Audio = Stream the audio (from the video) using  the bars below in two parts.

Audio Download = DOWNLOAD Jan Cox Talk 0277 from Cassette
AKS/News Items = none
Summary = See Below
Diagrams = See Below #125
Transcript = See Below

 Summary by TK

Jan Cox Talk #277 Sep 10, 1987 - 1:46
  [Religions exclusively focus their activities on the harder of the two possibilities for man: action vs. thinking of action (TOA). They require a change of behavior rather than a change in way of thought, and the former is virtually impossible for man, whereas the latter is his unique purview. The Few find that TOA changes people the most, and that a very small real change is hugely significant. None can act in accordance with their TOA because the information/data available for TOA is always incomplete. Consider the following equation: [the number 4 as numerator of a fraction with numbers 1 + 2 as denominator with number 3 below the plus sign, = 10] The equation is seen to be 1+2 by ordinary consciousness with an answer of 3, i.e., binary consciousness sees 'cause and effect'. On rare occasions it can take the third leg of the triad (the 'E-rrelevant) into account and arrive at the more complete answer of 6 (1+2+3). But the complete answer, seen only by the Few would be 10, which takes into account the 4th dimension completely outside even the advanced 3-D view. Thus the complete configuration of the apparent 1+2=? is diamond shaped--beyond even the triad shape of the 3 forces. Binary consciousness/cause-effect consciousness can never place the blame; cannot find who to blame because it cannot get past its own immediate existence. ]
  [There is a kind of Yellow Circuit literacy that cannot be taught; you are born with it. When such types hear correct information, extraordinary information, they experience a salutary stimulation, a joy, which they relish. ]
  [Possessions. Why do all religions denigrate them? The harm for The Few is when they satisfy neither utility nor beauty. Another harmful connection exists related to action vs. TOA: the possession (action) doesn't match the thought of possession. It is harmful to remain attached to such possessions; the Real Revolutionist is weighed down in a general sense by possessions; can't live on the run with lots of baggage. Fads should be avoided by the Real Revolutionist because they are fed by 'herd energy', D-related energy; crude. The Real Revolutionist should not run with the herd. ]
  [0:52 Continues with the list of  'commandments' commentary from last week [see #276] ]
  [1:43 TASK: Pick out a 12-hr. period to be aware of, note all the time spent in thought of possessions. Also, what is the usual category of such thought: beauty or usefulness theme.

Transcript

FOUR DIMENSIONAL ADDITION 

AND

NON-RULE RULES

Document: 277, September 10, 1987
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1987                  

     It is my plan to finish up my comments on the second half of the "Non-Rule Rule List" that I read to you last week, but first things first.  Let's play with something else a bit before I do that.

     Based on the binary division that I made earlier -- that from an ordinary viewpoint, humans and only humans have the possibility of either acting or thinking of acting (and that those two seem to cover the gamut).  I want to point out several things that should test the bullet proofing on your brain's understanding of things.  Here we go.  It would seem, from all 3-D views, that it is much easier to reform how you think of acting than it is to reform how you act.  Please note that people don't ordinarily notice this.  Even my division into "acting" and "thinking of acting" is not normally noted.  But look at religions, psychology, sociology; look at which end of the spectrum of human change they naturally gravitate to.  And look at yourself:  if you have actually undergone some change during the decades you have been alive, look back and you will see quite clearly how significant, how sizable even the smallest change actually is.  The smallest change.  I'm talking about change -- not reform, not simply swapping one habit for another, one pattern of acting or thinking of acting for another pattern.

     Take religions as an example.  Life makes the practitioners of religions focus their attention on actions -- on "what to do".  None of the major religions have much to say about thinking of action.  It's all about how to act, which is, to say the very least, the harder of the two.  But notice this:  people will accept new ideas much more quickly than they will accept attempted alterations of their behavior.  Anybody can stand up on a street corner and say something radical, and if you're wired up at all to hear it, you may punch your fist into your palm and go, "Yeah.  Hey!  Yeah!"

     Not so with behavior.  You can't stop someone on the street and say, "Hey, I want you to start using your left hand instead of your right all the time."  Or, "If you drink at all, I want you to stop drinking right now."  Much harder; much less acceptable.  "Rant all you want on that street corner, but no matter what I say, don't try to make me change."

     Now look again at religions and other such systems.  Apparently, they deal in activity, not thinking of activity.  Now I know there are a few things strewn in here and there like, "As a man thinks, so he does," and "If you kill somebody in your heart, the damage is done already."  But do these systems actually require that you change the way you think about acting?  Well, for one thing, you can't prove anything either way.  You can ask, "Hey, have you quit imagining that you're having carnal relations with your neighbor?"  And the would-be follower can say, "Yeah, sure."  But who can prove it?  But look, the head swami can say to the neighbor's husband, "Has so and so quit fooling around with your wife?"  And the guy, providing he's in a position to know, can say either yes or no.

