The Book of Wesley

CC

Introduction to The Second Hundred

THE FULL WORKS which constitute The Book of Wesley have been dubbed “Wesley’s 500” or optomistically “The Thousand,” although it is not clear that he had a thousand coherent thoughts, much less that he wrote them down. Even though he considered the work “irrational,” a more appropriate term might be “non-rationalized.” He simply wrote his own observations and feelings and did not make an attempt to sort and categorize, but simply to express.

Each “C” or Book of One Hundred, explores at successively deeper levels the understanding that this one person came to have of life while living in a suspended state of consciousness. There has been no attempt by this editor to isolate and categorize the topics covered in anything more than the order in which he wrote them. Thus, cross-references are made only to preceding statements, and never anticipate or look ahead to future thoughts.

Wesley used Roman numerals to identify each Hundred verses (C, CC, CCC, CD, D, etc.) and we have continued that convention by tens for releasing the book in this forum. The editor has chosen to continue consecutive numbering in Arabic numerals rather than beginning each hundred at one. Cross-references to statements will be shown in parentheses () only by the Arabic numeral and will not make reference to which Hundred.

Nathan Everett, editor

August 2, 1981

CX

The soul mate (41) cannot be chosen in time/space relationships. They are chosen in the super-conscious which is not bound to the physical world and the measurements it imposes. The soul mate may work through different physical manifestations at different times.
Time is not an absolute, nor a constant. The measurement of time is proportionate to the universal motion. Time, therefore, is a “physical” thing. (23)
If the universal motion were inconstant, in other words, speeding up or slowing down periodically, time would also speed up and slow down in relation to it. Since all material things are dependent upon their relation to the universal motion, the mechanics of our clocks and measuring devices would slow or speed at the same rate as the universal motion. We would, therefore, not be able to ascertain the change in universal motion, all relative things—even the deterioration of atomic particles—maintaining their relative speed.
If change in the universal motion cannot be ascertained, can such change be said to exist?
Trying to explain time, I asked what a year was. 365 days. What is a day? 24 hours. What is an hour? 60 minutes. A minute? 60 seconds.
So what is a second? Logically, in my elementary school mind, I believed a second was the basic element of time. That is what the skinny hand on the wall clock swept past that built all the quantities of time that followed it.
But reversing the order of definition brought a clearer definition of time. A second is 1/60th of a minute which is 1/60th of an hour which is 1/24th of a day. The basic units of measurement—our clocks, if you will—are defined as proportionate to the day. These also have astronomical implications which are more easily seen in the larger units.
A day is the period of time from sunset to sunset. It is, therefore, measured by the earth’s rotation (motion), not by a pre-determined time unit. A year, is marked by the earths revolution around its sun (motion). Thus, our basic units of time are derived from the relative movement of the cosmic bodies.
Imagine if you would, what would happen if it took “more than” 24 hours for the earth to rotate on its axis. Rotation and revolution are bound together like the gears in a clock. The distance around a center gear is measured by the number of times a small revolving gear will rotate on its axis during one revolution. That number is always the same, no matter how fast the rotation.
The mechanical measuring devices that we create to mark off our progress in this revolution and rotation are equally as dependent on that motion as the rotation of the earth is. Our very body chemistry—even entropy—is linked to the same cosmic clock.

