Transcript

WAVING NERVE ENDINGS

Document:  11,  February 18, 1982
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1982             

     Throughout the history of man, there have been stories of people claiming to be in touch with the gods, contacting deceased family members, or saying that not only have they seen flying saucers, but they have been kidnapped, tortured and tested by creatures from other planets.  By and large, everyone out in ordinary life, upon reading such a story in the newspaper or hearing of them on television, would immediately dismiss the tales.  Whether they discussed the story with anyone else or simply thought it over, the conclusion would be, "The person who dreamed up this story must be a little crazy.  Harmless?... Probably, but a crackpot, nonetheless."

     Neuralize what might happen if an apparently sane group of people let the word out that they had, indeed, been picked up by some extraterrestrial something and taken away for several days.  This group of people appears to be sane, intelligent and reasonable.  Their story is void of the flaws and foibles that usually characterize similar tales written in the tabloids.  They are professionals, without strange histories, and seem to have nothing to gain by revealing this extraordinary story.  Under close observation, they appear to be part of the crowd -- absolutely ordinary people -- except that they have this weird, unbelievable story to tell the public.  Assuming you are picturing the scenario, can you see that it would have some kind of staggering effect upon people?  It would have a real impact, because it's as if their story cannot be dismissed, coming from the mouths of such sane, such ordinary people.  Or, to drive the point further, what if one of the pillars of the community, or a prominent political figure -- the president, for instance -- came forth and announced that he had met extraterrestrials?  Let's say his story was supported by someone else of equal stature.  The ordinary mind would find it absolutely astounding and think, "This has got to be one of THE watershed points in history, a great breakthrough, a turning point in history."  And it seems like it would have a real impact.  But would everybody buy such a story?  And consider further -- then what?

     Everything that will work to excite the attention of a man or woman, won't work.  Neuralize this in relationship to the extraordinary information I have to convey.  If it works, it already fits into the common body of acceptable, reasonable human knowledge and understanding.  It takes something foreign, something that does not already fit, to attract notice.  But it can't be too foreign -- too drastic -- or else it will be immediately dismissed.  It almost has to be forced into fitting, that is, it must still sound vaguely familiar in order for something new or unusual to be heard.  Otherwise, if it's going to fit, it will fit on a mechanical level.  The case of our first scenario fits by incorporating and accepting the presence of harmless, fringe elements in society.  Or, if the story is accepted as true, because of the unimpeachable sources involved -- then what?  It will have an apparent impact on life, but than after two or three days what might happen?  What if we created a vehicle to carry exceptional information to the public, to the media, that could not be ignored?  But after two or three days, Consider, what then?  Everything that will work, won't work, because if it'll work, it will fit.

     I am going to continue using some of the same maps and I want you to Neuralize that which you have already Considered and observed, in light of these new picturizations I continue to draw for you.  You must begin to See for yourself the kind of dissatisfaction, the kind of hostility, that exists in everyone.  Hostility is just a word.  The reality of it is the tension, the tensile strength that sustains and fuels Life's growth.  Once you begin to develop some taste of an objective personal view, you will See that this is true.  No matter that your Line-Level "I's" see "people" being hostile, "people" acting wrongly -- remember, this is all the system can see at Line-Level.  That's all it's supposed to see.  Even when I continue to insist that there is nothing unjust going on in Life, that everything is just right, the parts of you that are still being nourished at the Line still cry out at perceived injustice.  Because Line-Level consciousness must believe that people are responsible for, and in control of, their words and actions.  But you must begin to See that people are not people, as your Line-Level system has always perceived them to be.  You must begin, by forcing your own self above the Line, to see the reality behind the word "people."  You must begin to See that it is all varying mixes and flows of Life's energy.

     The energy of Life enters the nervous system at the base of the spine, and from there it runs up the spine to its final, furthest point of development -- the Horizontal Line of Consciousness in the brain.

