Do It. Expand!

Last month, stuffing envelopes for our fund-raising appeal, I noticed the name “T. Golas” among our subscribers. Was this the same Thaddeus Golas who wrote The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, a book I’ve treasured for years? I scribbled that question on the back of the envelope, and got this reply:

“Yes, I am the T. Golas who wrote The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment. But I am not the one who appeared in commercials and ads for a headache remedy — he is Thaddeus A. Golas and I am Thaddeus S. Golas. Cosmic joke.”

Three more pages of letter followed — praise and criticism of THE SUN (“I argue with many of the articles and write imaginary replies in my head — if they’re smart enough to know that, why aren’t they smart enough to know better? — but I think you’re doing a beautiful job”); advice about money (“break out of any literal-mindedness about money. Consider that a corporation can sell stock up to 30 times its net worth against future earnings, while the individual must pay exorbitant interest to borrow against future earnings . . . my advice to you is to incorporate, borrow liberally, and give not a thought to the morrow”); and along with the letter, these essays.

The Guide — chapter one of which we’re reprinting, as an introduction to Golas’ ideas — is a gem of cosmic common-sense. “I am a lazy man,” Golas writes in the foreword, “Laziness keeps me from believing that enlightenment demands effort, discipline, strict diet, non-smoking, and other evidences of virtue. That’s about the worst heresy I could propose, but I have to be honest before I can be reverent.” The book — whose Seed Center edition has sold 215,000 copies since its first printing nearly 10 years ago, and which Bantam has now published, with five foreign translations in print or in the works — has been a friend to me for years, a map through the metaphysical wilderness, plain talk amidst the “spiritual” babble. Its “reminders” are tacked all over my mental bulletin board: “No resistance.” “What am I doing on a level of consciousness where this is real?” “Love is the only dimension that needs to be changed.” “Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it.” “When you learn to love hell you will be in heaven.”

Golas, who describes himself as “one of the few authors of metaphysical books who has formed no organizations, collected no contributions, made no speeches, formed no classes, acquired no disciples,” says that everything he’s written has been outdated by “Reminders.” He writes:

“Will have to start all over again, but I don’t mind because it’s what I’ve been looking for. What’s amazing to me is that these principles were implicit in the very beginning more than thirty years ago, but I just didn’t distill them. . . . the stuff I am evolving now in terms of pure function is so fruitful that I don’t even want to lay a trip on anyone of ‘acknowledging free will.’ But you may find something in it that is useful to your present circumstance. Perhaps this is a good time to note that it is not my intention to have others tune in on my vibrations, but simply to pass along information for others to use or not as they wish.”

Deep thanks to Thaddeus Golas for permission to reprint chapter one of the Guide, and for the chance to publish his newer work.

— Ed.

The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment
Chapter One

We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other. The universe is made of one kind of entity: each one is alive, each determines the course of his own existence.

That is really all you need to know to understand this book or write your own. Everything I say has its roots in that first paragraph, and it is possible to resolve any question by going back to it and thinking it through for yourself.

The universe is made of one kind of whatever-it-is, which cannot be defined. For our purpose, it isn’t necessary to try to define it. All we need to do is assume that there is only one kind of whatever-it-is, and see if it leads to a reasonable explanation for the world as we know it.

The basic function of each being is expanding and contracting. Expanded beings are permeative; contracted beings are dense and impermeative. Therefore each of us, alone or in combination, may appear as space, energy, or mass, depending on the ratio of expansion to contraction chosen, and what kind of vibrations each of us expresses by alternating expansion and contraction. Each being controls his own vibrations.

A completely expanded being is space. Since expansion is permeative, we can be in the “same space” with one or more other expanded beings. In fact, it is possible for all the entities in the universe to be one space.

We experience expansion as awareness, comprehension, understanding, or whatever we wish to call it. When we are completely expanded, we have a feeling of total awareness, of being one with life. At that level we have no resistance to any vibrations or interactions of other beings. It is timeless bliss, with unlimited choice of consciousness, perception, and feeling.

