Jan Cox Talk 0294

The Ultimate Contrast, " I want "

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Summary by TK

Jan Cox Talk #294 Nov 12, 1987 - 1:50

[Kyroot to :08.]
[Contrast. It is impossible to smell one smell, touch one touch. Consciousness is sensual contrast. Two samples are required to be conscious of one. Two pools of contrast extremes are accepted by the ordinary --but three are required for any combination to exist. The five senses are not constructed to operate out of inaction --to tolerate boredom. Thus is daydreaming born. Inaction would result in the death of the senses --contrast is a fuel to keep senses active. Consider: "man must be saved from himself" as connected internally to the I/me, consciousness -unconsciousness, angel/devil. What if all human conflict is nothing more than Life's absolute need for contrast: Everything is contrasted for Life's need for you to be a human being. What the form of contrast takes is absolutely meaningless as perceived (if man could be forced/allowed to see it). There is no human, much less, individual question/problem that has any significance. All questions are merely statements of the necessity/reality of contrast. The ultimate contrast is I want. Every religion and philosophy is bent upon eliminating contrast, while yet breeding more.]
['All human troubles' are synonymous with ordinarily perceived time. Time as a contrast between I and troubles; a non-physical distance-between; displacement in time --a day late. Not to be conscious of troubles (i.e., no time displacement) is in fact not having them. If change were possible, it would not be talked about or desired. In the City people "don't have the time" --i.e., have no escape from time troubles (i.e., the 'lack' of time). The Real Revolutionist says "I have all the time in the world, (because all the time in the world has me)".]
[Memory as the ability to freeze/retrieve troubles past; a prime supporter of contrast. ]
[Life is the supreme culprit--there is no contrast. ]
[1:34 UFN's. ]
[1:41 Epilog comments. Don't give up your hard-wired personal dreams. Normally, dreams are abandoned by women with childbirth; by men with marriage. Don't abandon them permanently. ]
[Is it possible to sell a teaching without selling the source? Offering knowledge, hope, relief or pleasure? The ultimate description of This Thing: Life is the ultimate cause.

Transcript

THE ULTIMATE CONTRAST: "I WANT"

Since we seem to have already established a jocose mood, and inasmuch as recently I seem to have presented data that got worseningly complex, then why not just continue the silliness, and I will only touch on matters completely impertinent and irrelevant.

I want to continue commenting upon the great matter of counterpoint, distinction, divergence, dissimilitude, juxtaposition, complement, contrariety, or, the one I like, simply contrast. Ordinary consciousness could not exist were it not for contrast.

It is impossible to smell one smell. It would be impossible to touch one touch. If you do not have two samples of anything, you cannot be conscious of one. If all you ever had in your life was one odor -- do you hear me -- you would have no sense of smell; you wouldn't know whether you were smelling anything or not. If you were to smell the one smell, you would have smelled nothing. You couldn't discuss smelling, nobody could ask you whether you'd ever smelled anything. If they tried to describe it, you wouldn't be able to follow any of their descriptions. You have to have two samples to be conscious of one. And in a humorous way, I suggest to you that that's true with all the senses. In an even more humorous way, I suggest to you that that's true with thinking, that you could not have one thought and still be conscious.

You could look upon the matter of contrast as though there were two pools of contrast. You have to have at least two samples or you have no contrast. You cannot smell one smell. So, the bare minimum for a contrast would be two areas, two sources to draw on, except for this: you'd really have to have a third one, otherwise you would immediately, if not sooner, run through all the combinations. The two combinations would have spent themselves; and you would be left with that one, immediate contrast with no possibility of there ever being other new ones. So, I would suggest to you that there has to be at least a third pool that would furnish a continuing supply of fresh contrast.

Let me also point out here that the five senses themselves are not constructed to abide boredom. They are not molecularly structured to be inactive, and, of course, a splendid, if not a sterling definition of boredom is: inactivity. The senses are not constructed to tolerate, to operate, on the basis of inaction. An insufficient lack of activity would spell the demise of the senses. It would be, in truth, terminal ennui; it would be the death of the senses. Continuing with the frivolities and the one-liners, we could say that part of the fuel to keep the senses active is contrast.

