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Summary by TK

Jan Cox Talk 130, Oct 25, 1984, runtime 1:53

  [Psych questions/topics continued: Change at line-level is almost impossible. Moot. Irrelevant. There must be a kind of tolerance, a looseness, in the grid which = your feeling of freedom, your opinions, the vicissitudes of Life, pushes and pulls of the forces. Provides an illusion of motion in an otherwise timescale expansion too gradual for ordinary perception. |
  |Illusion of two kinds of freedom: 1st-feeling of negativity toward others (I'm Free not to be like that fool!). 2nd-feeling of personal freedom to be whatever you want. |
  |Stress in Life = change. At line-level the only relief is above I-level. |
  |The underpinnings of all interactions between people is in part sexual. Supposed perverse sexual daydreams are impersonal; the energy is everywhere; feelings of self-condemnation and sexual inadequacy flow thru everyone. Neuralize why this is so, what purpose does Life make of this? |
  |Groups: forms of tension in same. To be viable, tension must develop. Most basic form: power struggle--who is dominant? Hierarchy develops. E.g., of "Goethe Society". |
  |What is hope? Mechanical dreams of Life, its expectations through a maturing process. Ordinary hope is irrelevant. Ordinary hope belies understanding and knowledge. |
  |Relationships in the Group. Like living w/ your own reflection-gone-insane. Most difficult thing in the world, but fraught with confounding possibilities for growth. If you feel anything less than extraordinary. Closeness with your partner after breakup, something is amiss.  You're experiencing yourself.|
  |There is a sense of time related to rate of breathing. And to anger, fear, boredom. Also these latter affect the breathing. Circular. |
  |Emotions are more suspect at higher levels of horizontal hierarchy--aristocracy and business. Development of codes of conduct--etiquettes, strict rein on emotions. Lower levels of hierarchy of Life's nervous system places fewer restrictions on emotions. |
  |There is a power/connection between blood kin--purely physical--inescapable, inexplicable intensity positive or negative. Proclivity for negative seems to predominate. Between you and lover or friend there is always a known power hierarchy existing: dominant vs. submissive. But with stranger this is unknown and potentially dangerous. |
  |Everything is Show Biz. All play a role, hermits included. Animal species that become extinct were used up because no longer necessary for Life. Role was written out--job description deleted. |
  |Why Life's forever encouragement of honesty? Up the mechanical hierarchy = more call for honesty than lower levels. |
  |Should view ordinary people as: harmless children and dangerous beasts simultaneously. |
  |In every, and any energy transaction somebody is drained. Imbalance always exists or the situation is irrelevant--doesn't exist.

Transcript

LIFE GROWS THROUGH MAN'S DESIRE FOR PERSONAL CHANGE
OR,  WHAT DO YOUR SEXUAL DAYDREAMS DO FOR LIFE?

Document:  130,  October 25, 1984
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1984          

     As with everything in Man, the idea of personal change is a proper reflection of Life's direction and growth.  As such, it offers profitable food for one seriously pursuing This Thing.  If you can hear for yourself what Life is saying through these dreams, without any kind of pessimism or entanglement with your internal voices, you will find that the reality behind the ordinary notion of individual change is far from what Man believes or wishes it to be.

     The question of change at Line-level consciousness is almost totally moot.  All of you have had occasion to try and change some "personal" habit in yourself, such as the number of hours you sleep or the amount of coffee you drink.  You may think, "I am going to quit drinking coffee.  For twenty years I have drunk at least two cups every morning before I could even comb my hair.  This must be wrong and I have to stop it."  It is on this level that you and everybody ordinarily address the idea of change, but it is almost impossible to change at that level.  This must be seen, not as a justification or excuse for your mechanical behavior, but as the nature of the way things are held together .pain the larger Grid.  The very things that people label habit equal their position in the Grid.

     Ordinarily when you attempt to change some habit that you have had for years, everything will shortly get pulled back into shape.  You cannot change some habit you seemed to have picked up during your teen years, such as drinking coffee or reforming what you call your habitual short temper.  You could swear, "I am going to stop expressing negativity towards my fellow man," or you might decide, "I'm going back to the religions of my forefathers, and I'm going to become a good Jew or Christian or Buddhist."  And you can apparently do so for a period of time, put yourself under pressure, especially if you're in the throes of a momentary shock such as having someone close to you die or knowing that you yourself are ill, and make this change.  You actually may quit drinking coffee.  You may begin to go to church and try to pray every day.  But within a short period of time it is all gone.  From Line level down, the circuits of Man are wired in a particular way and everything gets pulled back into shape.  This is not an attack on humanity.  And I remind you again to forget any notion that all of this has to do with psychological make-up and upbringing.  It is the hard wired nature of the human circuitry.  Everyone is playing a particular role, from worms and dogs to lions and humans.  A man is going to snap back into his shape, his role, from the Line down.  Your role is habitual.  It is your position in the Grid, and any question of change is moot.  It might as well be said that at Line level, change is impossible.

