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Summary by TK

Jan Cox Talk 18, Apr 15, 1982, runtime 00:38

  [Remarks re: expansion of The Work, given prior to including 'new' Atlanta people into Group and on the threshold of opening up the west coast cities to J.'s discourses] ]
  [ Ref: Diagram 5.  The Work is something absolutely inaccessible to the ordinary and in a horizontal sense accomplishes nothing in that arena; it is of no interest, is meaningless, ineffective and doesn't fit the horizontal world.  The ordinary horizontal organizations--sham, would-be Work groups--are what is meaningful and articulate.  So what place and purpose does The Work serve?  For The Work, the more that you know, the less you know.  If you think J. has a specific "grand plan" for The Work, that such is inherent in The Work, forget it!   An approach for J. would be perhaps, to establish a "sham church" since it is only sham systems that can do anything.  Real Work in a sense does nothing.  When The Work gets to an extreme acceleration, where a "savior" phenomenon appears, an "instant shortcut" is almost required.  In the first stage of a "savior" process, such a one merely shows up on the steps of the temple and cries out the obvious: "Life is suffering".  The second stage is to identify the enemy, provide the "reasons why" (demons; ungodly tendencies; 'false' personality etc.).  The third stage, rarely reached, is the giving out of apparent new data, rules and methods --"Commandments," self-remembering etc.  But these are impossible for any without one-who-knows and the Aim, and thus devolve on themselves in a circular fashion to a new entry into suffering. ]
  [What if the real purpose of The Work is to be made up as you go?

Transcript

WHAT IF YOU HAVE TO FAKE IT?                 

Document:  18,  April 15, 1982
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1982                        

     I am going to talk further and more specifically regarding the Line of Consciousness. To say that there is a Line is both true and false.  But there is, nonetheless, an absolute Line.

     I could say that the Line differentiates those who know and those who do not know.  I could say that the Line differentiates, absolutely, between one who has and one who hasn't ignited the higher areas of the nervous system.  But I could more simply say that there is a something, a secret that can only be known above the Line.   And the knowledge of that secret is the actual knowing of what This Thing is.

     People who become the leaders of pseudo-systems are of a specific type.  It has to do with the makeup of the nervous system -- that is, the type of personality role that seems to play in life.  Rather than being ministers or used car salesmen or entertainers -- all of whom are variations of the same type -- they become gurus of different stripes.  They present themselves as being "the one person whom the gods have sent," or "I am one of the only people in the Western world who got into secret cave x247 in Tibet and saw The Book."  There is a certain kind of intensity to what these people do, a certain kind of missionary zeal.  But don't pass it off as being simple idiocy.  Throughout the ages there have always been those who present their theories and ideas as some sort of system.  What they're presenting, though, is a washing of their own sickness, and it produces a kind of passionate intensity, a zeal that has its place, and there is nothing wrong it.  Such people and their activities are not doing This Thing any damage.  They do no more damage than other ordinary people, doing ordinary things, shooting each other over twenty-five cents or over jealousy.  It is no more than one country attacking another.  The double barrelled justice of this is that it is easier, in a sense, for such people to promote their activities because there is a certain kind of zealous intensity, a fervor that is simply a form of Line-Level engagement:  it is a system born of their own Line-Level illness, or type, if you prefer.  Whereas one who truly Knows has to fake it.

     From a certain quite real viewpoint, pseudo-systems and their particular kind of zeal -- the kind of passion apparently inherent in them, in their leaders and primary followers -- serve a quite distinct and specific purpose.  It is possible to See this in a lifetime.  It is possible to See it as it is happening.  But Neuralize simultaneously that This Thing, a real system, seems to be vague and undefined; it seems to be unzealous to the point of being nothing.

     If we take words further, and if I told you that it is possible to know without any doubt, to See in a certain way what is going on -- to See into the history of man -- what are you left with?  Suppose I said that right now on the face of this planet there is no one who understands more than I do, what possible use could that be to you?  Even if I presented it as fact -- right now, on this planet, I'm IT -- then you're left with a kind of variation of my story of the sky god coming down in Cleveland.  You are left with a kind of "so what?"   Not in a sarcastic sense, but simply "so what?  What am I to do with this information?"