Space is a level of experience that any of us can reach, but it is difficult to talk about on our present plane precisely because it is unlimited. It is that which chooses limits and makes definitions. We might say: all experiences are available to the One Mind, and the One Mind is all of us or any of us at the highest level of expansion. Or we might theorize: God could not create anything more limited than Himself that would persist, but if He duplicates Himself, He can enjoy a persistent universe. Each entity, therefore, is a duplicate of God, “made in His image.”

It doesn’t matter what words we use: we exist and the universe exists, and it is possible to test this expansion-contraction idea within the limited scope of what is real to us as human beings, especially in atomic and subatomic studies.

When a being is totally contracted, he is a mass particle, completely imploded. To the degree that he is contracted, a being is unable to be in the same space with others, so contraction is felt as fear, pain, unconsciousness, ignorance, hatred, evil, and a whole host of strange feelings. At an extreme he has the feeling of being completely insane, of resisting everyone and everything, of being unable to choose the content of his consciousness. Of course, these are just the feelings appropriate to mass vibration levels, and he can get out of them at any time by expanding, by letting go of all resistance to what he thinks, sees, or feels.

When a being is alternating expansion and contraction, he is energy. My guess is that at the middle point, fifty percent expansion and fifty percent contraction, a being would be logical, non-subjective, egoless, and predictable. This may be the “zero” which is one side of energy equations in physics, as well as the “ego-death” we go through in expanding to higher levels of awareness.

It is important to note that energy is not a quantity of anything “objective.” Energy, like space and matter, is what a lot of live beings are doing. Energy beings usually react to their neighbors in a way that is often predictable and apparently automatic, like falling dominoes. While relating to space beings, energy beings will appear to be high, vibrating rapidly, with a sense of increasing subjective freedom. Oriented to mass beings, they will be low energy, vibrating more slowly with a growing feeling of subjective compulsion and disorder.

The universe is an infinite harmony of vibrating beings in an elaborate range of expansion-contraction ratios, frequency modulations, and so forth.

There is a particular set of feelings and ideas that goes with every variation, every combination, every vibration level. There is also a different perception of how other beings are relating from every different viewpoint. The thought of these possibilities is so staggering, trying to contain them in writing is so ridiculous, that it is hard for me to move my pen any further. However, what we are after is to isolate some basic attitudes that will recover awareness of our freedom to move around in this maze — or go straight to the top.

What we need to remember is that there is nobody here but us chickens. The entire universe is made of beings just like ourselves. Every particle in every atom is a live being. Every molecule or cell is a tribe of beings. Energy is a large number of us vibrating together. Space is an infinite number of our brothers and sisters in perfect bliss.

There is no important difference between live and dead matter, since both are made up of live entities. Not only is mass convertible into energy, but energy is convertible into space, and vice versa. It is our own withdrawal from awareness, our own mass condition, that makes us see our brothers and sisters as objective matter, energy, and space. We always have the experiences and perceptions appropriate to our vibration level.

The same rules apply to all of us. The rules do not come from anywhere outside ourselves. They come from the truth that we are all equal, we all have the same range of possible behavior and experience. We are free to do anything we want to do, within the necessary laws of our relations as equal beings. And love must be the first law. Love is the action of being in the same space with other beings, which means that love is real, as real as we are. Love is not a limited idea, it is something we do, ultimately with our whole selves.

Perhaps many of us do not like it where we are in the universe now, but we can all be certain that we got where we are by our own decisions to expand in love or withdraw from it.

The kind of brain and body you have, the family and society, the time in history you were born into, all these and more were determined by you yourself, by your degree of expansion, by your willingness to love. No one did anything to you. No one forced you. There is absolute justice in the experience that each of us is having every second of the day. In one sense we can all relax, because nothing is secret, nothing is lost, nothing is forgotten, no one is abandoned.