CXX

If during the time of this writing, the universal motion had somehow slowed, our revolutions around the sun slowed, our rotation on our axis had slowed, our mechanical timers had slowed, and our own bodies compensated to slow down to that rate, then we would have no way of gauging or ascertaining that velocity shift.
Time is thus strictly controlled by the cosmic motion and cannot have meaning outside that context. Time travel (86) is not possible when considered outside the context of motion. The secret is not to travel “when” but “where.”
The logical extension of this concept is that we are simultaneously at all times. Our consciousness is the only time traveling entity. (8, 20)
Law is a convenient codification of a standard of behavior to enable people to interact with each other in an orderly and mutually satisfying way. It is created by the people who it governs and is effective only in so much as it is accepted.
The greatest error of governance is to attempt to legislate morals. This is the failure of most religion as well.
When law steps beyond the bounds of social structure and interrelative action and attempts to govern thought pattern (or morality), it ceases to be valid as law and one is no longer bound to obedience. Oppression, therefore, is inherently illegal.
For every true law that exists there is at least one viable and legal alternative to obedience. Without choice, there is no governance. The test of the validity of a law is the alternative to obedience.
Note the first law: “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat… [or] thou shalt surely die.” The legal alternative to obedience, however, is explained soon after. “Now lest they put forth their hand and eat of the tree of life and live forever…” A second tree offered immortality in the garden as an antidote to the effect of the first tree. To have eaten of it first (nowhere forbidden) would have voided the effect of the first law.
The problem with philosophy is that too many people study it and too few do it. Genius is born not in analyzing and categorizing, but in philosophizing.
Valid law must prescribe remedy, not punishment. (117, 118)

Editor’s Note: Verse 119, seeming to be somewhat flip, begins a lengthy section written in pencil. This is the second section in the Book of Wesley written in pencil. It seems that this may be material that Wesley intended to rewrite, was being tongue-in-cheek about, or that he expected to contain a lot of questionable math.

CXXX

Editor’s Note: This section regarding Wesley’s understanding of law is in its entirety, a pencil section. Did he intend to rewrite? Or erase?

All things being relative, law cannot indicate “rightness” or “wrongness,” but is indicative of the price society prescribes for certain types of behavior. This, one society may prescribe a high price for behavior which in another society may have no restitutional value at all.
There having been no “rightness” or “wrongness” to the first trespass (28, 118), a price was placed on a mode of behavior. There is responsibility for payment of the price, but no guilt based on right and wrong. (19)
For the civilly disobedient entity there are two choices: a) be willing and able to pay the remedy, or b) be able to find and utilize the viable legal alternative to obedience. (118)
Mass civil disobedience may be defined as one of two things: a) the result of a change in societal norms making the law obsolete and resulting in its change, or b) a reaction to the legislation of morality, demonstrating its invalidity as law.
The principles of civil law and disobedience may be applied carte blanche to physical law. (17)
The inability to pay the remedy is a viable legal alternative to obedience. i.e. Death releases a person from all legal obligations.
The person who has nothing and is willing to lose that which he or she has, is thus free to disobey at will, or to obey only him/herself.
It is most frequently seen that the “saviors” (those who seem to live outside the realm of physical law) have no possessions and are possessed by no one.
The inability to pay is one branch of the viable legal alternative to obedience that may be called negating the remedy. If the remedy is negated, the law is rendered impotent.
The character of a savior (128): A savior is an embodiment of the essence of humanity, demonstrating in all its limitations all its infinite possibilities.

CXL

The sounds that we call words and language are combinations of musical sequences overlaid as a camouflage to each other. Words are our means of disguising the music of our emotions. Since our real feelings are frequently in conflict with each other and with the emotions we wish to convey, the resulting sounds are an interweaving of different melodies.
The principle is as if you could play Dvorak’s New World Symphony and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at the same time and hear Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address out of the cacophony.
What is truly unique about the principle, however, is that a person may be able to play both symphonies and any combination of other sounds and hear each one distinctly and separately. That theory expanded means you may listen to the human voice and hear separately and distinctly, each emotional overtone and melody.
The tuning of oneself to the music of other people (97), stripping away the camouflage that we so carefully lay to conceal our feelings from others, leads to the empathic response (98, 99). But that empathy may be singularly painful to the receiver, who will hear not only the pure emotions of the heart laid bare, but also the desperate cacophony, that we spread in an attempt to conceal our emotions from others.
Emotion is non-programmed. It is basically the same across all cultural bounds. That does not mean that the triggering mechanism for the emotion cannot be programmed. Take, for example, fear. One person’s fear response may be triggered by heights, another by snakes or spiders or tight places. But all would recognize the basic response or emotion as the same. The emotion of fear is innate.
We recognize far fewer emotions than we experience. We know joy, fear, anger, love, and hatred, and little else. Despair, melancholy, and sadness round out our emotional vocabularies. Because of this, we find ourselves struggling to find words when we are struck by emotions that are unfamiliar. Either we seek and find a means of expressing the emotion, or we deny its existence and program ourselves not to respond to it.
The emotions that we recognize tend to be at the extremes of our emotional registers. In reality there is not a moment of our lives that we do not experience some sort of emotion.
As our emotions are carefully concealed in our words, they are just as much revealed there. Certain sounds that we make trigger certain emotions. These sounds, however, have become culturally relative. The tone of voice in which they are spoken remains a much closer clue to their meaning.
A more basic key is the written word. Since the handwriting is closely related to the gesture (92) and gestures are far more universally meaningful than words, it is possible to tell much more about a person from the stroke of a pen than from the words that are written.
It may be said, with as much logic as any other statement herein, that the gesture precedes the spoken word, i.e. we reach before we ask, etc. As such, it is frequently more descriptive of the actual object or emotion than the spoken word is.

