I would like to direct your attention to the difference between the configurational world and the phenomenal world. You will remember that I closed the class last Sunday with the statement that this is a non-metaphysical teaching. The prefix, "meta-" means behind, other than, under, what is called physical. With this lesson I am going to endeavor to lay the foundation for the keener understanding of why this is a non-metaphysical teaching. Then we will go on to describe the configurational process.

Space as it appears objectively is illusory. When we fully understand that there is no such thing as objective space, we have a foundation and basis for turning the consciousness ‘within’. Then we will understand the utter futility of turning the consciousness ‘out’. Do not allow your mind to dispute that. Just hold it in abeyance. Let us take that as a general practice, as a general rule. With any point that is developed in this work (or any other work), it is advisable, if you cannot accept it, to put it on a mental shelf. Don’t reject it, don’t accept it, because doing so sets up a psychological blockage. The idea might be true and later you might want to expand your consciousness into it. Then you would have to counteract the psychological blockage that you set up by refuting it. Whenever you encounter a thought, an idea, a doctrine, a proposition that you do not understand, put it on a mental shelf with the general observation that, "Well, if it is true, someday I’ll find it out; and if it isn’t true it will fall by its own weight and disappear, so why get hot and bothered about it." Just sort of have a philosophical attitude about it. Put it on a shelf if you cannot accept it, if it doesn’t ring a bell immediately.

But now let’s go back to our point. This work is based upon a non-metaphysical premise. There is nothing behind, under, other than this world, this world, therefore it is non-metaphysical. Mentally watch your step here. When I said "this world" I didn’t mean the phenomenal aspect as it appears to your sense perception. I meant this world as it is — in reality. When we understand this world as it is in reality we will understand that there is nothing metaphysical, because that is an illusion, like trying to lift yourself off the floor by pulling on the hair of your head, or trying to get out of your skin into some other world that has no existence except some illusion in the mind. When that is understood, we have the basis to proceed with the consideration of all the other processes in this marvelous, dumbfoundingly beautiful world. This world, as it is in reality.

There are those who have tried to get out of this world into some other world and have disconnected themselves from this world and never found that other world. They have become neurotic, neither here nor there, and have lost their balance, equanimity, poise and dignity, and worse, they have lost their worth to themselves or anyone else. It is all that sort of thing that I want to counteract, then we will bring in the true meaning, purpose, and significance to this thing that we call life. Why is it that we do not see and understand this configurational world right here all around us, in which we have our existence, and in which our being functions? Why do we see nothing but the phenomenal aspect, the appearance, through our sense registry? And why is it that the phenomenal world obscures and prevents clear perception of the configurational world? The answer to these questions is the thesis of this lesson.

Years ago, before Albert Einstein brought out his general theory of relativity, before the radio-active substances became known, and before electronic gadgets became everyday affairs, we had to labor to put over this simple point. This, this, any this to which you can point, is a configuration of units of energy, a dynamic process. This world is a dynamic process. In the pre-Einsteinian age I have stood on platforms many times from Boston to San Francisco and from Detroit to New Orleans laboring to get over that simple little point. I simply say "Learn all you can about how the mathematical physicists will describe this, any this. There are many popular works on it. You don’t have to be a mathematician to understand it. You don’t have to learn a mathematical language. You just have to read the popular works on modern field physics and familiarize yourself with them. Learn how modern physicists would describe any given ‘this’. You will arrive at this point: This that we call a body, or any ‘this’, if we could see it as it is in reality, would appear to be like a Fourth of July pinwheel. If we could see any ‘this’ as it is in reality it would look like a great ensemble of Fourth of July pinwheels —sparkling, continuously. That’s the way you are; that’s the way I am — particularly when I get lit up with this subject! Then the sparks are just whirly-gigging. Now the point: Why don’t we see it that way? We only see this appearance, the phenomenon. The answer is not very difficult to give. It is due to the limitation of the neural structure of our sense perceptive faculties.

Here is an example of what I mean. If we would revolve a large cog wheel with individual cogs of the wheel two to three inches across and two to three inches deep between the respective cogs of the wheel and place our hand on it, we would register the separate sense impressions of each cog up to 1550 impressions per minute. We call it he afferent-efferent circuit. Afferent: the impression telegraphed to the neurons of the brain. Efferent: the reaction back to the point of impact. That forms the reflex arc, the circuit. At rates up to up to 1550 impressions per minute we can keep each impression separate. But if the cogwheel revolves at more than 1550 cogs per minute that reflex arc cannot keep up with it. The neural mechanism soon breaks down and cannot register the separate impressions and groups them all together and makes what we call a gestalt, an overall ensemble, impression, and we say that the cogwheel is smooth. Separate impressions change to the neural impression of smooth. It seems smooth!

