Jan Cox Talk 0192

Special Head Theorems, or "Don't Call Me Spleen Brain"

 

PREV - NEXT

Audio = Stream from the bars below in two parts

Audio Download = DOWNLOAD Jan Cox Talk 0192 from Cassette
AKS/News Items = None
Summary = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = See Below


Summary by TK

Jan Cox Talk # 192, Jan 16, 1986, runtime 1:25

  [More on types of people: biochemical basis. The tie between biochemical change possibilities and everybody's life activity, i.e, hobbies. Example of the biochemical shift occasioned by perceived irresponsibility of behavior in another: broken promises etc. ]
  [Consider the pleasing effects of attempts at self improvement. Based upon a pleasurable shift in the biochemical present condition. The Red Circuit and Blue Circuit are the most commonly affected in any biochemical shifts. "Plans" as Yellow Circuit biochemical shift possibility--i.e., thinking of action. T of A as man's unique biochemical shift possibility. This can be used by The Few: force The Partner into cooperation via willful planning. Connection to 10-year plan task. ]
  [The case of Television: fair game for attack by Yellow Circuit types. Part of Life's body railing against unfamiliar, unproven new molecular impact --a new channel of info. ]
  [A new oxymoron: "Left wing general". Art is taken to be Yellow Circuit activity but it is not. Supposed great intellectual effort by the artist is a chimera. Artists can no more tell why they create than they can (or anybody, for that matter) know what they are going to say next. It cannot be allowed by Life that the artist's and/or critic's explanation of the artwork be seen thru, seen as meaningless in its imagined function. ]
  [Understanding is a relatively permanent shift in one's biochemical makeup. The biochemical shift occurs and you can't take credit for it. ]
  [SUPER DUPER TASK: Do something personally, biochemically pleasurable. Connection to hobby; it should be regular and ongoing. Can include making plans. ]
  [Desist in all attempts to impress J. Remember: J. doesn't even impress J. 


Transcript

SPECIAL HEAD THEOREMS, OR

"DON'T CALL ME SPLEEN BRAIN"                          

Document:  192,  January 16, 1986
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1986          

          Let's talk further about biochemical processes that appear to be human characteristics and responses.  I have already referred to what appear to be various types of people, and suggested that you try to observe on your own how the variety of wiring arrangements within people can indicate why certain people seem to talk abrasively, and in a parallel way, seem to stand in a certain way.  How certain other people seem to have a characteristic turn of the head and a certain style of dress -- and then when you talk with them, you find that they have a political leaning you could have predicted.  You find that there are others whose speech seems to be coming from some particular boiling place in the Blue Circuit that runs right to their tongue and makes it go.

     Now let's view this in a wider perspective.  Can you perceive that certain of an individual's activities (in fact, all his activities) are connected to his wired-in possibilities of biochemical change?  This refers to his hobbies, his profession, and the kinds of communities in which he seems to live (both literally and figuratively).  Of course, if you use Special Head Theorems you will explain it differently -- you will explain it "psychologically".  Special Head Theorems are the prevailing assumption that there is a special Psychology of Man that, even if it is not totally separate from the body and all of one's mundane activities, is nevertheless unusual enough to warrant special attention, special excuses, special descriptions, different from those used to explain mere "things" and physical processes.  Until now, humanity has used these theorems in order to take a step beyond the older religion-based idea of spiritual predetermination.  And if you're involved in the area that would appear to be contemporary psychology, then you would attempt to describe why a particular individual became an accountant, as opposed to a taxi driver, on a psychological basis.  Likewise, why someone attempted to become an author, instead of a brick layer like his father.  Or why a son or daughter did not pursue the military when all his or her background was in military service -- all these apparent choices, you would explain psychologically.  For example, suppose a family has two sons.  One goes into the military, following in his father's footsteps; the other becomes a hairdresser.  He becomes something less (according to his father) than a military man.  If a psychologist examined this situation, he would produce an explanation along these lines:  The father was so overbearing that the younger son did not have the psychological strength to put up with the military attitude the father attempted to impress upon the children, even when they were in kindergarten.  One of them seemed to take to it, the other seemed to immediately rebel.  The more he rebelled, the more his father hounded him:  "You know you're going to disgrace the whole family!  No son of mine is going to be anything less than a real man!  You're going to play and you're going to play hard.  You're going to get hurt.  You're going to get out there and get dirty."  But the child wants to stay inside and cut out paper dolls.  Then the psychologist would say that the relationship between father and son becomes a self-fulfilling psychological circle.  This explanation, if you are satisfied with it, is as good as any available in ordinary life, and it sounds more contemporary to people in our day and place than it would to say that the gods pick out some people to fight wars and some to stay home and cut hair.  Both of these explanations are acceptable now.  If you are Yellow Circuit oriented enough, you will say that the religion-based explanation is invalid because it can not be proved.  You would reject the claim that gods pick out some people to be soldiers because we've got to have soldiers, while to other people the same gods say:  "We also need men to do things that take a little more skill, dexterity, and a little feeling."

