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Summary by TK
Jan Cox Talk 156, May 2, 1985, runtime 1:55
[You should remember what you came to This Thing for. Compare what This Thing has turned out to be with what it was you were seeking. What is it that all people are looking for? God? Contemporary answers to question of "why are you in such and such religion?" would sound very far afield from traditional answers. Search for freedom, liberation.]
[Example of modern race cars which cannot be driven optimally due to the overwhelming G-forces of the avant-garde design. Life is constantly building what cannot yet be controlled.]
[Example of "liberation movements" all the way from talk to guns. Such movements always have a very specific goal; a small goal compared to dis-specific, or overall freedom. "There's something in me and its got to come out." Red level = sex; blue level = poetry; yellow level = philosophical system/novel.]
["I" is a tarbaby: the wrong enemy. Impossible to fight successfully.]
[AMV12. Ordinary men transfer quite crude energy. Sex and conservation of AMV12: if the sex feels right, leaves you happy and grateful = AMV12 conserved. For the Few, something is wrong if after sex you don't feel better for it. Laughter and conservation of AMV12 is the same as sex. Should feel better for laughter or you have used up more AMV12 than was necessary.]
[Religious "humility" and conformity, blandness. Remember, everyone wears a costume in life. Religion would create uniformity of costume--conformity. You should have your costume, not the costume have you. Wear tuxedos and be dashing but remember who is wearing what. Don't let the tux wear you.]
[On the complexity of Life which is never seen. PBS documentary on pollution which is sponsored by Mobil Oil Corp. or Dow Chemical. Ordinary consciousness cannot hold an awareness of the complexity of technology which creates pollution while simultaneously making us aware of it (via TV etc.) and providing means for solution.]
[The modes of the forces. D as force for change = D in kinetic mode. An example would be some activity which appears frightening or impossible to accomplish.]
[Everyone is engaged with attempting to define the division between the godly vs. the un-godly within themselves. Takes the form of "conscious vs. unconscious" these days. Ongoing speculations on the "fall from grace". Neuralize: you-at-line-level are the totality of a multitude of voices inside which collectively seem to be the un-godly, whereas the godly is the singular and single voice of Life speaking, the Voice of of Life itself, speaking directly from a higher level. Life is speaking to everyone all the time--but it's mumbling mechanically (just like your daydreams spinning on); it is saying only the minimum necessary to support consciousness and growth. Thus you have 2 choices: you can listen to Life mumbling or listen to Life speaking directly.]
["From whence cometh enthusiasm?" The power inherent in external truths. We only know what Life tells us.]
[Music can affect all 3 circuits simultaneously, and therefore is truly a universal language. No other activity or endeavor can do this.]
[Religion is the best vehicle for taking This Thing public since it can involve all 3 circuits while preserving a semi-traditional (not too drastic) approach/format.]
[TASK: What is it that people want from religion?
[Optional task: Choose the least possible and plausible place of business to stick your head in and ask: "Do you make keys here?"
Transcript
DO YOU OWN THE COSTUME OR DOES THE COSTUME OWN YOU?
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1985
Document: 156, May 2, 1985
When you remember why you originally got involved with This, and recall what it is you were looking for, most of you will immediately realize that whatever it is you thought you were looking for has almost no relationship to what you are getting. In fact, if you tried to verbalize what you originally thought you wanted from This, you could say that it has been an unconditional failure; that This Thing has no resemblance to what you dreamed about. But, of course, you also understand that you have not been misled.
Consider what it is that ordinary people expect from an endeavor they believe to be "higher" than the regular human activities of politics, art, sports, and social relationships. The one thing that appears to transcend ordinary information and experience we'll categorize as "religion." Neuralize what it is that people think they get from religion. What is it they are looking for? You should notice that there are religions already structured and operating that are for the "doers," the Red level workers. And there are religions designed for the Blue Circuited. And even at the Yellow managerial level of Life's corporate body, religions, and philosophies exist in which the managers feel they are the "chosen ones," and they don't have to put up with the crap miners do, nor do they need to suffer like the Blue level people do over the guilt of being rich and in charge. In other words, there are aspects, many aspects, of religion available on the planet to feed every possible type of consciousness.
Try to Understand why this is arranged as it is. What is it that people seek in religion -- from the traditional church to a far-out cult, to This? What are they looking for, and what is it they receive to enough degree to ensure their continued participation? Do not accept you internal voices' immediate response that people want to find a god of some sort. The day is coming, or has already arrived, when you'd be hard pressed to find someone in church say that they want to get in touch with the "divine creator." If you asked them why they go to church, their response will be much more verbally up-to-date, more "psychological," the kind of response someone might discuss in a bar with their date. And yet, the phenomenon of "religion" is quite real. Wars are still being waged in the religious arena; religion still serves an inescapable purpose all over the planet. Nevertheless, the question still remains: What do people expect from religion?
