evolution where we can change – change at will through our established logic and our imagination. We can create fantasies which may be unacceptable today but “fact” tomorrow. As long as we can imagine another reality, there will always be another reality. Indeed, anything imagined is already real to the degree we imagine it; that is, to the degree we can perceive and participate in it with all our senses.

We are individual realities only to the degree that we occupy different parts of the total reality; however, these parts overlap. When we expand our parameters of being, realities overlap, mix, and meld, and we eventually share more experiences and responsibilities.

We gain an expanding realization of each other and all things through a developing empathy, understanding, and love; in this, we are becoming one entity, and that entity is God.

The world we perceive is a function of our ability to perceive and correlate our perceptions for an understanding of our relationship with that world.

Our reality is based on events which most readily fit our experience. Events which do not readily fit our experience may not be perceived at all. The reality of life is the continual interaction of many lives, realities. I am made manifest by the flowing and interaction of different life patterns. Each moment in a person’s life is a new life, a new reality. Continuity is given to that life or personality because of a similarity of consecutive events that describe it. I am recognized, moment to moment, by myself and others by the manifestation of similar structural and behavioral consistencies. If consecutive moments in my life become too disparate – that is, bordering on my or other’s capabilities of relating, connecting, understanding one moment from the previous moment, my reality becomes confused and in serious doubt with the danger of my or the observer’s sanity becoming questionable. If my psychic, behavioral, physical patterns totally fragment – that is, one moment does not relate to the next in any understandable way, then I would be unrecognizable as a being whose consistent personality had been previously established.

We can not perceive others more clearly or differently than we perceive ourselves. If a person is a stranger, it is because we do not recognize that part of ourselves which is that person – and so it is with all reality. It is conceivable for an alien to visit us who is so totally foreign, outside our limited experience, both physically and psychologically, that we would have no sense of its presence. In other words, a sequence of events that does not fit our experience may not be observed even though we may have the physical and intellectual capacities to perceive them. We touch existence but do not fully understand it. We continually sense and discover other realities in and around us, and we are continually creating such, and in doing so, we expand our own sense of reality. Reality is sensed only partially to the degree of our understanding; but, partiality is a link to understand more fully, given the desire. And, in the need to seek and find, we are continually developing other means to seek and sense the depth and meaning of existence.