     To most people at Line-level consciousness, the psychological explanation sounds as though it is based on valid observations -- the experience of the last fifty or sixty years of psychology.  But to us, in This Thing, it is a biochemical situation.  Everything that someone is apparently wired up to be attracted to can be understood on the basis that it is a biochemical condition.  This is, in fact, the very issue that psychology has been choking on for twenty or thirty years (which is not a very long time compared with the typical time-span of Life's activities).  But the struggle within psychology always falls back upon the issue of environment versus heredity -- that is, to refer back to our example, how can you explain the case of the two sons, ten months apart in age, who grew up in the same environment, one of them took to military life and even looks like his father, while the other one, even by his appearance not just his profession, strikes you as diametrically opposed (in the great binary world) to a life of military service.

     By and large up to now, the explanation has always been psychological.  That is:  "There was some quirk, some special psychological effect brought about by the personal pressure of one family member on another.  The way in which the father treated the two sons was not as even handed as first observation might infer.  The son who was ten months older had ten months to get accustomed to it.  Although you may assume that ten months cannot make much difference, actually it can.  It has been proved statistically that younger siblings have difficulty coping, trying to compete with an older brother or sister."  This, or something similar would be the gist of a psychological explanation.  The world is not yet ready to see that given those two choices, Nature or Nurture, it is entirely a matter of genetics rather than environment. These two possibilities are all the human mind can acknowledge at the present stage.

     But rather than saying merely "genetics", let's say it is the overall biochemical effect, the way the person is "wired up" neurologically, and the concentrations of hormones maintained in the blood, among other things.  I am giving you an abbreviated description, but if you follow the idea, you can find these processes occurring in yourself, and this direct perception is beyond any sort of theory.  You may have had an inkling of this on one or two occasions, or you may have been feeling it all your life, but I am giving you a way to look at it more directly, and make a mental map of it for yourself.

     That things happen to you, that you react to them, is no secret.  Nor is it a mystical experience -- it's what you've been doing all your life.  For example, suppose someone broke a date with you.  Suppose the person said, "Look, I know I told you that I'd go fishing with you tomorrow, but I can't do it."  You know that it's not the end of the world; rather it's on such an everyday level that you may be able to observe that this is not some kind of psychological disappointment.  It is not simply a matter of how people let you down, how you would not have done that to someone, how you wouldn't break your word in such a cavalier manner, how you would be considerate of the other person's feelings.  You claim that you wouldn't treat anyone the way this person treated you -- you and your "personal partner" start talking about all this, weaving a very acceptable psychological tale explaining why you now feel somewhat disappointed:  how you had been prepared for the trip today and were looking forward to it.  You feel that somebody's pulled the plug from your tub.  It is being taken by you and your partner as a psychological situation because that is where the partner is, that is where the Voices are.  They are not down in the Red or Blue Circuit.  So the voices say:  "How could somebody do this to me?  How could someone let me down like that?  How could I have such reasonable plans and expectations, merely to see them come to naught yet again?"  But in order to really see what's going on, you must understand that no mystical experience is involved; it's what's always been going on, but you have been looking for understanding in the wrong place; you've been searching under the guidance of the wrong map.