CL

Just as one may attune oneself to hear the music in another’s voice through the words, one may also align oneself to see the gesture in the stroke of the pen that actually describes the subject of the written word.
It is possible, therefore, to look at a person’s writing or the marks that one makes while doodling, and read the frame of mind in which something was written. And since the gesture is universal (though not absolute—it may vary in form from culture to culture, but not in its flow), it is possible to read the writing of any language and perceive the image represented.
So, looking at any series of characters, we should be able to “feel” the images thought at the time of writing by the author. These images will be played back to us through the framework of our own experience. (56)
The most natural means of expressing these perceived images will be through music. Music will then act as a relay medium, receiving, amplifying and transmitting images from person to person, culture to culture, even time to time.
The image perception is most easily accomplished when looking at symbols that are not immediately recognized as having defined meanings. It is much more difficult to get a “feeling” from a word written in one’s own language than in a foreign tongue not known to the reader.
Scarcely a modern English-speaking person has looked at an Egyptian hieroglyphic and not gained some feeling from the writing even though they have no idea of the meaning of the symbol.
While everyone has that latent ability to attune themselves to another’s emotions, most people are able to block or shield themselves from being “read.” There is, however, that rare person who is so un-camouflaged, so open and honest, so innocent, that everyone with whom he or she comes in contact can not only tell instantly what that person is feeling, but can feel every twinge of that person’s emotions.
Projective empathy, then, is not so much an art of projection as an inability to shield. Only insomuch as a person is able to control the emotions that he or she is experiencing, can that person be said to control the emotions of others.
The projective empathy is his or her own impregnable defense against other experiencing entities. To attack a projective empathy would be tantamount to attacking oneself since each emotion of the victim would be felt by the assailant.
Our conscious carries on a complex and continual juggling act between the physically experienceable and the consciously knowable. And the pattern of the juggled realities creates what we know as time and space. (38)

Editor’s Note 1: In this section, Wesley attempts a “scientific” explanation of his unique ability to read emotion in writing and to translate it into music so that those emotions are experienced by others. To our knowledge, it was never shown that this ability could be reproduced in others following his procedures. Wesley himself would argue that this was because the person making the attempt was not fully opening himself to receiving the emotions, and/or was not honest and innocent enough to transmit them. Nonetheless, these statements would seem to defy truly scientific proof.

Editor’s Note 2: Verse 148 begins the second “brown” segment of The Book of Wesley (the first seen in the second 100). It is curious that this also marks a subtle shift in Wesley’s subject. It is virtually certain that he is attempting to explain the unique ability of his granddaughter (Ariadne Allen Paris) to play music that fully conveys her emotions and who is so open and innocent that she is completely “unshielded.” These three verses and the next four (151-154), may be the result of Wesley’s constant drive to maintain his own sanity in the face of physical and emotional experiences that lay outside the norms of humanity.

