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Summary = See Below
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Summary by TK
#243 Jan 15, 1987 - 1:50
[Does the topography of man's speech adequately cover the topography of Reality? How is it that people say "I can't exactly express such and such in words”. What is going on? Language is not adequate to describe Reality. ]
[Slogan for the night: "Nothing is true from every view". At least 1° of 360 degrees of possible view must be in opposition. Conversely: "Everything is true from a view. ]
["Thought is 'organic' --i.e., parallels the evolution of man; a natural outgrowth of physical, living tissues. Yet thought thinks itself to be non-organic. Thought has not yet been recognized, discovered in its true nature as organic. ]
[The Few have to learn to perceive the difference between long and short term phenomena; the difference between delusion/fad and the real future. This inability to differentiate creates all human suffering. Even Life is not always certain in what is to be long term or not. If life now is a 'vale of tears', an illness of sorts, what would be the treatment for such condition?
The Few must learn to see, understand and accept the obvious. To the many,the most underrated, overlooked aspect of Reality is the obvious. No one sees that the obvious has meaning. No one sees, for instance, that there are no causes --that nobody has ever found even cause #1--only symptoms. If you can't see the obvious you can't see anything.]
[The Few should be involved every day with some form of creative activity that is native, appropriate to them. A politician is a man without ordinary talent; can only exercise power. They are driven to become patrons/censors of the artistic talents of others. Consider: why are the 'arts' so important, that rulers must immediately gain control same? It takes the form of either fostering, or censoring; Louis XIV, or Stalin. Why do power holders find the arts so attractive? ]
[1:18 TASK:Find an example of the inadequacy of words to describe a specific, picturable reality. Write down your observation.
[1:20 Epilog for ATL Group to include tapeviewers. J's pleasure with EVOTECK and his suspicion that it may be the proper organic outgrowth of This Thing for public consumption.
Transcript
PERCEIVING THE OBVIOUS / STRIVING TO BE CREATIVE
Document: 243, January 15, 1987
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1987
Does the topography of Man's speech adequately cover the topography of reality? What does it mean when people say, "I just can't seem to say what I mean or what I feel. I just can't seem to describe it."
This refers not to something obscure, but to common experience. If you examine the full topography, the full relief, the full 3-D mapping of Man's speech, does that map adequately cover the topography of experience and reality as it is perceived?
At first, the ordinary Yellow Circuit might believe that speech is always adequate. The vocabulary of every language is expanded as new experience demands. When there are new scientific discoveries, new words are invented. It would seem that, apparently, language keeps pace with experience and that human speech is adequate to cover human experience and reality. However, there is reason to doubt that speech is adequate. Otherwise, what is happening in the following examples?
A literate, sophisticated person is trying to tell someone about something that they believe or the way they feel about something and they are at a loss for words. This may have happened to you. After listening to a discussion you might say, "I know what you were talking about and I don't absolutely disagree, but...I just...I don't know. I can't tell you exactly what I'm trying to say. I know what it is, but I can't say it." Or, you will try to explain something several times and to the quizzical expressions of your listeners you say, "No, that was not quite it." What is going on?
You are feeling or perceiving something and yet can not say it. If you knew what you were trying to say and yet you can not say it, something very suspicious is happening. It is not that you lack the vocabulary or have temporarily lost the recall of words. This situation does not happen on a continuous basis with ordinary people, but it does occur periodically. What is going on?
Here is another question for you to Neuralize. Why are religious and quasi-religious organizations a continuing source of new terminology? From the large, organized religions down to the neighborhood guru, these are sources of new words and concatenations of existing words. This invention of vocabulary can be found in most new age literature. Why is an area that is unscientific the source for new words?
In times past someone would say that the gods gave me this word. In all cases, past and present, it is at least tacitly implied, that before this word was introduced there was no descriptive word, and yet, the ordinary Yellow Circuit continues to believe that the topography of human speech is adequate to describe reality.
Look at this as a question rather than an unexamined statement. Why is this situation not recognized? Why is it not noticed though it is obviously true? If you get a glimpse of the significance of this, why is it that you have never noticed? Why does Life have Man believing that human speech, a partial reality or misdirection, is a full and accurate topographical map?
