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Summary by TK

Tape 201, Mar 27, 1986, runtime 1:34

Reference Diagram 1. The natural-physical dissatisfaction of the nervous system is chemically based. The state of having no complaints, no dissatisfaction, is found only in the use of such as drugs and alcohol. These are always looked upon as vices by both the general populace and the user. Is this not curious? Chemicals exist on this planet--not alien to life-- which can alleviate dissatisfaction yet they are condemned as wrong by the majority and cannot be allowed on a large scale. The addictive enjoyment is nothing other than an alteration of innate chemical unbalances necessary for Life's growth through man. The "virtuous life" is one which increases the chemical complexity of Life whereas addictive vices provide a kind of chemical finality--a fixity and stultification of Life's growth.

@ 57 The "fiction" story of Regal Collusion. Consider the 2 kings as: C and D forces. Consider the ever present acceptance of "conspiracy theories" and their ultimate form of god vs. the devil. Plug in C and D in their places and then their collusion to arrange strife between their respective provinces to keep each healthy and thriving. Only the two kings know of the collusion--to all others it is a real opposition--and the hostility/opposition, even overt warfare, serves to keep the populace of each province from getting fat and lazy. Consider that Regal Collusion on C and D force level is not fictional--an absolute reality. There is always the present need for opposition/resistance for anything to grow and this is even built-in genetically--biochemically to everything.

@ 1:14 - ACBI: "Change is the necessary norm but mere change is NOT the solution" Consider: change is the only solution.

@ 1:31 - TASK: Try to conceive/picture a "something"-process, system, object that cannot be named. No part of it can be susceptible to naming. Try for a week but don't give up then if you don't want to. Keep trying. This can be done.

Transcript

CHEMISTRY, COLLUSION, CHANGE AND SYMPTOMS

Document:  201,  March 27, 1986
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1986                             

     I've decided to introduce a new category, and, like all my categories, I "just thought of it," so I don't have an official name for it yet.  Let's just call the category "Those Things That Should Be As Plain As The Nose On A Congressman's Face," or, "Those Things That Should Be As Plain As The Snit In A Prophet's Mind." I won't work out the acronym for either of these, you can figure them out, but they both represent a category worth your continuing attention.  They are probably the stepsons of ACBI (Apparently Correct But Impossible).

     None of you need me to point out that everyone is dissatisfied.  I have given several mappings of this situation.  Some people are wired up to feel they are in a small minority, and everyone else in life is fairly happy, but right here is a case of The Things That Should Be As Plan As...  Namely, almost all of the activity that is unique to humanity -- verbalizations, arts, etc. -- are a kind of cry of complaint.  There is a continuing repetition, perhaps in a new garb from time to time, of the cry, "My God, aren't things terrible!"

     Now, using one of my diagrams of the nervous system, I pointed out to you one way in which this ongoing predicament could be thought of was this:  That at the highest reaches of the nervous system, up in the brain itself, where Line-level consciousness catches one and all at every time and every place, humanity is in a continuing state of incompletion.  Even though I point that out, please note everything in you, all of your own wiring systems, all the biochemical activity in you, operates verbally and even nonverbally at the old Line level to make you believe your dissatisfaction, the common human dissatisfaction, is a psychological or spiritual matter.  No matter that you may have denounced the religions of your forefathers, and you no longer believe such stories as Adam and Eve and the banishment from the great garden of eternal delights and satisfactions, it is built into humanity's nervous system to believe this dissatisfaction has, to put it most crudely, an essentially nonphysical basis.  There is no way I could ever wean your system (everything you take as being yourself) from this feeling, whether you in particular would want to couch it in psychological or spiritual terms.  The built-in perception is that the dissatisfaction is intangible, it is invisible and completely separate from any physical maladies you may have.  After all these lectures, it should be plain that the one thing I have never put into words, something that is impossible to keep in ordinary consciousness, is the idea that dissatisfaction is chemical.  It is elementary!  It is the elements that make you up.  As far as this planet is concerned, we humans are the only creatures who are chemically incomplete and in a state of growing, chemically.