Let me connect this to one more thing before I begin to draw all this together. There are hoards of old sayings of individuals or institutions, pointing out in one manner or another, that, "We must save Man from himself." (Since I like a funny meditation moment as much as anybody, everyone take a second and fumigate on that one.)

Now: in what way is this absolutely unrelated to the matter of contrasts? What if there's a certain kind of inner need in Man for a contrast beyond simply comparing two areas, two pools, or beyond the need to keep the senses active? How about ideas like the contrast between what seems to be a feeling of I and me, what seems to be a feeling of a conscious me and an unconscious me, a good me and a bad me, a me that might be worthy of some attention, and then a me that should be ignored if not tarred and feathered? Is there any way that that would fit into the definition of contrast? (I know I'm stretching for humor; if I had known we were going to take this approach tonight I would have certainly written some better jokes.) But is there any way that that could be, in a kind of humorous way, connected to matter of contrast? Nawww! We'd have to be kidding ourselves to say that the need for contrast is necessary for Man so that he can individually be aware of himself as a self-conscious being in the midst of Life's otherwise dull, flat, non-contrasting creatures, wouldn't we? There is no way that Man's ability, Man's need to be filled with contrast, would distinguish him from anybody or anything else, right? To be able to sample at least two things, and then apparently be aware of one of them such as "I" out of the equation of I plus Not-I, couldn't have any relationship whatsoever to the operations known as human consciousness? But, as long as we're being funny, let me ask you a real funny one: (I can hardly contain myself just thinking what I'm about to say) what if all human conflict was nothing more than Life's simple need for contrast? I'm talking about routine, everyday, ho-hum need for contrast. And such being the case, what if that were the basis for each and every form of human conflict, division, divergence, juxtaposition, and especially, dissimilitude, which has more syllables than any other synonym I know for contrast.

Now that I've started, how about Considering a few more things. What if we're correctly meaning contrast when we talk about such things as fads, fashion, friends and enemies, national boundaries, political parties, different religions, different races, new scientific and social facts, all arguments, all agreements? What about in the arts, not just what an ordinary person might immediately think about shifting artistic tastes, how about the arts themselves? The arts themselves are nothing but contrast. How can you have music with one note? You have to have at least two. If you only heard one note no one in the world would know what music was. How could you have a painting if you had one color?

How about a data tangent into an even more ridiculous area? How about the areas that would seem to be a little more individual and personal? What if the need for contrast was the reality behind such verbal and apparently emotional shadows known as bad habits/good intentions? The desire to change and reform and the inability to do so? Falling in love/falling in hate. What if all of the important matters, all the important conflicts, all the important questions in human life were meaningless as perceived? Not theoretically, not in the binary sense that they can be explained away or argued, but that they are simply meaningless in that they are no more than Life serving its need for contrast and the content of the so called conflict is moot, to say the least. (I told you it would get funny.)

What if reality, as people ordinarily perceive it, is different from what it seems to be NOT from a basis of mistaken perception, but from the matter of people operating on less than the available information? What if all the manifestations, all the questions, the problems, the ills, the imagined difficulties of all people, individually and as a race, are nothing more than the absolute need for contrast, and that was it? That without contrast it would be impossible for anyone to be conscious on simply a walking around, ordinary level. Ponder the potential humor in all of the serious questions like -- you know, "What's going to happen between the struggle between good and evil? How did it come about? Who's going to win and why?" What if all that is meaningless? Not in a religious sense, not in a moral sense, but in the absolute sense that you have to have contrast for Life to stay alive, for humans to be conscious, and it makes no difference what the contrast is. None! (I told you it was funny.) It's good and evil, sweet and sour, up and down, right and left, men and women, black and white, hawks and doves, republicans and democrats, left and right, thin and fat, tall and short, fair and dark, north and south, east and west, but none of it is any more than the absolute basic everyday need in Life for contrast. For anyone to be conscious of ANYTHING there has to be contrast. If you only tasted one taste, you would have no sense of taste. You have to have at least two different samples, before you could say, "I have a sense of taste. I tasted one taste one time, and then later I tasted another one. I know what taste is." And then you can say, "One of them tastes good, one tastes bad. One tastes left and one tastes right. One tasted like a democrat, one tasted republican." But you'd have to have at least two contrasting samples to be conscious of taste at all. That's a fact. You could not have one thought. If you only had one thought you could not discuss thinking. You would not know whether you could think. You've have to have two samples to be conscious EVEN of one.