     Picture the spine as one of the feed-in wires, the cables that run current into your home.  If you strip the covering off the cable, you see that it frays out in bunches of tiny wires.  And that's also the picture of what happens to your spine as it approaches the Horizontal Line in your brain.  It's an open-ended spine, and, at the Line, it branches into smaller and smaller nerve endings.  Every nervous system on this planet is developed only to the common level of consciousness -- the Horizontal Line.  But the Line doesn't just cut off the spine.  It culminates in these frayed nerve endings -- tiny wires -- and they're always in motion.  They're always searching, for satisfaction, for completion.  And it is this -- the incessant motion of the wires, the continual search -- that makes further growth possible for man, and for Life.

     No human nervous system on this planet is finalized.  No one is complete.  Every spine culminates -- at the Line -- in little waving nerve ends searching for the ultimate satisfaction and completion.

     As you get closer and closer to the reality of the force behind what appears to be a person, beyond the flesh and bones that appears to be one's personality, one's body, one's self, you begin to See that it is impossible for anything in Life to be totally satisfying or acceptable.  It is impossible for anything in Life, all the way from buying a new record to taking a vacation, or making an observation to anybody else, to be totally acceptable.  If there were such a thing in ordinary Life that was totally satisfying and acceptable, it would lie invisible, unnoticed, unseen.

     Let me give you, as an example, a man attempting to introduce a piece of legislation which you might consider to be the most benign, the most innocuous, the safest of all bills, a proposal for general human good.  For instance:  "I propose we love our mothers."  If it has any chance for viability, someone must oppose it.  Someone must debate its efficacy and question its merits and drawbacks.  It has to have opposition if it is to survive, if only for the briefest moment.  Someone must stand up and say, "I'd like to thank my distinguished colleague for this suggestion that we all love our mothers, BUT..."  Without opposition, the idea would have been so short-lived as to be virtually non-existent.

     Let's bring this closer to ordinary life.  If you speak to someone else and it is fully satisfying, it has no life.  You turn to someone and say, "Well, it looks like it's going to rain."  There are only two possibilities.  Either that statement has no life and there is no living intercourse, no energy exchange taking place between you two, at that moment:  "Uh hummm"; or else it cannot be satisfying:  "Rain?  What are you talking about?  There isn't a cloud in the sky."

     Remember, we are speaking most specifically of men as minute pieces of a greater whole, serving as conduits for the necessary transfer of energy in the body of Life.  It is the energy required to keep Life alive and growing, and everything that lives within Life does so for the purpose of transferring and transforming certain energies.  The static generated is the dissatisfaction.  You say, "Well, you know, it looks like it's going to rain tonight."  And Fred responds, "Aww, I don't know.  The weatherman said a warm front was moving in."  Everyone is in disagreement, even though a man does not normally hear it.  This is not a matter of cocktail psychology.  It has nothing to do with Fred being an argumentative sort.  It doesn't even have anything to do with disagreement.  Disagreement is only a word, just as hostility is only a word.  I'm trying to get you to see the energy, the reality behind the words.  Energy is continually being passed inside a larger organism, and anything that transfers energy between people cannot be satisfying.  Begin to refine your ability to See this process in action, by pressing your own growth upward beyond the Line.  Anything that is growing is unfinished.  It is involved in energy exchange.  And for anything growing, nothing can be totally satisfying and acceptable.

     Keep in mind the map I have given you, which quite literally represents the open-ended nervous system of man.  It begins at the base of the spine and progresses upward, ultimately culminating in the electrochemical processes of the brain -- where a man says, "I".  Begin to See this and you will See living, breathing, walking, talking upright spines with tiny, waving nerve endings reaching out, struggling for growth and passing energy inside the larger organism of Life.  If you could hold this awareness, you'd never again take anything personally.  You'd never believe yourself to have been insulted, complimented or verbally injured because you'd See, not people -- not entities responsible for their own words and actions -- you'd See walking spines.  You'd See waving nerve endings all involved in the necessary exchange of energy and information.  You'd See Life attempting its own growth through man.

