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Summary by TK

Jan Cox Talk158, May 16, 1985, runtime 1:36

  [Discussion of feeling of distance borne of This Thing. This feeling is pervasive in the ordinary as well--it is necessary for grid connection, this feeling of estrangement and inability to communicate. Ordinary sincerity is mechanical reaction to actions of others. True sincerity is not mechanical and Real Acting is the only form of appropriate behavior with others. It is the only proper way to bridge the gap of estrangement.]
  [The attention span of Life's short term memory is increasing. Specifically related to the increase in the Yellow Circuit rapidity of movement. Creates a particular discomfort: yellow circuit is maxing out speed wise. The focus of attention for Yellow Circuit is shorter and shorter and this is a reflection of the same phenomenon at Life's level.]
  [Religions consider their basic tenants to be immutable. Yet regularly conduct polls to assess followers' opinions which reveal disagreement with the basic tenants. And still the religion flourishes. Consider the connection to the unenforced 55 MPH speed limit which continues to exist. Such too is the status of religious sin. Timeless truths are simply irrelevant in the most creative areas of Life's body. Consider: No sin, no growth.]
  [Is it not curious that men do not condemn religion's inability to create religious people. This relates to the 3 forces: what appears to be the literal absence of linear phenomena is truly linear at an increased dimension.]
  [To be freed from all responsibilities would actually result in an extreme dissatisfaction (remember the task: "What would you do with a million dollars a day, tax free?"). For the ordinary it would result in dissatisfaction at a new level--indescribable. Men cannot be allowed to be "rich and perfect" ; to be sin-less. There is no cure for sin. Man is truly guilty of only one sin: being human. ]
  [Why is there no condemnation of natural disasters that kill thousands?]
  [Reading of questions/observations on religion. Religion is especially useful as a pipeline to transfer nearly any type of energy (and still qualify as religion). The majority of visible and voluble humanity is still at Red Circuit level.]
  [The only way to be absolutely sure you are not transferring routine energy is to engage in the Continual Act--it is the only fail-safe method. ]
  [TASK: What is the most potentially harmful activity and threat that mankind could visit upon Life? ]
  [Warning to Group: Do not talk to others about J. Don't even mention the name. Reiteration of no casual sex and expansion to include no casual flirting--not even a hint of same.

Transcript

THE CONTINUAL ACT
OR
THE FAILSAFE METHOD OF BEING A COMPLETE SHAM

Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1985
Document:  158,  May 16, 1985

      There is a question that comes up periodically regarding sincerity toward other people; and that This Thing seems to distance you from people in ordinary relationships, particularly blood kin and parents.  This sensation of distancing occurs in ordinary life where it's considered to be the central problem in the psychology of human relationships.  So it is quite expected for some to take what they think I have described as acting, as some form of insincerity, while feeling that what is needed, is for people to be more sincere with one another.  But out in life everyone feels, to varying degrees, as though they are estranged, that there is, particularly among family, some kind of gulf through which they cannot communicate properly.  This gap is quite natural and necessary, but in so far as it being bridged, the only way possible would be through real acting, and not merely reacting to the mechanical behavior of the other person.

     What ordinary people think of as being sincerity, is simply their own mechanical reactions to the mechanical behavior of other people.  Disregard any idea of people being blind machines; they are not.  People are people.  But, you will get a distinct taste that by and large you and they are out of control.  This is not saying that you're about to take off your clothes, and cover yourself with barbeque sauce and run in the streets.  There is probably no danger that at any moment you will become a mad killer, with butcher knives in both hands.  Yet you begin to taste that you could operate and live out your appointed days without making any further effort, without ever knowing what you were going to say next, much less, twenty years from now.