We're not talking about anything theoretical. To be conscious of just one thing you have to have two samples, and the samples must contrast. And that describes a basic, absolute requirement of human consciousness. Luckily for us, that has no bearing whatsoever on the questions of good and evil, true and false, up and down. But since we're exploring the world of humor tonight, let me pose the following question: what if there is no human, much less individual, significance to all so-called important questions? To any question you ever had -- culturally based questions, religiously based questions, humanitarian questions, down to individually selfish questions. Even questions like, "Can humanity ever agree or not? Can we ever agree as individuals? Can the great religions ever agree? Can conflicting political opinions, economic philosophies -- can they ever agree?" That seems to most people in the city to be a very significant, serious problem. "My god, people are killing themselves right now all over this planet because they can't agree. People are committing murder, mayhem, destroying their cities, their culture, their religion, their artifacts, their toes." Not only will people point out the significance of things like that, but they're apt to point towards some imagined super significance of, "Not only do we have the problems now, but my god, what does it portend for the future?"

What if none of that has ANY significance? Really! What if it is just yet another example in the absolute need for contrast? That's all it is! Yet please note: none of this would be valid without humanity's great ability to take things seriously; feelings of contrast could not survive if the participants did not take them seriously.

How about the questions, "Are we doomed to some sort of failure? Are we going down hill, or are we destined for better things?" That seems to be a continuing, not just a philosophical difference of opinion. Some days you get up and it feels like some kind of noxious fumes got going down in your chemical laboratory, and it feels like, "God, life sucks." You look in the mirror and you think, "I suck." Then you put on your clothes to go running, and you think, "These clothes suck." You look outside and the weather sucks. You see other people out jogging and think, "Everybody that jogs sucks." You see people walking and you think, "People that won't jog suck." And it is as SERIOUS as it can be, to you; if you're a serious person.

But what if it is nothing but yet another reflection of the absolute need for contrast, and that's ALL it is? What if that were true; that it goes no further, that that's the beginning of it, and that's the end of it? (I told you it was funny.)

How about other such questions, "Should I attempt to reform? Should I attempt to change?" That all humans feel in some way dissatisfied. Everyone feels a little itchy. Everybody feels the need that, "I should be doing something differently." What if it's nothing but the need for contrast? Nah, that would be beyond just being a little silly. If that were true, that would be a real thigh slapper.

How about the so called eternal questions of, "What's life about? Is it going up or down? Where did the battle between good and evil come from? And why does it seem that sometimes the undesirable seems to be winning?"

You do know that these questions have NEVER, EVER been satisfactorily addressed, much less answered. No one's satisfied with the answers. NO ONE! But here's what's really silly and funny: what if there's a very good reason for that? Not the reason that nobody ever imagined like, "Well, the gods did not intend Man to understand why evil sometimes wins." Give me a break; they've been saying that so long, it's no longer funny. What if no one can answer such questions because the questions aren't questions? They're a statement of the reality of contrast. There's no answer to why good triumphs over evil because there's no such thing as good and evil; there's contrast. You have to have contrast to be conscious. Life has to have contrast to grow. And as far as Man being a prime area of Life's growth, Life grows through apparent contrasts as Man perceives them. But what if (silly as it is) there's literally no difference between the concepts of good and evil, and sweet and sour? That they are absolutely the same thing. There's no difference between good and evil, and up and down. NONE. There's no difference between good and evil, and me and you. There's no difference between me and you, and I and me.