     One of "The Things That Should Be As Plain As..." is the answer to this question:  Which people do you ever hear saying, "Under certain conditions, I've got no complaints?"  One group, in our day and time, are those who use drugs.  The use of alcohol and drugs have always been considered to be vices.  Even a tribe of American Indians (who have used drugs ritually for hundreds of years) once they are pushed into the twentieth century mainstream, will produce voices condemning it.  Drugs and alcohol will become ultimately a vice if that cluster of people is going to grow culturally.  Today, to all intents and purposes, right thinking people in this country in our time and place condemn hard drugs.  Even those caught up in it are not immune from condemning it.  For example, a musician might be interviewed, (musicians are the easiest group to pick on in this way), and he will say, "Since you asked me about my drug problem -- I've been off the scene now for about nine months -- I've been in the hospital.  I was doing so much cocaine for the last nine years that, to tell you the truth, the last nine years have been a blank.  I had all these pressures, so I would use cocaine, and then everything would be alright."  Nobody notices that the majority of humanity, at any given time and place, condemn the use of drugs and applaud this fellow for seeing the light, coming to his senses.  It took him nearly a decade -- what a tragic waste.  For nine years he didn't know where he was or what he was doing.  But from our point of view, he has said one very significant thing:  "No matter what was going on, if I got some of that nose powder, within a matter of minutes there was no complaint in the world."  It's very common; you hear this all the time, but nobody pays any attention to it.

     Well, if anyone did pay attention to it, it would have to be those parts of Life's body involved with religion.  They would point out that this chemical erasure of all complaints is a sin.  Meanwhile, those of a more psychological proclivity, might say it is ultimately a personally unprofitable form of behavior.  But notice, everybody in the world, everybody in this country, everybody on this planet, is chemically incomplete.  Everybody is born incomplete and dies incomplete.  And in between, everyone lives in a kind of snit, a kind not limited to prophets.  Anyone can demonstrate to himself that drugs or alcohol will erase the dissatisfaction, but everyone will also condemn it, including regular users.  Let me suggest to you, it is absolutely beyond the scope of ordinary consciousness to conceive of the fact there are substances available on this planet, probably no further than a block away from you, from a liquor store or from a neighborhood pusher, chemicals you can put into your body, and within two minutes, instead of complaining about your frustrations in life, the hunger and injustice of the world, your mistreatment as a child, etc., you will be saying with exactly the same sincerity, "There is nothing in the world bothering me. Even if this is not genuine enlightenment, I'll take it anyway."  Now, try to get your attention away from the old universal wired in voices of condemnation saying this is harmful, and look at it the other way.  How is it harmful if it removes all dissatisfaction?  Of course, all of you know I'm not here to advocate the use of drugs -- on the contrary.  But what about the fact that drugs appear quite naturally on this planet, along with everything else, and that they work?  Leaving you still pretty much conscious, still more or less able to function, removing the general dissatisfaction with being alive?  On the contrary, it is strongly condemned.  No one notices the strangeness of this.  No one finds it curious that Life has raised up humanity as a part of its body, the particular part that is chemically incomplete, continually dissatisfied, but with the cure no further than a sniff, a drink, a toke away.  Two minutes away is the end of all dissatisfaction and the means is here on this planet as chemicals.

     Chemicals, not the devil's work, but chemicals you can put into your body and the incompleteness, the dissatisfaction, is gone.  Then I ask you, why do you not find it curious, now that I have pointed it out, that drug use is, by and large, condemned?  Even those who get involved with it, if they don't kill themselves, somewhere along the line will try to get out of it.  They believe it is ruining their health, interfering with their ability to function, but I am suggesting to you that is not the heart of it.  I ask you this, how is it Life has let these chemicals exist here, and be found by humanity and are discovered to put an end to dissatisfaction. And at the same time, Life has made man believe that his incompleteness, his growth, are not chemical but spiritual or psychological?  Because the fact is, there is in all of humanity a chemical incompleteness.  You are going to have to take this for the time being as a totally open ended situation and not concern yourself with when it is going to be completed.  The point is for you, individually, there is an incompletion, and it is chemical.  There is a dissatisfaction, there is an imbalance, and it is, my friends, chemical.  The proof of this (if you need any further proof beyond what I have sketched for you) is the fact when you put one of those special chemicals into your body, it's "no-complaint" time.  Yet Life has the majority of humanity, from the Horizontal powers that be (governments, religions, education systems) all the way to the common sense of the man in the street saying, "You can't go around stoned all the time."  Who does not find that curious?  The chemicals work, but they cannot be allowed.  Why?  These chemicals are known and used, but rejected.  Is it not curious that on a very immediate individual level, the solution, or the answer to your chemical imbalance, which is all you can ask for in your lifetime, is termed a vice?