CLX

The phenomenon that we know as sanity is the further product of our conscious juggling limiting our physical experiences to the norms of our cohabiting physical entities. Even when an experience outside this realm exists or occurs, it is quickly reduced by our shared inhabitation of the physical world—to the prevailing “norm of experience.” (4, 64)
What we refer to as insanity is a complete experience of phenomena that falls outside the “norms of experience,” accompanied by a breakdown in our cosmic juggling process.
Thus, it is most frequently from the mouths of the “insane” that we are accosted by undisguised truths that frequently take years more to be recognized by the “sane.”
It seems that there must be some reason that our infinite consciousness voluntarily limits our existence to a time/space relationship. Perhaps experience of emotion can take place only in these confines and in order to maintain an appropriate balance in our cosmic juggling, we must have the experience of emotion available only in time/space relationships.
The word spiritual has as a root the word ritual. It can frequently be seen that a person’s spiritual growth and nature is based upon the type/form/content of that person’s rituals.
If a person is a Sunday-morning-church-worshipper, the rituals of that church will be a source for spiritual growth (if the spirit can be said to “grow”); and far more so than the “message” of the minister. But what will surprise people is that the daily rituals that we perform (bathing, shaving, morning cup of coffee, glass of wine with dinner, nightcap, etc.) are more profoundly influential to our spiritual development than the act of Eucharist.
The ritual is the means of engaging the spirit.
The spirit is engaged (as in put in gear) with the universal conscious (god, goddess, etc.). It is, then, the source of motive power for life (13-16). That motive power provides us with means for living within our physical limitations—or beyond them.
To ask if one believes in the spirit (universal conscious, god, goddess, etc.) is much like asking if he or she believes in stones. You may build with them, throw them, carve them, shape them, break them, or ignore them. They are not a subject for belief. That is irrelevant.
In the same way, the spirit may be bent, shaped, built with, etc.—used—or ignored. But it is not of the realm of belief. Religion, on the other hand, is a system of beliefs and is irrelevant to the spirit.

Editor’s Note: As noted in the previous ten, the first four verses above are part of the “brown” section of the second hundred. Wesley’s experience, falling outside the norm of humanity, left him constantly struggling to affirm his sanity—sometimes successfully. The latter six verses, returning to his standard black fountain pen, contain Wesley’s most vehement indictment of “religion” as “irrelevant to the spirit.”

CLXX

The ritual (engaging the spirit) is a source of great power for those willing to use it. The impetus of the ritual is relative only to the intellect or manifestation of the individual.
When dealing with engaging the spirit, it is helpful to remember that the words written on paper are not what invokes power, but the ritual—whatever it may be—itself.
The mind (separated from the spirit at the moment for convenience) is one of the best examples we have of a network. Denying the gray mass in our heads as a limitation, it is continually leaping ahead and behind in time, around the globe, or around the universe. It is in constant motion, playing out a multi-dimensional design.
Typically, we communicate two dimensionally to the multi-dimensional minds of others. We use sound waves moving through the air. That is a limiting effect and connects only on the two dimensions (words and sound) with another—or in some cases more than one—mind. (50)
Only our own inhibitions stop us from engaging other minds multi-dimensionally. If we are networking, we need only open our personal networks to the influence of others.
Keep in mind that all things are made of relationships of connections or patterns of movement. Picture a busy freeway system as an illustration. Automobiles are traveling east and west on one freeway, north and south on the other. Where the two freeways intersect, some autos continue the directions they were going and others take, for example, the exit from north to west. Let us say that the car entering the westbound traffic does so next to another already traveling west. They travel side by side for a mile or two until another exit and one or the other of the cars turns off.
This illustrates two-dimensional communication—traveling parallel to each other, but never merging more deeply.
What would happen, however, if the car from the northbound lane actually merged with the car in the westbound lane and became one car while they traveled westward and split again when the appropriate exit arrived? The drivers would be joined by a common direction of travel, by a common environment, and a common velocity. They would share the same experience and end their relationship “knowing” something of the other person.
This illustrates the next stage in communication, which I will call three-dimensional. Simply put, it is sharing the same vehicle with another traveler. (51)
Three-dimensional communication is most frequently found between spouses, lovers, twins, close friends, business partners, etc. It may also be found in small and isolated groups, primitive societies, etc. where the corporate body functions virtually as an individual or single entity.