     If you can refine your eyesight on every possible level, you will See that anything which has life, i.e., anything that is transferring energy between people, cannot be satisfying.  If there were such a thing as an idea, an activity, a relationship  in Life, that was totally satisfying and acceptable, it would kill you.  And there would be no antidote.  We are not speaking of someone with an extended nervous system, but for an ordinary person -- an upright energy transfer station -- such ultimate satisfaction would effectively cauterize the wires.  It would cap them off.  Of course, they would then be incapable of further energy transfer.  Which is another description of death.  But they would be satisfied -- which is also another description of death.

     This system cannot be satisfied because it is always searching, always attempting to grow, fueled by an unrecognized understanding that it is unfinished and incomplete.  Can you begin to catch a glimpse of the fact that any words that come out of a man's mouth, any of his actions, are no more and no less than energy in motion?  Words and actions themselves are of no particular consequence, other than serving as the means for Life's own growth.  Nor can an individual man be held accountable for his words and actions.  They are simply the exchange of energy necessary for Life's growth.  Life itself understands that it, too, is incomplete.  If you could remember this, you would no longer deal with people as people.  I'm not insinuating that you would treat them with any less regard or consideration, but you would not continue to hold them responsible for their actions, nor search for the meaning behind their words.

     I have asked you to Neuralize the human need for the ever-new, the need for change, and how, on the ordinary level, man's attempts at change are appropriate.  Such attempts are built into the nervous system, and rightly so.  Consider man's interest, not just in new clothes and cars, but his desire to keep up with the times and to improve himself: "I just read a wonderful new book on developing self-confidence.  You must read it."  "I think I'll start jogging; it's supposed to be good for your heart."  This is a natural, integral function of an open-ended nervous system.  It's the waving wires.  And although an individual does not understand how to truly change in his lifetime, all activity at the Line serves the overall upward movement of the Line.  With each generation, the Line itself -- Life's overall level of understanding -- moves higher.  Today's search for the ever-new is connected with tomorrow's growth.  Nonetheless, there is a continual attraction toward that which appears to be new, whether or not it is pursued to any degree.

     Let's refine this somewhat.  There are several areas that are rich for observation.  You can see this in the arts, for example.  Not just on the mass commercial level -- you can see it on the individual level, in yourself.  It's the desire to play music, to paint a picture, to write music or a play.  And in the same breath, Consider the intrigue of sports.

     There is a certain vicarious enjoyment in watching a ball game.  It is, in a sense, a crude man's ballet.  It can be very pleasurable to watch any physical activity -- to see someone else do it right, do it gracefully, or even do it funny.  But there is something beyond that, which has to do with the mapping out of the Three Forces.  On one level, there are literally three Forces, or Flows, which I will verbally flesh out for you now: a creative Flow, favoring change; a destructive Flow, conservative and supporting the status quo; and a third, almost neutral Flow that is usually unnoticed by ordinary men.  The first two are easily recognized as the apparent sparring partners in questions of "right and wrong," "good and evil," or "new and old."  Remember there are different levels at which the Forces can operate, and this is not meant to be a final, ultimate statement about the Forces.

     Neuralize how sporting events could be connected, on one level, with the creative Force of something apparently happening right then, at that particular moment.  It is not the past.  It's not the news that the president was shot this afternoon.  It is not something you are reading about in the morning paper.  It has a different flavor; it's almost as though the action is created on the spot.  There is constant activity on the playing field, and no one knows what the outcome will be.  The game might go into overtime.  There may be fumbles.  A rookie ball player might emerge with unexpected prowess.  There seems to be almost a shift in ordinary time; the action happens in a special place in time, and it almost seems to be happening right now, whereas nothing else happens now.  This creates a singularly flavored excitement, based on the immediacy of the event.

