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Summary by TK

Jan Cox Talk 86, Oct 20, 1983, runtime 1:33

  [Note: no tape made Oct 13]
  [Analogy/allegory of the "Big Guy": Life can be thought of as an incredibly enlarged person. ]
  [The primal flow and the 'I' flow: I flow's Concern for answers. The basis for consciousness is impersonal and mechanical. I flow/consciousness is the "usable" portion of the primal flow. It is the yellow circuitry. ]
  [I + Not-I = Everything equation. Not-I portion can be considered or viewed as another person familiar to you in life whose shortcomings and "complex contradictions" you accept. But another person on a greatly exaggerated scale. ]
  [No wasted or useless behavior exists. ]
  [Differing relative speeds of I-flow and Primal flow: railroad crossing analogy: error of assuming that RR Xing is responsible for train slowdown.

Transcript

NOTHING IS BROKEN          

Document:  86, October 20, 1983
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1983                       

    Tonight I am going to touch on many seemingly unrelated subjects.  The screen that everyone calls consciousness is built to hunger for and be satisfied only by answers.  But remember that there is another approach -- Neuralizing.  The reality behind Neuralizing is pulling your own nervous system above the level of ordinary consciousness and creating your own short circuits.  Then nonmechanical associations are generated and new connections are formed within your nervous system.  And you did it.  

     By the way, I did not find my terminology in some obscure book translated from Sanskrit.   I simply made it up.  Notice that   within the nervous system is an inability, a reluctance, to hear that.  Whenever I meet new people interested in pursuing This Thing, I go to great extremes to say that nobody sent me, I am not a part of some secret school, and I didn't get this information from anywhere.  It's intended as a minor shock.  Everyone -- not just you -- imagines that if there is some secret work going on it must be in another part of the world.  Of course, if you had grown up in Tibet, you might think I got all this information from some farmer who lives secluded in Kansas.  

     Whenever I draw a diagram or give you a new map, I warn you, "Don't get involved with the description."  But consciousness always does get involved.  If I then reinforce that by saying, "I just made this up," it is very disturbing to consciousness.  This is similar to putting one program into a computer and then telling it, "press on, but ignore that program!"  As far as ordinary consciousness is concerned, a description is either valid or it is not.  But here is another way to Neuralize all such maps:  any time you are satisfied with a map, you don't Understand it.  There is nothing wrong with using any map, but remember it is just that:  a map.  If you catch yourself clinging with satisfaction to any one, you are lost.  Remember the reality of growth is alive and moving.  

     At certain levels, people cannot be changed:  at the lower end of the nervous system where the Primal Flow operates, for one.  At the other end, the brain itself produces your sense of "I".  Working from this end, you can expand the nervous system to a degree that will amaze you.

     How the Primal Flow enters you cannot be altered, but all of humanity believes otherwise.  They believe in real change.  The whole idea of change in all its many guises is built into the system of humanity.  In order to see this, you have only to look within.  All of you initially believed that if you could find someone who knew anything about becoming more conscious, you would change radically and immediately.

     I have described the reality of being more conscious as the practice of extending your nervous system above the Line of ordinary consciousness.  There  are people who have the ability to do that.  But I assure you that they still work for a living.  They can go home several times a year to visit their parents and their families do not notice anything unusual about them.  They don't suddenly appear in a puff of smoke.  In general, they intentionally pass as being ordinary.

     The Primal Flow cannot be altered, but those who believe in magic or in mystical systems assume the opposite.  If you ask ordinary people what it would mean to reach a higher level of consciousness, they might say, "Well, I could work miracles.  I could heal the sick, make a fortune without working and everybody would like me."  Without Understanding it, they are talking about altering the Primal Flow.  They assume they could qualify energy at the level where it sustains life and generates the nervous system.  And that   is not exactly possible.  Instead, change is a matter of physically extending the active part of your nervous system beyond the screen of consciousness.  

     The origin of consciousness is mechanical and non-personal.  What we call "consciousness" is the end result of energy rising through the nervous system and reaching the brain.  Once the Yellow circuit is activated, once the E-C Gate is in operation, you are "conscious".  It is not a "gift from the gods".  It did not originate outside the nervous system.

     I refer you to the equation:  I plus Not-I equals everything.  It is the nature of ordinary consciousness for "I" to feel separate.  You feel that your awareness is personal -- private to you -- not just in quality but in origin.  You feel that your individual consciousness is caused by your unique environment and experience.  It is not; it came from the Primal Flow.  But you cannot turn on yourself and See this because "I am I."  You hear words and they do not compute because your system is in operation.  And your system "knows" that "I" is separate and personal, that a myriad of unique circumstances shaped it.  "My individual Fred or Mary was influenced by my parents, by where I grew up, and by people I've known."  But consciousness is totally mechanical, as mechanical as how tall you are or what color hair you have.  This is simply true, though it will not compute.  