Each of us is the same kind of being, capable of outflowing attention and awareness, or withdrawing it. And that is all we need to do: Give full, permissive, loving attention to absolutely anything that we see in our minds, in our bodies, in our environment, in other people.

Expansion in love is an action that is available to every being in the universe all the time. A willing awareness will take us to heaven, a loving attitude will make us free. Nothing else controls our fate. Good or bad behavior is secondary. Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are thinking, love yourself for thinking it. Love is the only dimension that needs to be changed. If you are not sure how it feels to be loving, love yourself for not being sure of how it feels. There is nothing on earth more important than the love which conscious beings feel towards each other, whether or not it is ever expressed.

There is no point in worry or wonder about worse or better spiritual conditions, although that game is available. You will not be able to rise above your present vibration level to stay until you love the way you are now.

No matter what your spiritual condition is, no matter where you find yourself in the universe, your choice is always the same: to expand your awareness or contract it. And you have to start where you are. There is nothing wrong with being where you are — it’s one of the infinite experiences available to us. What you are, I can be. What I am, you can be.

Whatever we have done in withdrawing from full consciousness of the One Mind, we are doing now. Whatever we are doing will always be within us to do, even when we are not doing it, and therefore is not to be resisted, but transcended. These are reminders I frequently use: “That’s always within me.” “This, too, can be known with a fully expanded awareness.”

We can trust the flow of the universe. If these rules of love are true, then they are effective whether we agree with them or not, whether we are conscious of them or not, whether or not we use words to talk about them. The reality of love is something you do for yourself, with or without words, and judge the results from your own experiences. All information like this exists in space all the time, and doesn’t need books for its reality. It’s always within you.

It follows that I am not writing this book out of any sense of objection to what anyone believes now. Beyond all reason is the mystery of love: you know we are all equal, no one in truth needs any help from anyone else, no one needs to be told anything or given anything — and then you do the most compassionate act anyway, do the best for your brothers and sisters that you have in you. I’m relaying what was given to me when I felt I needed it: if I felt that way, maybe someone else does, too. This is a letter to my brothers and sisters, a love note to try to show how, when we thought love wasn’t working, it was working perfectly.

Love is the only dimension that needs to be changed.

It’s an interesting mental exercise to turn the whole game upside down: the problem is not how to free yourself from the mass level, how to get enlightened. The real question is: If you are a completely free and self-determined being, how did you lock yourself into a body to play games on the material plane? How did you get yourself and others to agree to this game? How did you get it to be compulsive?

Several times when I’ve spaced out, I flashed: Well, if it’s that easy to get out, I might as well go back and play the game. Maybe that’s the ultimate temptation. And maybe no one really wants to know how easy it is, nobody wants to upset the game. We may all be playing let’s pretend, hide-and-seek.

Physical reality is one of the biggest horror movies of all, and you know how we love horror movies. If the universe as we see it from our vibration level is illusory, only partially true, then that’s all the more reason for enjoying it and loving it, instead of getting freaked by it.

Everything that happens on earth can be experienced on any of thousands of different vibration levels, from the most euphoric to the gloomiest. We are entirely free to emphasize any level we wish. We need change nothing but our own attention and love, our own expansion and love.

Since the universe is nothing but live beings, each controlling his own level and his own relationships, there is absolutely nothing in the universe that needs to be corrected in any way. We don’t have to do anything about it, whatever it is. There is consciousness everywhere in the universe, and we can trust all beings to handle their own decisions. No matter how it looks to us, love never loses control: the laws of our relations are as honest and exact as the laws of physics.

I can’t say I know at this moment what all these laws are. But on some level everybody knows that we are all getting exactly what we deserve.

The harmony is infinite and one and divine. Where do you figure you fit into it? Don’t be too hard on yourself. A little bit of love goes a long way.