      It is not a matter of finding a new psychological explanation; that would be yet another Special Head Theorem.  You must try to grasp the fact that it is all a matter of molecular change.  You feel that you were in an unusually cheerful, expectant mood that morning, and then your expectations were dashed to the ground, your happy frame of mind was ruined.  But in fact, your good mood was an atypical biochemical condition, not usual for you on Saturday mornings (but you must discard Special Head Theorems to get a glimpse of this).  Then you were crushed, your happiness ruined -- but none of that happened until the other person spoke, the sound waves entered your ear, went through the most mechanical process imaginable, making your eardrums vibrate, creating a molecular change in the brain that translated these sounds to the effect that the other person is not going with you to do what you've been molecularly primed to do.  And then there was a change in you chemically.  You can talk on about psychological letdowns, you can talk on about the fragility of interpersonal relationships, but until that person said the words, until the sound waves went through the air and reached your ear, until you looked at him and saw he wasn't smiling and you realized that it wasn't a joke -- until your senses, (the same senses you've got in common with dogs, cats, and possums) took in the sights and sounds, your biochemical condition remained unchanged.

      Then the internal biochemical condition shifted.  "Oh, well," you said to yourself, "O.K., alright.  I understand.  Rats!"  Now the Yellow Circuit and the Partner can analyze the situation ethically or psychologically as much as they like, but nevertheless, what happened was a biochemical, molecular occurrence.  Other than that, there is a certain part of what Life-as-a-whole is doing, and a certain part of the way Life achieves a special kind of growth, both of which require that each of us have a Yellow Circuit to do this analyzing and talking about events that seem to befall us.  Life does have a Yellow Circuit of its own that, in a sense, takes credit, takes responsibility, and directs blame; that is part of the great C-D-E dance, which also occurs inside each individual.

     Special Head Theorems are not some kind of folly; they are not a mistake.  They are part of the Yellow Circuit at work, making it capable of inventing a camera, weaving a suit, inventing a hair spray, designing a computer.  In order to accomplish these feats, it must take itself to be unusual to the point of deserving special treatment.  It needs to believe that the rules that apply to the spleen do not apply to it.  "Do not call me Spleen-Brain!", it cries.

     Some of my past words may have suggested that I was attacking self-improvement because I said that if one could see beyond the "Binary Bias World" he would see no real improvement.  But nevertheless, ordinary attempts at self-improvement have a pleasing affect on the individual that is very real.  For example, the decision to lose weight, to get in shape, to go back to school, etc., induces a real biochemical change that is quite pleasing.  Even if there seem to be no observable results from the new project, it has still had its pleasing effect, even if it is soon abandoned.  Others may claim your project is useless, (their criticism is molecularly necessary for them) but it has improved you in the real sense that it created a pleasing biochemical affect.  We have reached the point in the development of the human nervous system at which such plans and attempts can have this pleasing effect even without noticeable outer change -- as long as they are registered as "self-improvement".  This is why the phenomenon, with its books and tapes and courses is so widespread now.

     How about an example now of the contrary affect?  Take a religious mystic who is convinced that some god talks to him.  You could almost depend on the fact that he gets no exercise.  If we could convince this man to run three miles a day, it would have a drastic, almost immediate affect on his spiritual life.  If he actually did it, what would happen is that his "god" would quit talking to him and within a few more days, he would stop running.  The point is that he is not wired up to find exercise profitable.  Given the position that he is already filling in life, making a mystic run is to go against his wiring.  Now between this example at one end of the spectrum, and what I have said about ordinary attempts at self-improvement at the other end, you can find the whole range of people making short-lived attempts at change.