     How about the poor old fellow who kills his wife and injures his infant child in a car accident while driving drunk and then two days later undergoes a miraculous conversion in which he swaps alcohol for religion? It's obvious there has been some kind of change, but it is taken as being a psychological change.  Those in the church that recruited him call it a spiritual matter.  Religion, like anything else, creates a chemical alteration in people, humanity has called these changes whatever Life wanted to call them at the time, but it is chemical.  The man could go from being a fifth a day drinker to a mass a day "drinker" to a service a day, to reading a holy book a day.  But it would not be a psychological or religious matter.  The ordinary person will insist there can be no comparison between a religious believer and a drunk, but every such change is simply chemical.  All the things that seem to be continuing improvement in the life of humanity are chemical changes.

     Consider the continuing attacks on the fast food industry.  Actually there have been health food gurus on the scene for as long as humanity has been able to talk.  But notice, you are hard wired to be susceptible to them.  There is a chemical situation within you which makes you accept a headline like, "Surgeon General Says Fatty Foods Are Cutting Years Off The Average Life."  Many of you immediately say, "Yes, that must be true," and you aren't even sure you know what fatty foods are.  A group of scientists and public corporations are attacking the fast food industry for using very crude animal fats to fry their foods in, and yet there is plenty of evidence (to say "to the contrary" is to say almost nothing) that in this part of the world each generation is living longer than the last, they are growing taller and their bone structure is better.  And there are other reports saying our children are in terrible shape.  Most kids in grammar school can't do ten pushups, most people nowadays are semi-illiterate and we can trace it directly to fatty foods and white sugar.  But there is evidence right before your eyes that there is a serious conflict between these claims and what you actually see.  In fact, Life is physically improving in spite of junk foods, and mentally improving in spite of TV and poor school systems.  But the statistics, that is, what Life lets humanity see and talk about, still lead to debate.

     There are conflicting theories from reputable sources saying, "Well, our life is improving simply because of the introduction of antibiotics."  Or, "We are living better not through any great stroke of genius or effort on humanity's part, it's that sanitary conditions are so much better that people are living longer.  In your grandfather's day poor sanitary conditions were wiping out large numbers of people."  So, it's either human genius or just changing conditions, or it's something else, but in any case, it's attributed to the nature of different groups of people and the nature of Man in general.  The assumption is progress is a distinguishable and semi-separate thing while the negative processes going on have nothing to do with that, because, after all, we have more people now in mental hospitals than we did in your grandfather's day.  But notice that in your grandfather's day there were only two mental hospitals in the country.  The same is true of the number of people diagnosed as depressed now and the fact that depression was not recognized as a clinical condition in the past.  These things have to change along with each other.  But if you listen to ordinary voices, it all sounds as though they are talking about things that are in the range of Man's spiritual life, his psychological life, his cultural milieu.  For instance, a contemporary person might say, "There are so many potentially interconnected aspects that could be bringing about an improvement in our physical life that it's too complex a matter to distill into some simple idea."  But it's not and part of the proof is we have all these disciplines:  psychology, sociology, religion, politics, health sciences.  But it's all one thing, no matter how you try to divide it up, "no matter how you shake it, no matter how you try to bake it," it is a continuing distillation of one chemical condition into another.  That is what is seen as progress. Of course, I suggest to you strongly, it is progress even on a level not seen.  It is a kind of progress that does not come about through Man thinking it over and figuring out how to live a better life.  It is chemical changes taking place.

     For the past few years we have seen a new concern growing in this part of the world over alcohol.  Many states have raised their minimum drinking age and passed new laws against drunk driving.  Hospitals advertise on television to help alcoholics.  There is a growing feeling about this and, if you are operating at the ordinary level of consciousness, you are caught in conflicting ideas about this, or in the idea that it is a very complex subject, physiological, psychological, legal, and so forth.  Yet, there is no place on this planet that does not have these substances.  There are places that do not have shoes, do not have toupees, do not have television, and some of them do not even have congressmen, but every group of people on this planet has liquor and most of them have some other drug as well and almost all of them finally discovered tobacco.  The mainstream of contemporary opinion now believes the use of these substances is more than just a dirty habit -- it's a threat to health of the individual and of society.  It is also believed that the users of drugs can understand this, get help and stop this activity.  How did this contemporary view come about?  Drug use is not simply a dirty habit.  Nicotine, alcohol, etc., pleasantly change the user's chemical condition and can even temporarily remove all problems.  Isn't it curious there is now increased condemnation of this?  Or do you still believe drug use "just isn't a good idea," or, "it just isn't right"?  Of course, a good drinker, even if he has to quit because his liver is about to turn on him, a "good drinker, my kind of drinker," never has a bad word to say against it.

