Audio = Stream from the bar below.

Audio Download = DOWNLOAD Jan Cox Talk 0236 from Cassette

AKS/News Items = none

Summary = See Below

Diagrams = None

Transcript = See Below

Summary by Tk

Tape 236, Nov 28, 1986, runtime 1:18

  [Within the first notion of 'gods' was the first glimmer of scientific thought. It was the first attempt to picture something outside the apparent closed system. The general motivation of human consciousness to invent 'gods' is ipso facto proof of an awareness of the limitations of a closed system. Religion is no more than outmoded scientific theories. The Yellow Circuit is aware at some level of its inherent limitations. All of Life is alive and ordinary consciousness cannot encompass this fact. There is no such thing as 'inorganic'. Does Understanding = the need to know; the requirement to know? Understanding as spanning the gap between short term and long term memory. Humanity has no need to know or else would have Understanding. Humanity does have the need to say they don't know, need to understand. The goal of This thing is the need to know; what you don't need to know requires only short term memory, mechanical recall. Only the Few have the real need to know --and Understanding bridges the gap between short term and long term knowledge/memory. ]
  [Jokes as' missiles aimed at others' incompleteness'. Question: is happiness then the intended state of completion for man? If so then why is humor, as defined, so pervasive. ]
  [Are you sick (Red Circuit),sorry (Blue Circuit), or confused (Yellow Circuit)?: prime categories of unhappiness. Why are such differentiations necessary? Why not just generic unhappiness; undifferentiated pain? Relation to enlistment of strong ally by weaker king to assist in internal problems facing the lesser king as not a good policy. Relation to political ploy by chief power handler (e.g., president) to blame responsibility for wrongdoing clearly on chief's hands onto underlings. Consider how this could be used by The Few. ]
  [Ordinary people can only laugh at what they do rather than what they are. What cannot be worked into your routine is not funny. ]
  ['Fake it till you make it' is simplistically difficult. Just do it --forget the commentary by the Partnership. A good start is taking up unnecessary actions/hobbies. ]
  [1:15 Epilog TASK:3 X day willfully refrain from an immediately intended statement.

Transcript

ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY WAS EARLY SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT,   OR

IS THERE SOME WAY OUT OF THIS CLOSED SYSTEM? 

Document:  236,  November 28, 1986
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1986        

     I am going to read some comments someone recently wrote to me.  "If all the stories created by human cultures are true, and no human has ever been 'dead wrong', then a burden has been lifted from me; the burden of maintaining a record of the supposed errors of the past, of having to bear witness to the foolishness of every prior thought and deed.  The most preposterous stories demanded the greatest effort to maintain.  It was if some unknown thumb were pressed against an unknown nose, mocking me the entire time."  The person continues, "Does one's preposterous assumption that everything thought, said, and done in the past is tainted by fraudulence and error, in itself, become an existing idea?  In which case, does this idea have its own way of being correct also?"  What all this amounts to is a question about the great Bugaboo -- the apparent closed system.

     No human has ever thought, said, or done anything that is, within itself, "wrong."  The world is full of those who would say, "What that person did was wrong," but the last part of the sentence includes the first part.  The person who says, "What that person did is wrong," is also right.  And ordinary consciousness hearing this comes to a dead end cul-de-sac.

     Many of you thought that ancient beliefs and religions were worthy of scorn and ridicule.  But let me point something out to you:  The first glimmers of scientific thought were held within the great religious myths.  It was not foolishness, it was the Yellow Circuit attempting to picture a dimension beyond that of ordinary consciousness, it was attempting a form of right angled astrophysics.  It was, indeed, a splendid effort to explain the limitations and contradictions inherent in three dimensional consciousness.  Our progenitors were not deranged.  Their beliefs were early scientific thought, an attempt to picture something existing outside of this closed system.  And that early effort manifested itself as "gods," because the Yellow Circuit has an awareness of its limitations, it just can't remember it.  In fact, the desire built into human consciousness to invent "gods" is, if you can see it, proof within itself that ours is a closed system.  If the Yellow Circuit was not aware of the closed system on this level, it would not have any need to conjure up the idea of gods.  (Well, I didn't think it would bring the house down.  We'll try it again.)

