Diagram 147

Re Talk: 320

First Story.  My opening line will be:  Life has a First Story for everything.

     Let me tell you what First Story is, to get us going.  You catch a kid doing something and you say, "Why did you do that?"  And the kid will go, "Well, er, well..."  They always have a First Story when they're really on the spot.  One of the good ones is, "Well I didn't do it.  Sis did it.  One of the kids down the block did it.  As a matter of fact, he just left town -- but he did it."  That is First Story.  Every kid worthy of the name kid has a First Story, if he can talk.  Every kid in the world, no matter how old, has a First Story.  Life has a First Story for everything.  Everything.  And I'm going to give you some sickening, if not inspiring, examples.

     If it were not for some extraordinary information you would never get anywhere in life because you would continue, along with everybody else, to uselessly struggle with the First Story.  It is part of the great trick.  Listen:  there are some good lower circuit people at a bar, bricklayers, ditch diggers -- people of our ilk.  At any rate, there they are and onto the TV flashes a picture of a Ferrari, and one says, "You know, I just heard that one of those things costs $100,000."  And all the bricklayers go, "Yeah.  I always figured the rich suffered from ingrown brains.  Who would pay $100,000 for a car!?"

     Life's First Story, "Sure they laugh, because they can't afford one."  It meets all the requirements because it seems to answer any question you have.  "Sure they're going to laugh at paying $100,000 for a car.  What else are they going to do?  Some of them probably won't make that much money total before they die."  That is First Story.  And let me tell you the purpose of First Stories:  they seem to be meaningful explanations, but above all, they stop any further investigation.  Life is trying to get out of something, and in a sense it's the same thing a kid does.  But here is part of the subtle nature of how the information has grown with the evolution of consciousness, but the trick has stayed the same.  The tacit part of the First Story answer to my example is that these lower circuit people would like to have a Ferrari as much as you or I would.  But First Story doesn't get it.  Because if the bricklayer's laughter is indeed coming from the lower circuit, what that circuit is saying (if it could talk) is, "Even if I had $100,000 I wouldn't spend it on a car."

     I assume that enough of you are catching on.  This data that I present is hidden only because ordinary consciousness can't touch it.  It runs in parallel to Life's First Story.  First Story is satisfying enough to stop you from going any further, left to your own devices.  Some other examples of First Story:  the effect of the environment explains human behavior.  Another:  the world is binary.  Another:  talk will either make a difference or the difference.  Another:  in some way a person can gradually get to know himself.  And, of course, still fail to realize at your time of death that you're no better off than when you started.  That one is a great example of First Story.  If you had another view of so-called gradual change, you would see that everything you have done along those lines up until now has had no effect whatsoever.  You, in truth, do not know any more about you than you ever knew.

     Another good First Story is that money itself has some real significance over your 70 years here.  And another is that Man is driven to personalize life, and especially death, and call it religion.  Along those lines, since I'm over in the religious ghetto, another First Story is that patronizing the gods with prayer and ritual will have some sort of effect.  There is no proof whatsoever that it works.  None.  Except the First Story.  It is as if Life, whenever it wants to, can slosh paint on everybody -- that is, the First Story -- and it becomes a part of human consciousness.

     There's another First Story that is really good.  It is an assumption on humanity's part that there is available a continual discovery, if not unraveling, of new facts which will prove personally beneficial.  It is like fad facts.  A present example is now known as "winter depression."  Psychologists and medical doctors now find a substance in humans which, due to decreased sunlight, can bring on depression during the winter.  It is a faddish fact.  It will be good for maybe two years and then you'll never hear about it again.  Right now it is a pretty hot topic.  They are treating people by exposing them to light.  But two years from now if you ask a psychologist about it, you'll draw a blank look.  Still, the First Story is that new facts like this are being uncovered all the time, in all areas of science and medicine, and will prove personally beneficial.  If you were my good clinical observer with blood of ice water in your brain, you would have to face up to the fact that none of these new fad facts have personally benefited you as long as you've been alive. JC talk 320