SMALLER PICTURE vs BIGGER PICTURE
Ingo Swann (08Oct98)
PART 3:
ATTEMPTING TO IDENTIFY SOME DYNAMICS OF
SMALLER-PICTURE FORMATS
If one is to conceptualize any kind of tutorials or training with regard to activating superpower faculties, one has to consider almost from the outset that "reality shifts" are going to be involved.
Two general assumptions in this regard are to be found, and both of them are usually left unexamined and thus not understood very well.
The first assumption revolves around the idea that if the student is presented with organized information regarding the superpowers, then the needed reality shifts will occur within the student.
The second assumption involves the idea that if the needed reality shifts do not occur, then the difficulty lies within the responsiveness of the student.
In observable fact, the two assumptions can be appropriate in most cases where (1) delivery of the organized information is the key step and issue of the training, and (2) IF the organization of the information first and only pertains to factors external to the student.
In other words, adjustments among the student’s inner realities (and mental equipment) will somehow take place with regard to incorporating the organized information about the external factors—and needed reality shifts, if they are required, will more or less occur without much further ado.
The whole of this particular concept is centered on the idea that in-take of information alone will result in learning. As mentioned elsewhere in other essays, this type of teaching methodology has without doubt demonstrated its effectiveness. But, it might be added, only within the particular criteria as given above.
This is the dominant concept of teaching-learning in the modernist cultural West, and as such is composed of three aspects: (1) teacher; (2) delivery of organized information about outer factors; (3) student.
However, with regard to activating the superpower faculties, the principal basis of what is involved is, in the first place, NOT external to the student.
So, whereas the existing condition and extent of the student’s inner realities can be minimalized in the Western concept, the status of the student’s inner realities now takes on essential importance—and does so as a first order of business.
The principle goal of activating the superpower faculties is, so to speak, to ENERGIZE or AWAKEN faculties that already exist within the inner realities of the student, but remain latent or deadened, and thus are non-experiencable within the scope of the student’s concretized awareness margins.
The faculties remain latent or deadened because the student’s awareness peripheries and inner realities are somehow structured so as to exclude direct cognitive contact with them.
As long as this excluding structuring remains in place, no amount of organized information about the superpowers will serve to go very far.
It is clearly to be realized that there are strategic differences between the concept of inner awakening and the concept of rote learning via organized information regarding outer factors.
It is also to be realized that EACH individual possesses some kind of concretized inner reality structure—and by even superficial observation it can be realized that each individual’s inner reality structure is different. And as everyone discovers sooner or later, everyone tends to cling to their concretized realities—and often do so come hell or high water.
One direct meaning here is that each individual WILL process all information through their existing mental information processing grids. Thus, information of any kind, whether external or internal, will be reconfigured to fit within those grids, and what doesn’t fit will be excluded and disposed in a wide variety of ways.
Now, one might at first consider the foregoing as alien to all concepts of human learning. But in fact it represents a situation that has been familiar in Asia since antiquity. This is the guru-chela relationship, and which has been translated into Western languages as teacher-student.
But a more exact rendering is guru-awakener, chela-awakenee. The interactive dynamic between them is founded on the understanding that it is very difficult for the chela to self-awaken since the chela is encapsulated within the limits of his or her concretized realities.
Such concretized realities include various kinds of excluding mechanisms that inhibit activation of awareness of WHAT IS outside of the excluding mechanisms. As long as the excluding mechanisms remain in place, what it outside of them will remain non-experiencable and thus invisible.
In the Eastern context, the principle function of the awakener (the guru) is two-fold: to present information about WHAT IS, and to aid the awakenee to become cognizant of his or her particular inner excluding mechanisms and thus transcend them.
In this sense, there is almost always a one-to-one, and somewhat time-consuming relationship between guru and chela. So how-to presentation of information meant to be in-taken "by the millions" is not really workable in this regard—although such information can serve as extensive background considerations.
One factor that is important in this regard is that in the classical sense the guru clearly recognizes the importance, meaning and value of the chela as an individual entirely capable of awakening to and attaining bigger and more extensive peripheries of awareness.