Let me give you a proverb: "Nothing is true from every view, but everything is from some." I have said this in several ways many times. At the level of the ordinary Yellow Circuit, this is an absolute fact. Except, there are no absolute facts because, "Nothing is true from every view."
No matter what seems to be unquestionably, undeniably true to you, to your family or to your profession, nothing is true from every view. If it were, there would not be democrats and republicans; there would not be gods and demons; there would not be alternating and direct current. Even when well educated, ordinary mentation denies this -- as it should -- which only continues to show that, "Nothing is true from every view." Everyone is wired-up to be chauvinistic and provincial, to have limited interests and to have a passionate interest in the defense of some cause. The cause is: "Whatever I believe, I'm at the center of," and, "If I am not at the center of it, then I'm not interested in it." This is the ordinary, prevailing view, and to the ordinary mind, the correct view. From this view the first part of the proverb is patently untrue.
To most people many things are either true or untrue. If something is believed to be true, then it does not matter what you do, it is still true. You can move to Encino. You can walk around it. You can stand on your head and it would still be true, but I tell you that it is not true. Nothing is true from every view.
The following example is not totally accurate, but I could put it this way: If there were 360 different views of something, the truest thing in the world would only be true at 359 of them. There would be at least one view at which that thing would not be true. At that view are your enemies, even ones that you have yet to suspect. At that view are the forces that make things continue to operate. At that view is the opposition, the necessary resistance, that everything requires.
I could get a fairly sober and sophisticated audience to agree that, "Nothing is true from every view," but the concurrence would be in some theoretical or philosophical context. The reality is physical; it is organic; it is material. It is as true as saying that if you throw something into the air, sooner or later, it is going to come down. This proverb, "Nothing is true from every view," is as difficult to see -- and as true -- as another dimension. It has nothing to do with the subject; it has everything to do with the view.
There can be no prevailing, all inclusive agreement on a view. There is nothing that is true to everyone on this planet. For those logicians among you, the second part of the proverb must follow: "Everything is from some." If nothing is true from every view then everything is from some. That would be the kind of topographical reality that is not covered by ordinary speech. Ordinary thought cannot contain the idea that opposition to a view has nothing to do with the subject, but is intrinsic to the process of taking a view.
Life is full of conflict. It could be you and your mate disagreeing about what movie to see, or it could be some great imagined conflict between you and the Christian Democratic party of West Germany. The ordinary mind sees the opposition as being off on the wrong track: They are being mislead; perhaps they cannot be rehabilitated. On a crude level, anybody who disagrees with you is an idiot. You attribute the wrongness to the cause itself. You attribute the wrongness to the subject under consideration.
Beyond the degree that could be categorized as a philosophical attempt to be liberal or ecumenical, ordinary mentation cannot hold a continuing awareness of the simple reality that from some view, everything in the world, everything that has ever been thought, felt, or guessed, anything that has ever passed through the Yellow Circuit of some person on this planet is true from some view. You might see something as the most heinous act ever committed on the planet, the most foolish action ever taken, or the most ludicrous theory ever formulated. Your definition of these things could be the norm, but it is still not a fact because there is another view held by other humans. They have the same kidneys, brain cells and nervous system as you, but they see things from another view where the things you see as false are true.
Understanding this proverb has nothing to do with a theoretical attempt to be ecumenical or broad minded. If you are trying to be ecumenical you are still left with the 3-dimensional world of ordinary consciousness. You are left with the apparent fight between two armed camps whether they are armed physically or mentally. You cannot start with this attitude, although it is a reflection of another reality that would be true if you could add another dimension. If someone could be ecumenical they still would not approach starting speed; you can't get there from here. You have to be universal. This is one of the secret uses of the attempt to Neuralize.
Along the same lines -- although yet to be fully realized -- is this fact: thought is organic. "Organic" is not quite right, but I will use it in a way that will make it serve. Thought is organic in that it parallels the evolution of Man in a mechanical sense. It is organic in that it pertains to the actual living tissues and organs. Thought is a natural outgrowth of man. It is interesting that thought itself does not recognize that thought is organic.