     I suggest that you consider the "gods" of Man's history as very ancient scientific thought, now verbally misconstrued.  It was an early form of particle physics.  On that basis, can you see that if the Yellow Circuit did not have an awareness of its limitations, an awareness that it did not fully understand Life, an awareness that it could not explain those experiences in which consciousness looked into a mirror and the images became contradictory and began to consume themselves -- then there would have been no need to conjure up such scientific theories as "the gods."

     There is no doubt that religion offers nothing to the Few who need new 4-D data, but rather than finding fault, look at it simply as outmoded scientific theories.  Groups of people still exist today who proclaim that the earth is flat.  Of course, other groups say that's preposterous.  But at one time in horizontal history the notion was an accepted fact.  If you were being magnanimous you'd say, "Those flat earthers are not absolute idiots, because at one time our own forefathers believed that.  It's just an outmoded, moldy idea."  I am suggesting to you that you give the same treatment to the early idea of "gods." 

     Life is, as always, motivating Man for a very good reason -- sometimes the reasons are short-lived, making one appearance and then they're gone.  Please note that religion did not merely make one appearance and then catch the train out of town.  Once religion began to appear, it appeared everywhere; and now it affects every phase of human life.  Any poll you read indicates that a majority of humans on this planet believe in a higher being, a supernatural creator.  What they are saying, without knowing it, is that they believe there are absolute limitations at this level of existence that ordinary consciousness cannot surpass.  Without knowing it, they are admitting that they are living in what appears to be a closed system. But if it were closed, then what about the question I started out with:  If it were closed, how does "it" eat?

     The ancient Greek gods were described as beings who flew around the sky, lived within a good view of downtown Athens, and occasionally dipped down to earth.  In the mythology, man could converse with the being that SAW, but yet was outside the system:  the gods could come in and go out.  These ideas were the first scientific thought.  And what about all of your personal dreams of great mystical powers and "hidden teachers?"  Those dreams, which you always thought of as mystical or religious in nature, were scientific interest and conjecture on your part.  Yet, do not science and religion seem to be at absolute loggerheads?  If you take religion and science to their absolute extremes they seem contradictory, mutually opposed.  And, yet, they are not.

     For the time being, the simplest and most direct explanation is that Life works and speaks through man in the same way that electrical energy surges through your organs and blood to keep you operating and doing the things you do.  It's not that humanity is simply white blood cells in some "Big Guy's" circulatory system -- it's much more that than.  It is manifest in apparently non-material areas, such as ideas.  Let's say there was one ancient Greek through whom something surged, and he said, "There must be superior beings.  I saw one, he spoke to me."  He began to tell others, some of whom listened and some did not.  If Life needed this at that point, then some people would have paid serious attention.  After that, he and they would have added a brother-in-law to the original god, then a wife, children and neighboring gods who could war on the first one.  The people added to the story, but what they were talking about was early scientific theory.  Their own consciousness was attempting to break out of the boundaries of an apparently closed system.  What they were speaking about was contradictory to all reason:  it was the ultimate conundrum, the ultimate cheese blintz.

     If I were to give you one message to encompass all these verbal pointings it is:  Life is alive.  All of Life is alive, but ordinary consciousness has never had a general conception of this.  Science still makes a distinction between organic and inorganic matter, between the quick and the dead.  But all of Life is alive; even what appears to be inorganic at our level of existence, when seen from a higher dimension, is alive. It is impossible for ordinary consciousness to maintain any kind of continual awareness that all of Life is alive.  There is no such thing as the "unalive" within Life, no such thing as the inorganic, although ordinary perception cannot see this.