     There are all kinds of pseudo-systems rolling right along out there.  They've got great mailing lists, they're pushing their books, selling tapes and records.  They hold national and international conventions, they even make the evening news occasionally.  And then there's us, barely even noticeable in comparison.  If you could "get right on the Line," if you looked at it from Line-level consciousness you could say, "Well, it seems to have always  been this way.  There's got to be some kind of injustice afoot,  that the world ends up wanting, at the very least, to ignore past commentators of This Thing and, at the worst, to kill them, while these people are rolling in their own profits."  But, you can look at it another way and say, "Well, there is nothing strange about that phenomenon.  Actually, it is not even worthy of much observation.  Of course such and such pseudo-system is going to have lots of followers.  Because that system is part of Line-level Life.  That system fits into the lateral arrangement of things.  It is all relative."

     Someone who presents This truly, must attempt to continually     refine it.  Do you see that the more This or any real system is refined, the less it fits laterally?  This Thing never fits into preordained Line-Level slots.  I have been trying to rearrange some of your slots; trying to make the unreasonable become reasonable; trying to make you Consider that which is absolutely unconsiderable; trying to make you do the impossible; then to have you find out that it was a trick to lead you somewhere else.

     Can you See that if This existed in graduated forms approaching something ever more pure, the increasingly direct, that if the person in charge were capable of presenting it this way (that is, his so-called "personality" were not involved) that it would have nothing to do with ordinary Horizontal movement?  It would have to do with the people involved wanting to know.  The closer you come to that point -- that is, the more refined This Thing gets -- the less of an apparent purpose it serves, from a relative, Line-Level view.

     There are pseudo-systems everywhere, there always have been.  But if you look at them and say that they are not proper, that something is amiss because they flourish, you're missing a chance to See something.  And you're missing the point of my comments.   Neuralize:  they do serve a purpose.  And then Neuralize this:  "What purpose does This Thing serve?"

     This Thing is all a continuing process of having to fake it, to pretend that it is meaningful.  Yet when a person comes in contact with This, their response is often, "Finally, here is something meaningful!  Not like all those other flim-flam things I've pursued."  I'm asking you, what is going on?  They think, "Now I am going to get something real."  Are they?  What they had already done -- their pseudo-system activity -- was meaningful because it had an effect.  Can anyone get a glimpse that the closer you are to something real, the less apparent effect it has?

     I have directed you on several occasions to recall how it was when you first came here; your imagination about becoming superman, your dreams of being able to bend people to your will and read their minds, being able to predict the horse races.  And I pointed out to you (some of you heard it in your own way as you went along) that even if all of that were possible, the closer you get to actually being able to produce and perform such tricks, the less interest you have in doing it.  

     Let's say that we have a man here who has ignited the higher regions of his nervous system.  He could simply look upon other people and no matter what they were saying he would instantaneously understand whether it was likely, if not certain, that they would ever live up to what they said.  He could, let us say, "read their minds."  The nervous system from the Line down feels, "If I could do that, it'd be an absolute boon, a miracle.  I would be rich.  I would have no problems.  I would be dangerous to behold."  All of you, somewhere in your nervous system still believe that in some way these powers are "gifts from the gods"; that if you were granted the power to do such miracles it would be some sort of holy grace, with a kind of controlling factor thrown in on top.  You would just sit back and be some kind of smug saint.  "Oh yeah, I could do it.  But now I'm so godlike that I wouldn't take advantage of my fellow man."  On a certain level, if that is all you could Hear, I might nod and say, "Well you hear something.  And if you find it interesting I would encourage you to continue Neuralizing it."  But that is not the end of it.  That's not all there is to be seen.  

     Neuralize further with me now:  rather than a limiting factor of sainthood, rather than it being a matter of not taking advantage of others, perhaps you'd reach a point where such powers would become irrelevant. Perhaps you'd See that the exercise of your powers wouldn't be beneficial.  And Neuralize beyond even that:  Can anybody See that perhaps the more you knew, the less you would do?  