The express and well-advertised purpose of doing so is to enable the chela to in-take and participate in larger realities—with the important proviso that if the mental excluding factors are not identified and transcended then any "knowledge" of the larger realities will merely remain superficially intellectual.
There now downloads from the foregoing the question involving where and how the mental excluding factors are to be found and identified.
A careful study of Eastern literature in this regard establishes that the major source of the excluding factors is the mental adaptation to local social factors, and which social factors do not take much cognizance of bigger realities.
The essence of this can be transliterated to the concept of smaller pictures versus bigger pictures—in that if the individual is oriented majorly within smaller pictures, then in many a sense the mind oriented in the smaller pictures is not prepared to access into bigger ones.
Indeed, a smaller picture can be identified by what it excludes, and so it is of little wonder that individuals who adapt to them erect inner mental exclusion factors appropriate to whatever smaller picture is involved.
PICTURE
To now begin to get deeper into this, it is worthwhile establishing the definitions of PICTURE. Beyond identifying that a picture is an illustrations of something, most dictionaries give the following:
- As a noun—"A portrayed description so vivid or graphic as to suggest a mental image or give an idea of something"
- As a verb—"To form a mental image" or, as might be added, to form a mental concept
It is also worth noting that PICTURESQUE is defined as "evoking mental images."
In turn, EVOKE is defined as "to call forth or summon up; to re-create imaginatively."
Moving a bit beyond the established definitions, a picture is also a FRAME OF REFERENCE: "A set, format, formulation or system (as of facts or ideas) serving to orient or give particular meaning."
A frame of reference also has a FRAMEWORK, this defined as: "A basic structure (as of ideas); a skeletal, openwork, or structural frame."
AN EXAMPLE OF A BIGGER PICTURE UNIVERSAL
Any even minimally competent assessment of the superpowers throughout the world easily establishes that the faculties are found world-wide, species-wide, and as having a transcultural basis.
This transcultural basis implies that the superpowers are existing in both a generic and a universal sense. And indeed, via comparative cultural studies, some researchers and writers have partially undertaken to examine and account for them in this light.
The concept of "universal" carries a connotation that seems rather consistently to be missed or ignored. "Universal" implies bigger, even the biggest picture. By implication, therefore, the functional basis of the superpowers would seem to belong within that bigger picture.
DESCENDING FROM BIGGER INTO SMALLER PICTURES
At first this might sound like some kind of gobbledygook—until it dawns that something that essentially and dynamically belongs within a bigger picture might not manifest very well, or at all, into smaller-picture contexts.
One perfectly logical reason for this might be that smaller picture activity doesn’t actually NEED bigger picture phenomena. This reason has a good amount of evidence behind it.
And so (as will be elaborated throughout this series of essays) it can be shown that bigger picture phenomena are usually EDITED OUT of smaller picture contexts, so as to protect the supposed integrity of those smaller contexts and realities.
SMALLER AND BIGGER PICTURE FORMATS
OF AWARENESS AND CONSCIOUSNESSIn any event, one can wonder, for example, how well the superpowers might activate or function in a mind, awareness, or consciousness that is centered or locked into smaller picture contexts.
This kind of thing has something to do with how one’s mind has been prepared or set to function.
Out of this, of course, comes the idea of MINDSET—which refers to a mind or a group of them centered or locked into a "picture" which is different from what other minds are locked into.
It is to be noted that the concept of mindsets has positive AND downer connotations, somewhat depending on which mindset is inspecting other mindsets.
Now, it can be said that our species, in the face of its many truly astonishing wonders, is quite excellent at setting up and nourishing small, limited mindsets of various kinds.
It is true that these are somewhat recombinant with each other. But the sum of the recombining still ends up Small and Limited—with the result that it is difficult to fit Universals into them.
Elaborating slightly, from a purely sociological overview, the proliferation of smaller, limited, or local mindsets accounts for the cultural sectoring of our species.
The cultural sectoring accounts, in turn, for the various different and usually conflicting societal formats one tends to encounter if one ventures into something so near as the next county or the next street.
All specimens of our species live within some kind of societal format, while the format in turn has something to do with how the specimens’ awareness, consciousness and mind-configurations end up being basically formulated.
How the mind thenceforth functions is probably quite consistent with the basic formulation (often referred to as mental programming.)
