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Summary by TK

Tape 221, Aug 14, 1986, runtime 1:28

  [Life's mainstream blood circulation as related to the bell curve. "Extreme" behavior as defined by the ordinary lies in the heart of the bell curve; e.g., wars, murder. True extreme behavior has to be completely extreme, e.g., fanatically atheist, tea totaler--truly isolated; an isolated, momentary voice of Life thru man. Man's job is to take Life's business personally; to believe that one group of humanity does conscious harm to other groups. Life keeps raising/expanding the peak, the heart of the bell curve; constantly draws the peripheral, unbalanced AMV12 extremes into the mainstream; enriching its own blood --homogenizing. The Few attempt to become more homogenized. The extremes inhibit this and are unprofitable and perforce transitory and limited in nature. The general physical prohibitions given by man (e.g., bans on free sex, alcohol, drugs etc) serve to discourage the dilution/unbalance of the AMV12 in the bloodstream. Same for 'spiritual' prohibitions, hatred, envy, gluttony --"sin"in general --since they are equally physically based. The absolute blind spot in the bell curve: the question of "nature vs. nurture" where nurture is taken to be primary or absolute. This assumes an interior independent existence that is formed after physical birth. It overlooks the anomalous effect of alcohol ('personality' altering) or vacations (will to power --keep everything familiar in strange surroundings; re-establish old habits) --remember"there is something in everything".]
  [1:25 - TASK:fill in the blank: "In my neighborhood the main dilutant of AMv12 is ____."

Transcript

THE BELL CURVE:  BRINGING THE EXTREMES INTO THE MAINSTREAM

Document:  221,  August 14, 1986
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1986           

     I am going to talk about a particular substance in the blood, which I have called "AMv12," in conjunction with a symbolic measuring device known as the Bell Curve.  For those of you not familiar with it, the Bell Curve looks like this:

     When studies are done of ordinary social phenomena, such as the consumption of alcohol, it is found that across a general range of the population, the distribution falls into a bell-shaped curve.  Out of a hundred people studied, probably three percent will say they never drink.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, another three or four percent will say that they drink to excess.  The majority of people studied will fall in the middle of the curve, claiming to be moderate drinkers.  Most studies of ordinary people involved in ordinary activities will result, when graphically plotted, in a bell curve.  While the Bell Curve is commonly used by statisticians to analyze ordinary events after charting them statistically, I am going to use this same device to point toward a 4-Dimensional reality.

     If you Considered what would be a bell curve of Life, you would find that there are certain types of activities influenced by an extreme combination, an imbalance or dilution of AMv12 in the bloodstream of certain individuals.  These activities constitute so-called antisocial or insane behavior that seems to fall outside the mainstream of Life.  Ordinary people would believe this type of activity to be extreme, for example, lying at the extreme ends of the bell curve.  In reality, almost all ordinary activities, including apparently antisocial and insane behavior, fall within the center of Life's bell curve -- right in the mainstream of Life's blood supply.  The apparent worst and best behaviors all lie in the fat part of the bell curve.  Murder and war, considered by ordinary people to be extreme behavior, actually constitute absolutely normal behavior for humanity.

     For any behavior to be truly extreme, that activity must almost be a danger to the Life of Life.  If such an activity were to continue for any length of time, it would pose a real threat.  Thus, the true extremes are transient.  Activities that are unprofitable for Life as a whole keep popping up from time to time, but in different parts of Life's body, and such truly extreme activities are almost imperceptible to those in the mainstream.  For example, a man proclaiming that everyone over three feet tall must be shot might make this proclamation three or four times.  Everyone who heard him would immediately forget what he said; or, the man might have a heart attack.  Such an incident would fall at the extreme end of the bell curve and would have no ultimate effect on those in the mainstream.

     Remember the fictitious couple -- or did I really see that couple -- at a health food store searching for absolutely pure, healthy food.  The man kept picking up packages, the woman kept reading them and saying, "No, there's such-and-such in it."  Finally, she pointed out to him, "There's something in everything!"

     Anything that Life expresses through humanity is happening within the closed Body of Life itself.  People in the mainstream look at other humans they believe to be at the extreme and proclaim that those people should be eradicated.  (Man is genetically constructed to believe it is possible to eliminate some things; that follows from the erroneous belief that there is a way out of the closed system of Life's Body.) But there is nothing ordinarily seen, talked about, or done that is not part of the mainstream.  All ordinary behavior is right in the heart of the bell curve.  The madmen people regard as being outside of normal human affairs are serving Life's needs as much as anyone else.  Those periods of history which have been called "tragic," wherein some "madman" came to power and slaughtered thousands, were necessary steps in Life's evolution.  If an insane politician or rabble rouser survives with his following long enough to make the history books, he is certainly not outside the mainstream of Life, no matter the public reaction.