     So with religions, apparently Life has been dealing with thinking, the harder of the two.  Now if you were a 3-D philosopher, wouldn't you find that interesting?  Maybe even weird?  Why would Life pick the harder of the two?

     Alright, I'll answer my own question.  It does it because, if and when it does succeed (and this is on the level of humanity, not on the level of the individual), the requested change has the salubrious immediacy of a benefit to Life's growth.  Thinking about change doesn't affect much, but actual change does.  Why else would Life have humanity able to think about change?

     Sounds like a kind of long, drawn out process, doesn't it?  Well, it is.  Stiffen up your spine bones, you who think you have actually changed somewhat.  Look back.  Then look at you now.  Be honest.  No matter how far you feel you've come, you haven't changed all that much, now have you?  Your thinking about changing has altered; your thinking about your actions has altered, but even if you think you're one of the ones who've gotten the most from This, you who think you owe me the most, you who think This has been the most explosive occurrence in your life; peel back your 3 and 1/2-D eyelids and take a good look.  With regard to actions, change hasn't been all that great.  Now switch over real quick and notice this:  if you're the kind to be interested in This kind of stuff in the first place, you begin to entertain the quite clear view that even a teeny-weeny (I think that's a scientific description.) change in a human being is something humongous.  Any change at all is a sizable change.  It's weighty.  It's almost gargantuan, just a teeny-weeny change.  If even that teeny-weeny bit has happened in you, you can look around at other people and appreciate that I have been correct in saying that ordinarily, people do not change.  They reform, maybe.  They swap one habit for another.  Real change, however, is a strange and elusive creature, not quite as elusive perhaps as the dodo, but running a close second.  Real change, even just a little, little bit, is really, for individual humans, a lot of change.

     Okay, I'm going to try to draw you out here with some specifics, and some of you may be able to punch a brand new window in the side of your Yellow Circuit wall.  If you listen real quick, you may be able to See something I've been talking around for a long time.

     It just doesn't seem logical that Life would keep hammering at Man, through his religious and philosophical institutions, to really change, when it's so much easier for humans to think about change.  No?  Well then, let's try on a bit of super logic instead.  Super logic, by the way, is the province of the 4 or 5-D world, and super logic always looks ill-logical and ironic from the relatively fragmented 3-D viewpoint. That is, the ends ofttimes seem palpably antipodal to the originally stated aim.  Try this on for size:  Life wishes some change, and up springs an organization that exclaims, "Our purpose is to help the poor."  So you watch, and six months later you notice they're using the financially impoverished to fire up their stoves during the winter.  Now this situation surely meets the criteria of the word "ironic", does it not?  The end result appears just the opposite of the original purpose.  Please note that this irony has not been lost on the critics and smart alecks of Life's body.

     But is this sort of "folly" really just an ordinary ironic paradox or are the ordinary looking at the situation from a position of imperfect, incomplete information?  I'll tell you, it's the latter.  And it can't be otherwise. This incomplete viewpoint is the source of all human confusion.  It's also the source of what 3-D people call the "miraculous" and "supernatural".

     I want to try to show you something here.  I could call it "insufficient addition" or "disjointed arithmetic".  Human consciousness always believes it sees just two things going on -- let's call them for simplicity, "1" and "2", the "addition" of which is expected to put out a third element, which we'll call "3".  But ordinary human consciousness doesn't see this "3".  It doesn't take it into account at all.  So we have the philosopher balancing the weighty problem:  "Is there a reality out there or only the reality we imagine?"  And we have the theologian musing:  "How could a god that is all powerful let all this crap go on and let my shoes wear out within six months?"  And we have the ordinary person saying, "How can I mean so well and everybody pisses on my foot?"  People are always expecting a "3" -- cause and effect, logic, reason, goodness, mercy, justice, the American way.  People think that if they can just put things together right, they should come up with a "10".  At least, they hope for a "6".  But look, under ordinary conditions, all they have is a "1" and a "2", so it's logical to expect at least "3", right?  (1 plus 2...., "I" plus "Not-I", "C" plus "D", "what I want" plus "what you want", etc.)

     Sure it's logical.  "1" plus "2" equals "3".  But what do you always get?  What is your perception of what you're stuck with in the "10" that is the whole of reality?  Your perception is that you usually get stuck with the "2" -- the opposite of what you wanted.  You don't even get to third base.  Now, under extremely epiphanous circumstances, an ordinary person might notice enough of the irrelevant ("3") to come up with a "6".  ("1" plus "2" plus "3".)  But even then, his viewpoint falls short of reality, which as I just said, is always "10".  No wonder everyone is always so confused.  They don't know what to add.  Something is always missing.  There are no answers to the unanswerable questions of Life, because no one knows what the missing elements are.  That's why to ordinary consciousness, Life appears so chaotic.  So ironic.  (Remember, I said "ironic" is what happens when 3-D looks at the workings of 4 or 5-D?)  Nothing ever seems to quite come out right, to your viewpoint.  Things just don't "add up".  Well, there it is, right there.