Dear Friends

Dear Friends:

I am writing this as a letter because I have something I want to pass along right away, without waiting to refine it into an article or a book, just in case Griffith Mountain falls on my head tomorrow. I hope you will find it interesting and useful, since it’s an idea that answers so many questions, and it’s just a step past what I said in The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment. To present the idea clearly, I will start with some things I’ve said before:

The universe is made of one kind of being.

We are equal beings. Together we are the universe.

Each being has absolute free will and control over his/her/its functions and consciousness.

The consequence of our equality and free will is that the laws of our relations must be what they are, and cannot be changed.

Each of us has complete freedom within the law to experience anything. That is to say, the law does not limit our freedom: the free will of others does not limit us. There is no need to contradict the law. We cannot and need not contradict what is and how it relates.

When we do attempt to contradict the law, to deny the free will of others or ourselves, we experience the necessary consequences, until we again recognize the free will of all beings.

“Free will” and “denial” are not emblazoned in words in cosmic space, but are realized by our actions and concepts.

When we deny free will, we are limited in communication with others, we can no longer tune in. We then see others from outside, so to speak.

When we see others from outside, when we see them as physical space, energy, or mass, we are looking at the operation of the law. This is a very important point: the law’s operation is not responsive to our wishes, it is not “alive” as we see it, we cannot control or change it, it has no significance or value. It is the physical world, seeming to oppose our free will, while having no will of its own. It appears to us whenever we are trying to contradict the law ourselves, denying free will. But what we are looking at is an infinitely large group of us beings relating in lawful ways.

We can, as we human beings do, manipulate what these beings are already doing. We can make forms out of matter and try to channel energy, but we can do that only by functioning through material means — a structure like the human brain and body. The entities forming iron atoms or gold atoms, for instance, are not conscious of the use we make of these metals: their conscious experience is free and unaffected.

Now we come to a big little step, the idea I want to tell you about:

In our primary state, our natural state as unique beings, no evil can exist — because nothing then exists except the choice of consciousness of each individual, relating to others or not at will. No being can control the behavior or consciousness of another, therefore there is never any undesired consequence of any kind. We are free to disagree without denying another’s freedom.

However, when we deny free will and begin acting in a physical world, we are then in a context in which events and things persist, a framework in which events happen regardless of what we think about them, in which undesired and unexpected experiences can occur, in which evil can happen.

Thus we have the whole catalog of human history — the persistence of undesired experiences.

The basic truth, our freedom, is lost in confusion. We find more and more “proof” that free will is ineffective, even destructive. We compound our “original sin” by trying to control each other, or asking to be controlled. We try to figure out who or what is controlling this mess.

The answer is that no one is controlling it.

No one can, not God or man. It is the way the operation of the law looks to us when we are denying the law. We are all outlaws.

The possible commentary on this approach is too much even to sketch in a brief letter. For now, I would just like to draw some large clear lines.

Keep clearly in mind that our natural state, the “life of the spirit,” is NOT a realm of virtue and goodness. Free spirits are not bound by “the knowledge of good and evil.” It’s just irrelevant. In a free state, the difference between Yes and No can be experienced as more horrendous than the atom bomb — but it lasts only as long as we wish.

We ourselves, with our passion for our physical forms, are the source of the standards of good and evil on Earth — that is why there are so many, so often conflicting — and these standards have no importance to the spiritual life. Our virtues on Earth will earn us no reward in the spirit, and our vices will not impede us. Our past is worthless and powerless. Whatever it is, we’ve all done it or could do it. All that matters is what we choose now.

Our basic choice is to be in or out of the Earth experience, and that choice is governed by our own free will. There is nothing on Earth or in heaven that can affect that choice — no faith, no system, no meditation, no virtue, no higher beings, no Brownie points.

But while we are functioning as human beings (which of course we are free to do!), we face a whole set of unusual problems that do not occur in our natural state. While we are making the mistake of seeing the relating of others as something that isn’t alive, from outside, then everything we do is limited by that mistake.