     Everyone will accept that physical form is mechanical.  Ordinary people will say, "I'm short.  My mother and grandmother were too, and I can't help it."  But without analyzing it, everyone assumes that his "private consciousness" is disconnected from everything else:  "I may be bald and fat at the age of thirty, but that doesn't explain why I feel so rotten.  I suffer and there are damn good reasons why I do!" Everyone feels consciousness is not mechanical in the sense that physical characteristics surely are. That is a mistake.

     On this planet, "being conscious" means the Yellow Circuit is activated to the point where the E-C Gate is operating.  Ninety-nine per cent of the human population on this planet is now conscious at this level. Once the Yellow Circuit is activated, the Primal Flow assumes a usable form different from (but still connected to) the form it takes in the lower circuits.

     Here is something else to Neuralize:  Nothing is broken.  This is one of the lingering shocks, since ordinary human observation is a continuous series of:  "My, things are broken!"  Consider: for what purposes might Life have arranged itself that people continually want to fix "things that are broken," when nothing is broken.  (And people thinking things are broken is part of nothing being broken!)

     Or, take this approach:  anything you can possibly observe resembles one person.  Life could be correctly regarded as another living person, another (big) human being.  Try to look at what you call Life -- the "not-I" part of the equation -- as a person in exaggerated form.  When I say person, I don't mean some divine, nonhuman person.  It must be seen as an ordinary person who is complex and full of contradictions.  Even ordinary people understand that when you are friends with someone, you recognize and ignore their inconsistencies:  "Yeah, Hubert's usually a really nice guy but with a few drinks in him he gets real aggressive about politics.  You just have to put up with it."  "Every time I talk to my mother she complains she is about to die and I just smile because she is healthier than I am."  Such contradictions are part of the ordinary nature of each nervous system and everyone is aware of it.  It's commonly accepted in people.  Now consider this in conjunction with picturing Life as an exaggerated person.  

     Remember also how the three forces must appear to be in conflict.  Any behavior you can observe -- even the things that seem the most useless and irritating to you -- serves a purpose.  Right now in this city someone is holding up a gas station.  But nothing is wrong.  Suppose you visit a foreign country and see hundreds of worshipers in front of a temple.  They are waving sticks of incense and beating their heads on the pavement.  Something in you says, "Good grief!  Somewhere along the line this had to do with attempting to reach a higher state of consciousness, but now what these people are doing makes no sense at all.  They'd be better off at home drinking or listening to rock and roll."  You might believe you have made an objective observation, but if their behavior were not serving a purpose, it wouldn't continue.  

     In order to begin to See this, you must remember that the Primal Flow and the "I"-level flow operate at different speeds.  The fact that you watched those people worshipping, and even commented on what you saw does not mean you were conscious.  The source of so-called consciousness does not originate in the brain.  What you call consciousness is spent energy, and it has already been somewhere else first.  But the system cannot see that.  It thinks, "I have my own awareness.  I observe things and I know when people act foolishly."  But there is no bad or useless behavior (including ordinary criticism of ordinary behavior) whatever you believe at "I" level.

     How can your apparent level of consciousness pretend to know anything when it can't even tell me what you are going to say next?  Any of you who have given this your best shot realize that  you can't do it yet. I'll go ahead and tell you a secret.  You can't ever do it; not from the ordinary Line of consciousness down, because "I" ponders what it will say on the basis that   "I" am the one who is going to say it.  It believes that  everything is coming from right here at "I" level.  "I" cannot normally See the source of its energy.

     It would be most profitable for all of you to attempt to look upon everything outside yourself -- all interactions with individuals, the behavior of whole nations and this entire planet -- as if they belonged to one person.  Of course, once you come closer to doing this, you won't need my descriptions of it any more.  But Neuralize what it is like to live with another person; how much of their behavior is contradictory and how you simply become accustomed to this.  Then notice, as an impartial observer, how Life seems to contradict or disapprove of itself. For example, Man produces alcohol and many people drink it.  Yet it is also widely condemned.  Can you see this as an individual with conflicting desires?  Everyone at some time thinks, "Boy, I sure would like to do that!" and  then immediately says, "No, I wouldn't!"  But that's never the end of it.  The same internal exchange continues for twenty, thirty, or forty years.  Life has internal struggles too, just as individuals do.  Life is a drunk and it's also a teetotaler.  

     Ordinary people are not capable of viewing Life this way, even though they can hold this perspective in regard to individuals they know.  This inability is partially due to people's rigid assumptions about what god would be.  As far as your system is concerned, "Life" is synonymous with "God" and you think, "God can't be a drunk.  Life can't have a drinking problem."

     The life of Life does not proceed in a straight line, any more than you do.  Life is not that much different from you -- it's just exaggerated in every dimension.  You cannot in any way criticize LIfe and do This Thing.  Once you see, "Hey, I'm dealing with a big person!" all criticism is just gone.  Learn to see Life as an old friend, an old guy you've known for years.  Sometimes he drinks too much.  Sometimes he yells too much, or for no apparent reason turns on you and says, "Leave me alone!", even though you haven't done a thing to him.  And you learn to smile and say, "Well, that's the way he is...."