Editor’s Note: It may seem that Wesley has departed from his unity and oneness theme when he starts talking about the mind separately. The evidence, however, is that he merely lacked the vocabulary to make sense of the oneness. He separates the mind “for convenience” in order to express a functional aspect of the entity. There is no evidence here of Wesley actually believing a difference between mind, body, spirit, and any other aspect of the person is separate from the others. As Wesley moves on toward multi-dimensional communication in the next ten, he also moves closer to a unity not of the individual, but of all people.

CLXXX

How can we illustrate multi-dimensional communication? In our freeway illustration so far, we have limited ourselves to one vehicle per person and one direction at a time. Of course, the mind has many more channels that operate at the same time. Say, for example, that my mind is represented by all red autos. You can see now that they may travel a multitude of different roads, speeds, directions. Some may be parked, waiting for use at another time. Some may be in need of repair. But all represent the workings of my mind.
Now let us suggest that your mind is represented by all vehicles with two doors. This also gives you the vast variety of travel, parking, repair, location, direction, speed, etc. But it will be obvious to you that some two door automobiles are also red.
This then is the basis of multi-dimensional communication. Each of us has our distinct identifying characteristics, but both of us have certain channels that follow exactly the same networks.
We may limit our vision and see ourselves figuratively as only red cars, or only two-doors; or we may expand ourselves infinitely and recognize that we network with each other and with those also who have 4-cylinder engines, or air-conditioning, or round wheels.
When we tune in with another person and begin to expand our own networks into theirs, we both begin to discover things about ourselves that we did not know. In the knowledge of those things, we gain a reservoir of power that exceeds not only either of our individual abilities, but which exceeds the sum of our individual abilities.
Hierarchical social structures are by definition degrading. A person cannot be elevated above his or her co-inhabitants. He or she may only hope to degrade others into his/her service.
For an entity in a hierarchical system to reverse his or her degradation, he or she need only exceed the expectations. If I am paid to do job A, then doing job A is my debt for what I am paid. I am forever owing the labor for job A to my employer for his/her beneficence toward me. If, however, I do both job A and job B, but am paid only for job A, my employer is indebted to me. I am no longer hierarchically degraded.
A savior once said, “He who would force you to walk one mile with him, walk with him two.”
Hierarchical systems are innately male-based.
When a person has become so transparently honest and undisguised (147) that they cannot believe that anything they say can be untrue, whatever they say must be or become truth. If I am at the point of honesty at which I determinedly (or better, naturally) speak only the truth, whatever I say is governed by truthfulness. Even if I say the table is floating three inches above the ground, because I speak only truth, it must float three inches above the ground.

Editor’s Note: Wesley recognizes that there is a difference between a person who routinely deceives himself or is mentally ill believing what he says and a person who only ever speaks the truth. Believing your own lies may be a future topic that Wesley comes back to, but in this case, he is strictly referring to the transparently honest.