     Only those who have reformed, who had to swap their chemical dependency on alcohol for a new fanatical religion through a severe shock, who no longer get their chemical alteration from alcohol, they are the ones who condemn it.  Going back to my "good drinker," although this is of no great importance, such a person would say, "Yes, I was a fifth a day drinker, but then I was in the hospital several times because of my liver, so I quit drinking and stayed off it so far."  But if you wait for the rest of the story, or ask him, "Aren't you glad you stopped?", he doesn't say that.  And if you questioned him on it he would say, "Boy, I miss it.  That was fun.  Some of the most fun I ever had -- it really was fun.  Life is kind of a drag now.  Since I quit drinking, what disturbs me is when I get up in the morning, I know that's as good as I'm going to feel all day."  Notice the talk shows do not have these people in discussions about alcoholism, because if this person were asked, "You mean if you didn't think your liver was going to explode you'd go back to drinking?", he would say, "In a New York minute."  I would further suggest to you, all cured or reformed addicts, if they could talk purely on the chemical level, would say the same thing.  They would go back in a minute, if it were only a matter of the chemistry that responds to drugs.  But there is more to human biochemistry than just the drug level, and they can't talk that way once they've really reformed. Life won't allow it.  You should Consider, you should Neuralize this situation.  I picked out glaring examples of addiction to alcohol or drugs, but it is the same whatever someone seems to be addicted to.  It could be music, it could be their hobby, it could be sports, it could be someone who attends religious services four or five times a week.  Forget the words Life uses to describe it.  All these people are addicted even though Line-level consciousness tells you there is a difference between the teachings of the church and a fifth of vodka.  There is not, at the ordinary level.  Both cause a chemical alteration in the participants which they find pleasurable.  Their enjoyment results from the alteration of the forever incomplete/imbalanced biochemical condition.  And all notions of spiritual traumas, all notions of man having been cursed by the gods and now having to work out a resolution of this former conflict -- all that is kindergarten.  It is like kindergarten professors of sex using kindergarten words to describe human anatomy.

     It's not simply that it is wrong, because it is true enough, it is workable enough at the ordinary level or it would not be thought or heard, but we are talking here about this incompleteness, this forever-expanding nervous system, it is not something "psychological," it is not something "spiritual," although it goes under these names continually.  Without any doubt, as you should see, this is the way Life works.  It offers the kind of explanations it needs at the time, and you cannot hear what I am saying on any street corner.  Despite my putting a better explanation in simple terms for you, most of you are still clinging to the ordinary ones.  You finish reading this and leave, and the wiring system takes over again and you are thinking in psychological or spiritual terms.  But these two kinds of explanations cannot coexist.  If you continue to think everything you do is based on karma or on your relationship with the gods, that you get closer to them by living a virtuous life, you'll move farther from them if you masturbate or do something else you consider bad for your spiritual development, then you are actually doing nothing, absolutely nothing, as far as This Thing is concerned.  You are doing as much as anybody else is, but whatever you thought was your original aim was in This you've abandoned it, because you cannot go anywhere with that kind of thinking.  The development of humanity is not the development of man's personality, it's not the development of his soul, it's the continually increasing complexity of his chemical makeup.  That's what is going on.  You are chemically more complex than your grandfather was.  We are, as a people, right now, more complex than your grandfather was.  We are, as a people, more complex than some of the people in older time zones on this planet right now.