     On the basis of observation it could be said that the most common areas in the ordinary organism that are biochemically affected (whether it appears that the person himself is trying self-improvement, or that the affects seem produced by outer circumstances) are the Red and Blue Circuits.  Remember -- I didn't say that this was necessarily true.  But it could be observed and talked about in that way.  But it is also possible to cause biochemical change in the organism by thinking of action, rather than by action itself. That is, by means of plans.  And of course, you can not have plans without the Yellow Circuit in operation. When I noted that it could be said that the Red and Blue Circuits would, apparently from one view, be the areas most commonly, most directly affected biochemically, I was referring to everything that is at the basis of keeping the organism alive in the ordinary sense:  of feeding its hunger, quenching its thirst, having enough sexual activity going on to regenerate the race, keeping warm, keeping cool.  But you can experience biochemical change not just from action on your part, or from action done to you, but also through that which is unique to man at this level, the ability to "think".  To think of acting, that is, to make plans.  Now this is nothing mystical, because everyone knows this, and they don't know it.  And nobody uses it.  But it is very common.  It's possible for the ordinary human to get a large percentage of his pleasurable biochemical changes not through action, but by thinking of action, that is, through planning. Who else but man, as far as you know, can sit down, prop his feet up on a table, look out the window and experience biochemical changes while sitting there motionless?  And everyone does this to some degree. In many people, a large percentage of their routine talk, not anything sounding particularly willful, is actually a continual attempt to affect their biochemical condition in a way that seems, let's say, "pleasurable" by means of something that resembles planning.  But ordinarily, it goes on very mechanically and is usually referred to as daydreaming.  You're just sitting, not having anything particular to do, but not bored, you look out the window, and there goes a brand new car you like, and suddenly you begin to dream:  "If I sold my present car and took a second job, then maybe..."

     What people do not ordinarily notice is that this causes a biochemical change.  Daydreams, that is, cause biochemical changes you find pleasurable.  You can use this to deliberately create pleasurable biochemical change in yourself.  But how many will use it?  The Partner begins to raise objections:  "Well, I don't know.  Could you describe it a little more?  I'm not sure I got it."  That is the daydream voice itself. But you can force it into cooperation.  You can willfully plan in order to create pleasurable biochemical affects in yourself.  Of course, I'm not implying that this is a substitute for real action when that is called for, but you can willfully use plans to create a pleasurable affect.  You can read magazines about cars, boats, etc., go on test drives, get involved in detailed planning even if you don't now have the money to carry it through.  Some of this kind of activity may use up your interest in the thing, but that is not the purpose at hand.  Go ahead, and just pursue it, plan as if you mean it.  Also, do not fall into self-condemnation or self-pity over it either, comparing yourself to someone else who already has what you're dreaming of, etc. Just go ahead and see what kind of biochemical change you can bring about willfully.

     There is a widespread attack by intellectuals against t.v.  They claim that t.v. is turning us into a country of idiots, illiterates; that there is something terribly wrong with t.v.  Take anyone who passes as an intellectual or wants to be one, interview them for a magazine, for instance, and sooner or later they will talk about how they protect their children from t.v.  They, themselves, watch only Great Performances and Night at the Metropolitan, and they allow their children to watch only PBS.  Intellectuals across the board denounce t.v.  Now, I'll grant you that there is nothing on t.v. ordinarily, that is very stimulating, but let's forget that for the moment -- and let's consider what seems to be this passionate attack by the intellectuals.  What is going on here?  It is a part of Life's body, almost a kind of D/protective mode that has been long established.  Let's assume that these intellectuals in their forties did not spend five or six hours a day, while growing up, watching Leave it to Beaver, Sky King, and Howdy Doody.  They spent their appropriate time in school, university, and graduate school.  And to them the mind is a beautiful thing. Reading the great books of the world will give you, according to them, something valuable that watching a hundred reruns of the A-Team will never give you.  If only the masses would give it a chance.  It is a part of Life's body, which is already involved, on an individual level, with a familiar and proven kind of molecular change, railing against another part of Life's body (which is always going in a multitude of directions), which is developing a new molecular impact, that is not yet proven.  Television has been here now for thirty years, but it is not proven in the same sense that oral communication, oral instruction, and the reading of the printed page are proven, because the tube of a t.v. set (ignoring the content for the moment) simply creates different molecular changes in the viewer than does the printed word.  Also there is the unfamiliarity of this impact, compared with that of the written word and the traditional classroom oral instruction, which have fully demonstrated what they can achieve (and if they had not achieved anything substantial, they would not have survived as long as they have, in fact, they wouldn't have arisen in the first place).