I continue to point out that Life does not grow in a straight line. I have also pointed out the possibility that Life may be moving in a straight line, but that that could only be seen from a fourth dimension. From such an expanded viewpoint you might perceive that things that appear to be disconnected may not only be connected, but may be moving in a quite precise manner.
For example, take the field of car racing. The recent technological breakthroughs allow them to build cars faster than ever before. In fact, they can now build a car that goes almost too fast for a mortal to drive it -- he's unable to see clearly and cannot tolerate the pressure of the weight of his own body. Can you see a connection between this example and your own apparently disconnected struggles? Sometimes you sense that Life is growing robustly, but most of your awareness is only of the growing pains -- the creaking, moaning, sickness, and death. The bad guys continually seem to be overrunning the good guys, and whatever "C" wind blows is only spasmodic compared to the evil regressive winds that seem always on the verge of taking over everything. And Life is building, through humans, race cars so advanced that no driver can drive them -- those very same people who designed the car can't drive it.
Use this example in reconsidering my first question: What is it that people seek and get from religion? For example, you can see that Life continually drives man into rebellious movements, into "Liberation" movements. Even in more stable parts of its body, Life does this. No matter where you live on this planet, there are always whispers, if not roars, about some kind of revolution. Some people seek a fair share for the disenfranchised through economic demands, other people fight in the streets for political causes. This has always gone on, and at the ordinary level, people believe that it is a very specific matter. Humans always identify liberation movements by very small aims; any kind of omnidirectional mortal freedom is impossible for human conception. But, small battles equal small spoils of war. The payoff is as specific and as small as the original aim.
Regardless of their grand statements like: "We will overthrow this tyrannical regime -- oust it from top to bottom," that's a small spoil of war. From an ordinary viewpoint, that is certainly not a small aim -- to tear down the whole rotten fabric and construct an entirely new government! That's no small spoil of war. But it is small compared to a nonspecific, omnidirectional freedom.
I asked you to remember what it is that brought you here. And it's always a matter of some form of attempted liberation. It's rarely expressed that directly: you may have thought, "I want greater freedom in my life," or, "I have this great artistic potential stirring within, something that needs to be said through music, painting, or writing. It's in me and it's got to come out." Can you see that this same feeling, this same desire for liberation applies to religion, as per my other question to you of why people seek religion. You may, at first, attribute this feeling to "emotions," but I suggest you look a little bit lower than that, down in the mines and into the sexual fuel of the Red level.
How can any liberation movement know when it has succeeded in this attempt to be "free"? Free from what? Where can you go with that? What if, when we first met, I told you that this was an unknown liberation movement, but I needed to know, "What is it personally that you want to be freed from?" If you don't know who the enemy is, if you don't know who the oppressor is, then I assure you it is most difficult to know whether you're getting free. "Are you succeeding?" "Well, I don't know. There's a lot of blood and bruises." "But, are you succeeding?" "I don't know -- but, what the hell, at least I'm doing something!"
I have pointed out that what appears to be the enemy in the beginning, is not actually the enemy. You think you know who the enemy is, this certain problem that you have -- but that's not the enemy. And you can struggle forever with this non-enemy. It's a tar baby: the more you fight it, the more you stick to it; the more you fight it, the less chance you have of walking away unscathed. But there is the sensation that, "At least I'm doing something. I'm whipping the heck out of this." The reigning tar baby is each person's sense of "I".
At first everybody thinks that they're fighting something "out there". And if you forced them to look more carefully, they will eventually say, "Okay, it's in me. I'm the tar baby. But I'm studying my shortcomings and working on myself all the time. Even the things I've carefully observed are, I'm sure, not all there is. I bet there are tar babies within tar babies." The problem is that you've engaged the wrong enemy. You're using the wrong ammunition. And there is no way, in the ordinary world, to tell if you're getting freed from it. The only sensation available is, "At least I'm struggling, not just sitting around watching lint grow in my navel."
Back to those racing machines that travel faster than men can endure. When they test them, the driver squats down into the most bearable position, and a special foam sprays him into place. Each foam harness is custom made, but still he can't go beyond a certain speed: he can't hold on, his eyeballs feel like they're leaving his head, etc. Can you see this personally formed foam container is, in a sense, a tar baby. You sit there, more or less comfortable, and then the car really picks up speed. It takes a curve at 265 mph and it's no longer a question of being comfortable. You think: "This isn't working, but it's the best that could be done."