     Ordinary consciousness hasn't got all the factors in the equation.  Even if you took into account "E", or "3", you'd still fall short of "10" and things would still look illogical, irrational, chaotic, ironic.  And you could still curse Life, blame everything, and look everywhere but the right place.

     Look at the human equation of "cause and effect" for a moment.  "Cause and effect" is simply a variation on the other human equation of "heredity and environment".  You can't ever find the original cause.  There's never any place to lay the final blame.  And, of course, ordinary consciousness can't deal with the whole thing on that basis.  It will always find somewhere to rest its laurels, even if the spot it lands on is right in the middle of a briar patch.  "Yes, I'm shy around women, but I'll tell you why, it was my father.  He used to walk around and pick up women and they'd expose themselves right in front of me and he'd laugh.  That's why I'm so fucked up."  Ordinary consciousness can't deal with the further question:  "Alright, if your father's the cause of your problems, what caused him to be such a....such a fucker?"  If you want to see someone's eyes glaze over, don't bother with a doughnut shop, just try running them back to an "original cause".  They can't deal with it.  They don't have the energy.  It puts them to sleep.  It bores them.  If you try to feed them that kind of food, you'll find they don't have the stomach for it.  Simply put, humanity doesn't need to be involved to that level in order to fulfill Life's present purposes.  "Who made your great-great grandmother make your great grandmother make your grandmother make your mother treat you so bad?"  Glaze time.  Human consciousness can't consider its origins.  If it could, it would be forced into at least a 4-D world.  It would find itself in a seamless panorama of which Time is the backdrop.  And that world being seamless, there'd be no place to stop and say, "That caused that."

     Now notice something else.  All human confusion over thinking of human action can be laid to this inability to add up all the elements in the Reality Equation.  I could describe it in other ways, but this is valid.  It doesn't matter how intelligent you are, or how talented.  It's beyond all that.  Yet, Life or Reality is a big fat "10".  All those factors humans can't notice still affect human life.  Do you see where people got the idea of gods; of mysterious forces beyond the will of Man?  That there must be something "up there" pulling strings?  Actually, there is no "up there".  What is there is a continuous loop that passes down through human consciousness, and human consciousness sees only a little part of that loop.

     It doesn't matter how big your telescope is, how big your atom smasher is, how much education you have, how much dope you put into your body.  It doesn't matter that you sit around and drink so much coffee you feel like your brain is wired and can imagine things nobody's ever imagined.  You still can't imagine those missing factors in the equation.  You say, "Yeah, I understand that."  No, you don't.  You've picked up the idea, perhaps, and now you are thinking about it, but as far as any of that affecting your behavior, we might as well be talking about two totally separate things.

     The unanswerable questions of Life can be laid right there.  All of them, whether they are couched in religious terms, philosophical terms, or just things that seem to bother your own little noodle.  You say of Life, "How can this be?"  And I'm showing you.  It's right there.  "1" plus "2" plus "3" plus "4" equals "10".  That's the problem with words.  Words can only convey what 3-D consciousness knows.  And all it knows is "1" and "2" -- usually on different days.  If that's all you're hearing of what I'm saying, you're missing part of the loop.  Without the whole loop, everything is incomplete, imperfect, virtually incomprehensible.  As some would-be philosophers keep pointing out:  "Every time we seem to solve a question, out pops another -- what? -- question.  There's no end to it."  How could it be otherwise?

     I said previously that this blindness is also the source of what humanity likes to call the "supernatural" or "miraculous".  You want to talk supernatural?  Here's your "supernatural", it's the part you can't see.  So people who think they're looking for Reality The Fantastic put turbans on innocent little old men sitting around in caves and say, "Boy, that's fantastic!"  That's fantastic?  What's fantastic is Seeing Reality all of a piece by adding the missing piece.

     Speaking of pieces, here's another one.  After I mentioned something about streamlining your possessions, many of you may have stumped up against the question:  "Why is it that all religions have always bad mouthed possessions?  Why?  Why?"  Alright, I'm asking you.  Why?  Let me see if I can push you into at least 3.2-D awareness.  Of course, there's no harm in possessions, or they wouldn't be here.  And for ordinary people, it doesn't matter how many they have, or whether they even use them or not.  But for people interested in This, for people on the verge of the twilight parking zone, there is a danger in allowing an accumulation of things around you that you find non-beautiful or non-useful.  It's excess baggage in a quite literal sense, because what ordinary people can't see is that you carry that baggage with you even when you're far from home.  If you possess it, if you house it, if you own it, in a certain very real sense, it owns you.  That's where the condemnation comes from.  Ordinary religious thinking doesn't know where it got that outlandish idea, so I'll tell you.  It got it from the missing piece, from the invisible part of that loop up there.  Or rather, Life handed down that little piece and they had no choice but to choke it down somehow and then find "reasons" why it should be so.  I'm telling you why it is so.  Such excess baggage has an adverse effect on your energy.  If your possessions don't either save you labor or lift your spirits, they're just excess baggage.  Only you can decide what's useful or beautiful and what's not.  I give you the Great American example:  the automobile.  For most people, the automobile is not excess baggage.  (Well, I guess some people would rather take the bus.)  But if it's worth owning, can you find any reason why it's worth it other than that it's either useful or beautiful?  With automobiles, people are divided like all Gaul into those two great camps.  Either it's simply a labor saving device to keep them from having to run everywhere on their own little feet -- in which case you can talk yourself blue in the face about "elegant lines" and a "cool image", or it's a personal piece of art, a prized possession which just happens to get you where you want to go.  For the first group, you could look at their cars and say, "Don't you ever wash your car?"  And they might say, "Oh, yeah, when the windows get so dirty I can't see out of them."  For the second group, such an attitude is simply incomprehensible.  They might own a garage full of vehicles they never drive, but for them that accumulation is not a waste, it is a treasure.