Although there is no ultimate good or evil, these standards are still important to us as human beings. In fact, the immediate urgency of values is more pressing than ever, truly a life-and-death question. It’s just that we must make them up as we go along, in a puzzling world indifferent to us, with all the confusions that we know so well: Which good for whom? Can we survive better as individuals or in groups? If in groups, how much individual freedom must we give up? How brutal must we be to enforce some peace? And so on.

In human life, the persistence of undesired experiences is only the beginning. We also get innocent beauty disguising evil surprises, and cruelty leading to good — but not always! We are never certain whether to trust our insight and imagination or to depend on learned experience and statistical probabilities. The survival of forms is more important to us than the free flow of life and consciousness. When we try to live with permissive grace, freedom and generosity, the most destructive among us rush to take advantage of it. We are obliged to offend our ideals under pressure of practical necessity. Good intentions are treated with suspicion, out of sad experience.

What can we do?

For myself, I keep in mind this reminder: “Others are free to do as they will, and I am free to relate to it or not.” And another: “This is my idea of what’s happening.” That at least begins to unravel things at the core.

I suggest we adjust our expectations: human life will never be ideal. We are too various. And it is worth-while to fight for freedom; it is fair to kill the killers. If you don’t agree with that, of course, you will be assisted on your way out!

Our natural state, the “life of the spirit,” is NOT a realm of virtue and goodness. Free spirits are not bound by “the knowledge of good and evil.”

We may withdraw from involvement in earthly affairs, just to reduce our personal chaos and perhaps get glimpses of the free spiritual life, but we should not flatter ourselves that our withdrawal makes us superior to other human beings. If we make special claims to purity and holiness, we are just making ourselves ridiculous in the light of the truth. No special qualifications are required to transcend earthly life: transcendence is our natural condition. Personally, I find the self-congratulation of the virtuous as repellent as the self-contempt of the evil-doers. Questions of good and evil do not apply to the spiritual life, but to earthly experience, and earthly problems must be solved by physical means. Civilization requires people who fulfill their contracts more than it needs saintliness. Religions were most successful when they concerned themselves with practical matters: calendars, clocks and crops. I have never had any patience with the comedy and misdirection that passes for spiritual search, and now I can say why. All of us are spirits, and all that happens is spiritual.

Scientists and technologists quite justly enjoy some success because they are willing to look at the lawful nature of physical events. Of course the use we make of scientific discoveries brings them back into the arena of human choice. In psychology, sociology, and other studies in which we recognize the action of conscious life, it will never be possible to be scientific. It is one of our most tiresome human habits to attempt to borrow the authority of science for areas where it cannot apply.

Since the denial of free will is so crucial a matter, it would be useful to examine ourselves to observe how we might be doing it without realizing it. Exchanging information is a valid human activity, but if we believe that others need our help and rescue for spiritual freedom, we are denying their free will. Status systems and hierarchies have their uses in good management, but if we are blind to our equality with all beings, we are denying our own free will.

As the arts show us, particularly in music, there is much we can enjoy on Earth of our real nature, once we have taken care of the chores. But I do believe we would live more sanely if we realize that the spirit has its limits in solving the problems of physical life. And we can certainly live with more zest when we know that life here is not the only game in town.

This concept has shaken all my thought processes to their roots. I have had to abandon some pet notions, and I must re-evaluate every assumption about the physical world that I took for granted. I am a bit stunned. Therefore I have no idea where this approach might lead.

But I am also confident and satisfied. I understand now why I have lived as I have, often when all reason and common sense told me I was wrong. I find the answer so obvious, so close to us, a part of us, that the wonder is how we ever manage to obscure it at all. Once we enter the condition of not knowing, we are tuned into a whole credible history of ignorance — millions of years of it! It’s hilarious!

Now if I could only do something about this flu. . . .