     I have admitted that this is very sticky verbally, because when you view it from the level of ordinary consciousness, you are stuck in the same mire as everyone else who believes that change is indeed possible.  From your Line level perspective, you have seen people apparently change, such as your uncle who quit drinking after the automobile accident where he killed his wife and child.  But that is not change. He could not do otherwise.  His so-called "change" to teetotalism is as much a part of his present Grid position as was his earlier drinking.

     Everyone believes change is possible because the Grid has a certain degree of looseness or tolerance.  Picture the map of Life as a living machine.  It is not a dead machine and not really a machine at all in the ordinary sense, but an actual living mechanism.  There has to be a tolerance for machines to operate.  If all the gears were to fit together perfectly, everything would freeze.  Consider this both internally and externally, that there is a tensile strength holding everything together.  It is almost as though the intersections where each man is connected within the Grid is like one fist rotating in the palm of the other hand.  It is not a completely tight fist or there would be no motion.  There must be a looseness, a necessary tolerance for movement to occur.  This is how you are plugged into Life; how you are connected to your mate, your family, your job, your neighborhood, the society.  The looseness allows the forces of Life to push and pull a man, just as there is looseness for my fist to move inside of my hand or a ball to move within a socket joint.  If there were not, then mankind and Life would be frozen; nothing could move. There would be no growth, and in the truest sense no life to Life.

     Real change can occur only above the Line.  It is the activation of a new circuit, not a changing of the old circuits.  If we continue with the illustration of a socket joint, or my fist moving in my other hand, then one with an Aim must fill up all of the tolerance so that you are no longer mechanically pushed and pulled about, either by apparent input from the Grid itself or from all of your apparent internal voices of hatred, prejudice and judgment.  No longer are you fertilizer for mechanical growth of Man as a whole.

     The Grid has a kind of tolerance which appears at Line level to be personal choice.  You can tell a person, "I support such and such political party."  In a Line level exchange, he will apparently listen to your argument, stroke his chin and reply, "You know, I used to consider such things.  I investigated which political theories could be most promising for humanity, and after many years I have come to the conclusion that you are wrong."  This person was not born into any particular political party and it appears that at some point in his life, after an investigation of his alternatives, he selected a political philosophy.  If you are tied into the Grid at that level, there is the appearance of personal choice and change.  But at that level, there is no personal choice.  The apparent movement is only the ability to be pushed and pulled. Just as the human body grows, the Grid itself is expanding.  Within the body, the bones can not expand at variant rates and proportions.  The pelvic bone cannot stop at the age of eight while the connecting thigh bone continues to grow.  Nor can the bones fit too tightly.  There must be a kind of looseness in everything at that level, expanding together.  But it is not a matter of freedom or personal change.  Your thigh bone cannot decide to become an elbow bone.  Only for the Few does the tolerance within the Grid allow the opportunity for real change.

     Despite all the voices built into people claiming they should change their habits and overcome their fears and hatreds, actual change is impossible.  You have constantly had the opportunity for such change. Look back down your spine into your true past.  Or go out and try it again.  Take this thing that seems to be yourself and try to clean it up.  Try to make all the changes that you have always worried about, stop all of the things that you daydream about and denounce.  It is impossible.  And even if it were possible, if you want me to carry this further, it is more trouble than it's worth.  You would have to devote every ounce of your attention to it, all of your energy from now until the day you die, and you would still never completely succeed.  It would be a new hobby, and it would take you away from a new activation of the higher circuitry. You would be in no worse position than anyone else, but you would spend the rest of your life with a new hobby that would eat up your energy and you still would not have succeeded on the day you died.

     This is not a form of rationalization or excuse.  You must learn to devote your energies where they belong, to the activation of Man's next circuit.  You were born with internal voices that insist, "I should be otherwise, I should be changing."  All of humanity is born with these voices, and their source is Life pushing its own growth through Man.  On an individual level, all man hears is self-condemnation and a call for personal change.  Activate consciousness above that ordinary level and you will understand why I call the possibility of change at Line-level consciousness "irrelevant."

     Again, there seems to be a certain latitude, within limits, within which a man can move which gives you the illusion of freedom.  One cannot make absolute predictions regarding an individual's actions, and it would not necessarily be worthwhile even if one could.  It would take more energy and time than it was worth to predict that on a certain Friday afternoon one specific man is going to leave his apartment, take five minutes to reach the market and then buy thirteen six packs of beer.  A neighbor may stop him on the way.  There is that amount of tolerance in the Grid.  We cannot predict whether his trip is going to take five minutes, seven minutes or twelve minutes.  This latitude gives the appearance of a form of freedom.  But you can predict, absolutely that he will go to the market and buy beer, not champagne.  You can predict he will come home, have a few beers and ask some of his friends to meet him at the Rat's Nest Club.  It is absolutely predictable that they will not dress in formal evening clothes or go to the opera.

