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Transcript
NOBODY DEMANDS THE CURE
Document: 15, March 25, 1982
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1982
Consider my map of the nervous system of man and the absolute Line representing the general level of human consciousness. Can you see that the area above the Line has always existed? It has always been the unfinished potential of man, and it is so today. The area above the Line is the world of tomorrow. Humanity has always been aware of this incompleteness; one example is the widely held belief that man is flawed, or that something is preventing him from attaining the great unknown satisfaction for which he yearns. The awareness of humanity's incompleteness is further reflected in the belief that actual demons are in possession of men; you can also see it in the notion that the lust of man, or the anger of man, keeps him from his great fulfillment, his union with the gods.
Even today, some still claim that they can see little devils jumping in and out of people's bodies, and faith healers say, "I can see the cancer demon running. I can describe him." This is not some sort of criticism of anybody in particular, nor of humanity in general. You should attempt to feel all these manifestations of humanity's incompletion in yourself: such manifestations are simply echoes from an earlier revolution of the merry-go-round of Life's growth through man. You should be able to feel these earlier echoes, because Life's past is your past also.
Attempt to Consider and see for yourself how these same perceptions of humanity's incomplete development at the Line of consciousness are reflected in contemporary beliefs and ideas. The world is now full of people who are inclined to show up for public lectures on anything from meditation to mind control to new-age religions. They do not now believe in gods literally being in the heavens or the trees and brooks; instead people now speak of a great cosmic spirit, a great unknown force that created all of this. And people claim to be more refined, no longer stuck with the absolute dogmas and rituals of some old-fashioned religion. They are no longer fearful that the gods are going to strike them down for having adulterous thoughts about a neighbor's spouse. Now, man's incompletion is manifested in beliefs such as, "I have personality problems." What they are still talking about, without knowing it, is the area above the Line -- the future and their inability to experience it. They express this failure as an inability to communicate, to engage in deep, lasting, meaningful relationships; or as being insufficiently attuned to the great cosmic spirits; as being insensitive to the planetary laws that govern the ecology of the planet. As humanity has grown up the nervous system, the enemy seems to have changed: it is demons no longer. Now "the enemy" is each person's "psychological problems."
On the Horizontal level I can always point back to a certain kind of mechanical evolution in humanity, but in any absolute sense, such evolution is meaningless. You cannot call it progress, nor can you attack it on an individual level. To substitute a fear of tree demons for a fear of mathematics is not any kind of personal growth to brag about. Such so-called progress is still the energy of Life taking form at the Line of consciousness. You may want to call it growth, but so what? Growth compared to what? Yet everyone immediately adopts the contemporary enemy. If I suddenly appeared and said, "Look, you simply have an irresponsible, makeshift, fragmented and uncontrollable personality," everyone would say, "Yeah, that's true. There's no doubt about it." And those attracted to This Thing would be the first in line.
I could go further and say, "Try to remember for the next week to observe what is the first gesture you make in the morning." After a week, I could ask, "Was anyone able to do that every day for a week?" And then I could discuss, for years, the fragmentation of man's personality.
Consider that this is precisely what has happened with some of the new-age religions and teachings. It is still a condemnation of man-the-sinner. Instead of saying, "All of you are demon possessed," they now say, "All you people are asleep because you're captive of a fragmented personality, a useless creature that Life has put upon you." That is true and not true. But since there is no one around who understands anything above that level, there is nowhere practical and useful to go with it. And since neither the leaders nor the followers of any of these "new-age systems" understand the Line of consciousness, they spend years together mutually reciting their failure to become whole and unified: they can't become whole and unified at Line-Level.
The terminology has simply changed from "Everyone's born in sin" to "Everyone is asleep," or "No one can remember himself all of the time." People can spend their lives chewing on that, without understanding the point of it, which is: from Line-Level down, for a man to remember himself all the times is impossible. Can you see how a person can become addicted to the fact that he cannot "remember himself"? You become addicted to a new expression of your incompletion. What difference is there between that and being unable to overcome the seven deadly sins? You are simply trading one verbal manifestation of incompletion for another; you are not one millimeter closer to rising above the Line of consciousness.