     But now Life has moved on into a new information age and it is talking about this through people.  But accompanying that, we also hear cries of fear that we're going to turn out generations of illiterates, that they are not merely watching cartoons, but they are going to get all their information from that suspect tube.  Information handed to the viewer without effort or attention, or force fed to the viewer who won't have the necessary background for intellectually wrestling with the material in order to understand and criticize it.  All this sounds plausible.  But if you take it a step further you see that it's a new molecular impact that is being resisted, as always happens, by another part of Life's body.  This other part has been dealing with what seems to be information flowing in a familiar molecular way that did not involve an electronic tube.  It shouldn't be a secret to you that there is an absolute difference between reading something, having the same information flashed on t.v., or having someone tell it to you in person or in the classroom.  Even to watch the same person giving the information on t.v. rather than in person is different. It has a different affect on the viewer, but the intellectuals claim that it will turn out generations of people who are not only illiterate, but also passive, millions of kids just sitting there, slack-jawed, staring.  But it is not a passive process.  There is no such thing as a passive process.  The t.v. tube is bombarding you, and you are no more passive than if you were reading a book, or listening to someone.  But it is a new kind of molecular impact, even though it is thirty or forty years old.  It is still new compared with what has been going on for a long time in the other kinds of communication.

     Recently someone mentioned to me their delight in the word "oxymoron".  A well known example is the phrase "Army Intelligence" -- that was always good for a laugh.  Another example is "Governmental Thrift". There are also oxymora connected with This Thing.  How about "left-wing general"?  I mean, of course, a career man, an organism wired up to go into the military.  He may be fulfilling his duties quietly or he may have come to power in a coup.  Now try to picture a liberal, left-wing general.  And since you would have to have a broken spoke somewhere if you can imagine this, the real question becomes, is that not interesting?  I'm not talking about politics.  Isn't it interesting that you cannot be wired up to be a liberal general?  Even though my oxymoron is not a real oxymoron -- using words in a legitimate, logical, linear, binary way, because in mine there is no verbal contradiction.  It's not like a standard poetic oxymoron, "the deafening silence", for example.  In my phrase "left wing general" there is no verbal, logical reason those two words won't go together, but nevertheless there is no such creature.  But there could be, couldn't there?  There's no law against it, is there?  But you cannot remember ever hearing of one.  You may still believe it is possible, but it isn't; not because of politics or because of the environmental background of any particular general or of all generals, but because of wiring.  Because what we're talking about is molecular.

     Consider people involved in the Arts.  To keep it simple, let's just consider what is well known:  music, dance, painting, and sculpture.  Those arts are not a Yellow Circuit endeavor, and yet, you can major in them in school -- or you can study their history or criticism.  And if you became a critic you might say something like:  "...the juxtaposition of the rough surfaces as they merge with a calliope of colors of a more smooth quality that seem to bring about a cohesiveness that has run throughout the primal level of this particular artist's work over the last two decades...", etc., etc.  Now when the artist himself hears that, he thinks he couldn't have said it better -- because he couldn't have said anything at all about it.  Artists are not actually Yellow Circuit people primarily, and it is Yellow Circuit people who become art critics.  When an artist does try to say something about his work, it comes out funnier, in a certain sense, than what the critic comes out with (this is not meant in a sarcastic sense).  Now the way that Life has made civilizations view the Arts is that although they certainly involve something more than just intellectual activity alone, they have a very significant, close relationship with the intellectual activities and the intellectual growth of civilization.