     Another aspect of this apparent freedom is that on the ordinary level, people can see other people do things that they themselves apparently cannot do.  Take this example:  You are sitting in a diner.  Another type of a person, different from you, walks in, sits down, and proceeds to speak loudly.  He may talk about his personal hygiene, his father the drunk, or shout out for more coffee, smiling all the while.  You, on the other hand, are hard wired in such a way that as soon as you walk in you feel that all of these total strangers will immediately think to themselves, "Oh, good grief, here comes somebody who is going to ruin the whole ambience."  You may slink over to a seat and try to disappear.  The waitress has to ask you three times for your order.  You are in total wonder at how the other guy can be such a loudmouth.

     Let us use this example as the basis to refine and expand this idea of freedom.  There is the illusion here of two kinds of freedom.  (Remember that we are talking about the ordinary level and apparently about psychological things, yet we are not.  We are talking about Life talking and people not listening. What comes out as the apparent personal psychological quirks and problems of individual people is Life moaning and groaning and thinking to itself.)  One illusion of freedom is for the shy person to look a the loudmouth and believe, "At least I have the freedom not to be like that.  Anybody could be like that -- crude, unsophisticated, uneducated.  They do not know any better.  But I have the freedom, the background, the upbringing and the genetic wherewithal that I am not that uncouth."  Another kind of illusion of freedom, rather than that sort of negative approach, would be the feeling that, "All right, as far as I can tell I am just not like that.  But that is the proof of the availability of alternatives, even though I may not approve of it or want to do it."  (That being, of course, a nom de plume for "I can't do it").  "But somebody else does.  There he is.  So there is freedom in the world."  Now, of course, all of this is unanalyzed, but it is, nonetheless, an unstated belief that there is a kind of freedom for a man to be and do as he wishes.  There is not.

     Some of you have asked that I speak on the topic of "stress."  There is a reality behind this having to do with the need for Life to expand through an individual person.  But this reality can never be analyzed at Line-level consciousness.  It appears to come out in the form of little "s" stress:  "My job expects too much of me; my wife expects too much of me; my husband expects too much."  But the reality is back at the primal level; Life is continually attempting to expand through Man.  That is the basis of what humanity calls stress.  The only relief is to move up to a higher level, because at Line-level consciousness, no matter who you are, there is stress.  In the ordinary Grid system, whether you appear to be a horizontal success or a dismal failure at everything, there is an inescapable feeling of stress.

     Can you see the connection between this and the lack of possibility of real change at Line level?  The belief in individual change is an illusion.  Ordinary consciousness in one man cannot change itself.  The reality of change exists on a larger level, Life, changing from generation to generation as it expands through Man.  At that level, change is occurring, the individual, however never feels this mechanically.  At man's ordinary level there is the feeling of stress when man feels, "I should be doing something else."  It is Life trying to push higher.  The only relief for an individual is to activate the area above Line-level consciousness.  (Of course, I should point out that if you do, you may find new and improved forms of stress.) 

     One of the first thrilling moments in This Thing is when you get some grasp of the impartial, non-personal nature of sex within the Grid.  The underpinning to all interaction between people is sexual in part.  Anytime you see people together, not just two people, but large numbers of people at football games or in church or in a literary society, the interaction is sexual in part.  You can't get away from it.  But remember, as with everything connected with This Thing, there is much more here than your mechanical associations of the word "sexual."  You must use an internal "comma" instead of a "period" to see more of this for yourself.  What seems to be individual sexual fears and daydreams of an apparently perverse nature, enough to fill you with self-condemnation such as, "Good grief, if anybody knew what I just imagined, I would be ostracized for life," are not what you take them to be.  These fears and daydreams are everywhere, and are not unique to you.  Everyone from the president to a bricklayer has them.  Once you smell this for yourself, your nonverbal comment should be, "Hmmmmm."

     In Western history, note that there has been a distinct progression in man's attitude toward sex.  The socially acceptable level of sex in behavior, speech, and imagination has changed drastically in recent years.  Life is talking in a very particular way and serving a very distinct purpose.  Look at literature and censorship.  There were times when certain forms of sexual activity were absolutely forbidden, while today, nobody gives them a second thought.  Life itself, speaking through ordinary people, may point out, "This has been some kind of psychological or social progress," or, "We are growing up."  This is not untrue, but these explanations entangled in Line-level consciousness will not do you any good or profitably explain anything.  There is a process, a movement which has accelerated in your lifetime, through which Life is growing.  And it is not a matter of speculation on your part, because Life is growing through you; you can see it in your own spine.  Look no further than your own and everyone's Yellow Circuit, which is hard wired with some form of self condemnation or feeling of sexual inadequacy and then consider, "Hmmmm.  There must be some purpose to this."  What I do is try to entice you to look at your own Yellow Circuit and then help ignite pieces of it.  The reality is there for you to see.