     There is something else afoot, and my description of Life having a life of its own you'll find more and more apt.  The something else afoot is not simply unconscious motivations or childhood traumas trying to express themselves subconsciously.  There is actually a life force going on, and we are in it.  You open your mouth and things come out, and what comes out is not satisfying.  What comes out does nothing to close this apparent gap, or reconcile this apparent estrangement between you and other people.  What ordinary people call sincerity is, at best, a level of sincerity that the everyday, ordinary flow of human affairs seems to demand.  But there can be a great divergence between the public voice paying lip service to this demand and what the private voice utters.  A con man is an extreme example.  His public voice says, "Yes, I can put aluminum siding on your house at a reasonable cost, and you'll have no complaints."  Yet the private voice has no intention of doing it.  The private voice has already translated the mechanical flow between the sales/con man and the potential con-ee:  "The customer will accept the deal."  What ordinary people call insincere falls within that example.

     Regarding your personal fears and inquiries about insincerity:  quite expectedly, in the beginning, there arises a feeling of grave insincerity when, for example, you follow my recommendation of treating your mother as though she was the world's greatest.  It is the nature of human intercourse, on the ordinary level, to recall "complaints" and remain engaged with "sincerity".  It is the nature of the tensile strength holding everything together.

     Upon first exposure to my equation:  I + Not-I = Everything, people often hear it as a description of the ordinary feeling of estrangement.  "It's 'I', and then it's that from which 'I am estranged', which includes just about everything."  People try to eliminate the estrangement through religion, psychology, drinking, or drugs; but it is simply the natural, necessary structure of things that has always existed.

     What I refer to as real acting is totally different from simply mechanically reacting to others.  What ordinarily passes for sincerity, should not be called "sincerity".  It is doing what one must, while the other person is doing what he must.  Whether it is your mother or sexual partner, they are out of control, and never know what they will say next.  In a sense, it is merely by good fortune that anyone is raised without being killed or maimed.  This state of being out of control, is part of the living structure of the life of Life.  Treating someone in the manner that is called sincere; is simply a mechanical reaction to their mechanical reactions.  This is no cynicism or an attack on your parents; and there is nothing wrong with Life.  .paThis feeling of estrangement is a part of the gap between everyone.

     It would apparently be a prime task of the Blue department, Advertising and Promotion, to transfer energy, and without the estrangement between everyone, there would be no need for energy transfer.  If you feel a negative charge between you and another person, you can turn it into a positive charge, momentarily:  but it is then subject to return to something else.  It is always subject to change.  What is called love, or some kind of positive Blue Circuit transfer, should not actually be called love.  It is simply a temporary flow, sometimes positive, and sometimes not.  But a real act would free you from simply reacting to the negative, or mechanical behavior of another person.  That begins to bridge a gap in a way that nothing else will.

     From the ordinary viewpoint, this sounds like absolute insanity, inhumane and insincere.  Ordinary sincerity is mechanical behavior, and Real Acting is not any form of insincerity.  In fact, once Understood, it is not really an act; but for someone who begins to see the circulation, it is the only proper course of action.  Real acting is the only possible form of behavior available.  The transfer of energy continues to take place throughout Life, through your parents, people you like, and people you hate.  But you cannot go back and engage in the mechanical dance with them.  What they seem to be wanting is the necessary participation of you in relationship to them, but it will not serve your Aim to engage in behavior or conversation with people that is going to encourage them along mechanical lines.  In that sense, Real Acting is the epitome of sincerity.  You are not necessarily going to help other people; but, by ceasing to react to their mechanical behavior, you have set up, at least once in their lifetime, the singular opportunity for them to see something out of the ordinary.  Of course, don't expect some kind of continuing change on their part.  That's not the purpose.  However, it will stop the particular pattern you have been dancing with them, and the whole relationship will change.  They can no longer engage you in the same kind of mechanical dance.  Real Acting will begin to bridge the gap between you and other people, and soothes the feeling of estrangement; because you see the nature of the estrangement, the necessity of a gap, and are not limited to the mechanics of it.

     Immediately pertinent to you, if you wish to continue in This, is the absolute necessity to close accounts with your parents.  You simply must stop any ordinary, continual arguments and established, mechanical dances you have with them, even if they are dead.  You have got to see it for what it is:  it is simply a stronger estrangement than you feel toward anyone else.  It is unprofitable, to say the least, and will stop you at a certain point.