       It is recognized that painting, for instance, does speak to our sense of style, balance and color. But continually, through Life's body, groups of people are forced to talk about paintings as though they were involved to a large degree with intellectual activity.  Whether it is a Rembrandt painting of someone examining a skull, or an old painting of a saint with some prostitutes, whether expressionist or abstract, people try to produce an intellectual explanation of its meaning or message, or they try to coax such an explanation out of the artist.  But they can't get it from the artist.  The Yellow Circuit critic has his work to do and the non-Yellow Circuit artist has his, and they're different.  A music critic may try to get a musician to explain how he is able to stand up in front of an audience and weave lines of improvised melodies for hours, entertaining the crowd and the critic himself.  God forbid that the musician try to explain it, because it is not a Yellow Circuit activity.  If the musician could answer from another dimension (which is impossible), he would simply say, "I have no idea how I do it.  Absolutely none."  And this would be the truth (note that this whole situation is a variation of my famous question:  "What are you going to say next?")  An artist or sculptor, if he could speak from a higher dimensional point of view, would say the same thing.  Forget the critic describing the work analytically.  The artist would say, "You got me.  I just don't know.  It's what I do.  I pick up paints, and I work like this; and sometimes it comes out, and sometimes it doesn't.  I don't know." That would be a true statement, if it were possible for him to make it, but it's not possible, and if it were, Life could not allow it.

     If we asked a psychiatrist, priest, or rabbi this same question, his answer would have to be the same, because, taking this a step further, a profession outside the arts, a profession that is believed to be Yellow Circuit based, like psychiatry or the clergy, is also really in the same condition.  If you ask one of these people what they do, and if they were to answer in complete sincerity, they would have to say, "I don't know."  But you see, this outcome is not acceptable to Line-level consciousness, which must insist that there is a great difference between an educated, intelligent professional like a philosopher or a clergyman, and some half-baked artist who throws paint into a fan which blows it onto a wall so he can cut out pieces of it and sell them.  But there is no difference -- not from the "molecular point of view". 

     If you can see that all activities are biochemically based, then the commonly apparent differences among them take on a very different hue.  The undertaking of This Endeavor, assuming you belong in it, is also a series of biochemical shifts.  And this applies to all mystical experiences you have read about, regardless of what explanation the person gave (drugs, fasting, election by the gods, etc.) for what happened to him.

     Consider that every religion has taught its followers about certain feelings they call love, compassion or pity for one's fellow man.  This feeling is a biochemical change.  Life produced it in some individual or group, made them attach mystical or religious significance to it, and made them try to transmit it to generations of followers.  Everyone experiences this feeling as pleasurable, and as a form of spiritual advancement, but it is profitable to Life, or it wouldn't exist.  But the reason for you to value this experience is simply to please yourself, which is why you're here, as it seems now.  You can find out the other shocks later on by yourself.  Whatever you have done in the past for spiritual or mystical reasons, and whichever religion you or anyone chose or defended as better than some other one, it was all to produce a satisfying biochemical change.  And from Life's point of view, it was part of its struggle to grow; a molecular shift in one person, a small group, then a larger group, then something spreading and continuing for thousands of years -- and always accompanied by the Yellow Circuit explaining everything by theology, morality, piety, and recently, psychology.  If you get beyond the words, which are just sounds, and you go back to what some of you can see on a good clear day, you see that it was all based on a molecular change.  Savoring the taste of a broccoli casserole and hearing the gods speak to you are both based on molecular change in the nervous system.  Were it not for molecular change, there would be no religion or mysticism of any kind.