     I'm going to respond to another question someone asked me:  "It almost seems that the only thing lying between short term and long term memory is understanding.  Is 'forgetfulness' a lack of understanding?" Let me ask you this:  Would that mean that understanding equals the need to know?  Or, to up the stakes, the necessity to know?  Short term memory is the ability to remember the phone number for the pizza place just long enough to place your to go order.  One hour later you can't remember it at all, because that wasn't what was required.  Long term memory, on the other hand, enables you to remember things year after year.  The question asks if the operational difference between the two is understanding.  And I'm asking you:  Is understanding, that is, long term memory or lack of forgetfulness, the need to know?  It brings up many interesting possibilities.  Why is it that people insist that they don't understand what is going on in Life?  Intelligent people of this day and time will say several times a day, "I wish I understood my own motivations better."  They are saying, "I really don't understand who I am.  I've been in analysis for 10 years, but I still don't know why I do the things I do?"  Based on my question to you -- what possibilities are raised?  Quite simply this:  they have no need to know, or else they'd remember.  Humanity in general has no need to know, but it has the need to say it does not know, and the need to say it would like to understand.  When people (and the people in you) say:  "I don't understand how humans can treat each other in such horrible ways," or, "I don't understand why people treat me the way they do."  Or, "I don't understand what is going on in Life, that's why I read everything I can find on religion and psychology," it is humanity admitting that it does not understand.  But, if understanding equals the need to know, then what is amiss?

     All of you would claim, not incorrectly, that your involvement with This Thing provided you with your only moments of understanding; moments not provided by your rabbi, priest, family, by anything you had ever encountered.  But, to turn it back around -- you obviously understood enough to get you to the age of 20, 30, 40 or whatever your age when you met me.  People say that they don't understand life or themselves, but in some way humanity muddles through.  People muddle through their 70 or so years and then say, "What a shame.  I feel as if I lived in some kind of dream.  I don't understand what happened, why I married who I did, had the job I had (it drove me nuts), why I went into debt.  I just made my last house payment and here I am dying.  Why did I waste my life?  Why did I worry about kids shaving their heads or playing that ungodly music?  Now I'm here dying and who cares?  I feel like I lived a life of misunderstanding."  And it's not true.  People understand just enough to get through their 72 years; they understand enough to muddle through.

     What if Understanding is and always has been the purpose of This Activity?  An understanding, not just of ordinary social data, but of something beyond common knowledge, that would increase your perception, "rub the sleep from your baby blues and open your heart up to the great cosmic truths."  If that is the Aim of This, then I ask you, what if Understanding equals the need to know?  Even in This, people continue to fret because they can't seem to move faster or make more progress.  Sometimes you have bolts of understanding, then five days later you have the blues.  What if Understanding is tied to the need to know?  And, if you assume there is something behind this question, then, what if you are getting all you need?  (What a bummer, huh?)

     Let me expand something I mentioned before about humor.  I asked you:  Why is it that there seems to be nothing humorous about being happy?  Happiness is not a series of setups that run into a punch line. And one of you noted that jokes seemed to be missiles aimed at other people's incompleteness.  If everything that is funny is a reflection of man's incompleteness, and if man's incompleteness is tied directly to him not being happy, then where in the world is a poor yokel to turn?  Now that you've left the farm and you're in town, where are you going to find a room?

     To divide unhappiness or lack of happiness in three ways, men can be described as being in one of the following three states.  He is 1, sick (Red Circuit problems), 2, sorry (Blue Circuit problems), or 3, confused.  You or humanity might ask yourself whether your being sick is the cause of your unhappiness.  Or is it that you're emotionally distraught, filled with pity or guilt?  And so on.  Even those things which seem to be apparent sources of unhappiness are not nouns, but verbs, processes within one of the systems.  Why does Life force these apparent distinctions upon man?  Why did it give man the ability and need to distinguish all these different kinds of suffering?  There is a difference between the pain of a pulled hamstring, and the pain you felt when your dear Aunt died.  Some feel a less common pain in their unsuccessful attempts to answer the great unanswerable questions, "I feel as if I'm about to grasp how it is that humanity has moved throughout history, and just as I'm about to see the whole picture...I lose it!  I spend almost as much on aspirin as I do on coffee."

     Some people say that man serves the gods, others say man serves no purpose at all.  I keep suggesting to you that, at a minimal degree, all of us are serving a living organism, our apparent closed system host.  But within that range, I am asking you, why did Life even give man this ability and need to distinguish different kinds of suffering, differences he can feel and write about?  Why is there a difference between the pain you feel when you find a "Goodbye John" note stuck to the bathroom mirror, and the pain you feel when you cut yourself shaving while reading the note.  The two can go on simultaneously, with your attention going from one to the other:  "Dammit!  I almost cut my ear off...she didn't even have the decency to tell me to my face...I'm bleeding!...She'll never get away with...."  What possible purpose is being served by such distinctions?  Why isn't there just pain and non-pain? 