As long as I'm being this silly, let me point out what would be the ultimate contrast -- two words, "I want." There is human consciousness. There's Life's growth. That is the ULTIMATE contrast. It is the contrast that would eat all contrasts. Any contrast you can think of having to do with human activity, human consciousness, fits into, "I want."

There is the ultimate contrast. "I want a different car. I want a different sex partner. I want a different attitude. I want a different stomach. I want a different nose. I want a different income. I want a different life. I want a... I want to quit thinking like this. I want a different set of thinkings. I want a different set of feelings. I want to be somewhere else right now. I want to sit down. I want to stand up. I want to be cooler. I want to be hotter." It is the ultimate contrast. Without it would you be alive? Without it would you be human? Without it would you be conscious? And even being funny, I'll have to tell you a non-funny answer. No.

And yet, all religions, all would-be holy systems, individual people attempting to be super good, super insightful, what do they get down on? On wanting stuff. "If you could cut out wants, you would be super-person. All you've got to do is .pacut out wants." It wouldn't be conscious. It wouldn't be human. There would be no contrast.

If you were following any of this, I could point this out: all religions, all philosophies, from a certain view, could be seen as being one aspect inside of Life's body attempting to eradicate all contrast. That's what every religious system is about. That's what every philosophy that's ever popped up is about. (Think about it, those of you that can think in manners funny.) It was an attempt to eradicate contrast.

Well, alright, let's pick out an obvious one as an example: what is it to be a Christian? It's to eradicate all non-Christian stuff. If you're going to be a Christian, you can't do anything that a Christian wouldn't do. If you have a set of rules, which all of the religions have, if you live by the rules, you eradicate all behavior of not living by the rules. It's an attempt to eradicate all contrast, and it doesn't work. But then the people in the city say, "Well, yeah, it doesn't work because we've got all the evilness in the world working against it." If it wasn't so pitiful, it would be funny. Naw, if it wasn't so funny, it would be pitiful.

It can all be seen as one part in Life's body attempting, on its own at one particular time, to eradicate all contrast. No matter what it is, what they're saying is, "Let's eradicate all contrast. Let this new idea prevail, and we're talking about PREVAIL, baby! You've got to do away with all opposition," which is synonymous with contrast. When I say that it does not work, part of the little humor is that it quickly splinters into new contrast itself. As soon as a religion states a fact, no matter what it says, (I'll translate it for you) "Let's do away with all contrast," the next day, or that afternoon, they splinter into their own contrasts, into the Orthodox and Reformed.

How 'bout a political example? The fascists take over; no sooner do they get through stating their apparent purpose, which is, "Let's eradicate all contrast," then they immediately fall into splinter groups. That is, they immediately contrast by saying, "Wait a minute. You are already getting too liberal in your fascist views." It immediately turns into, if there was such a thing, a right wing and a left wing fascist division.

It simply never works, and yet it repeats itself, and not every two thousand years. It repeats itself every two minutes, it repeats itself every two seconds. Every time you believe, "I need to change," what you're saying is, "I want to eradicate all contrast."

Let me change the subject slightly and attempt to tie this in with something else, that being: that all human troubles are synonymous with ordinarily perceived time. Distress, discomfort, grievances, vexations, worries, agitations, quandaries, quagmires, and, in general, a big old can of 3-in-1 agonies, are all synonymous with time as it is ordinarily perceived. Can you see that there needs to be a contrast between you and whatever you perceive as troubles, and this contrast is what Men ordinarily refer to as time. There is inherent in the neural wiring of all human systems the absolute need for a feeling of distance between what you perceive as you and what you perceive as "troubles." There has got to be; you and the trouble are not one or you could not be conscious of it. There has to be a contrast; in this case, the trouble, and yourself. But what I'm pointing to now is that this separation, this contrast between you and the trouble, can be perceived as a distance in time. You can say, "I have a trouble that's going on now," but it isn't. It's never going on now; there's always a feeling of distance between you and the trouble. Your feeling, your consciousness of the trouble is always distanced from you. But it is not simply a spatial distance, as you might think, but it is distanced through time. You might say, "I've got a trouble with this other person, other man, woman, family, business associates -- no matter -- and if we're going to talk about distance between the trouble and myself, we're talking about an actual physical distance, right?" Sure you can say that because you and the other person are not occupying the same skin, but it's not physical distance, it is time. There is always an arm's length between you and every "trouble," and it's not a matter of physical displacement, it's time division. Oh, alright, time contrast.

