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Summary by TK
Tape 218, Jul 24, 1986, runtime 1:38

  [More on "everybody needs an enemy" --Men programmed to identify and instigate conflict between others ("let's you and him fight") are seeking a 'stand-in' for themselves. Relation to dependence on external authority. Conflict required for anything to have life--to exist. A continuing awareness of this necessity apparently relieves it's hold. Example of excuses as removing self from conflict while still sustaining it. The Few have no excuse; cannot be part of the general hostile flow. A physical alteration to the nervous system occurs which absolutely preempts all theorizing of enlightened behavior.]
  [Change= TOA (thinking of action). Habits (behavior) = pure action. ]
  [Change is always predicated on thoughts of action. Behavior is not based on TOA. Consciousness is the last to know: the acting does and never thinks. Neuralize: Thinking is about change/action but change/action is outside the rules of thought.]
  [Development on a comment by Group member re: C, D, E forces where C is not necessarily always the "good guy". Example of two warring neighbors/principalities indifferent time zones depending on who is the latest vanquished now newly arising to throw off the yoke of oppression by the victor. The formerly vanquished and newly arising always = the "now" time zone --farthest east. The former victor losing its edge, growing nervous of the stirring among the conquered neighbor = a time zone west--conserving, restraining. Connection of time zone flavor differentiation to C and D forces--"good guys" can't exist in a time zone to the west. Connection to: all news is bad news. Connection to The Partnership time zones in you.]
  [Nonsequitor. After biochemical alteration you can stabilize by "transequitor": a controlled kind of insanity. Must be non-hostile, non-sarcastic --not externally obvious. Related to steadying the Line/Triangle in the midst of chaos. You can learn from transequitor process. It is Yellow Circuit activity resembling a "mystical Daffy Duck". A process to "teach yourself something you don't already know".]
  ["It's against the law to have too much fun". Literally. Neuralize that only what is natural and desirable to some part of Life's body is worth outlawing. No one finds this curious: Why should there be limits? ]
  [1:35 Exhortation of other cities to increase activity to publicize This thing.

Transcript

Behavior is Quicker Than Consciousness

Document:  218,  July 24, 1986
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1986                                   

     It is necessary that there be opposing forces for anything to exist.  There must be the tension of differing desires between people:  everyone is required to have an enemy or else nothing would happen. Opposing motivations obviously exist on a national scale, but your enemy for the moment could be your spouse insisting you take out the garbage.  Or perhaps you are attempting to start a small business and the "red tape" is about to strangle you.  Whatever happens, there is the requirement that some kind of enemy be involved.

     Everyone has to have an enemy and at the same time, everyone is able to avoid meeting his foes face-to-face.  For a dramatic example, let's go for a moment to a Red-Circuit scenario.  There is a game that some drinking men play in bars -- you've probably seen it in a film, if not personally -- called, "Let's you and him fight."  (Some "good ole boys", in fact, correctly identified some "good ole girls" as instigators of "Let's you two fight.")  Here is the way the game goes:  tension arises between two people but one of the two manages to bring in a third party to fight for him.  In a real, down-home fight, numbers two and three slug it out and number one, the instigator of the whole thing, remains safely on the sidelines.

     You can see examples of "Let's you and him fight" all around you, wherever you happen to be.  You don't have to confine your observations to fist fights or even heated arguments.  Maybe some people are sitting around over a few beers and someone says, "Hey, last night I heard on television that more Democrats are on welfare than Republicans."  Someone else responds, "Hey, you can't say that, my mother's a Democrat!"  The first guy replies, "Talk to the newscaster, he's the one who reported it.  I'm just telling you."  Suddenly, the fight is between the second man and the newscaster.  The first speaker has brought in a stand-in to fight for him and stepped out of the altercation.  There is still a confrontation of sorts, tension of opposition so essential to Life, but the parties are excused from directly confronting an enemy.