Thought sees that the brain is somehow connected to thought, but thought does not recognize that thought is identical to activity in the brain. It does not recognize that thought is the outgrowth of an organic process in the same way as gaining two inches in the waist is the result of sitting around watching football, eating potato chips and drinking beer for three months. Thinking is not thought of as being organic in that sense. Ordinary human consciousness in some way thinks, "Of course the brain is involved and I have had some education. I had to study certain subjects in school. Pressures in the environment have forced me to learn other things, but by and large I am the product of what has interested me, what I have taken the time to learn, what I've taken time to ponder and meditate." Thought does not think of itself as being related to the total evolution of humanity in a physical sense. It does not think of itself as being related to living tissues, to living organs. It does not think of itself as the natural outgrowth of the total human experience. Thought, in each person, thinks of itself as being unique. Each person thinks that his own thoughts are a unique combination of keen insight, startling perception and extraordinary depths of understanding.
Some of you may think that after all you have read and experienced you are beyond any disagreement with the fact that thought is organic and physical. However, in the minute to minute existence of the Partnership there is no such understanding because thought/consciousness/the Yellow Circuit cannot think of itself as being organic. It simply cannot! Ask yourself now. Try hard to see if your own thoughts can perceive themselves as being organic. You might say that you are not sure, or that you can't seem to deal with the question, but that is no better than denying that thought is organic. If you do not have a continuing awareness that it is true, you might as well deny it.
Even when I point it out and you agree that it is true, you cannot retain the perception. Life has not needed humanity to be cognizant of the fact that thought is organic. I am aware that some parts of Life's body, philosophers and such, have said, "Hey, thought is nothing more than the perceptions of the brain," but this is not a common realization. It is a theory at best. If an ordinary man were to hear that, how much attention would he give it? He might think that he had somehow entered the Twilight Zone and that his brain was picking up some PBS channel and he would be trying to change it back to the A-Team or something that made sense. Humanity has not discovered that thought is organic. I point it out to you. It is right before your eyes and it has a very strong significance for those who would like to escape being a little weed in the perceived potted plant of inorganic thought.
Here is something else that is of practical significance. You have got to learn to perceive the difference between long and short term phenomena. It is the difference between fads and the future.
The importance of this becomes evident. People are continually -- as they should be -- deluded. It is not that they are deluded in an ordinary way. People see what they should see, but from the viewpoint of trying to get above the Line, trying to see at a right angle to the ordinary, people are deluded since the information that they receive is not a full disclosure.
Why doesn't Life make the whole truth available? The situation is similar to some of these congressional investigations of political figures. The men are caught or suspected of having their fingers in the cookie jar, but after years of public experience and power they understand that the best policy is to "stonewall it" don't say anything. Give your name, rank and serial number, and then say that because of security considerations you cannot say anymore. Say that your silence is for the public's own good. At a certain level, Life operates in a similar way. It is not really true that people are deluded or misdirected. Life does not tell everybody the truth. Life does not understand the full truth about itself at all times. However, even if Life wanted to tell the whole truth, after it filtered down from a 4th or 5th dimension some of the information would be missing. If the information was there, part of it would be in code; part would be written in invisible ink. On a widespread basis there cannot be a full disclosure, and so, people do not realize that there are long term and short term phenomena. Much of what seems to cause people to suffer, to become uncomfortable, to become edgy, I could describe as the inability to see the difference between fads and the future itself.
Unless there is some major physical reason -- you are bleeding, bones are sticking out through the skin, muscles are in spasms -- human suffering can be attributed to the fact that people enshrine and therefore choke on the apparent "Now." That is, people assess the present situation and act as though it will last forever. "Things are not going well for me now. Things will not go well for me now, forever. I am disappointed now; I will be disappointed till the cows come home." Append "forever" to any example you want to try. Then the phone rings and somebody says, "You have just won a color TV," and you go, "Ah, oh, gee, really!" It is the inability to see that there are long and short term phenomena.