     Ordinary people who are interested in spiritual pursuits sometimes worry about meeting a "fake" teacher.  But let me remind you again, "There is something in everything."  Even that which seems to be a total sham, though perhaps not personally profitable to you, has validity.  The sham teacher did not invent his system; Life did.  His system was one of Life's thoughts.  In that sense, there is no such thing as a fake teacher or fake ideas.

     Everything happens within the Body of Life.  Thus, people do not do things to each other; Life does things to itself.  Yet it is impossible, operating at the ordinary level of consciousness, to ever See that people are not mistreating and abusing one another.  People continually suffer over the behavior of others and take Life personally.  For thousands of years, humans have believed that other humans are responsible for their actions.  That is an inseparable part of ordinary perception, but will never take you anywhere vis-a-vis This Thing because it explains nothing.

     Life has thoughts and actions on such a scale that they are unrecognizable to humanity.  Suppose Life is playing one day and decides to build a new house next to its toy railroad track.  Life takes a group of humans and puts them in the house.  When a train finally comes by, it turns out that the house is too close to the track, all the humans there are killed, and that's that. Of course, from the human viewpoint, someone must be responsible for this awful tragedy.

     Those who believe in the gods wonder how an all-powerful god could allow horrible events to occur.  "How could it be," they ask, "that a mass-murderer claims the gods spoke to him and told him to kill other people?"  The "gods" spoke to the murderer, just as they spoke to every holy man or teacher.  Life is talking through humans.  And both the voices of "good" and the voices of "evil" are generally coming from the very heart of the bell curve of humanity.

     Sometimes, Life just seems to have tripped up.  Fanatical movements, natural disasters, wars where thousands are killed and tortured, seem to represent insane, useless behavior on the part of Life, and may cause you to wonder, "How can Life engage in such activities?"  Initially, it sounds strange to talk about Life tripping over itself.  But Consider:  you do the same types of things; you act as Life does, only on a smaller scale.

     Life in operation is so huge as to represent another dimension, another time zone we cannot ordinarily perceive.  Yet we humans are not separate from the forces of Life; we are in them, they are in us.

     Consider that you continually hurt yourself, just as Life hurts itself.  You trip over your own feet.  You eat and drink until you get indigestion, then afterward, you think, "I knew that third pizza would give me heartburn."  Overeating is no big deal to you, but think what it means to your stomach. Parts of your G.I. tract could be saying, "Give me a break!"  If molecules had consciousness, they might believe a useless skirmish was going on between two warring factions of your body.  The stomach would blame the intestines; the intestines would blame the stomach; or they both would blame the mouth.  Yet, if responsibility had to be assumed, from your larger perspective, "I am responsible.  It wasn't my mouth or my stomach or intestines; it was me that ate too much pizza."

     If anything "bad" is occurring, Life is responsible.  Individual humans do not initiate events; they are merely actors, molecules being pushed around either individually or en masse.  Ordinary consciousness can never see this because the human eye and ear are limited in what they can see and hear.  There are things going on all the time that simply do not register on the senses.  They happen outside our perceptual range; in another time zone; on a larger scale.  The fact that many phenomena are invisible to us is not mystical or weird; it's simply a matter of physical limitations.  Only a change in the nervous system would allow the invisible to become visible and the inaudible to become audible.

     You do not have to read mystical books or perform laboratory experiments to study Life; you can turn your attention on your own, hardwired, mechanical consciousness.  Your internal voices criticize, curse and wage endless battles among themselves, just as Life's voices do.  Out in Life, you see mass political movements, whole nations going insane and attacking their neighbors.  The same type of movements occur continuously within you.  You attack yourself, thinking, "I'm fat, I should lose weight," or, "I'm ugly, I need a hair transplant."  What is the nature of being alive?  "I've got to change."

     Life is likewise attempting to change itself and its actions have their own purpose.  Just as the molecules in your stomach cannot take responsibility for you eating that third pizza, you cannot take responsibility for Life apparently hurting itself.  Once you Understand the nature of Life you will no longer blame yourself or other humans.  Remember, Life is more conscious than you are.  Whatever is going on, Life is responsible.

     Here is another refinement of the Bell Curve.  Another, smaller bell curve exists at the apex of the large bell.  There are two possible ways to look at what is happening here:  Life is continually raising and/or expanding the curve of the bell.  This is accomplished by dragging that which was previously extreme into the mainstream.  You can easily observe this continual movement in Life.  The entire world is becoming more homogenized or, as the phenomenon is sometimes called, more civilized.  Years ago, people who had never seen an airplane or a cigarette lighter could still be found on remote islands.  Now these same people have television sets and use credit cards.  These islanders have been dragged from an extreme into the mainstream.