     You can see a similar intrigue in music -- specifically in jazz.  The musician plays within a framework -- a certain beat and chord progression -- but he attempts right then, at that moment, to create something musically new.  He continually tries to play what he's never played before.  In the same way, football players must abide by the rules of the game, but within the rules and boundaries of the playing field lives the anticipation of the moment-by-moment, unexpected, unknown outcome.  Something is on the verge of happening and nobody knows exactly what it will be, including the musician and the ball players themselves.  The musician sits down at the piano, and starts to play.  For whatever reasons, it flows just right.  He knows this and so does the audience.  It's not on record.  It's not something you can read about later.  It's happening on the spot.  If you asked him to play it again the next night, he'd give it a good shot, but he can never duplicate it exactly.  Think about how many thousands of ball games have ended with a score of 6-12, but each game is different.  It can never be replicated in its original form.

     For now, I want you to Neuralize this process in a couple of ways.  On the basis of the Three Forces, can you See that something is being created on the spot?  There are different levels at which the Forces can operate, so this description is not by any means an ultimate mapping.  But you should be able to See the Creative Flow at work.  Likewise, the immediacy and excitement of witnessing such activity yields what we could almost call a shift in ordinary time.  Who knows what will happen in the next moment?  Player 23 might intercept a long pass and the complexion of the game alters completely.  It's almost as though, "I am watching a work of art being created, I am an observer in a special place and time.  This is almost happening now, whereas nothing else happens now."  This answers and reflects humanity's continual need for the new.  It reflects and bespeaks -- as does everything -- the ultimately unsatisfying, waving, searching nerve endings.

     These waving nerve endings produce the collective feeling in humanity that "something is just not right."  You can see it in yourself at Line-Level; you can see it reflected in the entire scope of recorded human history.  And its basis in reality is the fact that man isn't completely right yet.  He is physically unfinished.  Its basis in reality is these waving nerve endings.

     Remember that although I continually say there is no real injustice in the world, that everything is just right, all you have to do is look down in your own nervous system.  All you have to do is listen to your own Line-Level voices, and they'll tell you that something is definitely not right.  And if you give them the chance, they'll list everything that's gone wrong.  But before you are too hasty to listen and believe, note that throughout history, something has always been wrong -- according to the collective Line-based voice of humanity.  You should find it just as interesting to note that all available interpretations of this human condition, from the explanations offered by religion and philosophy to current psychological theories, are themselves not entirely acceptable and satisfying.  No religion, no philosophy, can be totally satisfying.  If there were such a thing, it would kill everyone.  It would stop the movement of the nerve endings.  If man and Life are to continue to grow, the nervous system can't be fully soothed.  And nothing can be fully satisfying.

     Now go back to my story about a god appearing on earth.  I'll refresh your memory.  Suppose something -- some sort of divine being, an extraterrestrial, a creature of superior understanding, landed somewhere on this earth and announced that he would, at a certain time, reveal The secret, The truth and ultimate answer, to all humanity.

     Consider what he could say and the effect it would have.  If his statement of The truth were to have any effect at all, it would have to be somewhat expected.  It must be familiar enough to fit into the prevailing Line-Level consciousness of humanity as a whole.

     But now we're back to where I began tonight: he'd have to tell people something that fits, i.e., something Line-level consciousness already knows.  And what good would that do? If he says, for instance, "the truth is love," the statement already fits.  It's already built into common consciousness.  In other words, people already think they know it.  Everyone may very well slap their foreheads and say, "That's it.  That's the truth if I ever heard it.  Now if only we could remember it..."  But it would have no real, lasting effect.  Everything that works to excite the attention won't work if it already fits into the common body of accepted human knowledge.

     But also Consider:  if people did hear and understand the words of this god -- if people could be made to see The truth, The answer -- if the words satisfied, that would be the end of everything.  All movement, all growth would stop.  It would be heaven on earth, as ordinary people like to believe; but can you Hear that man's nervous system would simultaneously have reached its highest level of growth, thus becoming a closed, completed system?  You would not be dissatisfied, you would not argue and you'd have no unanswerable questions.  And though I can make it sound like paradise, it would be the end of growth for man and Life.  And that is justice at work.