     The most popular explanation right now for these differences among groups is education or the lack of it.  That and health conditions.  But improvements in education and health are themselves chemical processes.  People living in older time zones have a lack of chemical sophistication, but this description doesn't sound right and there is no ordinary description for it.  It sounds, to many people right now, blasphemous.  They would insist that if I were indeed a spiritual teacher at all, I would have to be "of the Antichrist" (as the fundamentalists call it) because I have reduced it all to a biochemical level.  Whatever you are involved with, whether it seems to be a settling influence on you, or even a provocative influence which you find agreeable, it is an alteration of your biochemical condition.  It takes a lot of the magic out of it, doesn't it?  But it also takes a lot of the anti-magic out of it.  I mean what you call your "problems" Life calls a "virtue."  Whatever it finds to be increasing the chemical complexity of a group of people at a particular time, it makes those people praise it.  On the other hand, what Life makes people condemn as a vice (what I wanted, with my original question, to get you to find curious) is anything which brings about in any individual some form of chemical finality.  People have a convenient explanation for this condemnation: if everyone were totally satisfied all the time by a drug then no one would try to do anything, no one would work or make any kind of effort, and nothing would get done in the world.  This is true, but it is a childish explanation -- what is really going on?  Life's own growth would stop, and Life won't allow that.  So Life makes people in general feel that drug use is a vice to be avoided.  Yet, it is the very thing which on an individual level seems to be immediate salvation.  This is the effect religion should have.  This is what following a guru should have done for you.  Yet, Life finds this to be intolerable, and will not even permit people to conceive of it in this way.  No one finds that curious?  No one sees what that indicates?  It should be as plain as the nose on a congressman's face.

     Now I am going to change the subject.  Suppose we have two nations, each ruled by a prince, they have a long history of hostility and warfare.  From an ordinary psychological point of view you would say it is a cultural heritage, it is hatred, atrocities, revenge.  This situation has happened, and we could fit certain countries into it right now, but don't mistake reality for super-reality.  Now in fact, the princes of these two countries are not enemies.  They are in direct contact on a regular basis, meeting once a month at a secret place.  They talk over the situation, the history of it, and realize that in certain respects it has been beneficial for their people.  It seemed to keen people's senses, the arts would flourish once the fighting was over, and people seemed to have a certain kind of joie de vivre when they got up in the morning to go out and kill their fellow man.  Patriotism was strong, people trained and exercised and were proud of their physiques.  There was pride of country.  The two princes met and discussed this repeatedly and then decided to make the hostility of their countries an ongoing affair, kept up deliberately, in secret of course, with this secret to be handed down through their royal lines to each generation of rulers.  Their people know nothing about it.  They take it seriously as an age old conflict between them.  The two princes speak against each other in public and urge their people on.  There are periods of peace, but sooner or later one prince or the other will deliberately provoke an incident.  Then the princes lead their armies into battle, but avoid risking their own lives.  They do this whenever they feel that a dose of violence and destruction is needed for the health and welfare of their people, and thousands or millions of people are caught up in it.  Now, I want you to first understand this story simplistically and directly, then ask yourself (since the story is not true in the ordinary sense) why I would make up such a story?  Can you take the two princes to be not humans but the two great Persuasions of Life, the two I have sometimes called "C" and "D"?

     Another thing that should be plain, is the continual worldwide interest and/or belief in conspiracy theories.  This is not just a matter of the sensational headlines in tabloid newspapers -- it goes much further than that.  Humankind has always had conspiracy theories.  They range from the benign to the macabre.  At the benign end we have something like:  "There was a group of twelve descendants of the Prophet and they came here from another planet, and they are holed up in a hotel in Bombay."  The story used to be they were hiding in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but knowing how things work out, I am sure they are by now comfortably ensconced in a Sheraton somewhere.  Over at the menacing end of the spectrum, you have stories akin to the one I made up about the two princes who secretly kept up hatred and warfare between their two nations.  You should find this curious, almost everybody is susceptible to conspiracy theories, no matter how sophisticated or educated.

     Financial conspiracies are always popular, but the greatest of all conspiracy theories is the one about the good gods and the bad gods, the god and the anti-god.  But before getting into that, going back for a final hit on the two princes, can you see how to replace them with the two forces, C and D?  Do you see that the continuing conflict between their two kingdoms exerts a direct, daily influence on every aspect of their culture?  Their music, art, economics, politics, everything, goes on as a reaction to their past encounters with their neighbor?  That they wouldn't be able to go forward from one day to the next if that history were not there?  They, themselves, would deny it, but if their history were taken away from them, if the horizontal past were cut off at yesterday, then all the people in both these nations would be left standing around like zombies.  They would almost cease to exist.  Or if eternal peace suddenly descended on all of them you would have the same result:  stagnation.  But instead of taking up my story as external and physical, can you replace it with the two forces and work out the rest for yourself?