     Over the years, I have had questions regarding how sexual energy could be used in pursuing your Aim.  I will not say much more than I have said in the past.  There is no general rule to give to any group of people about how to use sexual energy.  It is so basic.  I will point out again however, how would-be groups of people attempting to expand their horizons during this lifetime, such as many religions and would-be mystical groups, have used the old monastery syndrome.  You can take the words of all religions, of every holy book, of anybody that ever fell down foaming at the mouth and mumbled something seemingly mystical, and make it sound like a condemnation of the body.  Spread throughout human history is the notion, "We've got to cut out sex if we are to ever reach the level of the gods."  There is a reality to that, but you cannot take it literally any more than you can use any one incident by itself to see where Life is going.  For example, there are instances of men who slaughter their family.  That one instance is not where Life is going.  It is the same with celibacy.  If celibacy were necessary in this day and time for igniting the higher reaches of the nervous system, I would demand it from you and I haven't.  The notion that you cannot have sex and reach the level of the gods is used primarily to stop sex.  Line-level consciousness may observe, "Hey, if I devote more energy to attempting to do This Thing and less to trying to attract the opposite sex, I might be better off."  Or, "It appears that sex and love are always followed by the blues and unhappiness.  And the blues slow me down."  Can you see that feeling this has vibrated to certain groups of people and it has come out in the form of "celibacy equals godliness"?  And so any group that calls itself mystical will have a final selling point if they demand that everyone restrain from having sex.  People get there and say, "What a relief.  If I join that group I couldn't have sex even if I wanted to."  Everyone has a piece of this attraction.  And as with most things that are called mystical, once you see it in yourself, it is not especially mystical anymore.

     Another variation, not as widespread, is some group espousing the theory that they have an absolute license to do anything.  This is not the norm of would-be religious groups and orders but it does exist occasionally in the form of anything goes sexually.  It is the same thing as celibacy, as those of you beginning to understand that opposites are always the same thing, can see.  But on an ordinary level, nobody knows how to deal with it.

     In general, mankind understands that sex is not something to fool around with.  The power of sex is a part of the unrecognized underpinnings of all relationships.  You cannot get away from it.  There is no profitable way for me to give you some sort of rule, but I can suggest this:  when you're having sex, then have sex with the person you're with.  Reign in the Yellow Circuit and keep it from daydreaming about other people and different circumstances.  Keep sex at the level of sex.  You cannot have sex without the Yellow Circuit; it is going to be involved somewhere, but you can direct it.

     There is no simple way that I can point you with words towards taking sexual energy and turning it in a profitable direction.  But there is a way in which you should look at sexual daydreams.  Everyone has some form of condemnation for their sexual daydreams or feelings of sexual inadequacy (which is the same thing.)  They are just meaningless.  Rather than investigate your hoary past or look for excuses, you should begin to Neuralize, or consider as best you can without thinking about it, "What is going on in Life with regard to this?"  Do not look for anything more mystical than the fact that if people did not have sex we would not be here.  People have got to do it to keep everything growing.  Sex is basic.  Not kind of basic...very basic.  Yet, you should Neuralize that people are having something as basic as sex and then worrying about it:  "Do I do it enough?  Do I do it the right way?  My daydreams are terrible."  Investigate for yourself how can this be.  What possible purpose is being served for Life?

     The process of changing attitudes regarding sex is going on in your lifetime.  I do not mean it as some kind of cure, but it is changing in your lifetime.  There is change enough that people can discuss it.  On the radio, on television, at dinner, people are talking openly about things that twenty years ago you could have been jailed for writing about it in a book.  "Yes, I seem to have become impotent in the last two or three months.  I do not know what has happened."  "Yes, I had a brother-in-law that way.  More coffee, please." Something indeed is going on.

     Another related so-called topic:  there exists a living, dynamic, tensile component to Life, which in a sense holds things together, and is experienced as tension.  It is inescapable and absolutely necessary, but curiously, Man views tension as some sort of psychological flaw.  Feelings of tension are always present between people, between groups of people, and if you can see, within your own internal system. A kind of tension exists within the cells of an individual body, keeping the muscles alive, making you capable of resisting gravity, enabling you to walk, act, make gestures.  When any group of people get together, there also is a kind of tensile strength.  In other words, tension forms.  If that group is to live, if there is vitality to .pait, there is going to be a tension to it.  From a certain vantage point the words tension and vitality are interchangeable to Life.