Now, if any of this had any bearing on anything, I would say that a Revolutionist would have to grab whatever he perceived as "the problem" and jerk it right up into his face -- no more arm's length, no more dancing with the problem. You have to grab it and pull it right up into your face. Not just the natural space between you and everyone else's face -- that doesn't count; it has to be closer than that. I don't care how close you think you started out. And really being funny, I might suggest to you that somewhere in that area is what I talked about when I talked about the "just do it" method. You either do it, or you don't do it. If you don't do it, you are always removed in time, you are always displaced from the problem.

What if all that I've been mentioning is why there seems to be no solution to human problems? That it is all a result of people operating in two different time frames. Problems don't exist because you are weak, or because your habits are too strong or your character's too feeble, it's not because the cards are stacked against you -- it's none of that. What if it's all because you're operating in two different time frames?

If there was any truth to this, look how simple it is. For instance: you are continually -- with your best shot, with your intelligence, with the hand that you have been dealt and the cards that you have tried to stick up your sleeve -- you are trying your best to finally deal with, to overcome, to have some effect on Wednesday's problem, and it's flippin' Thursday. Alright, wait a minute. Next time we pick up the scene you have doubled your efforts, and you apparently are now sweating forty-fives instead of thirty-eights working on Thursday's problem, except, except, oh dear! (as you might have suspected I'm about to say) it is now Friday. And this goes on for how many years? How long are you going to live with that kind of displacement.

What if, truly, not being funny, all so called problems -- from illness to death, broken hearts, torn romances, economic rents in your fiscal cloth, no matter what they are -- they are all synonymous with time displacement? Were it not for your individual perception of time, none of your problems could .pasurvive. They would gasp and be dead, that is, they could disappear from consciousness. You could not conceive of them.

We are not talking about your liver going downhill. Hell, you're going downhill in toto. But without an individual perception of time, you could not be conscious of being ill in any manner. Or let me pose this question: does it matter if you're sick if you don't know it? How many of you have heard stories of some guy who goes to the doctor for the first time in forty years and says, "I've been having a pain in my side for about the last 20 years," and the doctor looks at him and says, "Oh, my god, you've got lung cancer," and the guy dies the next day. Such stories are Life saying something, and they are a reflection of something real, but what I'm presently pointing to specifically is that without an individual perception of time, you could not be conscious of any so-called problem, whether it was apparently physical, or whether it had to do with the relationship between you and somebody else. If you are not conscious of it, what kind of trouble is it? How can it be a trouble of which you are unaware? If you take away the time displacement between you and the trouble, if you grab the trouble and jerk it right up into your face, where did the problem go? When you take away the contrast between you and the trouble, there is no room to say, "Well, I would like to quit smoking. Well, I would like to get more exercise. Well, I would like to control my temper." You can like all you want to. The tango palace never closes. The dancers finally die, every 70 years or so you've got a whole new group of dancers, but the palace stays open. And so, you and everyone else can say, "Well I would like to. I'd like to discuss it. I'd like to know more about it. I'd like to think about it. I'd like to work my way up. I'd like your opinion." Contrast, contrast, contrast. You couldn't speak if you only knew one word. You couldn't move if you could only take one action. You could not be conscious if you only had one thought. Therefore (wouldn't this be silly?) the reason people can't change is because as soon as you talk about change, you have to have contrast. You could not even think about change. Man couldn't talk about change were it not for the great inability to change. If you could change, you wouldn't talk about it. If you could change, there would be no such thing as change.