Back to asking the man or woman in church what they look for in religion, why they stay. He says, "Hey, at high speeds it doesn't work, but it's the best that can be done. Past a certain point, it's almost unbearable, but sitting here at this speed, it ain't so bad."
I have been asked many questions about the substance in the blood and it's relationship to sex and laughter that I mentioned before. First, let me remind you that under ordinary conditions, humanity transfers and transforms energy on a very crude level. Once you understand that, you Understand 90% of everything that goes on. The substance is tied to individual processes of energy transfer, one of which is sexual activity, which obviously supports the survival of humanity and Life's further growth.
Beyond that obvious connection, many of you wonder about the substance in the blood in relationship to "doing sex right." You do know that, like everything else at the ordinary level, there is no way to "do sex wrong;" at that level, no one is doing anything wrong. And that includes all the people who are concerned with sexual therapies or think they get so little out of sex that there must be something wrong with them. As popular a subject for discussion as sex is, please note that it is in no way outside of my statements that everything in Life is just right, including people's feelings that everything is not right. At the minimum level of routine existence, there is no way to "do sex wrong."
But from a viewpoint of usefulness, from the viewpoint of This, sex can be inappropriate if it depletes the substance in the blood. As through any activity, the blood is altered through sex, and the substance in the blood carries your potential to be something More. Hence, you would not want to unnecessarily waste the substance by engaging in sexual relations that just "don't feel right." In any particular situation, if you don't feel better for having had sex, if you don't feel afterwards that your partner at that moment is the just the best person on the planet, then you're wasting something and should not have had sex.
There are verbal parallels between sex and laughter. To someone involved in This Thing, laughter sometimes feels soooo good, but there are other times you wish you could take the laugh back, it felt sooo "not good." Laughter, too, has a connection to the blood. What is considered harmless humor among friends or family -- laughing at each other's hardships or behaviors -- is not harmless to someone in This. "Well, I don't mean anything by it. But you know Al -- he buys these cars for $75 bucks and everyone knows they're going to fall apart. He's so cheap, but he's my best friend. What can I say." But to anyone with a little awareness, that is not funny. It's part and parcel of the tension of the grid that holds ordinary life together. This laughter, the kind that supports the hostile tensile field between people, wastes the substance in the blood. It wastes it in your attempt to get up into new areas of your nervous system.
People have frequently asked questions of another nature: "Does it matter what kind of car I drive?" "Should I have plastic surgery?" You can recognize (and feel in yourself, hence, the questions in the first place) that religions have a common thread in desiring blandness -- that we, "all must deny the ego." It's as if anything like driving a fancy car, or getting your nose bobbed, the "Big Guy" won't like. The feeling is that a proper follower of a religion shouldn't waste his money on such, he should not attempt to distinguish and adorn himself. Like everything in Life, there is a validity behind that, it reflects something real. They are trying to externally become humble. But what you must See is that everyone is wearing a costume.
Whether you live down in the mines or act as one of the managers in Life's corporation, everyone gets pulled into the circular snare of feeling that he or she should not be wearing a special costume, all the while wearing your own special costume. Even if you're naked, you're in costume. The difference is not in a forced kind of humility -- the difference is in Seeing it. Once you Understand something you are no longer hostile or defensive about it; you are no longer captured by it. You may have the costume, but the costume doesn't have you. It's not a matter of whether you own a new Corvette, it's a matter of whether you care if you drive to that party in a new Corvette or an old Buick. Does that ruin your evening? Or, if the perfect dress you bought has a green stain on it, do you care if you have to wear something else? "Wait a minute, I can't go out if I can't wear that new black dress." The costume has you. You don't own the dress, it owns you.
All forms of religions and quasi-religions have rules, some quite curious, regarding what their members cannot do: things to make individuals conform rather than stick out. This is no condemnation, they are doing exactly what they should be, but they are, nevertheless, caught in the circular snare: No matter how bland, they don't have the costume, the costume has got them.
Here's another circular snare, the kind of observation you should continually attempt to make: Thousands of people sit in front of their TVs watching documentaries on the terrible affects of industrial pollution created by the petroleum industry. These people would not even be aware of that particular form of industrial pollution were they not watching this show which, if you notice, is sponsored through a nonprofit grant donated by the petroleum industry. They would not have heard about the so-called destructive side effects of technology were it not for the very same technology giving them the television set on which they're seeing the documentary. It's another circular snare, that goes unnoticed at Line level. Even if you laugh at this example, notice how quickly your ordinary consciousness will forget it. No matter how smart or attentive people may be, their ordinary consciousness cannot spot these paradoxes, and if I point them out, it cannot hold an awareness of them.