THE NATURE OF SMALLER PICTURE
SOCIETAL FORMATSBy far and large, from within itself any societal format seems a bigger picture.
But it can also be shown that societal formats are mostly centered in local realities rather than in universals. And thus the formats usually have more to do with local social set-ups and local environmental factors rather than with species-wide or other generic kinds of universals.
And indeed, not a few social structures are somewhat notorious for expunging generic universals if they don’t fit into their particular societal configurations.
If one takes time to reflect on the above commentary, it would thus seem that our species possesses the ironic universal capability of formulating different local societal formats—but that the formats are selective reductions emanating from the universal capability.
This is to say, then, that the reductions are smaller local pictures formulated because of and within the universal capability of formulating them. Grok THAT!
Indeed, anthropological and archaeological studies clearly establish that our species has, during its known Earthside history, formulated hundreds of thousands of smaller picture societal formats.
Most of these have come and gone, as is the on-going case today. The only really permanent aspect of this is our species, and which has the capability of formulating, and eventually disposing of, smaller societal pictures.
Put another way, it might be said that everyone has the capability to manufacture, craft, or construct SMALLER pictures. The reasons for the smaller pictures be might numerous, and indeed sometimes necessary. None the less, smaller IS smaller.
Individual specimens of our species are then formatted (or brought up, as it were) to fit into the smaller local societal formats, not into the larger universals that are generic within our species entire.
RELATIONSHIPS OF SMALLER AND BIGGER PICTURES
If the above can tolerably be considered, at least for theoretical discussion, it would then follow that ALL societal formats, no matter how bigger picture they seem, are actually smaller pictures—including the state, extent and content of their knowledge systems, whatever those might consist of.
Indeed, it is easy enough to demonstrate that knowledge systems can be characterized equally by what they DO NOT CONTAIN as by what they do contain.
Having said thus far, it would then be obvious that smaller pictures might be fitted into a larger picture. Many people are prepared to accept this, especially if they are humanitarian types.
In this context, it’s worth pointing up that some of the historical tutorial modalities referred to in Part 1 have consisted of transcultural and metaphysical efforts to mentally or intellectually orient students within bigger pictures that refer to universals.
And it is from within those "enlargement efforts" (so to speak) that increases in the frequency of at least spontaneous superpower phenomena are often reported.
The reasons for this might not be quite clear. But in some sense, it is possible to speculate that bigger picture does have something to do with bigger mind, and bigger mind in turn seems to have something to do with increases in superpower functioning.
In any event, bigger and smaller pictures exist. While we can think that smaller pictures might (somehow) be somewhat fitted into bigger ones, the reverse seems unlikely. It is true that big feet won’t fit into small shoes without wrecking the feet and/or the shoes.
To over-emphasize a little, it does seem a universal that small might fit into big with space to spare, but not the reverse. Thus, it could become obvious that bigger pictures won’t fit very well into smaller pictures.
There are, of course, many simple and complicated reasons for this—one being that smaller pictures are in the first place usually set up to exclude bigger picture elements. And indeed, the boundaries of many smaller pictures might vaporize if they would be required to integrate universal elements.
Beyond the implications of the above, it is easy enough to comprehend that at various social levels many have interests seriously vested in maintaining the contours of their local smaller pictures—if only to remain, as it were, big frogs in the ponds the smaller pictures represent.
If and where this might be the case, it is understandable that the introduction of universals into smaller picture situations could be seen as troublesome and undesirable.
For reasons that might be obvious, one certainly does not want to antagonize whatever are the pictures set up by any segmented portion of our species—and which anyway is a stressful waste of energy.
But the notion might be entertained, hypothetically, that our human history is the history of its societal and social SMALLER pictures within which all specimens of our species are some kind of disposable and replaceable players.
It is true, of course, that the players are usually arranged along lines ranging downward from the powerful to the powerless. But the "identities" of the powerful and powerless tend to change if the picture configurations that contain them starts shifting about.
This may be one reason why the powerful of course don’t like the picture configurations to change—while the powerless sometimes tend to view such shifts with interest and bemusement.