     There's another little connection here, and the connection is between the usefulness-beautifulness and nonusefullness-ugliness of possessions and that other fearless duo we've talked about, action and thinking of action.  Here it is.  If you have possessions around you that no longer fit the useful-beautiful criteria, they also fall out of the "action" sphere, and into the "thinking of action" blob of mud.  You no longer spend energy acting on them or letting them act on you to your benefit, now you have to keep thinking about them.  Where to put them so you don't have to keep stepping over them.  How to keep up the payments on them.  Another way to look at it is that you spent all that thinking on them -- plotting and planning and scheming -- and they just don't live up to what you thought they'd do for you.  You spent your energy and now you're getting no return on your investment.  Instead of making you a profit, they drain you.  They drag in even more excess baggage that you have to carry around, like:  guilt, "I went to all this trouble and now what am I going to do with this thing?"  Every time you walk through the garage, this number -- $9,640.59 -- flashes through your brain, and you have to keep thinking this thought over and over and over again.  The Real Revolutionist lives almost out of a suitcase, being in the bushes and all (where even a Jeep won't function).  He doesn't have any extra energy to give to excess baggage, inside or out.  He can't spare the energy to try to drag all that stuff through the bushes.

     One more thing about the Real Revolutionist before I get back to my list:  the Real Revolutionist shouldn't get involved with fads.  That's a fact, Jack.  In the bush world, there's a scientific reason for this.  Fads are fueled by herd-energy.  It doesn't matter how good the cause, if it's become a fad, you should turn your back on it, at least until the fad comes unglued.  Herd energy is energy moving through a very large part of humanity, and as such, lives down at a very crude level, right on the verge of "D".  That's why all fads are so potentially inflammable.  "Let's all take care of planet Earth because this is the only home we've got" sounds like a noble cause -- but as long as it's a fad, you can pick up the paper almost any day of the week and see where some pair of groups has gotten into a fist fight over the issue.  Here we are right back to irony.  Irony is being beaten to death while participating in a peace march.  And yet, that's the name of the game.  If it's a fad, it's running hard on the edges of "D", and you've got no business being there.  It doesn't matter how great the cause may seem.  It doesn't matter if it's something you heard me say.  If it's become a fad, something about it is on the verge of change.  You can take that as a safe prediction.  If "igniting the higher circuitry" becomes a fad, run for the hills.  Stay in the closet.  Come find me and we'll go off somewhere until it all blows over.

     I'm going back to my list now.  Remember last week?  My little homilies?  My little words of wisdom for wise ones?  Well, if you missed last week you missed part seventeen hundred and twenty-three of this continuing saga, of inside at the outside.  That's a variation of a well known British series, and I can't back up and explain all of this.  But I can give you the general idea of it:  I wrote stuff down just as I thought of it, in no particular order, and then I got through commenting on about half of them.  Here's the rest of it.  As I talk, try to keep in mind tonight's comments about how much easier it is to reform than to change, how much easier to alter how you think about action than how you act.  Which category do my "Fourteen Hundred Murphy Commandments" address; action, or thinking or action?  Which is it that can apparently initiate real change?  What is it that can change?  Here's a hint:  last week I mentioned several times that you should get out and stay out of debt.  Maybe you heard that and went, "Jesus, I know that's true.  I can feel that it's a burden I don't need."  Under different circumstances, you could be reminded of it standing in a store; somebody in front of you in line hands out their credit card and they run it through their little machine and the machine spits it back and says, "No way, Jose."  And the person says, "Oh my god, I've gone over the limit again."  And suddenly you remember me bad mouthing debt, and you look at the clerk putting aside all that unbought merchandise and you think how great it is to be exposed to all this wonderful, astounding new information from me.  The person ahead of you moves and while you're thinking all this you stick your hand out with a credit card on it.  That's the difference.  That's not an attack on humanity, but that is the difference.  Thinking of action may or may not bear any specific relationship to one's actions.  They're not nearly so tied as people think.  If they were tied tightly together, there'd be no tolerance.  And if there were no tolerance, nothing would get what?  Done.  Nothing.  If people didn't act like they act, no matter what they may be thinking at the time, they wouldn't be people.