I've already pointed out to you that the ultimate contrast occurs whenever anyone says, "I want." As soon as you say, "I want," you can't have what it is you want. If you could, you wouldn't be conscious of wanting it. You would not be conscious of there being a distance between you and the thing you want. Without this property of consciousness, you would be dull, you would be flat, you would be colorless, you would be non ambiguous. You would have no more contrast than an earthworm. Every other creature in Life is dull, flat, and colorless, because there is no contrast. There may be enough basic sensual contrast that it keeps them alive, but there is no consciousness, because there is no real contrast. There is no contrast within them of a feeling of distance. Dogs do not feel like there is a canine equation of dog plus not-dog. Only humans feel thusly. Without such a contrast, without a feeling of a time disjunction between yourself and "out there," you would have the personality of an earthworm.

As long as we're on the topic of time, let me point out that a Revolutionist would have no respect whatsoever for such city affairs and ideas, as time -- None! He would have no respect, hence no fear, for city ideas such as time. In the city, people are frequently wont to opine, "I do not have the time," the implied part being, of course, that, "I do not have the time to change. I should be doing something differently, in contrast to the way I normally act, feel, and think, but I do not, literally have the time." Now, let me translate all that for you, because it is not individuals who are motivated to say such things -- it is Life grumbling, musing down in one part of its system saying, "I see no way out of my time troubles. I perceive no escape." That's what the molecules in you are saying when they say, "I would certainly do something differently in contrast to my present actions if I only had the time." And in a very crude way, they're speaking the truth. It is not correct, it's flawed, it's imperfect. It lacks full data, but in a boorish kind of way, they are telling the truth. But the reason that it seems to lead nowhere -- that no one can seem to use it -- is that it's not correct. It may be true, but because it's flawed, it's not correct; for it to be correct you would have to bring in an understanding of the time distance I have been speaking of.

On the other hand, a Real Revolutionist would be attempting to close up this time separation by grabbing perceived "problems" and jerking them right up to his face. Thus he might say, "I have all the time in the world, because all the time in the world has me. This thing which I've been calling a problem is simply a contrast, and I will grab it and dance with it for as long as need be, because I've all the time in the world. We will dance and I'll never get tired. I'll dance until its legs turn into apple butter. Time just means nothing."

That's the kind of thing that if you went back into the city and they say, "Boy, you have changed!" you go, "What?" Or, if you go back into your own city and somebody wants to say, "You've changed," then your nonverbal response is, "I don't do interviews; I don't respond to rat hole watchers. I don't respond to ordinary people commenting on me." That's in your own state, of course, where you are absolutely free, if you are an enlightened tyrant, to treat The People like, "Fuck you peasants." What the hell does the king care that some lice infected, dunderheaded peasant comes up and says, "My, you look nice since you lost a little weight." Is that going to make his day or what? You're a peasant in your state, and we're not talking about Bulgaria, folks. If some dunderheaded peasant with an I.Q. of, like, seven, tells the king, "My liege, I am sorely impressed with your intelligence," is that going to send the king off on a spree or what?

I would suggest to you that a Real king would have no regard for comments from his inferiors concerning the management of his own state. Of course, for those back in the city, how else do they know how they're doing other than by the contrast of someone saying, "My, how I approve of what you've done. How impressed I am with what you've accomplished." Those in the city, hearing such comments are wont to go, "Well, I just hardly know what to say. I'm just overcome now that I know that I have some purpose in continuing; I feel as though there is some value in my eternal struggle." (Can I be funny or what?)