     "Let's you and him fight" is directly connected to the phenomenon of "knowing" via external authority.  I have been trying to get you to see that no one knows anything by himself.  Personal knowledge seems to come from an external authority.  People who "know" the most are, from one viewpoint, those who can quote the most external sources.  When you start a fight and bow out when things get hot, who steps in and fights it out for you?  Your stand-in is a person who is practically never present -- the newscaster you heard on television, your father:  the external source of your information.

     "Let's you and him fight" is taking place everywhere.  You and another person get up to do the foe dance and you go, "Blah, blah, blah."  And they go, "Dah, dah, dah."  Then it's suddenly as though you step back and say, "Uh, may I present my father."  "May I present what Freud said."  "May I present my father's religion."  "May I present what happened to me one time that you wouldn't believe."  Someone makes a statement of his beliefs and then says, "Now wait, don't get mad at me.  It says so right here in the holy book.  The gods said it, I didn't say that.  I'm quoting the gods."  If you were to move up in time and space and size into the body of Life itself you would see that there is an absolute physiological basis for "Let's you and him fight" at Life's level.

     You should be Neuralizing and wondering how this constant calling in of stand-ins is of benefit to Life as a whole.  Everything is so arranged that everyone must have a foe.  For an event to stay alive, it must contain opposition.  Why don't people just fight everything out directly, man to man?  How is Life physiologically profiting from this routine that humans continue to go through?

     How about the wide, wonderful world of excuses?  What is an excuse?  An excuse is a form of "Hey, don't blame me -- let's you and somebody else argue this out."  A person is accused, "Why do you always do so-and-so?  We've been living together for two years and I've told you over and over, I can't stand it when you do this.  I'm tempted to pack my clothes and leave."  "Oh, please don't!  My father used to stay on me about that and for some reason, it's compulsive behavior now.  I subconsciously want to continue doing it.  I know you told me you're suffering over it but I can't stop!"  Do you hear between the lines what the person is saying?  He is saying, "Let's you and my father argue about the problem.  I am blameless."

     Making excuses is not some psychological problem humanity has acquired somewhere.  The mechanism of excuse making -- the universal response to a confrontation -- is as real as coughing, being nearsighted or having heartburn.  It is written in each human being's physiology.  The origin of excuses and all other behavior is in the blood chemistry of Man:  in his DNA.  If people could see the physical basis of behavior, everything would change.  One of the words missing from your dictionary would then be down toward the bottom of the "E" section.  You could look for the word "excuse" (with your picture in the margin as an example) but search all through the "Ex's" without finding it.  There would be no word for "excuse". None.

     Picture for a moment a world without excuses.  You and your foe would oppose each other with no reference to external sources.  I suggest to you that if you lived life without the crutch of an external, third party stand-in, you would have less and less to say of any consequence.  Once you have undergone a series of alterations in your own nervous system, confrontations become irrelevant.  Then you begin to See the pleasingly balanced, expanding system of opposition in which we're all involved.

     There is something else:  without a foe present, you have a non-event.  You could be in a supermarket, exchange a few words with someone, and immediately forget what took place.  Two minutes later I could ask you, "What just happened between you and that person who stopped you in aisle seventeen?"  Even though the exchange took place only seconds before, you would hardly remember it happened.  You would know that somebody walked up to you but you would not remember the essence of the exchange.

     You could consider opposition as a continuing sign of good health.  If you are prone to wonder if you are alive or merely dead and dreaming all of this, look no further.  All you have to do is ask yourself, "Do I have the feeling of opposition, of being put upon?"  If so, you don't have to go to a chiropractor or consult your neighborhood psychic.  You are alive.

     Once you begin to See, it becomes more and more difficult to view anything as an imposition.  Once you have begun to ignite the higher areas of your own nervous system you See that there is nothing to take personally.  Evil forces are not afoot.  If I may appeal to your sense of the ridiculous for a moment, imagine someone looking upon atmospheric pressure as a burden.  "If we didn't have that weight of 14.8 pounds per square inch pressing down on us, think how light we'd feel!  We wouldn't have to keep cutting down on donuts!"  I would point out to that person, were it not for atmospheric pressure, their lungs would not be filling with air.  There is no reason to take opposition personally; but seen through the tunnel vision of ordinary sight, Life is but a continuing string of impositions.