     Now back to the gods and devils theory.  If you go back into your own wiring system, to the place that still wants to speak of gods and devils, then I would have to tell you the story I conjured up -- I may not have conjured up.  I may know something.  I obviously must know something or you are wasting your time here, but I may know something deadly.  I may know if that is true, I may know all about it.  So if we are in your forefather's time, and the part of your wiring system, the part of your own nervous system, the part of your genes that still wants to speak and believe such things as there is a god, well, let's use the old classic formula, there is a god and then an anti-god.  If it were true, then I am going to strongly suggest to the part of you, the story may not be fictional at all.  Along with the whole idea of them being in conflict -- you poor babies, you poor simple nationalistic babies -- you say, "Yeah, but now we're talking religion, not nationality; and being a Christian is not a nationalistic impulse."  Tsk, tsk.  In fact, it's nothing but jingoism revisited.  It is absolutely a nationalistic impulse.  It's, "Yes, I'm a good Jew."  Or, "Yes, I'm trying to be a Sufi."  Or, "Yes, I'm trying to be a Zener."  You have been caught up in this regal collusion.  They are plotting it.  They are sitting around laughing about it.  Not just laughing at you -- they are just laughing at the situation.  They are laughing at the fact things continue to get better in spite of what we do.

     For those of you who really think you are up to date, I might ask you where E might work into this.  Of course, then I might ask you, "Alright, if the two princes are C and D then where is E?  Then I might say to you, "Where do you think they get together and have those meetings?

     Here are some other things that should be plain.  In my continuing desire to plumb the depths of our contemporary culture I periodically turn on the radio or TV, just to improve myself, broaden my cultural horizons.  On one educational show someone was talking about how natural selection works and how things seem to work out in the great food chain, in certain ecosystems out in the wilds.  They talked about how things continually undergo change -- one species will seem to die out or get overpopulated and that seems to trigger something else.  A plant may start putting out more toxins that seem to kill these creatures.  They finally got themselves to a sort of "end of paragraph" and I was just listening with one ear when they wrapped it up with something about life in the wilds being a matter of continual change -- "but mere change is no solution."  Then I listened with one and a half or one and three quarters ears because I always like to hear philosophically profound pronouncements coming from that little box.  Just when you thought the program was over and you felt good about the fact things are basically alright in the Amazon forest, they hit you with that final pronouncement, "Yes, change is real, change is a constant in this world, change apparently serves a purpose, BUT mere change is not a solution."  So things are not all right.  "Tune in next week."

     Alright, that is a fair ACBI because apparently that's correct.  "Yes, change can seem to be, in passing, beneficial, or it seems to serve a purpose, make for adaptation, help the cycle continue, get it slightly redirected -- but change, just mere change in and of itself, is no solution, period.  Well, I must point out to you that that is not true.  Change is the solution.  Binary consciousness, the chemical condition of humanity, including this great thing, your brain, this great thing you call "I," in its ordinary state can never find a finality.  But using their words, using the words Life is having humanity talk about, deep voiced announcers, writers with some education, we would have to say, "Change, mere change, is not the solution."  And oh, but it is.  They are saying change is not the solution.  You can understand by now I'm not telling you simply it is not true and you should forget it, because at that level it is true.  It would have to be true or it wouldn't be on television at all, so I knew it was true immediately.  But what they are saying without knowing it is there is only one true solution, and that would be the cessation of change which would be the termination of the problem.  When they discuss the ecological problem caused by human invented insecticides, when they point out the changes occurring in certain plants, in their secretions, which bring about a kind of adaptation to the situation, when they reject this adaptation and insist that mere change is no solution, what they are saying without knowing it is that the only real solution would be the cessation of all change.  Or, to put it in a way they would hear better, at least for a second, the only real solution would be the termination of the entire problem itself -- which would amount to the complete disappearance of the entire ecosystem -- if reality could be chopped up in that way.  That would be the real solution they are asking for -- the problem, as man has identified it in one particular place must simply and finally go away. They do not know it chemically, but that's what they are talking about, and in a sense, they are correct.