You should Consider in your own way how ready people are to adopt a verbal manifestation of their own incompletion. Now further Consider that when they adopt such a verbal expression -- whether it's "You're flawed at birth," "You're demon possessed," or "You're a fragmented personality," nobody ever goes any further. Nobody ever shouts out in church, "O.k., I'm a sinner. WHAT'S THE CURE?" Nobody demands the cure. If people demanded a cure, all the church-houses would be burned down. All the religious leaders would have been hung years ago because they don't have the cure. This arrangement has persisted throughout history: religious leaders tell people what's wrong with them -- and everyone calls it religion. It all serves a purpose, of course -- if the arrangement did not serve a purpose, it wouldn't exist. But such activity, though essential to Life, is not This Activity.
Attempt to Neuralize what the possibilities would be if I spoke to the public; as you know, I do have the cure. But I would still be dealing with humanity at Line-Level. What would the possibilities be? I could talk to the random public and just come up with absolutely intriguing ideas until I intrigued everybody. It doesn't necessarily fascinate each person in one whack, but I could produce allegories and stories that would sound like the products of a brand new system of thought. I could make it up almost as fast as I could talk, and I can do it in such a new way that they'd believe that something new is happening. But when the presentation is over -- no matter how it might excite people -- not one voice will say, "Alright, that's the problem, but what-in-the-world are we going to do about it?" They'll be quite satisfied below the Line to hear a new description of human flaws, limitations, and incompletion. People are satisfied with that. Although humanity dreams and imagines it will run across the face of the earth to hear the religious truth, in fact what can be heard is just a new version of what is already believed. Essentially, everyone will accept a new version of, "You're demon possessed." Everybody still goes, "Wow! Double-barrelled enlightenment! He showed us the folly of what we were doing before, and then showed us the way out." But I'd have done no such thing.
Just because people will go to great effort to get to the church-house door, to get to a new-age system, or to find some teacher, do not hold your breath -- once the man they've come to hear has had his say -- for the people to demand a cure. All that is possible is limited to what's at Line-Level consciousness, because nobody can hear any more than that. It's always a version of, "Things are not right. And I know what it is." But of course he does not because he also is functioning at Line-Level. And remember, no matter how brilliantly or creatively anyone may describe mankind's flaws, no matter how enthralled an audience becomes over some cosmically-scaled picture of sin, you cannot hold your breath waiting for the audience to ask, "Yeah, but what can we do about it?"
Attempt to Neuralize a question in light of this situation: Is there another possibility? Is there any way to tell humanity more than a mere describing of limitation in new, fascinating terms? I'll answer for you: yes, there is another possibility. It is to show people that there is a way to not be frustrated; to show them that all the ideas of being more awake, the reality behind ideas of trying to be a religious person, a good person, is a reflection of something quite real. It is all physical. The possibility exists in each person's nervous system, and there is at least one person on this planet who knows physically exactly how it works. (Of course that doesn't make me king of the earth, please note. Even if it did, I'd turn it down.) But notice I'm calling it a possibility. I'm not predicting the exact outcome of such a public presentation, nor am I promising to use it. It's a possibility. But take note, that whatever is done with the random public becomes simplistic: you have to reduce any idea or method to what can be stated as simply as, "This is this, and that is that." What does that sound like? That almost sounds like a religion, does it not?
Now I want to turn your attention to another aspect of what I have called "being engaged." It is an absolutely necessary condition for all humanity. Engagement is the human use of this electrical energy coursing through the nervous system. People ordinarily refer to the engaged state as their attention. You should be able to see this state from another perspective: the energy of Life rises through each individual human nervous system, and instead of saying "ouch," it says "I". Whether it is verbal or not, what it is saying is "I", or "I know what I am." This subtle background, this feeling of "I", could be seen as keeping everything at Line-Level in a state of flux, open to change.