     A similar situation exists concerning the dietary laws of all the religions and cults.  Now you all know that my instructions to you to eschew drinking alcohol, or eating meat are not religious or moral.  But you also know that such restrictions have existed in religions for as long as recorded history.  At any time, there has been some cult forbidding meat or liquor.  In fact, almost any group that would commonly be labelled a cult has such a prohibition.  But they always have a religious story behind it, while I have told you there is a biochemical reason.  In fact, if you were properly drawn to This Thing, and we both lived long enough, and you were progressing appropriately along your own lines, then you would be going through a series of biochemical changes, each of them reaching a temporary plateau.  You would have got to one plateau very soon on which you would have lost your taste for eating meat.  Biochemically!  You would not see it as any kind of religious or moral issue; biochemically the Red Circuit would have sent you the message and you would have lost interest.  That's why it is so common all over the world.  You would have found it out on your own.  Likewise, for one involved in This Endeavor, there cannot be a constant consumption of alcohol or recreational drugs.  They are incompatible with it.  But everyone else says it is religious or moral.  That's the way it has to be in Life, because that's the way things get done in Life up until now.  Or more recently, people say drugs and alcohol are deadly to the psychological aspect of man which is the best explanation Life can come up with for now.  But in This you just quit doing it, because it becomes, at a certain point, a matter of understanding.  You do something that is impossible for most people, and no one even knows about it, including you.  It's not a struggle, it's not a Yellow Circuit phenomenon, it's not spiritual.  Understanding is a shift in the biochemical makeup of the individual on a rather permanent basis. There is another temporary stable floor, a plateau established in the shifting of your biochemical makeup. Then part of what you used to do to create biochemical changes in yourself -- drinking, drugs, hostility, anger, laziness -- you can't do any more.  You do not take the credit for having made a decision or exercised will power.  It has simply become no longer biochemically pleasurable, profitable or even tolerable for you.  It is not a reform or a correction or a change of mental attitude (these are the explanations ordinary consciousness must give).  You find you must give up the drugs, hostility, etc., because they make you sick, biochemically.

     Throughout history, there have been stories of people who were fasting or keeping silent for a spiritual reason and then broke down and violated their oath, perhaps by getting angry at someone.  Then they felt that evil spirits had entered them, that the gods condemned them because they had blown weeks or months of effort.  These descriptions are not simply someone's imagination.  There is no such thing as imagination (except the idea that something is someone's imagination).  What the spiritual seeker is lacking is complete understanding of his experience; what they were describing is simply a biochemical effect -- the negative of doing something that is no longer biochemically tolerable for that person.  And on the basis of what Life has told me, or showed me, or made me do in This Thing, you can bypass all that spiritual or mystical type of explanation or excuse.  For our purposes, let's just say that it's more efficient to leave unprofitable biochemical interventions behind.  (More efficient, to say the very least.)   I can't give you a sales pitch for this -- I never have and I assume you're not waiting for one now.  And it's not just that it's more efficient to abandon unprofitable actions, but "more efficient" is one way to put it.  It is certainly more enjoyable!  And by "efficiency", I don't mean in a mundane pragmatic sense; it's more efficient in that you understand so much more, and then you can quit doing a lot of things that you realize are actually unnecessary, whether in action or in thinking of action.

     According to what humanity says (that is, according to what Life makes humans say) the gods have been telling humans not to get angry and kill each other for thousands of years.  And humans have been telling each other not to do these things, because the gods have forbidden it, because they didn't intend us to behave in that destructive way.  Then the ordinary person must either accept that, or else ignore his Yellow Circuit, and ask:  "If they didn't intend us to be this way, then why did they make us this way?"  That question puts everyone into a swamp of theories and arguments that no one knows how to get out of.  The point of it, for us, is that Life has always been working through a few people in a certain way so that it becomes biochemically almost impossible to become angry or violent.  Instead of "impossible", you can read "inefficient", "unprofitable", "unpleasant", "sickening", but not "unspiritual".  If you are one of those few people who have altered your own biochemical makeup, your biochemical information media have changed.  This change is almost permanent, although small in the beginning of your involvement with This. Then it's still possible (for example) to become angry, but it would be for you something like eating rotten or poisoned food.