     Picking up on the next item after the last one I left off with.  "If you let feeling sorry for yourself become electrical, you cease having a real self."  You become the thought instead.  You become the charge passing through your chemical makeup and into your electrical brain-thoughts.  All your feeling circuits have become tangled up with the flow of information and there is no self left to be a self.  You are not mad. You are madness.  You aren't in a mood; the mood is you.  There's nothing left if you let yourself remain ordinary.  You cease to exist.  Feeling sorry for yourself is one the great religions missed somehow, and people don't normally think about self pity as anything dreadful, because normally people feel there is some justification for feeling sorry for yourself.  That's all part of the "I can't find the blame, and I'm certainly not going to take responsibility for it myself" game.  "It's okay that I feel sorry for myself, because I've been really disappointed."  Really?  You know why?  Because you can't fucking add.  I said "fucking" on purpose there.  "I've been disappointed."  You know why?  Because you can't count.  You based all your plans on "1" or "2" or "1" and "2", and you expected it to add up to "10" and it didn't.  To say that you are disappointed is to say the obvious.  To say you are disappointed is to say you are a human and an alive one at that.  It's also to admit (unbeknown to you) that you have insufficient information, that you're trying to operate without all your wheels in gear.  So, what's there left to feel sorry for?

     "Look after yourself, but don't always conceive of your fortune or good luck as being only at the expense of others."  At the 3-D level of consciousness, everything looks like a closed system.  If you found 50 gold pieces, somebody else lost out, and so on -- finders keepers, losers weepers.  You know the story. In a sense, of course, this is true.  But you make a molecular faux pas if you leave it at this.  That's the way it appears to be at the 3-D level.  And if you're a good capitalist, you may relish the thought that, "Hey, I'm richer today and that means some of my enemies may be poorer!"  Ha, ha, ha.  Everybody needs a hobby, but that one shouldn't be your hobby.

     "Stare not."  In case you missed it, that was one of my original tricks I handed out some time ago:  to try not to stare, physically with your eyes and otherwise.  It's the nature of Man to want to stare, but you, au contraire, should always be trying to case the joint.  Everywhere you go, you should flip your awareness around and case the joint.  You don't know what might have materialized since you were last there.  If you step out in your back yard and you know your back yard like the palm of your hand, still case the joint.  Maybe you haven't had your coffee yet that morning and you think it's not important to look around because you know your own back yard, so you step out without looking and a hippo in a carp uniform could jump out of the bushes and eat you up.  It could be standing over there in the bushes and maybe you've been out there for a good ten minutes, dazed from lack of caffeine, spitting at the ground and kicking rocks -- for ten minutes before you happen to turn around and realize......  You should always be casing the joint.  You simply should.  Staring is molecular stagnation.  It's a reinforcement of your own chemical and electrical patterns.  Contrary wise, casing the joint keeps you alert.  You should do it every time you move from one room to another in your own house.  Who knows what's going on in there?  I don't want to frighten you, but you could be wandering in your normal sleepy way from room to room and never notice what's going on.  Maybe one of those 4-D holes might show up in your hallway, and you'd miss it because you're staring and shuffling along.  Of course, closely tied to "stare not" is "debt not".

     Some of you got a kick from the next one.  It reads:  "Hangeth not around dumb or cruelish people."  Several weeks ago I pointed out that if you hang around dumb people, you get dumb.  And why?  Any of you that like to take things like this internally, be my guest.  Don't hang around dumb people.  If you do, don't cry to me.  If you do, don't feel sorry for yourself.

     "At least once a day be amazed at the fact of you and This coming together."  Even the days when you don't feel particularly amazed, you should try to.  You should at least try to remember the days when you were amazed.  The days you grinned so hard your ears hurt.  If you can't quite make it, fake it.  Try.  Stop and be amazed.  Be amazed that "I am not amazed right now."  That, "I've been amazed before, and right now I can't be amazed and evidently it's because somebody told me I look like I've put on a few pounds. Somebody I barely know, and it's been about nine hours ago."  If nothing else does it, that should.

     "Hurteth not thy back, whenever possible."  I don't know what lasting good this one will do in the 3-D world, but I couldn't resist.  I'm sure that I speak for most of you if I say that if your back would cooperate in this, you would probably find this had been your intention anyway.

     "Be secretly better than your religion."  By "your religion", I mean whatever system you were apparently brought up in.  What set of ideas your molecules still seem to have a propensity to react to.  All those "shoulds" and "should nots" regarding how to act like a good ________(blank).  As I said before, Life deals through these institutions on the basis of real change in one's actions.  I also said that that change, when it comes, comes on a generational level and not within the lifetime of an ordinary individual.  And I also mentioned, if you recall, that Life pushes for this change because it finds the change beneficial to itself.  Life hasn't done us in yet, obviously, so far we're still serving our appointed purpose.  You people had better be over worrying about religion, but you can do this:  you can take the religion that Life served up to you on your birth bed as another of those "tests" to see whether you measure up.  That's a distinct possibility, you know.  Maybe you think it's a dumb religion, or silly.  But secretly, you should consider that all those holy maxims were another way for the powers that be to test you.  