Love,
Thaddeus Golas
February, 1980

Reminders

Maintain the intention to be expanded.

Functions come first.

Your functions must be right before anything else can be right.

Functions happen now, in present time.

Functions are outside consciousness, more than awareness.

Functions come first. As a unique being (a spirit or soul, if you prefer), you have a function: expanding and contracting. Your functions have priority over all ideas, beliefs, concepts and intentions. If your functions are right, the wrong ideas won’t stop you. If your functions are wrong, the greatest wisdom in the world won’t help you.

You can see how much we have achieved in science and technology just by identifying functions. What I am proposing now is that we identify our functions as unique beings.

Everyone is doing it already, of course, and it seems silly that something so simple should be hard to explain — but that’s because functions are independent of consciousness. (That is, there are many times when you are not conscious, but there is never a time when you are not functioning.) When you pick up a cup, you just will to do it, without exactly knowing how your brain works or how your body does it. Therefore, while you are maintaining the intention to expand, you won’t have a clear sense that anything is happening, but do it anyway. Keep doing it, and see what happens.

Functions happen now, in present time. You always have full control of your expansion and contraction right now — no matter what others are doing or what else is happening. The only time you can function is now: if expanding made you feel good ten minutes ago, that’s irrelevant. Maintain the intention. Remind yourself. Do it now. I’ve said this before in other ways: “Pay attention to what you’re doing. Love it the way it is. This, too, can be experienced with a fully expanded awareness.” Now I have tons of logic for it, but the logic doesn’t matter. Don’t think about it. Don’t take my word for it. Do it. Expand!

If you need more reasons, note this: alternating expansion and contraction is energy, which we experience and perceive as “vibrations” and “waves” and so on, but for starters in asserting control it would be better to think in terms of the extremes:

Expansion makes you space. Space amplifies energy and sends it on its way.

Contraction makes you mass. Mass retards energy, and congeals it into form and builds structures.

Now, if you contract to withdraw from “negative” thoughts, guess what form the energy will take? And if, meanwhile, you are willingly expanding only with “positive” thoughts (and creative thinking, high ethics and good morals), your expansion causes all those lovely thoughts to vanish formless into space. (Unless, of course, you get others to resist you!)

I am emphasizing expansion because we are presently involved in the massive contractions of physical life on earth — gravity, etc. — but the goal really is to recover some sense of our freedom to choose our experience.

— February, 1981

Postscript To Reminders

The preceding is what I have been passing on to friends on a single sheet of paper, and it would seem that some find it hard to credit the simple advice to do something. What I am proposing is not inspirational or uplifting, which may be all to the good. What I am looking for myself is action with reliable consequence — reliable on all levels of being.

In a cosmic system with a ceiling and a floor, involving functional relations between equal and free entities, it really doesn’t matter what names we give to the various processes, how many entities are involved, or whether we measure functions in a complex or simple way. Insofar as our ideas are in agreement with the way we function, we will be successful in choosing our experience, and insofar as our ideas contradict the laws of function, we will fail. Therefore analyzing the spiritual in terms of functions seems to me a fruitful approach; what follows are a couple of examples of this approach.

In Nigel Calder’s book, Einstein’s Universe (Viking Press), he notes that the formulas for acceleration and for gravity are the same. He also notes that Einstein’s revolutionary proposal meant that matter does not pull on other matter, but that mass follows a certain course in free fall because space is warped by gravity. If I may be so bold as to say it, being as lay a layman as one can be, it appears to me that this just shifts the problem of “action at a distance”: instead of matter pulling on other matter, it is now pulling on space.

In my book, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, I proposed that space PROPELS energy and mass: the greater the contraction and resistance of an entity, the more it is propelled.

Now, in which direction will a mass entity be propelled? It will be propelled in the direction of other mass entities: the bigger the blob of matter, the larger the gathering of mass, the greater the propulsion towards it. Why? Because that large contracted mass is not pushing back, it is not pushing outward enough — there is less space there.