     Suppose you put an advertisement in the personal columns of a newspaper that reads, "Starting a Neo-Goethe Appreciation Society," and somebody answers your ad.  You get together, surprised more people didn't answer the ad, and discuss how much you both like Goethe.  Then it will soon get to, "Why don't we run another ad somewhere else?  Maybe at the German Embassy."  For your society to grow, some kind of apparent tension must form.  It might start as an apparent power struggle.  (Remember we are back to describing this on the apparent psychological level.)  Whatever the form, some tension will develop or the group will go no further.  You might start subjectively, such as, "There have got to be more people in a city of this size who appreciate Geothe."  And the other person agrees.  You might say, "What should we do?  Maybe I put the ad in the wrong place."  And the other person says, "I know you did.  That was a dumb place to put the ad."  You reply, "Well, you answered it."

     If it's going to live, even with just two people, some form of apparent tension will develop.  Otherwise, you may both leave appreciating Goethe, each other, and everything else, but you will never call each other again to discuss Goethe.  If it continues to meet or involve more people, a dominant person or group will emerge right there at that first dinner.  A mechanical structuring will begin, a static tension, and a mechanical hierarchy will form, establishing who is dominant and who is submissive.  Before you can look at it, the situation has jelled into a static condition of tension.  It is not mystical, and it is not psychological.

     Humanity believes that there is a psychological aspect to Man and a non-psychological aspect, or, to put it another way, a physical and a nonphysical aspect.  Given those alternatives, nothing is psychological...nothing.  The tension is not a psychological battle between you and that other person.  hose alternatives are not all that is available on other levels, but I am attempting to shake you out of the unprofitable belief that there is an absolute line.  There is nothing that is divorced from the physical -- not psychosomatic illnesses and not psychological problems.  There simply is nothing.  Given those two alternatives, you and the other person are in a physical power struggle.  Neither of you are conscious of it, nor could either of you change it.  If both of you were dominant, it would go no further.  Were both of you submissive it would go no further.  Suppose that you are the dominant one and a submissive person responds to that ad.  Then you two may get it going and it may grow.  If the Neo-Goethe Appreciation Society is to go anywhere there will be a tension immediately, a form of a power struggle.  Even though you may both leave each other that night satisfied with your great plans, new advertising ideas, arrangements to visit each other's homes, hands shakes and slaps on the back, there is a tension.  A tensile strength holds the group together, without which, to coin a phrase, it would be like two ships passing in the night.

     Another way to Neuralize this condition of dynamic tension as necessary for movement is to consider that anytime an exchange occurs between two people, someone will feel exploited.  Say that someone stops you on the street to ask directions and you take an interest in trying to help them.  Information is exchanged, and they leave having expressed their appreciation.  Anything that was transferred during this interlude was based upon an imbalance.  Now in this situation, you could think that the imbalance was that you knew where such and such street was and the other person did not.  That is not untrue and it is not unfair to start at that very superficial level.  In any exchange there is an imbalance of information/energy/heat.  In a sense, one party gets drained.  Energy/information/heat transfers from one person to another. This sort of draining, this imbalance, shifts back and forth, over and over, on multiple levels and in every possible direction.  You can not always identify what is going on, and even if you could, it would be more trouble than it was worth.  Anytime "anything happens" between two people, whether it lasts two seconds or two years, there is always this feeling of a drain of energy, a current of heat, a movement of information from one to another.

     Some of you have asked questions such as, "What is hope as ordinarily believed by humanity?"  And, "What is hope's function and purpose?"  One way to consider hope is that it is Life's mechanical daydreams, its expectations of its own maturing process.  Although it comes out through humanity in religious terms, the proper basis of considering Hope, with a capital H, is that it is Life's mechanical expectations of its own growth process, of where it is going, as expressed through Man.  The only profitable connection with the ordinary idea of hope for a man or woman with an Aim would be active expectation based upon one's own experience and understanding of the general direction that Life is taking.  What ordinary people call "hope" is just irrelevant.  But it seems important, and until you understand it, you cannot abandon it.  Even if I could snatch from you the voices that talk about "hope," I would not.  Coincidently, hope starts with the same letter as a more important word -- hobby.  It is almost the same thing as hobby, because if you don't have hope, you had better have a hobby.  I am not talking about people who mechanically say that life is a bad mistake.  Without hope, you had better be past Line level "stress" and if you are, that is when you had better have a hobby.  The definition of hope at the ordinary level means you don't understand whatever it is.  When people out in the ordinary Grid say, "I hope for something..."  Or, "I have faith," it implies a lack of understanding or knowledge.  To put it more crudely, for one to say, "I have faith.  I believe that things will work out," is the same as saying, "Most of the time I don't know what is going on."