     Igniting the higher areas of your own nervous system involves a quite real physical change.  Such a change has to do with the blood and the ways in which AMv12 is used, and with activating parts of the brain presently not utilized.  This self-ignition is everything the mystics have always talked about.  It is a series of absolute shocks that happens to a few people.  I won't say who might undergo the process, how long it may take, or how many possible shocks there are, but alterations happen which have nothing to do with theory.  To the ordinary circuitry, the descriptions of self-ignition sound wonderfully alluring.  The religions try to describe it as a state wherein you always love everybody.  I take a different approach and say you would no longer hate anybody; nevertheless, all my descriptions and words have very little to do with actual change.  What I am doing is pointing.  My words and tasks are a kind of trickery.  When your system actually undergoes the physical changes, my pointing becomes moot.

     As a crude analogy, let's say you are addicted to a narcotic and you have to take it every day.  At first the intoxication seems to be tremendous fun.  Then it is fun sometimes, and other times not.  And then it gets to be less than fun.  Let's say you finally realize you want to stop taking the drug.  Unlike quitting a narcotic, in escaping the ordinary hostile tension which holds everything together, you don't have to check into a clinic.  You don't have to call the "drug abuse hot line".  Removing yourself from the general flow of hostility is like getting up one morning and finding you have absolutely no interest in a drug.  After all those years of taking it every day, you simply stop.  You don't make a resolution never to use the drug again, and you don't memorize everything I've said and resolve to live accordingly.  You physically lose all interest in the substance.  Real change is not mental or spiritual.  It is physical.

     In the past, in various times and places, people believed each man and woman possessed a soul.  The spirit was said to be the uniqueness of Man and it was not part of the body -- you could dissect all the cadavers you wanted, but you wouldn't find the soul.  Those who believed in the soul were talking about the Yellow Circuit.  (They just didn't know it.)  The Yellow Circuit, or what ordinarily is called "the mind", "the brain", or "consciousness", is in no way separate from the workings of the total organism.  From a physical viewpoint, that which has always been labelled a mystical experience is no more mystical than a nervous breakdown, a hernia, or having your liver turn on you.  The reality of a mystical experience is a permanent change in your nervous system.

     Still on the subject of real change, let me try something subtle on you.  In humans, the apparent desire for change is always accompanied by thoughts of action.  At the same time, the actions to be changed are not accompanied by thoughts.  Behaviour is quicker than consciousness.  Yet, to change behavior requires thinking of changed behavior.

                         CHANGE = T.O.A.

                      HABITS = PURE ACTION

     But the fact remains -- for humans there are only two possibilities:  acting or thinking about acting.  In light of these two possibilities, it would seem impossible to change -- you're trying to alter something faster than thought by thinking about it.  Yet humans continue to spend generous amounts of time thinking about change.

     Let me repeat, all ordinary behavior is pure action.  If you think otherwise, you haven't even made it to kindergarten yet.  What seems to be consciousness (that is, thinking of action) is always the last to know what went on.  By the time you can think about a piece of behavior, the behavior is already completed.

     To look at action and thinking of action another way, consider my old story about the catered banquet. You are at a lavish banquet carefully set up by a caterer, yet you believe you ordered your own refreshments personally.  You perform some behavior and then you explain why you did what you did.  I am telling you, regardless of what your voices may say, you don't order the food you eat at the banquet. You don't decide to do anything.  Action is faster than thinking of action.  To continue with my picture:  you simply turn around and there it is -- the Golden Gate Bridge done out of chopped liver.  There's wine over here, spilled drinks over there, and bromides to-go.  A band over here is playing music you like and one over there is playing music you don't like.  Some people over here are too noisy, someone over here intimidates you and you wonder if he recognizes you.  You are at the banquet and it is a catered affair.