     Someone recently heard a particular kind of avant garde music, and wondered if Life continually plays to a limited audience.  This involves Life's increasingly shortened attention span and it is reflected in man.  If you can correctly feel the history of man in your own nervous system, you should see this fact.

     The sensation, among ordinary people, that everything is changing at an ever-increasing rate, is reflective of Life's shortening attention span.  In this part of the world, where the Yellow Circuit is most fully developed, you find it mentioned constantly, under various guises.  The Yellow Circuit, the Yellow story, of man, is almost the focal point of Life's attention; so Yellow Circuit activity moves faster and faster.

     You can see it in all of the areas associated with the Yellow Circuit:  technology, political philosophies, development of ideas, etc.  What is proclaimed as the greatest idea since the light bulb, and is, "Soon to be in every household!", is nearly forgotten a month later.

     You have to free yourself from the ordinary flows, which support your belief that there are groups of men, or an individual man, doing things.  It is Life, mumbling, theorizing, and talking to itself.  It is as though Life had a drinking buddy, and after a few cold beers, Life says, "Tomorrow I will do so and so."  You have done it many times; but the next day, it's as though you never said it.  Everything that occurs on the larger level of the body of Life is reflected at the level of ordinary humanity.  The difference is that of dimensions.

     As Yellow Circuit activity moves faster and faster, the attention span of Life itself gets shorter and shorter.  Right now, it manifests as a particular kind of discomfort in humanity.  It is not that we are living in a dangerous age or an "apocalyptic" time; but everything is undergoing a continual rearrangement.  Humanity is not feeling a kind of discomfort that is singular and unlike that of your grandparents' generation.  But now, the Yellow Circuit is about to wind up:  it is about to reach its maximum.  There is going to be a new level added to the Building, and it has already been started.  The Yellow story, in a sense, is simply a floor to the new story.  As the speed, and hence, the discomfort increases, Life's attention, at its own Yellow Circuit level gets shorter and shorter.  More and more bursts of things will make large write ups in major newspapers and magazines, and they will strike you as being an important area in Life.  And then suddenly, it's as if they never existed.

     (As interesting as this may be, answers become clear over horizons that you thought were limited to the questions themselves.  Questions are tied to the answers, once you change the perspective.)  You can find within yourself, this same, increased tempo.  You decide to learn the auto harp, buy all the books on it, and then in a few weeks, it's forgotten.  Look how quickly I have conjured up new maps and then abandoned them.

     I am going to mention several things that would seem to be tied to religion.  Recently the head of one of the world's major religions commented again on that religion's teachings on certain moral issues.  In essence, what he said was, "The teachings were handed down from the gods to the founders, and are immutable.  They are timeless, and will stand forever.  Case closed."  Every year or so, independent agencies, such as newspapers, do surveys among the followers of some of these major religions, at least in the western world.  The followers are asked whether they agree with the expressed views of the leadership of the church on these issues.  In at least one survey, somewhere between 70 and 80 percent identified themselves as being faithful followers of this religion, yet disagreed with the church's interpretations.

     Get beyond words, beyond the circulatory and digestive systems of Life itself that are making noise, belching and crying out great ideas, then ask yourself, "What purpose is being served, when a large number of followers disagree with what their own church teaches?"  This particular situation has been stable for close to two thousand years.  Ask yourself, "What purpose is this serving?"

     Allow me to appear to change the subject, verbally, while not actually doing so.  Have you ever noted the effect of highway speed limit signs?  By and large they are not enforced.  To a greater degree than religious adherents disagree with their own church's law, drivers ignore speed limit signs.  Do you see any connection to that great, dynamic constant in human affairs, known as sin?  Can you see that nothing is amiss?

     Life, through one segment of its body, one man or organization, says that there are a few immutable truths and laws, yet those who identify themselves as being part of that religion or political body disagree with them.  There's nothing wrong about it, once you begin to see it.  In fact, I challenge anyone to improve it.  How else could everything be held together?