     Everything that happens is Life talking, Life thinking to itself.  Sometimes it mis-thinks or changes its mind.  Sometimes it gets so excited it absolutely goes overboard.  It is all Life talking.  If you could See, it is all around you; if you could Hear, it is your own mentations.  Life is growing and friction is necessary for growth.  For example, there is a specific tension that has been noted throughout the Yellow Circuit history of humanity.  In each person, and then reflected back into the society itself, there is a mechanical conflict between basic animal urges and what could be called more civilized urges.  There is a continuing tension between an ordered, predictable, safe structure within a man or a society, and the more feral uncivilized urges.  Everyone has them, even those who say they don't.  They are a part of every man's circuitry.  And note, as things have progressed, (and they continue to progress as we sit here) not only are the urges still there, but built into the conflict is the need to suffer over having such urges.  This points to something slightly different than the sexual self-condemnation referred to earlier.  This conflict comes out as morality, as religion.  All people have dreams of killing their mother and violating other taboos.  Obviously, to do such things would not be in the benefit of the growth of Life on a wide scale.  Yet such urges are built into the genes of Man, along with the pressures of what would seem to be civilization.  The result:  "Yes, I have that urge and it's awful."  Or, "Yes, I've thought that and it is wrong."  There seems to be a real conflict here; a very real friction.  But there is no growth without friction.

     I have mentioned a "mechanical hierarchy" in the way that the Grid system establishes itself in Life.  I now want to expand this further.  Consider that some people, such as those in the business world or the upper classes, seem to have a "built-in warning light" regarding so-called emotions.  In other words, they apparently do not get caught up in personal emotions or let emotions interfere with their business judgment.  They seem to have established a distance between their emotions and their actions.  A business man will say, "Look, if you are going to do business with somebody, you can't get emotionally involved with them."  If a business man starts to pal around with somebody while charging them a high interest rate, you can bet this conversation will occur:  "Hey, I thought we were buddies.  Last night when we were out chasing women together, I bought you four rounds of drinks.  Now, today you give me a contract to sign that charges me too much interest.  You can't do that to me."  The business man replies, "Look, let's not get emotional.  You know business is business."

     You will find similar examples in social areas of the mechanical hierarchy.  Look at what would normally be referred to as the upper classes, those that seem to be in positions of extreme external power and wealth.  (Do not think that in any way these people are really doing something.  They are not.)  You should find it interesting to ask why, as far back as history has been recorded, there have been structured classes, and there has always been an upper class royalty.  If you could see it in a certain way, what would seem to be the upper socioeconomic classes within the mechanical structures of the world seem to have a kind of distance or fear of emotional display.  Part of the manifestation in the social hierarchy is that they seem to be involved with details that lower class "bricklayers" would laugh at.  They worry about such things as whether they use exactly the right fork at the dinner table or whether somebody talks out loud about his drinking problem.  Even if you have never been around these people, you have seen it reflected in movies.  There is a kind of artificial, minute by minute established code of conduct in which one knows what to do and what is expected under every circumstance.  This unwritten code reflects the feeling that emotions are quite suspect:  "You have got to watch them.  Even when they are under control, you have got to deny them, hide them."

     Let me repeat again, do not become captured by thinking that people such as the very rich in this example really know something in terms of This Thing.  They do not.  They are part of the same mechanical structure as everything else.  Life is moving through those people in ways that differ from its movement through other people.  It is not that either is better or worse.  (If any of you just accidentally have your choice tomorrow as to whether you want to become part of a million dollar family, or to become a bricklayer, I leave it to you.  Do not, however, expect instant enlightenment to come with the bank account.)

     Areas that would seem to be higher socially and economically in the social strata are in a different place within the nervous system of humanity as a whole.  Individuals in that position have an expectation of propriety in behavior.  People lower in Life's nervous system do not have this fear of emotions, other than at the crudest of levels.  Using bricklayers as an archetype, their prohibition of emotions is limited to the very basic Red Circuit level.  It is just enough to keep human life going, to keep them from killing each other.  Bricklayers will admit, "We shouldn't kill each other, but that doesn't mean we can't fight each other in bars and whip up on each other."  On a Saturday night, jails are packed with bricklayers and carpenters and ditch diggers, locked up, still half drunk and bleeding, laughing and having a good time waiting for their wife or girl friend to bail them out.  The feeling is, "Hey, that was fun."  The attempt to control the emotions at this level of the mechanical hierarchy is very crude.  "What's wrong with a fight every weekend?  What's wrong with insulting or beating up on your wife when she gives you problems?  I don't see nothing wrong with making crude jokes about other races and religions and nationalities.  It's fun.  All right, I won't kill anybody if I can help it."

     In another area of the social mechanical hierarchy, such behaviour would be distasteful.  This is not a social condemnation.  Life's nervous system encompasses all of humanity.  There are people higher up and people lower down in the system.  They are all necessary.  No one is better or worse mechanically within that structure, just as there is no "better" or "worse" between toe cells, liver cells and brain cells.  At that level, they are all necessary.