     And if you don't measure up, they're secretly laughing at you.  Because, look, those maxims were handed right down by Life itself.  They aren't silly, even if they're misunderstood reflections.  So if you say, "Why should I try to act that way, when my parents obviously couldn't, the head swami couldn't, nobody could."  I'll tell you why.  Those people weren't trying to act that way, it was just a test to see how dumb you still were, and here you are getting mad over the issue, and the "gods" are laughing at you.  You think you're so smart because you think you see a paradox while those secret "powers" are laughing themselves sick over how doubly dumb you are. You should take it as an absolute benchmark; whatever the system, you should secretly always be better even than it said you should be.  Secretly.  Secretly, you should be the best walking example of those ideals because you can use them.  However taught, you can use them.  Your parents can't.  The priest or rabbi can't.  But you can learn from them.  You can really do it.  In fact, that standard should be your minimal operating everyday standard.

     "Rejoice only slightly (and in a controlled manner) at the injuries suffered by hunters and fisherman.  We all know a joke when we hear one, don't we?  Yeah, and I didn't hear one."

     On we go.  I didn't know I could write two pages of this stuff.  "Do more than think about things that truly interest you."  Even if your interest is writing, which looks at first like a purely Yellow Circuit activity.  Do it.  Don't just think about it.  Again, I'm not trying to give you the blues, but if you ignore your molecular need to do whatever it is, some day you may be sorry, because the day may come when, interest or not, the energy to pick up pen or brush, or ballet slippers, or hammer may leave you.  You may not be able to summon up that energy again, be able to enjoy that energy/food unique to you.  Even worse, you may blame your boredom on This, and think that This is responsible for your new level of ennui.  If that happens, and This Thing could talk, it would say, "Oh, you poor pinhead, you missed it again."  If you've got a true interest in something, do more with it than think about it.  And do it for itself, for the enjoyment of doing it, not because you expect some great reward somewhere down the line.  If it's a true interest, you never need an audience to enjoy yourself.  You may or may not enjoy having one, but you don't need it. That personal pleasure you get from your hobbies is not just a personal pleasure, it's all tied to This kind of activity as well.

     "Ask not for mercy, unless you're doing it willfully or else it's an absolute last ditch stand."  Don't ever ask for mercy.  I don't mean try to project a Super-person image.  There's both a chemical and an electrical basis for this one.  Don't ever ask for mercy unless you know exactly what you're doing -- or my semi-facetious CODA, it's an absolute last ditch stand.  I said semi-facetious because look:  suppose it works and you're granted mercy.  Then what?  Then you've got to stand around and say to yourself, "Okay, I'm still alive, now I've got the rest of my life to sit around and think about what I did."  Suppose there were a group of you, and you asked for mercy, so only you have all your fingernails left.  So what? Now you're an outcast because you asked for "mercy".  There's no such thing as mercy.  To ask for mercy you have to believe that Life hands out rewards and punishments.  You've got to believe in cause and effect.  You've got to be limited to two little eyeballs and one little teeny weeny brain which is always trying to make some sense out of the mess you perceive of as Life.  Asking for mercy is like saying, "Uh, can I have just a second of out time before you step on this foot, and then go on to the other one?  Huh?  Huh? Please?  That's the sort of belief you're dealing in.  If that's all you've got, perhaps you should ask for mercy, you don't know what you're doing anyway.

     "Stand up straight, and when possible, always drop a few pounds."  Another self-explanatory one.  Ever notice how you feel when you're slumped over?  Ever notice what a burden it is to carry in that 25 pound sack of dry dog food?

     "Treat everyone as your superior, but in a willfully indifferent style."  Treat everybody else as though they were your unrecognized, unspecified, undetermined superior.  Do it so that either they don't know you're doing it in an indifferent style, or you don't.  And don't fault me just because I don't know exactly which one.  I gave you both, so one of them is correct.  At least I didn't present it in an indifferent style. (Little joke there, folks.  I think.)

     "Keep your personal life lean and neat."  Straighten up your desk.  Don't ask me and don't debate with yourself whether you or your roommate left the toothpaste cap off the tube again -- just neaten up anyway. If you feel it should be on, for whatever reason, put it back on.  Put it back without fail, put it back if the house is burning down, put it back if the school bus is outside blowing the horn and saying, "You're going to be late for class if you wait and put that dumb top back on the tube of toothpaste."  Why is the school bus blowing a horn for you if you're forty seven years old?  I don't know.  I just relay the information. Maybe they held you back more grades than even I imagined.