     Life is becoming more homogenized.  The homogenization of humanity is a long process, and not nearly completed, but we are definitely on the road to Blandsville, where everyone is almost the same color, height and creed; where everyone will drive the same make of car, wearing identical designer jeans, and listening to the same music on the radio.

     Consider what you are actually attempting to do by becoming involved in This Thing.  In a sense, you are attempting to become, in your lifetime, even more homogenized than the general population.  If a person were to properly pursue the goal of becoming a good Christian, Moslem, Hindu, or Jew, what would he be doing?  The mainstream of religious thought has always expressed such ideas as, "Love they neighbor," "Do not judge your fellow Man," "We are all one people in the gods' eyes."  Those ideas are examples of Life's desire to bring the extremes into the mainstream.

     In order to do This Thing, you must become super-homogenized -- the ultimate milkshake.  If you are truly involved in This, you cannot hate other people, be a sexist, a racist, or a follower of any particular creed to the exclusion of all others.  You must, instead, embrace the whole world.  Life has, through religion, been talking about that for years.  That is what Life is attempting and that is what you, on your own level, must attempt.

     Human beings seem constantly driven to behave in a more civilized manner; to alter their extreme thoughts, feelings, hatreds and lusts.  What is going on here?  You might say you are trying to bring such radical behavior under control.  But from another viewpoint, you are attempting to bring the behavior into the mainstream of Life and, in so doing, you are enriching Life's blood.  Ordinary people do not see the effect of this in their lifetimes, but Life's blood is being enriched through Man's growth.

     The Few involved in This Thing are attempting to speed up this process; to enrich their own blood, right now.  Willfully bringing in what seem to be your own extremes, through efforts in This Thing, can drastically alter your individual bell curve.  Your newly enriched blood literally activates areas of the brain that would have remained untouched.  In terms of the mainstream, such extremes are irrelevant; you could have lived out your days without ever ever experiencing This Thing.

     Let's peer at this same subject from a viewpoint slightly askew.  There are certain activities in Life that humans, through the genetic, nonverbal grapevine, have been told are improper.  So in the mainstream of Life, attacks are continually made upon certain kinds of behavior.  To pick out three that are easy to spot: humans have always been forced to regard drinking, smoking and the use of drugs as dangerous, ungodly, reprehensible, unhealthy, unsavory, or fill-in-the-blank.

     Consider that those three substances -- alcohol, nicotine, drugs -- have a particular effect on the chemistry of the blood.  They dilute/imbalance the level of AMv12 in the bloodstream.

     This is not to imply that general prohibitions against the use of certain substances would do humanity any good.  It's not true, as some ordinary people believe, that if you could just stop smoking you would attain a mystical state almost overnight.  The variations in the way drugs affect different individuals render across-the-board prohibitions almost useless.  But the knowledge that alcohol, nicotine and drugs dilute AMv12 is valuable to the Few.  The use of such substances creates an imbalance that can make you have to run two or three times harder just to keep up in This Thing.

     Other, so-called less physical activities also dilute/imbalance AMv12:  hatred, anger, greed, gluttony, suspicion and envy all have an effect.  Life, through religion, has expanded on the unprofitable nature of those behaviors.  Religion says, "The gods do not want you to be filled with hatred," "Thou shalt not envy thy neighbor," and from the heart of the bell curve of humanity, the cry goes out, "That's true, that's the truth, I agree!"

     All of you have experienced how becoming angry makes you feel different, immediately.  You are not experiencing the wrath of the gods, or psychological "guilt."  You are feeling bad, chemically.  During the activity of getting angry, certain hormones are diluted, the levels of others are raised, and the respiration undergoes a change.  If you could look at your body 4-Dimensionally, you would see that "anger" is accompanied by a radical change in your chemical, molecular structure.  Anger changes you molecularly as surely and even more quickly than drinking alcohol does.  The level of AMv12 in the blood is diluted/imbalanced.  The firing mechanisms in the brain are altered; different areas of the nervous system are ignited.  You don't need to grab a science textbook to understand what is taking place.  You're inside the laboratory; when you get mad, you can feel the changes.

     At the ordinary level of consciousness, unprofitable behavior such as drinking and getting angry is referred to as sin or, more recently, as having psychological problems.  But what is more profitable for you is to realize that such behavior is actually diluting/imbalancing the chemical structure of your blood.

     For the many,  such information is irrelevant and useless.  But for the Few, it's better than being given a free prescription at a discount drugstore.  You don't have to even go to the store; you don't have to pay outrageous prices.  And the side-effects of this free self-treatment go at right angles to the effect, whereas in all ordinary treatments -- as you know -- the side-effects tend to be at l80 degrees, thereby partially countering the effects:  "Yeah, my head feels a lot better, but my feet are swelling up."  "I'm not mad anymore, but I cry whenever anyone looks at me."