     Your forefathers believed that the gods do the catering.  I'm not saying anybody does the catering, but at the ordinary level, you are attending a catered affair.  Yet as soon as somebody asks, "How did such-and-such happen?", you reply that you were responsible -- that you ordered the meal.  Somebody asks you, "How did you end up standing in this particular place, with this drink in your hand, saying what you are saying, dressed the way you dress, acting the way you act?"  And suddenly you have a reply to the question:  "I ordered all of this the day before yesterday -- it was about 1953.  I made arrangements to get myself exactly where I am today, and I don't mind admitting it."  You surely know that ordinarily you have no such awareness?  You are not responsible for what you do.  If your consciousness were actually faster than your actions, you would be one of those who could answer the question, "What am I about to say next?"

     What seems to be consciousness (thinking-of-action) is always the last to know what is happening. The action is done, the affair has been catered.  Action may be just a tiny bit quicker than thought, but that tiny bit quicker will kill you.  That tiny bit quicker is killing you.  Put the swiftness of pure action together with the sensation that "I should be doing things differently,"  and ask yourself, "What could Life be up to?"

     To shift gears somewhat, let me refresh your memory regarding my "time zones".  You recall I used the geographical time zones on this planet as a metaphor for various levels of development in mankind.  When the sun is rising in Philadelphia, it is still pitch dark in Seattle; but beyond geography, there are parts of this planet actually living in a younger time zone than other parts.  The United States and Western Europe might be the youngest time zone in the twentieth century.  Our present western-world time zone is the one with the largest number of possible choices for its inhabitants.  People come and go freely, they are prosperous economically, and there is plenty of room for creative expression.  The present time zone is at the leading edge of progress on the planet.  Things here are going about as well as they're going anywhere in the world.  (Things are also most unpredictable in the present time zone.  For a twentieth century example, compare Manhattan and Moscow.)

     But note that the time zones are by no means absolute for a whole region.  Within present time zones there are still people living in older time zones.  What do you think the so-called generation gap is all about?  It is the same within yourself.  You have several different time zones operating in you simultaneously.  Each person at Line-level consciousness has attitudes, prejudices, and behavior that are not up with even present time.  Under certain conditions (if you're ordinary) the molecular structure of your system reacts in a way that is almost prehistoric.  At such times an older time zone within you takes over. Under other molecular conditions you might express yourself through a more recent time zone, as in enthusiasm over a new endeavor.

     People also express themselves through a time zone ahead of their present one.  A drunk in the gutter who has just beat up a woman might begin to cry and shout, "We should not mistreat our fellow man!  We should not destroy ourselves physically!"  That kind of talking and thoughts-of-action is from a future time zone because people can't actually do it yet.  Life makes people talk about it; Life continues to muse.  Life continues, just as you do, to age and grow at different rates of speed.

     I bring up time zones so you can look at the three persuasions in a new way.  As an example, let's invent two principalities, X and Y.  A generation ago, so the example goes, there was a war and Principality Y defeated Principality X.  X was subjected to an unjust peace settlement and for years Y was the more powerful country.  In recent years, however, X has gradually regained its strength and a new prince has risen.  The new prince of X begins to talk about taking back what is X's, and finally X wages war on Y.

     If you lived in Principality X and you were typical of that place and time, this new warlike prince would be a hero to you.  He would be restoring your country to its former glory.  If you lived across the border in Principality Y, the prince of X would be a villain, storming through your fields and taking the land you inherited from your father.  You might also ask yourself:  if you lived in some location remote from both X and Y, how would you label the prince?  If you hear the representatives of X saying he was sent by the gods, while the inhabitants of Y were claiming he was evil incarnate, might you not wonder, "Are they talking about the same person?"  This raises the question, how is anyone to tell C-persuasion from D? (Not to mention E!)