     The nervous system of an individual man can't move any higher than the highest level of Life's consciousness in its time and place, but the neural tentacles are constantly in motion at that level, searching, fueled by dissatisfaction and an inherent knowledge that man is incomplete.  This searching motion is what an ordinary man calls his thoughts, desires, and his sense of "I".  And it's simply an extension of the larger organism, Life, in motion.  From this perspective, can you See that, though a man would believe otherwise, he cannot be held responsible for his words or actions?

     Learn to look upon men with the held awareness that they are extensions of something else.  They're like the spines on the backbone of a great walking fish.  You're surrounded by walking spines topped off by nerve endings.  They're in constant motion; they speak; they have jobs.  But they're all unfinished nervous systems.  There are no individual personalities in conflict.  Humanity is not ungodly nor inhumane.  That which is disguised under the name of conflict, greed, humility -- any interaction named by humanity, whether pleasing or otherwise -- is no more than the energy exchange needed for Life's continued health and growth -- and it's carried out through these unfinished nervous systems.  Every cell in Life's body, every man, is necessary.  Even if one particular cell does not appear to be directly, actively involved in the exchange one moment, he needs to be there to keep the cells all around him from collapsing.

     There can be no such thing as a satisfying, totally acceptable thought, idea, statement, car, dress, piece of music, or relationship.  If a god appeared and promised to set everything right, to speak THE TRUTH, if he said, "Alright, I know things are in terrible turmoil but I am here to direct people back to the true path..." and he told humanity the truth (which is the desire for continued growth) -- if he did answer all questions in a totally satisfying manner, if he put everything aright, as humanity considers it to not be aright -- that would be the end of Life's growth.  All movement, all growth would stop.  There'd be no wars, no political rivals, no hostility of any kind.  It would be heaven on earth, as man now pictures it.  But can you Hear, if only for a split second, that man's nervous system would simultaneously be capped off and closed?  Man would become a creature similar to all his fellow creatures.  Just like a cat or dog, he'd have no unanswerable questions.  He wouldn't argue or be dissatisfied.  And though it may sound like a description of heaven, it would be the end.

     Even when people are sitting chatting in a friendly setting, it is not totally satisfying.  It can't be.  If what was said were totally acceptable, it would scarcely be heard and the exchange would end.  The people talking would move on to some other discussion, in search of energy flow.  This is not simply a verbal game that I am describing.  You are surrounded in Life by spines with faces, and, even though they are walking around, they're essentially nailed to one place.  Spines wiggling about, collecting energy, digesting it and passing it along.  Life is unfinished business and demands energy exchange for its sustenance.  You cannot find anyone to agree with you, because agreement is death to the waving, searching movement.

     Indeed, if people could be treated in such a way that everything they said was taken as being totally acceptable and satisfying, in a very short period of time, they would feel as though they had ceased to exist.  It might strike them that they had lost their mind.  They would lose the sensation of "I".  Humanity already understands a crude variation of this with the use of solitary confinement.  Lock a man up in a small room alone, and if you leave him there too long, he'll cease to exist, from a sane person's perspective.  But Consider further.  Consider the possibility of living without friction.  Consider a life devoid of the resistance, the frustration, the disagreement that fuels existence at Line-Level.  It sounds like heaven:  a life without continuing friction.  But could you live without it?