     Believe it or not, I am not changing the subject, but let's go on to something else.  An absolute blind spot exists at the heart of the bell curve which centers on this question:  What has the greatest effect on the life of an individual, nature or nurture?

     Ordinary humanity assumes that within each human being there exists a psyche or personality, a little person.  This little person is supposedly shaped by parental and environmental influences, which determine what he or she becomes.  That is the basis of the idea of "nurture."

     Ordinary consciousness, believing in "nurture," cannot deal with the fact that a small amount of alcohol will drastically change a person.  At Line level, it is not possible to See that you are suddenly somebody else after three or four beers.  How could a person change, suddenly, if they are a product of their environment?  The environment and personal history appear to remain constant, yet the "person" is altered after drinking alcohol.

     Fred is a different Fred shortly after you put alcohol in his system.  But notice that, conversely, you can drop Fred down in a new environment -- new circumstances -- and he will not suddenly change.  Hence the popularity of Holiday Inns and Sheratons all over the world.  People talk about the thrill of travel; how they'd love to have new experiences and a new way of life.  But note what happens when you suddenly find yourself in a different environment.  You feel disoriented.  Because at Line level, all you can do is continue to play out your mechanical role as established by your genetic structure.  Putting a person into a new environment is like taking a racoon from the wilds of Alabama and dropping it in the middle of the Sahara Desert.  The animal is out of its natural habitat.  An animal can't be "nurtured" by a new environment; it can't quickly benefit from its new experiences or easily adapt to different surroundings. Likewise, an ordinary person doesn't deal with a new environment by suddenly adopting a new outlook or developing new social skills.  This is why being banished to a foreign country or put in jail is an extreme punishment.

     What is Life up to -- what is Life attempting to accomplish -- by instilling in man the belief in "nurture"?  At the heart of the bell curve lies man's belief that experiences are the prime, if not the total, shaper of what a person is.  Line-level consciousness cannot see the full picture, so it believes that nurturing shapes us.  To See otherwise requires Seeing within yourself that which is forbidden:  that a person acting at Line level is nailed to and determined by his genetic structure.  An ordinary man needs to feel that change is possible, because his desire for change fuels Life's growth.  From a 3-Dimensional perspective, the reality of genetics would shatter an ordinary person's will to live.  "You are telling me I'm only a predetermined genetic structure?  A bunch of chemicals?  A pattern of neurons firing in my brain and nothing more?"  If the truth were seen by ordinary Line-level consciousness, it would shake the whole universe.

     I could give several real answers to the question of nature versus nurture.  One is that we are nurtured by nature.  Another would be that we are all nurtured by somebody else's nature.  Still, I can't verbally give you the complete picture.  All I can give is a description based on the way the question of nature versus nurture has been stated by humanity, and the question is derelict.  The question is binary and only addresses two-thirds of reality, as do all ordinary questions.

     The real problem is not finding an answer.  The initial problem is realizing that the question -- the "problem" -- is incomplete.  For example, the old philosophical query of how there could be evil in a world created by a good god cannot be answered because it's only two-thirds of a question.  Similarly, all "nature versus nurture" questions are lacking.  If you spend the rest of your days working on eight cylinders, in a bullet proof manner, attempting to solve a three-part question with one part missing, you are in for heartbreak.  Whatever answer you come up with will not be satisfactory or satisfying.  You'll never explain anything, because one-third of reality is missing.

     Neuralize also that questions such as "nature versus nurture" or "good versus evil" are predicated on the illusionary idea that humanity is in some way separate from the environment -- from "out there."  And seeking answers to such questions is based on the same notion.  If "There Is No Out There," then how could there be a wrong answer?  How could anyone tell a lie or be a "fake"?  There are no wrong answers, no lies, no false or immoral ideas.  Whatever Life is saying at any given moment through some person is valid, no matter how transitory it may be.  In this sense, there is something in everything.

     But ordinary consciousness cannot see that there is no way to extract "I" from "not-I."  People seem to believe that so-called insane or evil thoughts are pulled out of a black hole somewhere:  "Where do such weapons come from, where's the arsenal outside this universe?"  Ordinary consciousness cannot even get close to formulating the question of how there can be hatred, harmful thoughts, so-called "evil," much less come up with an answer.  But remember, anything you can think of has already been thought of by Life.

     At one time Life had the thought, "I believe I'll kill all my molecules that are not above three feet tall," and then forgot about it.  Don't fall into the trap of thinking that Life is dumb or capricious -- not unless you can do better.  Don't laugh.  Can any of you sitting here honestly believe, "I've never had a thought that dumb.  I don't think foolish things.  I'm sure other people might, but I've never had any really silly or horrible thoughts."

     Life has thought of everything -- including those ideas which could be said to be out on the extreme edge of the bell curve -- at least once, otherwise you couldn't say, "I heard this really insane idea one time."  If you can think it, Life has already thought it.