I recently found this letter written by myself in the mid 1980s to myself in 1978.
Claude;
As you are no doubt aware even after the most cursory observation, you cannot hold an aim steadily for more than a few minutes, hours, or maybe days. I don’t recall an example of the latter but let’s give you the benefit of the doubt. Even so, you cannot maintain attention on a project for the months and years required for voluntary evolution.
Voluntary evolution is not a quick and easy process. If I told you the actual time required to evolve to any significant degree you would find it to hard to believe. Let it suffice to say that it takes at least years.
One of the uses of a group is the maintenance of aim. The attention of a member of the group can be directed by where the attention of the group is placed. The attention of the group is directed by a combination of the placed attentions of the members. A group tends toward the mediocre. The extremes on both ends of the stick are modified by being in a group toward the middle of the stick. Those whose attention tends to wander all over creation is held more fixed by association in the group. And those attention can be fixed firmly on a single aim can be nudged about by the constant jostling in a group.
Another aspect of group work that is extremely valuable is the combination fo types. Any individual has a limited repertoire of points of view and attitude. In a group many different points of view and different attitudes are represented. As a simple example of this usefulness of this consider the brainstorming of an idea. You know yourself how beneficial it is to get input from different people just with the projects you have been doing.
The real no-bullshit down-to-brass-tacks this-is-it you’d-better-pay-close-attention wait-no-longer here-it-comes reason that you need to work in a group is that it takes a group to act as the landing pad for presences that cause transformation (or evolution).
- Voluntary Evolution is not a psychological process of self inspection — even though it is vital that we know ourselves like we know the multiplication table.
- Voluntary Evolution is not a system of physical exercise for developing the body — even through it is vital that we develop dexterity, balance, flexibility, and strength.
- Voluntary Evolution is not a method of developing mental abilities and tricks — even though it is vital that we learn to hold the mind on a subject and hear beyond the verbal barrage.
- Voluntary Evolution is not a method for developing control over bummer states (depression, loneliness, fear of embarrassment, etc) — even though it is vital that we learn not to be at the effect of our emotional fluctuations and learn to produce at will specific moods.
- Voluntary Evolution is not a method for the development of psychic powers — even though such powers are necessary in our work.
Voluntary Evolution is an agonizingly slow process of transformation — the turning of one thing into another. Not the reshaping, not the reworking. It is the actual transformation from one thing into another.
The part that was just-sort-of-slipping-by is a group acting as a landing pad for presences that cause transformation. By verbal argument I can’t convince you that presences exist, nor that these presences can cause transformation, or that the presences we require for our work need a group to descend. However, if you are willing to give it a try, in only a relatively short time you may begin to glimpse the truth of what I’m saying.