An ordinary electric fan is another good example. We know that the fan has two, three, maybe four blades. We can see those blades. Now revolve them. Up to 1550 light impressions on the retina of the eye we can still see the separate blades. But let it go beyond 1550 impressions and we see a disk. We don’t see any blades at all any more. With a little experimentation you can discover for yourself the point at which your neural functions will no longer register separate, discontinuous impressions, stimuli. The neural mechanism will compensate for that failure and will make an overall ensemble, impression, image, or picture.

Compare the revolutions of the separate cogs on the cogwheel with the revolutions of the units of energy in the atoms of which any given ‘this’ is composed. Electrons travel in the orbits of the positive nucleus, the protons, at the speed of light, 186,300 miles per second. Compare 1550 impressions per minute for the neural functions to break down or fail to register discontinuous impressions, to electrons travelling at 178,000 miles per second. How are we going to describe how many impressions that will strike the retina, or the sense of touch, that is, the neural system, through the sense of touch or taste or smell or hearing? Get my point? Our consciousness makes pictures, images, gestalts, out of a multiplicity of impressions that it can’t keep up with, and when those pictures, images, gestalts appear ‘out there’ we call it the phenomenal world. Therefore the phenomenal world is in your consciousness. It’s not ‘out there’ at all. The phenomenal world has no existence outside of your inner, subjective, feeling, perceiving, psychic-mind consciousness. The phenomenal world is in you—and has no other existence anywhere!

The phenomenal world is a picture gallery in you, in me; it has no other existence anywhere. All ‘things’, ‘objects’, belong to the phenomenal world. The next time you get all stirred up and in reactions over ‘things’ and ‘objects’, please try to remember that each one of us has a private world picture gallery, in which, unfortunately, we live too much. This is what the limitation to the sense way of functioning does to us and does for us.

Before I turn to the reality with which we are surrounded and in which we function and in which we are growing and developing consciousness, I want to point out some fatal mistakes that have had devastating consequences in the past and today. There are those and there have been those who have understood that sense registry cannot perceive this world around us as it is in reality. They understood that the pictures, images and, gestalts were formed, but they identified those pictures with the dynamic reality and denied it. Their fatal error, was the identification of the phenomenal pictures in the consciousness with the dynamic process, with the configurational world, with this world as it is in reality. That identification caused them to deny the dynamic as well as the phenomena in their own picture gallery. Imagine the devastating consequences of that little error in identification.

In India there is more poverty, disease and degradation per square mile than there is anywhere else in the world. The high death rate, including infant mortality is due to the degradation, filth and disease throughout in India. Why? Because the so-called gurus saw the phenomenal world as maya, that means illusion, and identified the maya with the reality and denied the reality. "Don’t pay any attention. It is all illusion, all maya." And that led to degradation, filth, and pollution created and perpetrated upon this beautiful, marvelous, sparkling pinwheel in which we live. Look at the evil consequences that have befallen those who made that little error of the identification of the picture, the image, with the reality.

We had a narrow escape from that fate in this country because there was an organization that grew strong and did the same thing. They saw the phenomenal world as illusion, a picture gallery in the consciousness, and they identified it with this world as it is in reality — they identified it and then denied it. "There is no truth, no substance, no reality, in matter"— see, they denied it. What caused us to have the narrow escape from going the way that India went? It was because they were not consistent. They turned around and tried to demonstrate it. That turning around and trying to demonstrate some of this matter, this substance, saved us. The second error contradicted the first, saving a large segment of this country from being in the state that India is in. That inconsistency of striving to get some of this matter while denying it saved them.

We must learn how to sharply differentiate the picture, the image, the gestalt in the mind, in the consciousness, from this dynamic reality in which we have our existence and in which our being functions. Sharply separate the picture in the mind, in the consciousness, from this dynamic reality. Here is a practice. You have to practice it every day if you want to get it. If you don’t want to get it, all right; keep it on the verbalistic level as something to talk about. But if you want to get it, practice. The necessity of the practice is this: after you get a clear mental understanding, and you are so clear mentally, cortically, that you say, "Yes, yes, yes, I’ve heard that; I know that." But long after you mentally understand it you cannot function in it. Long-time students have heard this over and over until they can say, "Yes, yes, of course, we know that." I would like to say to them, "You know it, oh yea?" You have to keep practicing, practicing, practicing until you make it functional, and not intellectual. What I am trying to do now is counteract another fatal error of those who learn intellectually all about it. They study and can discuss rounds and races and orders of Beings in Light’s Regions and this world is a representation of the state in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious, and on and on. They have the intellectual understanding, and they too have made a serious error. They have mistaken intellectual understanding with development. But remember, development is functional, not intellectual. I’m trying to counteract their error. Students in the School of the Natural Order must learn to make this teaching functional if they want to develop. They must not mistake the keenest, the most penetrating intellectual understanding with functional development. You must learn how to function in it, or it is just squirrel caging. This is my own cliché. Squirrel caging means that intellectually, mentally, you go round and round like a squirrel in a cage. And no matter how fast you spin that mental process when you stop, you are right there where you started. The only difference between where you started to squirrel cage and where you stopped is you are just tired.

