We have recently emerged from a place of darkness, and our first impression is light. We have spent nine months surrounded and protected in a world of liquids, and now for the first time we experience the pull of Earth’s gravity upon our little body. Our sense of touch and feeling is Awakened by the gentle hands upon us. We now experience warmth of a new kind, as we are first placed upon the mother’s breast. All of these initial experiences are simple Awareness. They are not thoughts based upon Knowledge, but enter into our brain through the FACULTIES OF KNOWING.
Very soon however, the process of building thoughts by association comes into play. We must remember that all knowledge is derived through experiences of signs, symbols and words. There must always be more than one of these, to give meaning to anything. Once we have heard two voices or two sounds, we begin to distinguish between the two and create our first simple ideas. We begin to recognize that softness and smoothness, means “mother”. When that which touches us is not so soft, but is more coarse and even smells slightly different, these sensations then become our first Awareness of “father”. As we begin to make simple associations, our brain in turn begins to function as a memory bank. It now begins to assist us in deciphering the differences between one experience and another.
Very soon after our introduction into life, we have progressed from our faculty of KNOWING, to the art of simple KNOWLEDGE. As time passes, we begin to decipher sounds into language and our eyes reveal to us the existence of objects beyond the reach of our tiny arms. We begin to establish an Awareness of time and space long before we learn to repeat what we have heard or touch what is out there beyond our reach. We are told by the brain that everything that there is to know, is outside of us and separate from us. Our brain has informed us wrongly.
Thus our first impressions of separateness from the Universe come into being. Even though our future impressions will lessen the power of the first impression of separateness, we nevertheless have great difficulty resolving that first experience into a greater experience. Even when we have grown old enough to speak and even after we have discovered that we have the power to touch things at great distances simply by walking to them, the half-truths which were fed to us by the brain are still never entirely resolved. Even when we take into our body, the water, food and air that we need to give us life and greater growth, the first impression of separateness is still present. The original damage has been done – and we spend years or even a lifetime breaking the bonds of those first half-truths, before we can set ourselves Free ...
From Lesson 6 of the Foundation Series
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