CXC

It is possible to process oneself to complete honesty, but one will normally maintain belief in the prevailing “norm of experience,” (151) thus seldom if ever contradicting what the rest of us believe. It becomes a rare exception, then, that a person is ignorant/innocent of the prevailing norm. When it occurs, the word of that person wields nearly unlimited power and he may eat stones simply because he says they are bread.
We limit our perception of the universe and reduce it to simplest form. It is as if we sat listening to an orchestra playing a symphony and heard only the violins. Someone sitting next to us may hear only the drums. A third person hears only the horns. Each hears a true and honest portion of the symphony. But only a few people hear the complete composition.
While pulling the words we hear from other people apart to catch each individual strain of the music, we dare not lose sight, or sound, of the entire symphony. (92, 131-133)
While each hears an honest portion of the symphony (182) none would be able to agree that the others were equally as valid in their interpretations. This creates political parties.
The obvious seldom is.
That the principles of coincidence are always in operation is not a reason to assume that every event is a significant coincidence. Significance is the key.
Science has indicated that a gaseous substance will expand to fill a vacuum. The same is true of networks and coincidence and relationships. To reduce it to practical terms, the trivial will expand to fill an empty relationship. Suddenly the speck of dust, the time of dinner, the pattern of the china, all loom up as being incredibly significant.
Another viable legal alternative to obedience (17) is malicious obedience. Unlike obedience, malicious obedience obeys the letter of the law and ignores its spirit. This is the foundation of the legal profession as it is not concerned with proving a person did or did not break the law, but is focused on finding a law that makes the behavior legal.
Malicious obedience is the most common form of civil disobedience in the modern world. It results in longer more defined and therefore narrower laws and in page upon volumes of written interpretations. This is as true in religion as it is in governance.
Malicious obedience is at least as old as the Bible (or rather its legendary sources).

Editor’s Note: In Devon Layne’s series “Living Next Door to Heaven,” Book IX, Heaven’s Gate (2018), Doug quotes verse 185 “The obvious seldom is,” as one possibility for his final words. It is rejected as being from The Book of Wesley that they had all studied in a class called “Critical Approaches and Radical Thinking.” That is cited in Book VII: Hearthstone Entertainment. It is unlikely that the works of Wesley have ever been cited in a college class.

CC

Another viable legal alternative to obedience is circumvention. This is especially applicable to laws requiring action in given circumstances. For example, the law may require that 2x4 studs be placed at 16" centers. However, using post and lintel construction would eliminate studs altogether and thus circumvent the law.
The more frequently malicious obedience (189-190) is practiced, the easier circumvention (191) becomes.
It is possible for a law to become so well-defined that it becomes inapplicable. Therefore, we generate an unceasing flow of laws beginning with a general principle and being honed down over successive generations to a specific applicability, ultimately becoming obsolete and irrelevant. In the process from genesis to obsolescence, the words of the law may expect to quadruple with each generation.
Circumvention is also a Biblically sound tradition as illustrated by the Greek word for sin. It is literally translated “to miss the mark.” One may easily avoid missing the mark (sinning) by not shooting.
The easiest way to avoid obeying the rules of a game without cheating is to play a different game. One is not bound by the rules of football if one is playing tennis.
As the arc of a pendulum deteriorates (60-63), it changes the direction of its swing more frequently.
In the same way, as our social history begins to settle at its historical convergency, the direction of social thought—though perhaps not reaching its radical heights of former eras—changes at an ever -increasing rate of speed, leading to social disorientation, sudden turns in thought, and confusion among the masses.
A pendulum has its greatest potential at the bottom of the arc. Thus, we see that when we approach the historical convergence, our potential for beneficent glory and total destruction is at an incomprehendable height.
Since all things are in motion (19), one might be tempted to assert that all things are made of motion, i.e. a relationship of connections. Therefore, one might picture sound waves, light waves, brain waves (the most elemental units of motion) as actually being able to take shape. If one could concentrate strongly enough or compress the thought waves, they might take a shape visibly representative of the thinker or the thought.
While it may be difficult to conceive of thoughts taking visible shape, it is important to remember that thoughts hold their own dimension of reality. Nothing is thought that does not exist. The mind, being a sophisticated broadcaster of thoughts constantly projects beyond the body. Just as a doctor is capable of using electronic instruments to measure and chart brain waves, some sensitive receivers may be able to “see” the thoughts that we broadcast.

Editor’s Note: We once again find that in the last two verses of the second hundred, Wesley couches his thoughts in “might” and “maybe.” It is significant to note that these two verses are the second pencil section of the second hundred. The third hundred follows.

❮ The First C The Third C ❯

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