     Getting back to the ever-present tension that is necessary for Life to grow, notice that you seem to have a propensity toward more immediate, more magnified conflict with a family member than with a total stranger.  There is a connection, an unrecognized transfer of energy that is inescapable between blood kin.  This is nothing mystical.  It is a simple physical reality.  It is common knowledge that throughout history heinous violence occurs amongst family members.  A brother can do terrible things to a brother, a father to a son or a daughter, or vice versa.  It has to do with their singular blood connection.  And conversely most men would do almost anything, to assist or protect blood kin.  A man would not think twice about taking in someone who appeared at his front door and identified himself as blood kin, even if they had never met before. 

     Along these lines, also note the seeming lack of tolerance toward a lover.  Neuralize the power hierarchies that are established between you and a lover, and the lack of same between you and a stranger.  If that is not clear enough, I will put it more crudely.  You mechanically reprimand your lover.  "It makes me sick when you flick your cigarette ashes onto your plate."  Yet, if a stranger or an acquaintance you barely knew did the same, you wouldn't mention it.  You might say it was out of common courtesy.  Do not, however, take that as an answer, a final period.  There are known power hierarchies between you and a lover; the dominant and submissive roles are already established.  With a stranger, either it has not been established or you do not yet know where the boundaries are.  You can speak like that to your lover, and know what his or her response will be.  When you speak to a stranger, you really do not know what will happen.  If you're too hasty, he might rearrange your nose.

     From worms to man, being alive is transferring energy, playing a role.  A worm is transferring energy on an apparently totally physical level -- eat and be eaten.  Man is a more developed organism, transferring and transforming other energies unique to him.  He is doing more than just eating and creating manure on a physical level.

     Everyone is playing a role and everything is "show biz."  You were born in show business and at Line level you have no choice but to play your role.  It is like a map of where you live in the Grid.  You could describe it as your job description.  Even a hermit on a deserted island with no human contact whatsoever is still in show biz.  Life needs hermits in the great play or it would not have hermits.

     People speak of a "natural selection process."  They talk about dinosaurs becoming extinct and speculate as to why.  Others fight to save certain species saying, "If we don't fight to save it, this particular species is going to become extinct because of man."  This is simply not so.  If species become extinct, it is because they have been used up and are no longer necessary.  Their role is no longer important.  As long as they are here, they are transferring some energy, no matter how small.  Suppose there are only ten known "Peruvian wombats" left in the world, and it looks like they may all die out.  If they do (and in a sense I would be sorry to see it occur) it is not because humanity killed them.  That can appear to be the reason, but they simply were no longer necessary to Life.

     Back to the hermit.  The man is still in show biz.  He did not retire when he became a hermit.  When the day comes that Life no longer needs hermits, they will become extinct.  But it will not be because humanity in some way decided, "Hey, hermits are a danger to us all.  We are going to have to kill them."  They will become extinct because they are all used up.  The great show no longer had a place for their role, and their job description became inoperative.  Their place in the neighborhood was revitalized.  Their neighborhood was resettled, or bulldozed down.  "There are no longer any Peruvian wombats," or, "There are no longer any hermits."  But up until the day they went down, it was all show biz.

     Your entire life on this ordinary level is all show biz, but when you go far enough in This, you find a whole new definition of stress and the blues.  The ones that you have now are just child's play, simply oatmeal.  They are not worthy of any concern, except on the basis of understanding why stress exists at all, or what purpose it serves to Life.  If you feel like, "I suffer from the blues," it is a form of hobby, the same as when a hermit says, "I am not going to play a role anymore," and then leaves for an island to play the role of a hermit and join the hermit club.

     Some of you have asked about the function of "honesty" and why those highest in the mechanical hierarchy value it most.  In response, I will ask you one of my rhetorical questions.  What possible purpose is being served by Life making Man speak about the need for truthfulness?  Why is this need for truthfulness found in areas all the way from religion to humanist liberal philosophy?  Truthfulness is considered the benchmark of a religious person, a civilized person, a good person.  I ask you again, "What is going on?"  Why is it that this kind of expressed desire for and love of honesty seems to be held in highest regard in the upper echelons of the mechanical hierarchy of Life?  Have you ever heard of bricklayers standing around bars engaged in any kind of philosophical or religious discussion about the weighty nature and need for truthfulness?  Picture the boss coming in and saying, "You have been late three times this week.  If you're going to lay brick with us, you are going to be here at 7:30."  And so a conversation ensues between the worker and the boss.  "I got a phone call that my mother died."  "You told me your mother died last week."  "No, I meant my stepmother, my stepmother."  Neither the boss, the worker or any of the other bricklayers standing around would think that there was anything unusual or offensive about such a dialogue.  Yet when you start moving up in the mechanical hierarchy of Life into what would appear to be more Yellow Circuit areas, there seems to be, as expressed through those people, more of a need for honesty and truthfulness (whether their behavior matches such or not).