At a certain level, Life itself is not completely clear about what is going to be long term and short term phenomena. One description is the inexplicable nature of the behavior of humanity at given times. Reasonable people look back into history and say, "How could our forefathers have engaged in such insane, heinous behavior?" People write books castigating some nationality or religion for something that happened several hundred years ago. They don't notice that Life did not allow the behavior to last long. If you can get a right angle view, you see the memory of Life continuing to pass energy long after the whole occurrence is over. Parts of Life's body are working for reactionary forces as they must, passing along some necessary energy. These parts of Life, these people, do not recognize that Life stopped the behavior almost as fast as it started. They do not see that it was a short term phenomenon.
There is a quality in events that you can begin to see, feel, and understand. This is all subject to gradations, but in instances that have personal importance, you can tell the difference between a passing fad and that which is going to be a part of your future unless something extraordinary occurs. It is a little more difficult to see the same thing in Life where a passing fad may last for a decade, or decades, but it can be seen. If you can shake up your own wiring system, your own biochemistry, if these structures that seem to be you can undergo the kinds of extraordinary shocks that I have talked about, you will begin to understand what I am saying. One of the first realizations is going to be that the suffering, "me feeling bad," is ephemeral. It will be forgotten in a flash. You will sense things that seem to bother people, such as environmental pollution or homeless people are just examples of Life involved in some temporary insanity. You know that the situation is going to pass, that it is not going to be a part of Life's long term operations. Some time from now it will be a forgotten matter. You will not be guessing; you will know it. This is a kind of foretelling the future, but it is not Nostradamus revisited. It is not as mystical as people think. It is a kind of common sense operating in the 4th dimension.
You can look back at history and see things are getting better and better. Your partnership and everyone else's partnership are not going to agree, but things continue to get better. Even though you feel terrible today, things continue to get better. You begin to see that things not involved with growth are going to die out. You will see that Life, that people, are going to resolve some lingering conflict. An apparent pocket of folly is going to be short-lived. It will be apparent. Your partnership will say, "but these people are suffering right now!" True.
Here is a question that you can continually pose to your partnership: If being alive is an illness, then what is the apparent treatment? Address the partnership in its accustomed role of the critic, Mr. Know it all. The partner blames you. He is looking at the partnership, but the fault must be yours or else he could not be making the criticism. Right? That is always true. Everyone likes to criticize because it is like getting the first serve in tennis or the first move in chess.
Ask Herr Professor Know it all, "If you see Life as being an ill, what, pray tell, in your great wisdom, do you surmise to be the cure?" Why are humans wired up to be such keen diagnosticians? Everyone recognizes illness. Illness cannot hide from human view, but where is the treatment? Everyone can recognize that being human and being alive is an ill; nobody recognizes that the diagnosticians offer no treatment. The critic says, "Hey, that's not my job. I point out the illness. You gotta get treatment elsewhere." Where?
Here is proverb number two: Learn to see, to understand and accept the obvious. This is very closely related to what I was just talking about. To ordinary consciousness, that is, the "many," the most underrated aspect of existence is the obvious. No one recognizes that the obvious has meaning.
A general term for This Activity that I am speaking about is "The Search for the Life of Meaning." I am using this phrase because what most people have always called "meaning" has no life to it. Look at what happens to the things that ordinarily are called meaningful. Let us say that you hear someone describe something that is said to have meaning. Before you heard them you thought that you could see some potential, but as they speak it is as though someone stuck a finger in your eye. If you can get a perspective above the mentation of the many, the wiring patterns of the many, it is as though the idea had meaning until it was explained and then the meaning died.
No one ever sees that the obvious has meaning. Take for example the following statement in common circulation. This type of statement is often seen as a sign of the depth of intelligence and perception of the speaker. "Sure, we can take all the criminals and lock them up. We can even put them to death to get these crimes stopped, but that is only dealing with the symptoms. Why can't we start dealing with the root causes of the problem?" I have pointed out to you that in the 3D world the choice between dealing with symptoms or causes is moot. There are no causes. That is why people cannot find a cause, but no one has recognized it.