Thus we may view gravity, not as a pull, but as an acceleration toward other matter. This would be supported by the equivalence of the formulas for acceleration and gravity. (This speculation can be taken into the Big Bang and out again.)

What has all this to do with the spirit? What this means for us is that any of us, as a unique entity, may leave this earthly mass simply by changing function. Nothing is pulling us down. When we begin expanding and cease contracting, we automatically cease being propelled toward matter — we are free in permeative space.

I am sure many of my readers have had the experience of popping out into space, in satori or with psychedelics. Of course you can’t take much mental baggage with you at such times, but the next time you’re out, try to hold the thought, “I am expanding now.”

In any case, this line of thought indicates why I am not interested in making bodies live longer or in taking them out there in space ships.

What is truly spiritual about you will always be invisible to other human beings. To be spiritual is not to be here at all.

Am I thinking in terms of survival after death or reincarnation as a personality? No. Thinking in terms of functions leads to other interesting perceptions. For instance, I was watching a TV film about chemosynthesis: a camera had been sent five miles below the surface of the Pacific, and there, where the sun never shone, along cracks in the ocean floor where a little heat from the earth’s interior was escaping, there were marvelous and unusual forms of life. Just as plants incorporate sunlight, these forms were responding to heat.

And then it struck me what was happening in photosynthesis: matter will respond to a slight increase in energy by organizing itself into self-reproducing and sometimes mobile forms. And once the plants have incorporated energy (which matter in its delusion considers must come from somewhere else — contracted entities hold enormous energy but always plead for more), other forms of life keep on reusing it — animals eat plants and other animals; both animals and plants in death and decay are reused by other forms. (That is why corrupt societies are so creative — there is a lot of loose energy around.)

Now, these “life” forms may be wildly proliferating on earth, and may be incredibly various and ingenious. We may even get a form that considers itself the only consciousness, the apex of creation. But all these forms are still matter, no matter how complex, dissipative and subtle they may be. They will use all the energy they can hold and manipulate, all the information they can absorb — merely to make more forms, more bodies.

ALL material interactions are rooted in contraction. Mass has no future except to be mass as long as it continues to contract. It can only solve the “problems” of material existence by expanding, by ceasing to be mass.

What this means is that there is no way for the spirit to make earthly life work better.

Life on earth is simply its own local system, grounded in the necessities and perversities of resistive entities — anti-space — all trying to tear pre-formed packets of energy from each other, never using the enormous energy stored within themselves.

Of course space is nothing if not a store of infinitely variable ideas, which would include ideas for manipulating matter in less painful ways. But there is no idealized state of matter — nor of human behavior.

There is no way that enlightenment, or spiritual uplift, or ideals, or varying your consciousness, or any other space-level activity is going to do anything to alter the way matter interacts with matter.

Ecology, saving human bodies, reforming the establishment — all these are practical activities, but they are not spiritual.

I am not arguing against optimism and energy in playing with the predictable and repetitious functions of matter. But please, just don’t call it spiritual.

Being spiritual, being space, is totally other; its rules are the inverse of the rules of mass relations. Space rules are not appropriate in a material context. They just don’t work. Enlightenment does not help you run the world better. Remember that space PROPELS energy and mass, and that’s all it can do. A mass entity must expand of its own free will to be “saved.”

What is truly spiritual about you will always be invisible to other human beings. To be spiritual is not to be here at all. Or to be on your way out in as natural and decent a way as possible. Organize your life so that you need give the minimum of attention to material events.

It doesn’t matter what your ideas or actions are — what you do with an expanded self will be spiritual. What you do with a contracted self will not be spiritual.

To emphasize again:

Functions come first.

And, as Nigel Calder noted, the laws of function are the same for all entities everywhere in the universe at all times.

And that is why I am telling you to maintain the intention to be expanded.

— June, 1981