     "Try (among all these other things) to always remember that everyone alive does exactly what Life has told them will be pleasant and necessary for them."  That includes everybody:  all the Attila the Huns es, all the antipopes, all the Cardinal Fangs, all the Hitlers, all the Hitler's dear, dear, great-grandmothers. Everybody does what Life tells them will be pleasant for them.  If you think otherwise, you're still stuck on the level where you can't see above your own individual eyeballs.  You can't see that Life is bigger than you, and that it's all okay and necessary.  I hate to be crude, but for the raper, there's always got to be a rapee.  How are thieves going to have fun if you're not around for them to mug you?  How are you going to enjoy cheating on your income tax if there's no big old faceless government moving "too far to the right to suit me anyway, the hell with them"?  (Another facetiousness here; you should be able to tell when I'm joking by now.)  This particular "rule" is a really hard one to remember.  "What do you mean, people are doing what Life tells them is pleasant?  People drive like maniacs!  Why, somebody pulled out in front of me just today and then when he saw my shocked expression, he stuck his tongue out and flipped me the bird at the same time!  What do you mean, Life tells them it's pleasant?  They're not doing it to be pleasant, they're doing it to make me mad!"  No, they're not.  They don't care about you.  They hardly even notice you.  Your thinking they should treat you "right" (according to your ideas of "pleasant") is no more that you adding "1" and "2" and trying to get "10" -- or at least "3".  "Somethin' ain't right here."  Well, okay.  So answer me this.  How come nobody ever seems to get their "just desserts"?

     "If the chemical doesn't become electrical, then you don't think it."  You don't think it, you don't even feel it.  Humans at the ordinary level of consciousness, humans that are at right now, don't truly experience an emotion until it becomes electrical -- that is to say, until it passed through their Red Circuit chemical makeup and into their thinking apparatus; until they can talk about it.  And some of you wondered why I don't talk much about emotions and advise you not to talk about them.  This is why.  If you can block that thought, you can block that feel, too.  "Yea, team!  Sis boom bah!"  You can block it.  Way down in your molecules you can feel an uprising that says:  "We is mad."  And you can literally not feel that feel, or think that thought.  You can leave it right where it is, like your stomach going "burp".  Don't let rude noises down in your gut go up to your head (or worse, spit out your mouth).  Use baking soda or something.  Don't let it become electrical.  "You mean I should never think anything again?"  Shut up, kid.  Would we ever think anything again.  Who let you in here?  That's about the dumbest question I've ever heard!  (Whew! Thought he almost had me there.)

     "Whenever you're asked what you believe in, always smile and say, 'Everything,' and mean it."  Act that way even if you're not directly asked in words.  If you're in a group of arguing people, don't take sides.  Not even inside.  Don't choose just one side, choose all sides.  "I don't believe in that, and I don't believe in that either; I believe in all of it!"  And you've got to smile and you've got to mean it.  "What do you believe in, son?"  "Oh, I believe in everything."  "What are you in favor of?"  "Oh, you name it.  If they come up with a thirty-fourth flavor, I'll take it.  You don't have to name it specifically, just give me a double scoop."

     "Pay all of your debts and return there no more."  I'm making this one a very strong suggestion, as you may by now be suspecting.  In fact, I would be within my rights as revolutionary band master to ask you just how in debt you are right now.  I'd even be within my rights to give some of you a time limit on the pay back.  Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.  Unless it's for an absolutely death defying health reason, don't do it.  Not even then, if you can help it.  If you don't have the money to buy it right then, forget it.  For some of you, that one thing would be as good a move as you could make right now for yourself in This Thing.  Take your credit cards and file them in that great circular ceramic filing cabinet, usually located in the bathroom. You've got no business being in debt.  Debt misuses energy, it misuses your thinking of actions (which is the worst), and it finally misuses your actions.  It just doesn't work.  Not for you people, it doesn't.  It's bad medicine.  It's bad chemical medicine, and it's terrible electrical medicine.  For those of you badly in debt, let me ask you this:  what is it that nags at you while you're trying to have a good time?  What occupies your thoughts day by day?  Huh?  Huh?  What?  What?  I rest my case.

     "You should continually be seeking privileged information (from a secret position), while attempting not to give out any information about yourself."  This one is not far removed from "don't give interviews" or "casing the joint".  Always seek privileged information.  It's all around you, everywhere out there.  It's coming at you from all quarters and you never get it, because you're living face to face with everybody else.  Out there in the herd everybody lives nose to nose, and worse, nose to other parts.  You've got to find a secret place where you can get out of everybody's face.  You can't live in the herd, even if you're physically there.  You've got to find a privileged spot, a secret spot, where you can continually case the joint and spirit out secret, privileged information.  You've also got to not let out information about yourself, because the one depends to a great extent on the other.  One will cancel the other out.  Not because information about you is privileged:  it's not.  It's just duck slop like all the rest.  Worse than that, it's boring.       But don't let it out, because if you do, you'll temporarily lose your secret position and have to find it all over again, probably somewhere else.  Once you find that secret place, protect it.  Keep it secret, and you, too, can begin to See beyond the 3-D level.  Look at it like this:  if you let out where your secret spot is, everybody will yell, "Hey look!  He's been hiding in the bushes all this time!  Hey, you!  Come out of there."  And you're caught, at least for the moment.