People say, "Yes, we have children that grow up to be a disruption to society. We talk to their families and friends and they say that the kid was bad news from the time that he began to walk. No one is surprised that he tried to kill the Emperor. We can lock him away or feed him to the Lions, or the Rotarians, or the Moose Club, but what good will it do?" The obvious good is that it will get rid of him, but people continue to say, "Yeah, but something caused the poor tyke to go bad. Something is breaking down in society." Nothing is wrong with society. Society is supposed to feel as though it is breaking down. Just as you feel, the many partitions of society, communities, nations, religions feel as though there is something wrong with them, that they are not measuring up to some ideal. So people hunt for the cause and delay dealing with the bad kid.
Nobody has recognized that no human on this planet has ever found the first cause and no one has noticed it; no one can hear it. Here is a case of the big "O," OBVIOUS, being overlooked and underrated. If you cannot see that the obvious is obvious, then you cannot accept it or use it. There needs to be at least a tripartite approach to the use of the obvious: to see, to understand and then to accept. The obvious may be a short or long term phenomenon. You may or may not have a grasp of what is happening or why it is happening or how long it will last, but what is extraordinary, metaphysical and transcendental is the ability to recognize the obvious as the obvious. It is astounding and very, very revealing to those who can do so.
Everyday strive to be creative in some manner that is proper to you. I want you to take the word "creative" in the broadest possible sense. There should be something in each of you that responds to some degree when I mention being creative. You should have a feeling about what would be an appropriate creative area for you. It could be almost anything, gardening, woodworking or needlepoint. It could be an area that you have always had an interest. It could require an audience or be a solitary hobby, but it will be something that gives you a feeling that you can get from nothing else. It is not work. Of course, work is not work unless you would prefer not to be doing it. What you would prefer to be doing may be where you are creative.
There is something very real about creativity. I am referring to more that just the fine arts, music, painting and sculpture. The word "creative" does not provide an adequate topographical description of the reality, but it is the closest approximation using ordinary language. I tell you there is a true, out of the ordinary, out of the mainstream, experience available to those who can be creative over a long period of time.
I have hesitated speaking of creativity because it is not some metaphysical gift that some of you might hope it is. It is not that the arts themselves are the gods' gift to man or in any way an entree to some higher level or state of consciousness. I am not saying if you write music, for example, that some day -- if you keep trying -- you will write a hymn that will please the gods and they will reward you by making you a better person. Creativity is not even necessarily, apparently connected with This Activity.
Let me point out something from a somewhat oblique angle. I will expand on this vis a vis the singular reality of creativity.One of my definitions of a politician is a person with no talent. This is not a cheap shot; it is a fact. By "politician" I mean an elected official, or a tyrant, or someone who took power by force. Political people do have a talent; let us say "ability" to distinguish the two. Their ability is to exercise power, to get and keep power. A political man knows how to deal in retribution. He knows how to lie. He has a long term memory for revenge. He can do everything Machiavellian. He can do it in the same way a Mozart could play and write music. A young Julius Caesar or a Genghis Khan could stalk the schoolyard and say, "You, do so and so, and you, do this." Most of the other kids would follow his lead. Those that didn't were at risk. As soon as they left, the young politician would be making up all these horrendous stories about their personal habits, etc. That is the exercise of power.
There is a curious aspect to the exercise of power. The political man has no interest in art -- to say the very least -- before he seizes power. However, after the election, after the coup, as soon as he feels established in a satisfactory position of power, he will become interested in the arts. Almost without exception he will be driven to become either a patron or a censor of the arts. I ask you this: Why is art considered to be of such importance?
One example is the pope calling a Michelangelo and saying, "I'm going to give you the biggest canvas in Europe. You get to paint this whole chapel. You get 2 meals a day and all the paint. You don't need to thank me. I'll let you do it." It is almost as if he had said, "I've got no talent, but you couldn't do it without me." People in power don't think like that, but it is like saying, "I can't paint, but I can control someone who does."
