I would like to update what I wrote all those years ago about movies. The cinema is an illusion,isn't it, a series of still frames or photographs made to create the illusion of life and movement. The silent movies used to be shot and projected at 16 frames a second, and then, when the talkies came in, at 24 frames per second, to allow for a smooth sound track. The film director and cameraman produces an edited and selected version of reality, and even then we as viewers can only focus on part of the picture at a time, and we may miss the background or not hear the music on the sound track. The projectionist who is showing the movie is quite calmly sitting in the projection booth, while the audience is wallowing in the soap opera or adventure on the screen, totally carried away by the farces, comedies and tragedies of life.

Cartoons and other animations create even more of an illusion. The TV images we see are also built up fragmentarily as they are scanned electronically from one micro-second to the next. In the same way, signs and words, language and literature and other forms presented to our five senses have to be interpreted and understood to ‘make sense'. The only thing that we can say is real is the mind or consciousness behind and beyond our body and brain, and the material world it experiences. The Eastern philosophy would say that the whole of this material world is illusion, fabricated like a movie, and the real world is the world of spirit.

You and I are illusions also, as are all the different life-forms teeming around us, along with our human sciences, religions, organizations and activities. They are creations of the spirit, the spirit of God at some level. That is the true reality, and we can only participate in it and experience it for ourselves, individually, as we go within to our OWN spirit, and with the help of our inner guides and teachers, and with the initial help of our living leaders and teachers on earth. Without belonging to society, without parents and teachers to bring us up in the first place, we would never speak or learn. We would remain an untamed animal.

Just as from the series of still photographs we can create the illusion of movement and life on the cinema screen, so in the same way, within the frequencies of the material world we have created a particular form and style of life. In the worlds of spirit, at far higher frequencies, we will find a different reality and different forms of life. But the person who is experiencing the illusion of the cinema and television and the material world, and the person who is experiencing the spirit worlds, is one and the same person, the soul or spirit. That soul or spirit is what we are, not the body, the vehicle we drive, or the life-form we ‘wear' like a garment or space-suit in order to live in that reality. Similarly, the icons and public images of our leaders, stars and heroes are manufactured also, not real.

So, instead of worrying about whether we are really Republicans or Democrats, Left or Right wing, Christians, Muslims, Spiritualists, Scientists, Atheists or Agnostics, Americans or Russians, Immigrants or Illegals, trying to define the illusory forms and labels we assume in living here, why not attune to what we REALLY are in essence. We can't DEFINE what lies within, but we CAN share the same harmony and understanding, and this is what we feel when there is a true meeting of minds and spirits, a recognition of joy, love, caring and inner peace, wherein lies our true home.

Coming back to the global reality we live in, in light of our knowledge of how illusion is manufactured by our technologies, we must see that the media including the internet now and cell phones and laptops and ipods are creating an even more illusory world, and what is real is still what lies within, in our hearts, minds and spirits. What we carry with us eternally is a conscious, creative MIND, never lost, ALWAYS connected to the greater Spirit. It is a vast network to which our spirit belongs, continually and forever, no matter what temporary life-form we assume. That spirit of ours shines a light, and the quality of that light is what attracts good fortune or disaster. Take your pick!

We make use of our technologies for convenience, but they are not essential to life. They can improve our living conditions if used wisely, and are a means of enhancing contact between people and countries, and now, with EVP and ITC, between worlds. But they can distort reality, be misused in propaganda, or become addictive. Our REAL means of contact, through spirit, will always be there, even when the solar system along with this planet will have burned itself out and disintegrated into space.

As for our religions, they have only been with us for a few thousand years at most, while simple creatures like frogs, bees and flies have been here millions of years longer than that. Trapped in amber 20 million years ago, we can PROVE these creatures existed back then. Can we prove as much for our religions, or our own human evolution? Do we accept a local myth, a few thousand years old, or attune to the great Spirit or Mind which imagined the cosmos and brought life as we know it into being?

In love and all humility. Richard R.