     I refer you to where I began this discussion:  Can you see that the leader of any pseudo-system does not know.  He doesn't have the knowledge, the understanding of the secret.   He simply plays out a role.  He could even be using my books, my terminology.  He could talk like I do. But he does not Know.  Almost all of you, without discussing it, can look at any guru in the world and See him for what he is.  You'd simply See that he does not understand.  You wouldn't have to ask him for his credentials, you wouldn't have to interview him; you could simply look upon him and See that the man knows nothing.  You See that he does not know, whatever knowing is, because you can See him.  But Neuralize that he and his activities have an effect out there on the great moving merry-go-round of Life.  Hundreds, thousands, are persuaded by him. And you can feel why.  It has a place, a definite place.  And so it has an effect.  It is doing something.  

     What are we doing?  Ordinarily, one might have the sense that there is a grand specific plan somehow inherent in This, or that I've worked it all out in advance and we are simply seeing the steps through.  But notice that I keep conjuring up short term plans.  We seem to move in one direction for a while, then I say, "Well, lets move in this new direction.  We've got to really plan to get this done.  We've got to move over here."  I am not saying that there's no such thing as making some kind of plan.  But it's natural to think that one who could see how things operate, who Understood the nature of man, would be able to instantaneously (or at least over the weekend) map out a grand plan.  Or you might think that an ultimate plan was at work in producing such an extraordinary person, that Life has a grand plan that takes into account all man's evolutionary leaps and pratfalls.  I'm not saying that is wrong.  But Neuralize:  the purer, the more refined, the closer something gets to being real, the less it observably does, in any given lifetime.  So it is those operating on the level of pseudo-systems who are doing something.  While we here seem to be doing nothing, just continually threatening.

     I am going to direct you to Neuralize the manner in which This is moving, and, specifically, that it is speeding up in a certain way.  For example, the maps and descriptions I have presented to you in the past had a longer shelf-life than those you are hearing today.  The territory I've previously covered over the course of several years is now being consumed in the space of several months.  And it is not that I could have run This faster in the past, because everything was as it was and today everything is as it is -- in comparison to everything being as it was.  I am not here to tell you that I've found a short cut, or that you people are getting better at doing This.  There's no way to gauge results in This journey.  It is simply that now is not then.

     Notice also that once This begins to spread out -- not just spatially, or in time, but in other multidimensional ways that cannot even be described -- it is like pearls coming apart even before they get to the "swine."  An unknown aspect of quantum physics begins to eat this information and the pearls begin to disintegrate.  Where before you had pearls, now you have little mini pearls.  Neuralize how the idea of saviors has arisen in Life.  And I don't mean just in the needs of the machinery itself, nor just in the needs of ordinary humanity looking for completion, looking for a new father, looking for someone to still the movement of the wires, someone to apparently complete this unfinished nervous system business.  Why is it that some of the people you would just naturally assume were spokesmen for This Thing in the past let themselves get dragged into the position of being a saviour?  

     I want you to Neuralize that the faster This moves, the more it almost has to get down to the level of someone who knows simply showing up and going through the first two stages that I have pointed out to you.  For example, the first stage would be the priest on the church steps saying, "Everybody is suffering and miserable and frustrated," and everyone says "Yeah."  It gets everyone's attention since the whole world is prepared for that.  Then the second stage is the identification -- the attempted identification of the enemy -- the cause of all this misery.  "It's because of demons, it's your ungodly ways."  In the past, the enemy was Satan, demons and assorted anti-gods.  Today the enemy would likely be identified in psychological terms:  "personality problems" or "aspects of one's personality." -- so much for the first two stages.  

     No one ever gets to the third stage except those in a real system.  Everyone else is left with this two-stage, self fueling, circular process:  "We are all suffering.  Yes"; then you run halfway around the circle to get the rest of the sentence, the new information that identifies the enemy:  "The reason you are suffering is because of your life-induced personality."  Then you run full-circle, back to the initial suffering stage.  What I call "pseudo-groups" or "pseudo-systems" are all a two-staged circus.  Their leaders, their gurus, have enough show business in their personality type, they all have a certain turn of mind, a certain mechanical cleverness, a certain ability to rephrase old answers and come up with something that seems to be new.  But it is not new and it is not an answer.  It is simply a refueling stop, so you can get back around the circle.  That is, they point to the impossible.  "You've been suffering and you're demon possessed.  Get rid of the demons." or, "Live totally by the commandments."  Today the terminology is different:  "The problem is man's personality; false personality is the culprit." or, "If you could 'self-remember' all of the time the cycle would be broken.  You wouldn't go back to suffering."  But no one involved in a pseudo-system  understands what I have pointed out to you:  no one, from the Line down, can self-remember.  No one at Line-Level can live by the commandments.  There's no such thing as a Line-Level true Christian, Buddhist, Jew or Sufi.  No one at Line-Level can be truly religious.  