When you go to bed at night, if you can’t sleep, you go squirrel caging, mentalizing, round and round. Get up in the morning and what have you accomplished? You are just worn out, that’s all you accomplished — you didn’t get anywhere. And you never learned how to function. So do not mistake the keenest intellectual understanding with development. The keenest intellectual understanding is nothing but squirrel caging, and sometimes loud-speakering it. Sometimes we become loud speakers, that is, we mentalize and verbalize. It means plain nothing, except exhaustion. So if I can get that point over and get you started on learning how to function, learning how to realize, learning how to be in it instead of mentalizing about it, then my efforts will not be in vain.

You must practice, practice, practice until you can function. Stop mentalizing. It is a simple process. You can teach it to your children. Wherever you happen to be, whatever you happen to be doing, say to yourself, "This (this dish, this pencil, this paper, this, that), is a dynamic process." And keep saying it. "This is not a thing; this is not an object; this is a configuration of units of energy. If I could see it, it would be so brilliant that it would strike my neural senses blind if I saw it all quickly, all at once, before I got used to it." But this is a dynamic process. Any ‘this’ that you eat, wear, or use (that takes in everything, doesn’t it?) mentally have the attitude toward it: "This is a dynamic process, not a thing, not an object. The thing, the object, the phenomenon is in my consciousness because I don’t have the inner, the higher, perception to see the reality. Nevertheless, whether I see it or not, this, this, this, any ‘this', is a dynamic process." This is too simple for words; too simple to pay any attention to. Wait until you are further along. And you will develop the deeper understanding about what I am saying about this, this, this. These ‘simple things’, single quote, ‘things’, these simple configurations, will become dumbfoundingly beautiful whirling points of light.

Are you familiar with Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, "Flower in the Crannied Wall?" Remember how he plucked the flower from the crannied wall, held it little in his hand and looked at it, and he said, "Little flower, if I knew what thou art, all in all, root and all, I would know what God and man is." See, he had it. We are stumbling over it and falling down and maybe trodding in the mud, with our head in the stratosphere somewhere and verbalizing about the reality behind the cloudbanks. Do you see that this is non-metaphysical? Reality is here, all around us.

Do you remember how in the vision of Sir Launfal, the proud Lord of the castle ordered his steed to be saddled, and he rode forth to seek the Holy Grail? He rode and rode, until broken and old he returned home. And the beggar at his gate, the beggar at his gate, was he for whom he was seeking. What is the beggar at your gate? Why, every day right around us, these so-called simple things. Get your head down out of that cloudbank. Get your thought down here — in this reality around you and in you and part and parcel of you! Don’t metaphizzle!

Do you know that when this new cycle and this new age has advanced the dirtiest word that someone could use is to call someone a metaphizzler. Metaphysical — that’s going to be the dirtiest word that we can possibly imagine. Not yet, because we are not yet far enough along, but by and by — metaphysical is going to be a bad word because it is a flight from here, the simple world of reality around us. I want to direct your attention to it until you learn it, you see it. We see it; we function in it as we grow and develop. We couldn’t imagine a more wonderful world than to see this world as it is in reality.

Now, one more point apropos of what I am talking about. Let us work our understanding into the meanings of three terms. The first is ontological, that which pertains to being. Ontology is the science of being which constitutes the noumenal world, as distinct from the phenomenal world. Noumenal means basic fundamental reality. Phenomenal describes the world as it appears to our physical senses. Here is something for your contemplation, because it is going to require many lessons to build up the adequate description of what I am going to say. But I would like to have you contemplate it in anticipation of the description, and that is this: Every one of these states in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious has its representation in the configurational world. That is, every configurational dynamic process is a representation of a state in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious. When this becomes a part of your understanding, your consciousness, then you will see that this configurational world, or any given configuration thereof, represents the fundamental reality of being — ontological. Again, what I am trying to say to you now is that the representation of the state in which the Power-to-be-conscious is conscious cannot be separated from the configurational world. The Power cannot be understood in or by reason of its representation in the configurational world.

So the configurational world represents the state of being, and if any being can perceive, understand, function in, etc. beyond its own state, it has departed into the unknown and has turned metaphysical. It has departed from reality. Any departure from the understanding of the configurational world as the reality and as the representation of a state is a departure from being itself. I am going to say that again. I am going to say it many times when we come to the minute description of it, but I want you to register it now. There is no possibility of getting the consciousness of God, the consciousness of being, of getting the consciousness of reality, separate and apart from the representation of its state or states. The representation of its state is what we call the configurational world, or any unit thereof. So to understand the dynamic process of this world is to understand fundamental being. There is the science of being. Thus, the science of being, ontology, is the understanding of this configurational world, here, now, in which we have our existence and in which the being functions.