     Animals are either in pain or not in pain.  The parallel is not perfect, obviously because animals are creatures of fewer circuits.  Nevertheless, why does man have this distinct awareness of the difference between the pain of a pulled hamstring and that of a broken love affair, or of intellectual exasperation.  What possible use could Life be making of this fracturing that men never see?

     I didn't read the following item on a sign outside a church or in a news magazine.  I read it in a book about that very fertile area -- the Middle Ages.  It was noted that it is not desirable or profitable, based on the evidence of those times, for a weak king to seek the assistance of a stronger king against a third party enemy.  If a fledgling king asked the wise men of his court to ask a stronger king for his help, they would advise against it.  And based upon all the tales passed down through the genetic blood lines of our ancestors who tried to stay in power, if someone did accept the assistance of a stronger leader to defeat a foe, when he tried to say thanks and goodbye, the stronger leader said, "No need to write.  I ain't going nowhere!"  The fledgling suddenly found himself in a regal tandem, a throne built for two.  He had a partner who would not go away.  Consider if this happened to you.  At first you would feel gratitude and think, "He came all the way over here to help me out of this jam.  I'll be reasonable and not ask him to leave immediately."  Later you'll say, "Thanks again, but the war is over.  Leave now."  And the stronger king replies, "Your preferences are interesting, they verge on being humorous.  By the way, which way to the master bedroom?"  Now, why did I bring up this scenario?

     On to the good old world of politics in the routine sense and in the regal sense:  people wanting power, getting it, and not wanting to let go of it.  There's a particular ploy that has happened throughout history, and still occurs, and it goes like this:  The person in power, the leader of a country, fires someone under him for a mistake that he himself made.  Let's say that a story is released suggesting that the leader okayed some sort of illegal activity.  The public hears rumors to that effect, in fact, there's every indication that the person in power had to know.  Within a few hours or days, there's an announcement that the leader will be holding a meeting and "heads are going to roll."  And the leader says, "My directions were not followed properly, I fired the guilty party."  The person in power does not admit fault.  He fires some poor lackey.  If the leader pleaded complete ignorance of the plan it would be as if he said, "I'm in charge, I wield the power, and for these little underlings to do something without my knowing about it -- then I'm even dumber than them."  So, instead he calls a press conference and fires someone.  Everyone, in a sense, realizes it's a ploy, "He got caught, fired someone, and walks away free."  But it doesn't matter.  Of what possible use could such a story be, internally?

     People can laugh at what they "do", but they cannot laugh at what they "are".  They can laugh at their own "shtick" but not at themselves.  There is a reason in Life that people don't ordinarily perceive the distinction.  Comedians can laugh at how bad their jokes are, or at the size of their nose -- and that's their "shtick."  To them, it's not what they are.  Even if they joke about how fat they are, they are not laughing at what they are.  Being a professional fat person is what they do not what they are.  Perhaps you know someone at work who jokes about their weight; as he's reaching for the donut he says, "Straight to the thighs."  Or you have certain little self-deprecating remarks that are part of your own routine.  But, there is a line beyond which your own "shtick" cannot pass.  And everybody has a line passed which "things about me ain't funny."  The joke has crossed over the line between what you "do" and what you "are."

     And a final question from one of you:  "Can you fake it 'till you make it?"  If we were to agree that an extraordinary Understanding is the Aim of This Thing, then is it possible for one to pretend until they come closer to that Understanding?  In an almost inhuman degree of simplicity -- Yes.  You pull all of your circuits together, and all of your molecules, and you say, "I want to do _________(whatever might be your immediate goal).  And if it's mortally possible I will do it!"  Period.  You don't allow the partnership to entertain any questions or excuses.  This is easiest to see at first with Red Circuited activities.  Useless hobbies provide a good start:  "I'm going to do 100 push-ups every morning," or, "I'll learn how to run a computer, even though I don't need the skill for my job."  You say that if it's humanly possible, you will do it. Consider how this willful action is, in some way, faking it 'till you make it.