     People always say, "Look, we continue to deal with the symptoms, but we never get down to dealing with the causes of the problem."  This complaint is made whether it concerns an ecosystem, the economy, the educational world.  Everybody with at least a high school education knows you are in for a serious statement when somebody says, "I have studied this problem, I have read all the available literature, I have been to many seminars and I want to tell you that the reason we're not making any progress, why we're still in our infancy with regard to this problem, is that we are still trying to deal with the symptoms and we've got to get to the causes."  And Life, by secreting its own hormones, makes a large group of people hearing that statement to applaud and agree wholeheartedly.  But I have already pointed out to you that everything is "symptoms."  You can't find causes.  If you are looking for causes you are looking for a cessation of the problem.  You are looking for the problem to go away.  Yet problems do go away and nobody notices it. And of course, if people had any practical intelligence, they would say, "Well, certainly.  You never hear about it any more.  The problem, you know, went away.  We don't have to talk about it any more."  But nobody noticed there is only one solution:  the problem has to go away.  Everything else is "mere change." Nobody ever notices that indeed causes do show themselves, they show themselves by disappearing -- and then what people call "the symptoms" are gone.  But the "symptoms" are all there was.  Symptoms are to change as causes would be to what people call "solutions."  Things are continually solving themselves and nobody notices it -- because when things have solved themselves from any viewpoint, that's the only solution there is going to be.  For example, someone suffers the heartbreak of being left by their mate. Then a few weeks later, when reminded of it they realize they have not thought about that person for many days; they are over it.  Yet, earlier on, when they were crying and depressed, we could have convinced them they were confronting merely symptoms of the affair -- but if asked how they were going to deal with the cause, they wouldn't know.

     The symptoms are the cause, or if you want it another way, there is no cause, or if you want it another way, the only way you will get to the cause is to ignore the problem.  The only way you will ever find a solution and simultaneously find the cause is when you have quit looking, when it has become irrelevant.  "Ah!"  But nobody can really say, "Ah!" to this idea because it's crazy.  At the level where humanity can ordinarily perceive things, it is transition; it is change that does away with problems.  Humanity's comment that, "Change, mere change, is no solution," is wrong.  But since things are "incomplete," no one can see it.  It is a continuing matter of transition, the fact that things do change, which causes symptoms to change.

     "But we never get down to the root cause of it, do we?"  Well said, well said.  But no one ever asked why it is in any area, after a certain period of time struggling with a problem, somebody always cries out, "We are dealing only with the symptoms, not with the causes."  Instead, everyone agrees.  And no one ever ponders the fact, despite great progress in many areas, we have never found the root cause of anything.  You and I know why, don't we?  At least some of you suspect.  Despite the constant complaints, nothing but symptoms will ever be found.  Any attempt to reject further consideration of "mere symptoms" will have to fail.  Because there are only symptoms.  There are no causes.  What they are looking for does not exist except in the minds of the educated part of the population.  There are no solutions -- except the one that cannot be noticed:  a change, a "mere change" that simply ends the problem once and for all. One example of such a change is the death of the observer of the problem.  That certainly ends all of that individual's psychological and medical problems, financial problems, career problems, and anything else that may be apparently causing him distress.  But ordinary people would not consider that a "viable solution," certainly not a solution anyone would care to accept.  But that is a solution for everything from childhood traumas to hemorrhoids.  Everything else is "mere change" -- but if it could be seen correctly, change is the solution.  But this standpoint is not a comfortable one, because people are not chemically arranged to realize change is the solution at this level of existence.  People cannot see a "final solution" would be exactly that -- it would involve the ending of your life at least, and possibly the end of everybody involved in the so-called problem.  And if humanity as a whole were the problem, due to polluting the environment, risking nuclear holocaust, etc., then the solution would be "bedtime" for all of humanity -- the world's largest grave.  That would be the only "final solution" at the level at which Life makes humanity talk about these things.

     You have to have a certain kind of new chemical imbalance in you to be able to hear any of this.  That is part of what the element of trickery in this Endeavor has been.  Some of it I have been able to do with mere word, I have not been imparting information, although you may think so.  You think I have written books and you may be taking notes.  I'm not telling you to stop it -- it serves a purpose -- but if you think you are hearing and taking down information from some strange secret source, this information is something you should ponder on, think over, maybe try to put into some cohesive rational form on your own, then you must understand everything that has happened in these pages has been a biochemical happening; this has been a chemistry lab.  It is colors and sounds bouncing off your receptors and little chemicals churning around inside of you.  I suppose you could find it interesting the chemicals that got churned up in certain parts of Life's body came out like this -- This Thing, me and you, these transcripts -- but it's not interesting enough to spend much time with, and in any case if you tried to figure it out you would be dealing with just the symptoms of it -- I mean, the mere manifestations of it -- you would never get down to the actual source of it...and we know how much time we have all wasted dealing with those blasted symptoms, so...

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