     If Guru X were to describe the exercise of "remembering-oneself" to your nervous system below the Line, it would say, "Yeah.  Okay.  Got it."  Then next week he'd ask, "Well, what happened with your self-remembering?"  And you'd have to tell him, "I tried it and I couldn't do it.  And now on top of all my other problems, I'm suffering over not being able to self-remember."  So the circle begins all over again.  "I have a great deal of hostility toward my wife, my kids, my job.  How can I stop it?"  "Simple, if you would 'remember yourself' at all times you would not suffer."  That is true.  Except Guru X himself doesn't understand it, because he doesn't understand that it cannot be done on that basis.  He can't do it, but no one there is interested in that fact because no one has the Aim to ignite the higher areas of their nervous system.  It just goes in a circle.  

     The longer the Life of a real system, there comes a time that there almost has to be an instant short-cut.  The system must be presented simply and directly.  You can point out the obvious to people, "Everybody's miserable; you're miserable."  "But how do you know that?"  they might ask.  "Because you showed up here.  You're miserable in a certain way, and you thing This Thing can cure your misery."  Then I would have to identify the cause of the misery.  But in doing so I would have to go past demons, past personality and psychological problems.  And then we come to the third stage, the stage lacking in any but a real system.  It is the stage of forgiveness.  The stage where you tell them, "Yes you're miserable, and it's because you've done such and such.  But never mind.  You're forgiven."  Of course the third stage only really works if it comes from someone who knows.  That's why pseudo-systems are all two-staged cycles.

     One of the most renowned phrases, at least in the Western world in religious areas, is "The truth shall set you free."  I can rephrase it, this way:  "Knowledge of the situation will stop all suffering."  The truth will set a man free.  It will set a man free if he wants to know, if he wants to be set free, and if he's found someone who knows how to do it.

     People express the desire to be free in various ways.  Everybody who shows up at pseudo-system meetings of any kind is absolutely convinced of what freedom would be.  It would be "freedom from this kind of ignorance, from this kind of frustration, freedom from the whole world kicking me around, people mistreating each other, freedom from hunger and starvation, freedom from myself.   You know I can't 'remember myself', I can't even remember to observe which sock I put on first.  I just want to forget it all.  I want freedom." But as I attempted to point out by my references to the two stages, all they ever receive ordinarily is the leader simply noting that everyone is suffering, and then apparently identifying the enemy.

     No one ever demands the third step.  Yet people will attend all kinds of gatherings that purport to be able to set them free.  If you asked them, "Does everyone believe the old idea that 'The truth will set you free?'"  They all say "Yes."  Then the tacit follow-up to that statement is:  "Let's get to it.  Let's have the truth."  But the telling of the truth does no good unless there is someone to Hear the truth.  The justice of it is that the majority of people don't want to hear the truth.  They can't hear the truth.  They are, rather, looking for a new place to replay the two-stage circle.  They want to hear, "Hey, boy, isn't life a drag."  And everyone says, "Right on, swami."  Then the swami says, "I'll tell you why...you people are not vegetarians, you have not read my books, you are not chanting..."  And then he lists just enough requirements so that nobody does them.  No one is ever going to do them.  No one can do them.  But everyone accepts the fact that "I could be free if I could do all these things."  Notice the process:  it is always the two-staged circle.  That is all anybody wants.  And that is what Life furnishes.  It's the old law of supply and demand.  But on the other hand, where is the call, the demand, for This?

     Neuralize this next-to-last tidbit:  if there were a gigantic call, a human-wide call for something real, for This Thing, it would cease to be real.  That is not going to happen, but if it did, well, I'd disappear in a second.

     So what could be done ultimately for a real purpose?  I'll give you one last thing to Neuralize.  What if you have to make it up?  What if you absolutely have to fake it?