     Consider the desire, the attempt to get one's desk cleaned off once and for all!  It's a basic human urge to tie up all the loose ends, to get everything completed and neatly filed away.  And then you want to shellac it so it'll stay that way.  But that can't be done.  If you ever got your desk finally cleared off and straightened up, the center drawer would jump up and strangle you.  It would cap off any further growth.  Of course I'm not talking about your desk.  I'm talking about the longing of every nervous system for stability, for completion and satisfaction.  Yet at the same time, it is the nature of man to grow -- to carry out Life's growth.  Man is unfinished business, and it is this -- his capacity for further growth -- that is the difference between him and every other creature on this planet.  But nobody analyzes it this way.  Anything that is alive cannot be completely satisfying or acceptable.  It reaches far beyond the skin and bones of people's apparent problems, their racial or religious tension, political strife, or conflicting ideas.  It's the nature of being alive and growing.  It is the fuel that feeds Life:  "I'm going to get this accomplished, totally straightened out and then move on to something else."  "If I could just make $100,000 and get that behind me."  It's everyone's desire to accomplish something, to reach some stable and identifiable condition.  "If I could just get my little corner of the world cleaned up and then live out my life and be happy."  Can you hear that this would be the end?  The reality is that these desires cannot be satisfied as long as Life continues to grow.  On a magnified scale, humanity, too, voices the hope of clearing its desk.  "We've got to learn to live with one another; we must become better people.  We're so close to justice, so close to actually deserving the name of man."  If humanity had it's way, do you understand, it would be as if Life finally got its desk straight.  It would be one moment of stability and satisfaction.  It would be the end of us all.

     Is a man prepared to be un-dissatisfied?  Consider the idea that one must die in order to be born on another level.  Such ideas have always been extant in man's consciousness.  I am not speaking of becoming a martyr.  Such ideas are related to the non-ordinary act of pushing your own nervous system growth beyond the Line, Seeing Life as it is, through objective eyes.  This process demands objectivity, beyond what an ordinary man sees when he says "I", when he forms an opinion.  Consider: if the price is death, then what part of himself does he have to remove?

     Look for the kind of energy I am talking about.  If anything alive is going on, no matter the situation, no matter the relationship of the people involved, if it is alive, it cannot be totally acceptable or satisfying.  This has nothing to do with people; it has nothing to do with what's being discussed.  It has to do with Life being unfinished.  The kind of energy that passes for human conversation cannot survive without opposition.  You walk outside and the sky is pitch black and it's thundering and one guys says, "It looks like rain."  And another guy responds, "Maybe yes, maybe no."  There is no such thing as one Force in action.  There must be opposition.  If something is to survive, if only for a split second, it must be resisted.

     Only when a man is living at the Line do other people seem misguided, foolish or ignorant.  At Line-Level, Life itself seems unsatisfying and unacceptable.  Some of you might think This Thing is the ultimate desk cleaner, the final cosmic janitor.  It will straighten your desk in such a way that, if anybody tried to put something back on it, leave a message, return a call, it would slip right off.  Neuralize how it is that this nervous system wants to go in two directions at once: you want a clean desk, but if you could get the desk permanently cleaned, you would have literally cauterized the growing edge of the nervous system.  You would have a static nervous system -- a nervous system no longer searching.  The body could still function, but what passes for being "I", what passes for being a human, would have been removed.  Because you would be satisfied.  Can you See these two different urges, which seem to be going in different directions, operating simultaneously?  If people actually understood what they want, that would be the end of man's development.

     The only thing that is pleasing for an ordinary man, the only thing that fits, is that which a man already knows -- that with which he is already familiar and comfortable.  So what is man waiting to hear?  What does man want to hear?  If a god were to arrive on earth in a big flying saucer and announce his decision to reveal the answers to everything, explain the basis for man's inherent dissatisfaction, the only thing that man could hear is what he already knows.  "The answer is love and where there's love, there's growth."  And everyone would go, "Yeah, yeah.  How true."  It was the expected.  There would be the brief sense of comradery among men, but eventually everyone goes back to what they were doing, and nothing's changed.

     Let's take this in a slightly different direction.  Consider what would be the alternative.  What if the god gave an answer that no one could automatically agree with:  "Life is like a piece of moldy bread." or "The answer is kumquats."  People would just as quickly, just as automatically, reject it.  And what would have been accomplished?  What would humanity hear?

     The only thing that is pleasing for an ordinary man -- everyone at Line-Level -- is that which already fits, that which he already thinks he understands.  But remember, this system is moving in at least two directions simultaneously, tugging one way, then another; searching out satisfaction and stability while seeking the new.