The other apparent side of this in the 3D world is the censoring of the arts. A contemporary example would be the control of what can be publicly displayed as art in the so-called Marxist countries. Some bureaucrat says, "This picture does not reflect the ideals of our society. If you paint anymore crap like this you'll spend the next 20 years in Siberia." How can a group of people in Russia, China or anywhere look at a nonrepresentational painting or listen to a symphony and find it to be dangerous? You can forget all the rhetoric about the thing being "a disruption to good Marxist society." That is all baloney. Need I point out the obvious. The only thing that a political man worries about is losing power. People do not speak of it in this way because the obvious is what? -- overlooked and underrated. Politicians will say that some work is not art, that it is not creative, or they will say that it is reactionary. .paThey threaten the artists with imprisonment or even death. Why do these people go to such extremes to suppress art?
This concern with the arts seems insane, especially when you consider that there are always other politicians who would like to kill this guy and take power. There are 20 Republicans and Democrats getting ready to run for president and replace this guy as soon as it is legally allowable. How can the guy in power worry about some painting or piece of music?
On the apparent other hand, why do politicians spend money from the public treasury to patronize the arts? They say, "This will be money very well spent. We will put up paintings. We will support writers and performers." This is also insane from a certain view. Every nation on the planet has poor, homeless and hungry people. The poor say, "How can you justify paying someone from our money, our taxes, that you took from us legally or otherwise. I don't even like painting. I am hungry. I have friends who are living in the street." You don't care much about art and music when you are living in the street.
The politicians who are spending this money have no talent in the ordinary sense. They are tone deaf or colorblind. They wouldn't know a good piece of literature from a bad one. This is not an attack on politicians. Everything has a price. Everyone is wired up to do what they should be doing. You would not want to see Beethoven in charge of the West German Republic, or, even worse, the East German. You would not want to see Salvador Dali as president of Spain. You would not want to bring back Dostoevski and put him in charge of the Russian government. If your partnership latches on to some example that I present and you think, "Yeah! What idiots, what dangerous fools those politicians are!" you don't understand. If you thought Stalin was a madman and you somehow replaced him with Dostoevski, you would find out what running amok really means. Everybody is wired up, outfitted to do what they should be doing. Everything is in its right place.
Having no talent is just one of the prices of being a political man. It's the way they are wired. If you can begin to see this it is the big "O," obvious. You can watch the TV and see the head General of some country. His picture appears just for an instant. You should be able to understand that here is a person who knows how to use power. You would not want to mess with this person. From time to time this political animal may say, "We're hoping to hold free elections next year. We're hoping to relax some of the restrictions on the press." Sometimes they do. They relax the media restrictions and the first day some newspaper tries it out. "We don't like the way the General dresses." The next day forty tanks flatten the building. The General says, "We're moving too fast. I made a mistake. I haven't changed my mind. I am theoretically in favor of more freedom, but you people went wild on the first day."
You can look at a man and understand that he is a political animal and understands the uses of power. Likewise, you can also see that this person is lacking in ordinary talent. Look at paintings from hundreds of years ago. You can look at some of the French or English kings and see that this man did not have any talent. You would not expect him to sit down and start to sketch. Of course, if you are king, you can draw a stick figure and everyone will say that it is a perfect likeness. But everyone knows you can't draw. Having talent in the ordinary sense is almost antithetical to being in power, to being a political man.
You should find this to be both curious and interesting. My oblique approach was describing a relationship between the spiritual world and the world of Caesar. There is the mundane world of Caesar and a spiritual world which should also be a creative world. The two cannot meet. You should not try to mix them. Give to Caesar what he demands and give the other aspect what it needs. I am pointing to something that people do not realize. As soon as the Caesars of the world secure their power, they want to become either patrons or astringent censors of the arts. Why is it that they find painting, music and literature to be so dangerous, or else so attractive?
If you are going to continue in This, take to heart this suggestion. Be creative in some way. All of you have something. It could be fooling around with an automobile, giving the engine a little more oomph. Maybe you can jury rig something from old parts laying around the garage and it saves you a lot of money. What you do should have a degree of creativity to it. It will be a Real hobby. It's something that you do and you are just completely zippered by it. No one else even needs to know about it and you are delighted. This has some importance beyond the immediate pleasure, which is not to be discounted at all. There is hidden ammunition in the daily pursuit of creative activity.