     When you begin to See it, there is astonishment and absolute delight.  "What I once saw as simply the cynical, foolish and self-destructive nature of Life, is not so.  There is nothing cynical.  There is no sarcasm involved.  It is no longer possible .pafor me to be critical of any of this; because it is simply a beautiful situation."

     Compared to the C Force in the kinetic mode, or the area in Life's body that is growing in the fastest, most direct manner, the idea of timeless truth is not wrong or laughable; it is irrelevant.  It simply exists in a lower dimension, in an area of Life's body where nothing is happening.  There is no such thing as a timeless truth; but notice, it has an effect for even one person to say, "Though times have changed, there are a few things that the gods have said which are timeless."  In the over-all expansion and growth of Life, that is simply not true; but, to keep everything in balance, it must appear true.  Only a few people on this planet can understand that.

     "Timeless truth" doesn't exist, even in words, but it sounds like it could.  Life does not produce many people in the major parts of it's body who say, "It can't be true; something is wrong.  If this is a timeless immutable fact of truth, how do you explain the fact that the majority of people who say that they believe it, don't believe it?"  Of course, the answer always given would be -- Sin -- that the people are deluded and are straying further and further from the truth.  In the most creative part of Life's body, there is no such thing as a "timeless truth".

     The faster that you begin to Hear, the faster things move; and the shorter Life's attention span becomes, things I've said that seemed to be useful maps for you at one time, now are dead and moot.  What was true has not become untrue; but it's become useless.  It took you somewhere.  It opened up something else; but a map is a map.  You could walk right by the Eiffel Tower while  staring at a picture of it, and not know where you are.

     Here is another subject that seems to fall within the bailiwick of religion:  men do not have a general condemnation for religion's failure to produce religious people.  There is an overall tenor in the grid of human affairs wherein no general demand exists for any particular religion to produce a person who would be its epitome.  No group of people anywhere, be they worshipping spirits of frog gods, or following the major religions, live up to the tenets of their religion.  That is simply a scientific fact, not religious or psychological, but based upon certain funny laws of physics, and certain equations, that cannot be described in three dimensions.  There is no general condemnation.  No one can truly say that they live up to the tenets of their religion, and no one knows anyone who can, yet there is no condemnation of this.  Does anyone find that of particular interest?  Put more succinctly:  you had better find it of interest, or you are wasting your time.

     Can you See that if religions succeeded in achieving their own definition of perfection, it would close an otherwise open-ended system?  It would be suicide.  It would be the chord progression going from C, to D, to E, and then becoming immobile.  It would be the end of the song.  Were it not for "sin", as the religions call it, there would be no growth.  It's the struggle that keeps things moving.  If, suddenly, all those who attempt to be religious succeeded, it would be the flow of the forces, the chord progression, committing suicide.  Man cannot be allowed to become "perfect".  It is not scientifically possible for that to occur in the body of Life.

     If men were to truly succeed in living these "timeless truths", the gap of "suffering brought on by sin, by being separated from the will of the gods" would be closed, and Man would certainly be at peace.  But the absence of that success is not condemned, because Life is not going to commit suicide:  it has its own understanding, on another level.  Such success has not happened, and in a sense, it is no closer now than it ever was.  Is this unusual?  Are things unbalanced?  The answer is:  No.

     Connected to this, but beyond the apparent genre of religion, is the sensation in the majority of humanity that, "Life is just barely tolerable.  Just living day to day is almost more than I can take.  All of my responsibilities..."

     If the ordinary were suddenly freed from all of their "problems and responsibilities", they would experience a dissatisfaction such as they had never imagined.  Holding down three jobs and paying alimony to five wives, would be nothing compared to this new level of dissatisfaction.  It's a scientific fact.

     Everyone, to varying degrees, feels dissatisfied about the way they look, based on their original wiring.  If, suddenly, you were turned into your idea of perfection while retaining the same sense of consciousness, you would soon reach another level of being dissatisfied.  It may sound crude and unbelievable to you, but your new level of dissatisfaction would be more than you can imagine.