As an aside, this is an hypothetical situation that emerges in other contexts at various points in this Website. But here it is worth noting that power is usually considered bigger picture. However, whatever is passing for the power is only relative to the size or dimensions of the picture within which it is being "played."
ONE ASPECT OF THE SOCIOLOGY
OF PICTURE-MAKINGThe usual, even standard, way of dealing with pictures is to attempt to concretize those wanted, and to try to trash those not wanted—and usually by any means possible.
The concretizing and trashing seem laudable within the mindsets locked into the pictures involved. But by far and large, this somewhat reeks of pismire proclivities randomly adrift in the hostile mildew of useless lower order illusionisms. And indeed, as many ultimately discover, any conviction that smaller pictures will maintain for very long is clearly an illusion.
SUMMING UP SO FAR
In attempting to sum up so far, it seems quite clear that big and small pictures do exist, and that there are important distinctions to be made among them.
Roughly speaking, it can be considered that bigger pictures probably refer and relate to universals.
In many a possible sense the smaller pictures refer only to local factors that are not universal in nature, but with one exception. It seems a rather vivid universal factor redolently incorporated into our species to be able to erect smaller pictures—and this could explain why there have been and are so many of them.
Indeed, it is possible to guesstimate that EACH specimen of our species is actually some kind of an individual and individualizing smaller picture, and this in a number of ways. And indeed, the concept of THE individual has its exceedingly important connotations in this regard.
As already mentioned, the usual way of managing WITHIN smaller pictures is to concretize the one desired and to trash others—this at the individual, group and cultural levels, and even at the philosophic, sociological and scientific levels.
The assumption here seems to be that the concretizing will enlarge the one desired and diminish the others. Thus, one can observe, rather frequently, a lot of attempted concretizing and attempting trashing.
The whole of this might be referred to as the Wars of the Smaller Pictures, this whole in turn being a rather stinky, lower-order enterprise that can trickle down into pismire stink replete with scumocracy and slimeocracy phenomena.
To now link back to the contexts of superpower tutorials, the world-wide evidence is quite strong that the superpowers "belong" to some kind of faculties universal to our species.
This seems to place the superpowers within some kind of bigger universal picture. However, the contours and formulations of this have NOT been adequately mapped.
Among the evidence along these lines that can be located and analyzed, it would appear that those individuals who can access, so to speak, universal bigger pictures tend to experience some kind of automatic enhancement or elevation in superpower functioning.
One of the tentative observations regarding the whole of this is that smaller pictures might at first seem far distant and not relevant to the case for superpower activation. Yet, their mindset effects or by-products might easily function as exclusion factors and inhibitors, especially if they are active in some kind of mental sub-awareness levels.
Whether this is the whole case or not, elements of it have obvious relevance to the entire theoretical contexts of any possible activation of the superpowers.
If this is understood for what it might represent, then the spontaneous urge is to reject and escape from the smaller pictures whose limitations might be thought of, and can actually constitute, mental blockages to increases of superpower activation and functioning.
However, long experience has taught this writer that smaller pictures are everywhere, and that it is virtually impossible to ESCAPE from them. Indeed, as was earlier the case with little Moi, one might merely make efforts to jump from one smaller picture to another one, based on the illusion that the latter SEEMS bigger.
Well, who knows for sure. Any motion is better than none at all.
THE STRUCTURE OF SMALLER PICTURES
Some years of study and reflection regarding this Situation suggest that escape from smaller picture confines does not mean avoiding them. Rather, entrapment (so to speak) in smaller pictures is possible largely because one doesn’t understand what a small picture consists of in a structural sense.
After all, if one wants to escape a "prison," one needs first to know that it IS a prison, and then to know its layout, its construction, and its ways and means—and possibly even to know HOW and WHY it can and does exist in the first place.
In any event, there are NO studies regarding the topic that might be entitled "Recognition of Smaller Picture Characteristics."
Some few of these structural characteristics (or anatomy) that can easily be recognized without too much intellectual stress will begin in the following essay.
But before jumping into the structural characteristics of smaller pictures, a particular factor now really needs to be pointed up, somewhat bluntly.
On average most people already have some kind of idea about the superpowers—and those ideas are almost certainly derived from within some kind of local, smaller picture concepts.