     One way to approach this question is to determine which time zone your principality occupies.  If you lived there, Principality X, with its spirited citizens marching and waving flags, would be a likely candidate for the present time zone.  (Notice how time zones may change location.  When X was the defeated, downtrodden principality in the story, it was not in the present time zone.  But now that things are speeding up there, X occupies a younger time zone relative to Y.  People in X now feel involved in C-persuasion. Someone right across the border in Y cannot see into the present time zone in the same way a citizen of X can.  Y's citizens will not perceive that a good guy is the motivating force.  For a Y dweller, the prince of X turns into a non-good guy by operating in a different time zone from Y's.  Is that tricky enough?

     If you're present and the events of the day appear to be good, they also appear to be happening now.  That which is apparently happening now is always connected with the "good guys".  If you move back an inch out of what seems to be the present, the same "guy" is no longer "good".

     If you think I'm only referring to politics and history, shame on you.  You can always take these stories and turn your view inward.  What goes on in Life is going on in you, in miniature.  There you are, minding your own business.  Trying to better yourself.  "I'm trying to do this project right now, but someone is making threatening overtures.  I'm going to have trouble here.  I thought I could make a move, but I see I'm going to have trouble with the city council".  Whenever you've got opposition -- non-"good guys" about to wrap you up in red tape -- you can sense that they're not operating in the time zone of the present.  Good guys can't exist in the past.

     Here's another twist.  If news comes from the past, it's not good news.  Just try putting some good news in a history book.  For instance, what would you think if you read something like this as a footnote:  "It was during the summer of 1542, right after the big plague, that Prince Hernando threw one of the finest parties and dances ever.  It lasted two weeks and everyone who attended said it was just a first class blowout. Everybody really enjoyed it."  That is not history.  A story about a happy little interlude is almost a non-event.  What are you going to do with it?  You'll never remember it.  Good guys can't live in the past.

     Look what happens when humanity attempts to tell tales about prophets and religious people -- sons and daughters of the gods.  Telling tales about good guys from the past has quite an effect on thinking-of-action.  Let's assume you grew up in the shadow of some religion and it told you all sorts of things you should do -- ways you should change your actions.  Did it work?  No.  You and the partnership think about what you should do to change, but the forbidden behavior still goes on.

     Is there any way to use such information internally and personally?  If you were forced to tell in what respects you are a "good guy", in what internal time zone would you place this representative of C-persuasion?  Where is he when you need him?  Where is he when he could do something?  I suggest to you that most of the time you will find him in your dreams.  Most of the time you will find him when you're impotent to act.  You find him when you say "I should have done..."  You and the partnership sing the praises of this new leader when you're home in your underwear, sitting at the kitchen table at one-thirty in the morning.  He's been around for years and he can never seem to get in power, but you're all in favor of him.  You're in favor of how he should have handled things today, when they went awry.  The internal voices speak of how, if tomorrow the same thing happens, he can handle it.  Thinking about this "good guy", you are thinking of a different time zone from the one that ordinarily produces your behavior.

     Let me suggest something specific.  Everyone knows about that bugaboo of English teachers, the non sequitur.  Literally translated, "non sequitur" means "it does not follow".  A non sequitur is a final statement or observation that does not fit its accompanying preface.  In the early days of film the Marx brothers used to make great use of this for comic effect.  One scene was of a manager in a hotel lobby striding up to a woman he'd never seen in his life and whispering conspiratorially, "We've got to quit meeting like this", then walking off as if nothing had happened.  A more modern example of a non sequitur would be to reply, "And you have a slice of hay, too", when a sales clerk wishes you a nice day.

     There is a use in This Thing for something like non sequiturs.  Once you have had a certain stabilizing shift in your total organism, you can willfully steady yourself.  With a steady base, you can free the Yellow Circuit into a kind of controlled insanity.  You can deliberately and joyously create your own non sequiturs. (Non-sequitur doesn't really cover it:  "Trans-sequitur" would be a better word.)  You can hurl the Yellow Circuit into a kind of parallel universe, putting together things in unexpected and amusing ways.  When you get good, you just turn the Yellow Circuit loose and it hurls itself into places beyond any sense in the ordinary world.