Now consider the state of being engaged in a specific situation you have all experienced. It is a phenomenon that I will call "worry kinks." Suppose you just got out of bed in the morning. You don't have to go to work, nobody is at home with you, and you've nothing particular to do. You're just in a sort of state of random daydreams. It is as though you're awake but still having dreams. Your mind runs on through the same channels over and over, like always. But there is nothing that we could say you were engaged with. Your attention is not held by "your job" or "that leaky faucet that needs fixing." You aren't doing anything but sitting there drinking coffee or wandering around staring at the walls. Consider the great power of suddenly getting some of the loose, waving wires at Line-Level caught up in a worry kink. The more the background seems to be calm at the start, the more powerful is this phenomenon. And it can come from nowhere, apparently; even a phone call. Someone might call you and say, "Did your aunt reach you last night? She was calling all over town trying to find you. I called her this morning, and there was no answer." Then you think, "What could it mean? Did she want to invite me somewhere? Did someone I know die? Are the police after me?" And the more calm the background is, the more powerful the tendency for some of these little waving wires to kink up and become like little worry beads. That is the nature of Line-Level consciousness. Consider how powerful this is, and that when nothing else seems to have your attention, you'll sit there and play with that, like a cut or sore.
From one viewpoint you might think, "That's terrible. How useless." And everybody can say, "I know that state. It happens to me sometimes. It's my false personality out of control." It's a man being engaged. But notice that below the Line, it's almost pleasurable. You now have something to do. You can take the ends, the little kinks, that you get in one particular place about this phone call and all it might mean, and rub on them for hours until something else happens. You may even rub on them to the point that it apparently begins to affect you. You feel you should go for a drive. You begin to get a headache. It becomes something beyond a vague phone call. It's been in there for hours, and you keep drinking coffee and pacing around. It seems to build up. And it reaches the point where you're almost sick about how serious it is.
But suddenly a phone call can come in and somebody says, "Hey do you want to go to a party?" "Yeah, what time?" And it is all over! You could have spent hours rubbing those kinks. And the area at Line-Level was not really engaged, but just kinked up in a certain place, and it remains irritated. Instead of just diffusing into the same old daydreams -- the state called boredom -- a greater amount of this energy or electrical charge is brought to a certain focus. But somebody calls and invites you to a party and that is the end of it. There is then somewhere to be engaged in some other way.
Another idea to so Consider, that appears in Life through various religions, is the possibility of a resurrection after death; the idea that, "When you die, you won't really die." It is nothing new and the stories are very common. Attempt to Neuralize that this idea is a reflection of something real, but that the reality has nothing to do with a man dying. The reality therein is the possibility of a resurrection from Line-Level consciousness. Because everything that happens up to Line-Level is a foregone death; for something to be alive it has to have the possibility of change. And unless a person finds a method, has the insane hunger to go beyond ordinary limits, he is born dead; that is, he is born with the limits foregone. Of course it does not appear to be so, but in his individual lifetime he is as foredoomed as any other mammal is, in its individual lifetime. Unless a person finds some extraordinary means of escape, and has some unbelievable, unnecessary hunger to do so, he is locked in to preordained energy exchange as much as a dog or a caterpillar is locked in. And so he is born dead with no chance of any development outside of what is possible the minute he is born. All the old ideas of resurrection have nothing to do with coming out of the grave. This -- below the Line -- is a graveyard. It is the ground of death. And it is at whatever level humanity is conscious at the time.
The resurrection is coming alive. You were born once at Line-Level, but you were born dead. Or, if you would like it a little more poetically acceptable, you were born alive, then you died, and you managed to do so by the age of twenty. The resurrection is not coming out of the physical grave: There is the graveyard: it is "I". The graveyard is ground level. There is the dirt: It's one's "I". The resurrection is to come out of that.