And yet, all kidding aside (ha!), what are the kinds of things I've talked about these many months, continuing to warn that these are not psychological commentaries. Does any of this ring a bell: talking about what seems to be the purpose in change; my pointing out that if you're going to do something, don't talk about it. I don't mean just don't talk about it to your mother or your girlfriend -- give me a break; don't talk about it! Don't contrast the situation. Don't acknowledge the contrast by telling it to yourself, much less someone else. Why bother trying to tell somebody else? At least if you're going to deal with inferiors why not go first class? Go ahead and tell yourself, see what good it will do you. You might tell yourself, "I'm gonna get up and run in the morning," -- maybe you will, maybe you won't. Who cares? You won't do it right; not as long as there is a contrast, as long as it is a "trouble," as long as it is a problem. You can never achieve what you imagine to be the benefit, which ultimately is, you think, the benefit of eradicating the desire to want to run, the eradication of all contrast. But you have some other imagined immediate goal in mind and you never get it. You never run enough so that one day you think, "Hey, that did it," and then you never have to exercise again. You never get to the point that you think, "Hey, all the contrast (that is, the problems) that motivated me wanting to exercise -- they're gone! I no longer want to exercise -- phew!" and that's the end of it. You know better. In the city, you stop, and then two or three weeks later, whatever seemed to have been the motivation -- that is, the contrast -- is back again. "Jeez, I'm getting back out of shape; I'm putting back on weight." Or, "I'll go study. I'm gonna read books and study until I get so smart that I won't worry about how smart I am." Such a day never comes. You cannot eradicate contrast, unless you are going commit suicide.

So, if there is going to be a Revolutionary approach, it would be: I'm not going to discuss it with my inferiors. The king does not go out and ask peasants, "Do you think I'm putting on weight? Do you think I should have my hair cut differently? Sometimes I wonder whether the people really know how intelligent and talented I am. What do you think? Huh? Huh?"

The Real Revolutionist knows that when it comes to change, there's nothing to discuss. Who are you going to discuss it with? What if all such discussions are nothing but the need for contrast?

Yet those in the city (in you and out there) continue to whine and discuss their inability to change -- "Why can't I ever change? Why is it that nothing seems to work?" I suggested to you earlier that such questions are meaningless in a certain way. If something is meaningless, that's why it won't work, that's why there's no answer to it. The questions are inoperable, because what you are talking about is the all abiding, all encompassing, nonstop, absolute requirement for contrast. And you can call it, "I'm too fat, I'm too thin. I'm too dumb, I'm too smart. I'm too good, I'm too evil," but call it what you want to -- it's contrast.

One or two other things, real quick. Could you see ordinary human memory as being a kind of necessity to freeze and to retrieve troubles from the past? Could you see memory as being a prime supporter of contrast? Why else do you have memory? Think about it. If you didn't have memory (and there were such things as problems -- let's just assume there are) you'd have a trouble and then it would simply go away. If it wasn't for memory, problems would be gone and forgotten. But hey, not so. You can remember the bastards. You've got to remember them. Or, to drag out an Old Testament quote: "Troubles are with Man always." Back in the city they treat that as being the nature of the afflictions that the gods placed on Man for his comeuppance. But to say that troubles will be with you always, is to say what? You have a memory! That's why they're with you always.

Could the heart of this new data that I have been producing be simply to identify the Real cause and the ultimate culprit of everything as being Life itself. That there is no contrast, there is not even a slight variation of you or anybody else. That if there is a supreme culprit, the ultimate cause is Life itself. And if you could see and fully understand that, it would be the ultimate eradication of contrast. And if all that were true, what would you have to talk about?

I want to mention one other thing to you people. Do not give up your dreams, whatever they might be. I don't mean anything all that weird, but everyone is wired up with some dream: to sail off around the world or to visit foreign places, and women have their own versions. But then the dream gets abandoned, and you could look at it as a very specific molecular, physical event. Normally the dream becomes abandoned when women get pregnant, in their case. With men it seems to get abandoned when they accept responsibility for a woman/family. It is nothing unusual. I'm telling you there is no reason just because the apparent literal physical chase of the dream may be temporarily put aside, do not abandon, do not give up the dream. If you had a dream to be a great ballerina, to be a great musician, to be a writer, to sail around the world, do not abandon your dream. If the dream finally seems to abandon you, and I'm not saying it will, but if it seems to, that will be natural, you won't notice it, you won't be hurt. But for many of you, that has not happened. Many of you believe that you have abandoned the chase, and then many of you feel like, "Ah, that was just a dream, and I'll never do it." If it is still there at all, if you can still feel the contrast of what you are and the contrast that you'd like to do it, I am telling you, I'm telling you from a Revolutionary view, I'm telling you from me to you -- do not give that up.