     Humanity continually talks about "doing good," even if it cannot do so in its present actions.  Each generation speaks of the need to make things better.  It speaks of setting up the potential for an improved life for future generations.  Observe that you can feel vibrations of this not only out in life, but within yourself as well.  "We should be creating a better planet for our children."  It is another example of Life's use of Man's dreams.  Picture someone saying, "I am working two jobs and it may kill me.  The doctor says I have too much stress and I am taking valium by the handful.  I never see my wife and our marriage is falling apart.  But at least I'll be able to leave a nest egg for my children.  They will be able to go to college and have a better life."  Now try to catch a glimpse in an area you would not ordinarily see.  If I could grab somebody and say, "Look, you are going to die, maybe in the next ten years.  Do you really believe that it is all worth it because, 'At least my children will be better off'?  Do you really mean that?"  Now of course this can't really happen, but what if he heard some of that?  He would suddenly go, "What do I care?  I like children all right, but if I'm dead, what does it matter?"  Of course, he could not do this on his own.  I could not make him, and even if I could, I wouldn't.  But you should be able to see this -- it is not in an individual person's self interest to work himself to death just to be able to say, "My children will be better off," or, "A whole generation will be better off because I worked like a dog."  People are forced to say it because of the greater structure in which we live.  Life's tomorrow is going to be better because part of tomorrow is already extant.  It is not speculation.  Things already are better (although "better" doesn't really describe it).  Those who say, "It is going to better in another generation," are a day behind, and, as always, right where they are supposed to be.

     Many of you still ask how someone in This Thing can simultaneously participate in the mechanical order of things, dealing with the friction in Life.  To continue what I started this evening, you have got to remember that what you call "I" will always exist to some degree at Line level.  I have given you hints, saying the voices are like a tiger behind a door, or like radio noise.  I have even gone so far as to tell you that it is not a matter of absolutely killing them, but being able to ignore them.  The old religious and mystical ideas of becoming a new person, being reborn, is based upon some reality.  It is Life dreaming through individual people about being more evolved.  The idea of being reborn, taking a new name, or in some way being born again as another person are all verbal reflections of the realities of activating the circuitry beyond the ordinary level of consciousness.  But at Line level, there is no choice.  As long as you are playing in traffic, you are going to breathe exhaust fumes and periodically get bumped or bend a fender.  Any idea about change at Line level is completely foolish, irrelevant, and plain impossible.

     A temporary way you might try to Neuralize dealing with people out in the ordinary traffic of Life is to simultaneously treat them as absolutely harmless children and absolutely potentially dangerous beasts.  Always do this simultaneously while being totally non-combative.  Many of you continue to think that there is some kind of trick to handling people in an appropriate way.  I have suggested varying approaches so that you could see what happens, but there is no absolute trick, and your hope that there is such a singular method is just another form of the way you play in traffic.  That hope is of the ordinary world -- you at the level of your own hard wired personality.  That part of you was born in traffic and it is going to play in traffic, breathing exhaust and bumping into other cars.  At that level, it has no choice.  You must begin to internally separate from that part of you.  This will not happen through just the attempt to believe what I or somebody else tells you.  It is not that you can find some would-be holy book that says, "Well, don't worry about it.  Only the gods know what's going on.  Man cannot really change anything, and you will understand by and by."  It is not that.  

     You must begin to develop within yourself the ability to be conscious above Line level through all of the many approaches I have given, hinted at, denied even existed, pushed you toward and pulled you back from.  You must understand that it is necessary that things operate in what amounts to an unalterable fashion, but not in the sense that ordinary consciousness is preordained like an absolute machine.  That explains nothing.  What you need to see is that at the ordinary level of the operation of this Grid, of Life growing, things must move at a certain tempo, in a certain direction.  It is only binary consciousness that perceives things as detrimental to progress, preordained or self-defeating. That is the one-sided view from your own limited consciousness, from being subject to only part of one force. Picture being stuck in traffic on an interstate that stretches as far as you can see, with traffic going in every possible direction.  What description could you give it, while in its midst, other than madness?  From that level, it is insanity.  Yet I suggest to you that seen from another level, it is a beautiful miracle.  What if you could walk through a grocery store or out on the street with hundreds of thousands of people running in all directions and see it all as if you were up in a plane or on top of a building looking down?  You would see it as a miracle that so few bump into each other as they move in an unrecognized choreographed ballet.  Something somewhere knows what it is doing.  It is not a madhouse, except when you are down at that level where it appears to be so.  Only for the Few could another vantage point reveal an indescribably orchestrated score.

     It is Life.