     To do this you have to start out from an absolutely steady, normal-appearing center.  You have to pass for being Joe or Josephine Normal, Fred or Frederica Nerd.  You have to appear to be square, dense, boring, bland -- a living weenie -- and steady, very, very steady.  You look just like an unremarkable person, wearing more or less what everyone else wears, smiling when they smile, standing when they stand.  You sit, you look curious, you respond, but inside it's almost as though Daffy Duck had become mystical and he's bouncing off every possible word and pattern of what everyone else is saying and doing.

     If you are wired up to be naturally wacko, that is not a proper starting place.  It doesn't count.  If being nutso is your natural hardwired position, your first job is to work your way to being straight, dull, and normal.  You can be a lot more boring and predictable than you ever imagined.  Once you have achieved a stable base from which to start, then you can literally turn the Yellow Circuit loose inside.  You can allow the Yellow Circuit to hurl itself into the land of the trans-sequitur.  Inside you're almost insane, but outside you appear to be quite normal and uninteresting.

     It is not that trans-sequiturs don't follow what is going on.  They follow quite well; in fact, they predict what is going on.  And beyond being pleasurable, non-repetitious, and non-boring, the process can teach you.  That sounds about as strange as anything:  how can you teach yourself something you don't know? Two dimensionally, you know everything you know -- that is the illness of repetition.  Everything follows, and everything is reasonable, even if you don't like it.  Everything does plant its own seeds.  You plant rutabagas, and you're going to reap them someday.  The Few discover that they didn't plant anything. Then whatever comes up is truly kind of funny, on a number of levels.  It's funny that you can hear your own Line-level consciousness and you know what it would say.  It would say, "Wait a minute, let's you and whoever planted you fight."  It would say, "I can explain this."  It would laugh at and envy other people's crops.  Above this level you can turn the Yellow Circuit loose and it goes beyond all descriptions into a kind of controlled insanity that you can learn from.  Trans-sequiturs are non-hostile and non-cynical, and you have to be very steady to be able to enter their territory.

     I'm going to leave you with something to ponder.  I heard a song on the radio, a kind of semi-humorous country song.  The line which I liked was, "It's against the law to have too much fun."  Your first impression of that might be simply of something funny.  Maybe a bunch of people are riding along in a '49 Packard and they have some of the best marijuana they ever had in their life, some good wine, and some naked go-go dancers in the back seat.  A policeman pulls them over and points out, "Listen, it's against the law to have too much fun!"  Setting aside the humorous part, do you realize it is literally against the law, all over this planet, to have too much fun?  It is not normally expressed in those words, but the law defines very precisely what is "too much fun".

     There are large numbers of people, in every time zone that ever existed, who consider drinking fun.  They will spend their hard-earned cash on it and complain when the bars close.  But it is against the law to drink too much.  The same goes for sex.  Every religion in every time zone has been in favor of sex under particular circumstances, but beyond the bounds of the ruling time zone will be sexual practices which are against the law.  A church might say it's alright to have sex if you are married, heterosexual, and ready to have a baby.  A government might say you can only have sex in certain positions, not in others, or you can only have sex with one partner, if you will sign a paper.  If you want to change partners, you have to sign some more papers and it'll take a while.  Then if you sign some more papers you can do it with another person, but the new person has to be of a certain age and gender.

     What is Life up to, that "too much fun" is against the law?  Don't get entangled in the old ordinary notion that whatever is desirable is forbidden.  Remember, if nobody wanted to do it, we'd have a non-event.  The subject of fun would have never come up.  What is Life up to, saying "Alright, you can indulge yourself, there is also a cutoff line"?  What could be going on that you do not generally hear, "If six ounces are a little fun, what the hell!  Give me half a gallon!"