Of the Three Forces that form all the processes in Life, almost everyone can most readily see manifestations of "D", the conservative or resisting force. It is the force that denies change. But can any of you glimpse the fact that "D" can also be seen as a force for change? Change is not only in the province of "C", the progressive force. Neuralize what "D" might be in a kinetic or active mode. Can you conceive of "D" in the kinetic mode as being Life's attempt at not just the new, but the almost impossible -- the frightening, the almost unimaginable? In Life's own attempts at liberation, if you could see "D" operating in the kinetic mode, certain aspects of human history that seemed morally inexplicable can be seen as actual signs of Life's growth.
One of the most popular activities that Life has driven man to engage in is the attempt to define an apparent split in himself. In religious terms, it's the "godly part" versus the "ungodly part" or the "good" versus the "evil" part. They may say it's the "shadowy side" versus his "essential side." Psychologists call it the conscious, self-profitable areas of behavior versus the unconscious swampy area of unprofitable signals, etc. Or, it is the belief that the splendid creature that is man has run amok, lost his way, fell in a ditch, and is so covered with mud that he wouldn't know the truth if he stumbled on it. All of these descriptions are maps of the same country. Now I'll bring it up to date.
My equation of, I + Not-I = Everything, feels quite real to Line-level consciousness. Even for those down in the mines who are apparently the least philosophical or reflective, it appears true. "I don't know what it is that makes me go out every weekend, get drunk and run around on my wife." They may joke about it with the guys at work, but they still experience the sensation that something is wrong about it, and they shouldn't be doing it. Their sensation that they have urges they can't control is just an updated version of, "The Devil made me do it." They never think about the puzzling fact that if they think these things are bad, they must have a good part that doesn't want to do them.
Attempt to Neuralize it on this basis: You are the totality of the voices in you. That's it. What people have historically called the evil, carnal, artificial, or unconscious side are the voices of Line-level consciousness. And the other side, the mostly dreamed-of "good side," the "godly side," is the voice of Life. Of course, all the voices within you are also the voice of Life, but they operate at the bare minimal level. Every voice within you -- public voices, private voices, voices you approve of and those you don't approve of -- are all Life talking. But it is Life mumbling. And you wonder why people feel so confused?
On the other hand, many people have had the experience of hearing the "voices of the gods." That is a crude reflection of hearing Life's direct voice. It won't get you anywhere, and it didn't get them anywhere, but you will notice a similar quality of conviction by anyone who describes it. And it is quite proper for them to speak so highly of it, to put great names on it. Life was talking to them, within their ability to hear, on a more direct, and higher level.
You've got two things you can be listening to. Even here, giving me your best attention, you are listening either to you, or to Life. No new exotic terms; that's it. When you really Hear something, then you are not just listening to you. That is the simple, and that is the great difference.
All those stories of gods speaking to people are quite real, and they are telling you the truth in their descriptions, but it is on a kindergarten level. Once you activate the area above the Line, you are no longer limited to the voices that are you. Life is talking to everybody, but its mumbling. It says only that which is minimally required to keep itself going. It's as if you have just barely enough of the substance in your blood to pass for a conscious homo sapien; as if you're just squeaking in under the wire. That is the degree to which Life ordinarily speaks through man -- except human consciousness takes Life's mumblings as "me."
Once you realize that you don't know what you're going to say next, you realize that it's not you saying anything. It's Life mumbling, at the minimum level. From the learned professor lecturing around the globe to you cursing your shoelaces after they became untied, it's Life mumbling. Nobody knows what he's going to say next, because he isn't the one really doing the talking. All these ordinary voices are just the noise left over after the maximum amount of the substance in the blood has been extracted; it is consciousness acting at the minimal level needed for Life to continue living through humanity.
You have two simple choices: you either listen to Life mumbling, or you listen to Life speaking. This Thing has always been about hearing Life speak -- not mumble, but speak distinctly. The laboratory is within you: just jogging along one day, observe the voices -- there's a whole soap opera going on constantly, low level brain activity that's been present all your life. It's the voices wondering if those blondes will notice how cute your buns are in these shorts, or whether they'll laugh at your skinny calves. It's the same mumblings, over and over, for 20, 30, 40 years.
When Life speaks, it speaks very distinctly. This is not a perfect parallel, but Life speaking very distinctly would be like you (except remember the difference in scale) jogging along, worrying about the same old stuff, suddenly saying, "That's it. I'll never worry about this again." At that moment, it's very, very clear. Remember, you can count on this: Life knows what it's doing. If it made a decision it would do it. On that direct level, Life does what it says.