     Men cannot be allowed to be rich and perfect, or to be freed of "sin", at the ordinary level.  They cannot be allowed to even live within a political utopia.

     From a certain viewpoint, religion seems to be reporting to humanity that everyone feels sinful, and relief from sin is accepted as religion's purpose.  "The gods sent down these truths to relieve everyone from this disturbing feeling of being sinful."  Yet religion does not succeed, and generally, nobody condemns it.  "The law says the speed limit is 55."  Nobody obeys it.  "Sin" is the tensile strength that helps hold Life's body together; but it is not something that can be cured.  That would be suicide.  Man is guilty of naught but being human.

     Another apparently rhetorical question:  "Why are not natural catastrophes condemned as killers the same way as individual humans are?"  Life's civilized, verbal body will spend much newsprint and radio time condemning one man that kills three people, but a volcano will wipe out millions of people, and there is no general condemnation of it.

     Someone noted recently that everyone on this planet has some form of religion; and it would seem that each is designed to feed the highest level of those involved.  That is both true and not true.  Religions are feeding the highest levels of those involved, but what it is really doing is feeding Life's own, highest, mechanical level.  Five thousand years ago a religion may have said, "You should love your neighbor as yourself," yet the followers of that religion still cannot do it.  It was Life attempting to feed itself through humanity, to pass energy at the highest possible level of mechanical Line-level consciousness.  That is ongoing, but, on a multidimensional, more complex level than is visible to ordinary man.

     But religions do not, and cannot, feed the Few.  The Few require tomorrow's food.

     Another person pointed out that religion seemed to serve Life as an almost universal vehicle, carrying everything from government, to medicine, and to information of unknown circuitries.  They described it as a pipeline to all parts of Life's body, through which practically any kind of energy could be sent.  That is one of the uses of religion.  You can slip in a multitude of sins, as long as you call it religion.  Anything less, and it would not feed all the possible systems and circuits in those interested.  Then you would have to go through an apology, a preface, to what you were doing; and, even if it sounded reasonable, many people would leave feeling they had been tricked.

     It is quite common, at some Red Circuit religious meetings, for some of those involved to go into a kind of ecstasy, and then lose almost all control over the Red Circuit.  This, even today, is sexual in nature.  If you find a Red Circuit religion, all it is going to do, is mechanically feed the highest level apropos to those people.  This apparent state of ecstasy is an unrealized sexual activity in that person's particular wiring system.  Of course, it is not satisfying.  Remember that I said that religion feeds the highest level possible among those involved.  But it can't get any higher than the mechanical necessity of Life itself.

     Red Circuit people are never going to be fed on the Yellow Circuit level.  You are not going to hear from their religion some kind of philosophical, intellectual, scientific, rational food for the mind.  It is a Red Circuit atmosphere, and the food is for Red Circuit people.  It should become quite obvious to you that, for most of humanity, consciousness is still at the Red Circuit level, although the Yellow Circuit is moving at such a rate that it is about to complete itself.  Remember, there are parallel times working.

     Here is something else for you to pursue:  in Life, there appears to be a literal absence of straight-line phenomena.  Nothing goes simply from point "A" to point "B", whether it be some temporary aim of yours, or some religion, or some political aspect of Life.  Ask yourself this musical question:  what if that which appears disjointed and nonlinear in X dimension, if moved to a more complex dimension, might be seen to move in a straight line?  On the ordinary level, things do not move in straight lines:  Life appears to try this and that and stagger around.  But, if you could change the horizon of perception, and move into a more complex dimension, it might be something quite different.  Remember, if you are involved in the routine expenditure of mechanical energy of any kind, it is ultimately an unprofitable expense.  You cannot alter your understanding, or begin to expand the nervous system, without the continual act.  Anything less than that is the routine expenditure and transfer of mechanical energy, whether you are laughing, crying, jumping, or lying down.  The only way to be absolutely sure that you are not expending energy unprofitably is to be engaged in a Continual Act.  The only failsafe method is to be a complete sham, to be absolutely insincere, in the most sincere manner possible.