     Granted, you have to be strange indeed to be able to do this.  You'll see that nothing in you is equipped or prepared for it.  You are, rather, equipped to see personal struggles.  With no effort, you can notice that some people work to create a better society, some people waste their time, and some people are just obnoxious.  But what if you could see all of this as just your old friend?  He burps, he farts, he drinks and he oversleeps.  But, what else is new?  Who are you to judge him?  You might think, "Well, I'm above all that."  If you are above all that we can say one thing about you:  you are dead and nobody has noticed it yet.

     To say that the Primal Flow and the "I"-flow operate at different speeds is a serious understatement. Consider again that the "I"-flow could be described as simply the usable observable form of the Primal Flow.  I am going to hide this description in a quick example.  Let us say that we took you -- an ordinary conscious human being -- and dropped you suddenly down into the middle of civilization for the first time. Suppose that you are dropped beside some railroad tracks and you start watching trains go by. Immediately, you notice a road crossing the tracks nearby and you read a sign saying, "Railroad Crossing".  The "I"-flow observes with some interest that each time a train reaches that sign it moves at a slower rate of speed.  Then after it passes the sign, it takes off again.  The "I"-flow concludes that the sign makes trains slow down; that when a train passes by the sign it cannot continue at a constant rate of speed because the sign literally, physically, slows it down.

     I direct you back to earlier descriptions.  There is no way to change the Primal Flow.  There is no question of altering the structure of what one is.  This is not an excuse or even an explanation, but simply a fact.  If you attempt to walk into some new situation and behave in a way that is "not you", it requires an extraordinary degree of effort.  To be capable of that, your nervous system must be literally extended. Without having the nervous system activated above the Line of ordinary consciousness, all you can do is struggle with this.  Whatever you accomplish is going to be incomplete and should taste in some way dissatisfying.  On the other hand, if you could do it, you wouldn't have to do it.  

     Have any of you ever considered that you are always dissatisfied with you?  How can you be so dissatisfied?  Here's one question that you would never ask yourself:  "What if the blood flow culminating in energy spent as "I" included a self-criticism carrier?"  If you can see Life as another human being, it too  is criticizing itself.  When people say, "We have to do something about the national disgrace of alcoholism!", it's really Life saying, "I've got to cut down!"  Then later that day, it gets hot and he has another beer.  Life is not that different from you.

     One definition of getting above the Line of ordinary consciousness is not taking things personally.  I have given this description before, but the first time you hear this, it sounds like some sort of psychological panacea.  It is as if I had said, "Look, don't take it personally."  That is not what I mean.  Down in the lower circuitry you are always going to take things personally.  That will never change.  The reality behind this is to Understand that nothing is personal:  there is no individual basis of isolated consciousness.  What you continually see are the forms built into your system.  You identify humans engaged in useless behavior  The simple reality you can't yet recognize is the interplay of forces at work.  Apparent people are transferring energy and there is no basis for your critical observations.  One year it seems that everyone around you is saying, "That country threatened us!  Let's attack them!"  Then, twelve months later, the majority of people say, "Listen, we've got to disarm.  We are a civilized nation and this has gone far enough! You might stand back, the astute observer, and think, "Humanity is Crazy."  It is not.  It's not crazy and it's not non-crazy.  If you could view it as a real huge guy with the same problems you have, you'd be closer to Understanding.

     "The huge guy" is not just a good metaphor.  There is a reality  behind this description.  Attempt to see that all of Life can literally be viewed as another human being.  Consider that in viewing Life you are not observing the President or the Pope or some group of people, but one other person.  If every behavior you normally attribute to individuals were taken up to an exaggerated level -- if you viewed Life this way -- it would not be so hard to Understand nor so open to criticism.

     Let me give one more hint.  I know it still sounds allegorical.  But let me remind you there is a physical reality involved.  Remember the description of moving pictures traveling from a projector and that you can see them before they reach the screen of consciousness?  It is literally, physically true that by the time something hits what seems to be the individual screen of consciousness, it's too late.  Yet everyone in the ordinary world believes this screen is what they are working on.  I am telling you that once the energy reaches your individual level of consciousness, forget it.  It's over.  It has already been somewhere and, as great Alabama Mystics say, "You are a day late and a dollar short."  You may think, "I am conscious of this now and I'm going to figure it out after I think about it."  You can do that if you can tell me what you're going to say next.

     The two flows operate at two different speeds and to say that they're incomparable is a lie.  They are mega mega mega incomparable.  If you think you understand a map -- if you're satisfied -- you don't fully understand it.  And once you are conscious of something, it is too late.  The process of always  being too late cannot be altered; that will never change.  What you must do is extend your consciousness beyond the "I" process so that the source of it is no longer the current (totally mechanical) source.

     You cannot remove yourself from the process; therefore, you will always be recognizable.  No matter what, you will not suddenly grow a foot taller, lose twenty pounds and fly through the air to astonish your friends.  Still, it sure was fun to dream  about such things, wasn't it?