     "Always be thinking (that is, electrifying) more than two things at once."  'Nuff said.

     "Don't do stuff you really don't want to do."  Now "what you don't want to do" may be hard to determine in some instances, and I'm not going to get into that.  Just don't do it if you don't want.  Even if it's hard to determine.  Yeah, I know I said that twice.  Maybe you weren't listening the first time.

     "Don't be cynical regarding how others have fun."  Don't ever laugh at another person's hobby.  Don't sneer, don't be cynical -- but always know where the back door is.

     "Share when you want to and when you can, and when you don't." If you can follow this one, you'd find it nearer the 4th dimensional reality of charity and humility, of brotherly concern, than anything else you can find.

     "Do not confuse acting with thinking of acting."  Well, that's certainly not your problem, is it?

     "Treat everyone's autobiography as fiction."  Don't believe or disbelieve it.  Just treat it as fiction, as entertainment, or noise.  Everybody's autobiography is just fiction.  We aren't talking about you here, now are we?  You don't have to try to find the inconsistencies in a person's autobiography.  You don't have to try to find the holes.  And you shouldn't laugh or be cynical.  They're just having their fun, they're playing their hobby just like Life told them to do, and Life said it would be fun, so they're having fun.  They're giving out an interview whether you asked for one or not.  We've laughed a lot over critics here, but think a moment.  Do you really think critics have no place in the body of Life?  Do you really think they serve no function?  Try and stretch your little taffy brain here for a second.  I mean look:  if you try, you can almost see a purpose in every form of criticism known to man, but how can you criticize fiction?  How can you criticize a story that was made up from the beginning?  How can you appoint yourself critic in that situation?  If you do, how can you avoid hearing those "powers that be" laughing at you all over again for being dumb?  Fiction is not important, serious stuff.  It's fun stuff.  It's entertainment.  What's there to criticize?  Of course, we're not talking about your autobiography here.  Ha ha.

     Here's a bunch of self-evident ones.  "Get fresh air and solar food."

     "Don't do 'that' if 'that' hurts."

     "Don't be self-conscious unless you've got a self."

     "Don't ever tell anyone seriously that you will do something unless you will or unless you fully didn't mean it."  And the latter doesn't ever apply to friends, particularly to other people here.  If someone you don't know or don't like corners you or holds a knife to your throat, of course, tell them whatever will get them off your back.  But you have to have absolutely no question in your mind of ever doing it, or you'll have that thought to nag you in among all the others playing up in your brain and down in your nervous system.  Either say, "yes," and mean it, or say, "yes," but don't mean it.  If you say, "yes," any other way, you'll suffer for it molecularly.

     "Don't let yourself feel distant or estranged from This activity without noting that the feeling is one-sided and (from the equation "I" plus "not-I" equals "everything") that the feeling is "I" based.

     "Appear not too scruffy or weird."  We're just talking about manners and social etiquette here, right?  Have you lost your mind?

     "Never let them see you mad or disappointed."  Really.  If you begin to understand this one, that understanding immediately begins to touch 4 dimensions.  Don't ever let 'em see you mad or disappointed. "That's just other people outside, right?"  Right.  Riiiiggghhht.  Right.  I suppose you think you know who the enemy is, too, don't you?  Well, don't you?  Not if you can ask a question like that.  Don't let them see it.  It's poison to the system, it's bad news.  Every time you get mad, you failed the test, remember, you pin head?  They're always watching.  They're always testing you to see if you're still as dumb as they thought you were.  And sure enough, if you think you're something special, somebody special, somebody different, outside the rules of Life itself, you better start laughing, 'cause sure as anything, somebody invisible is chuckling at your expense.  If you can't do this one wholeheartedly, fake it.  Fake 'em out.  Don't give 'em a chance.  Let them be disappointed that they didn't catch you this time.  And don't play like you're the great-great-grand-bastard of Freud or Jung and say, "But that's not going to work.  I might damage myself holding all that stuff in like that."  Show that man the door.  For you, you're right.  It's not going to work.  I guess I finally went too far.....  Are they gone?  Don't let 'em see you mad or disappointed.  It keeps you in a circular path, trotting around in a closed system.  It's a belief that, "Somebody promised me a teddy bear if I would let them use my bicycle, and I didn't get a teddy bear, I got a hand full of teddy bear poop.  And somebody is going to pay.  Either that or I'm going to cry."  It's serious bad news, folks.

     "Hug someone when you want to and don't give it a second thought.  Or even a first thought," self-evident.

     "Worry not about anything you've already done or anything you might do."  Other than that, have at it.  Any worries that slip through the crack there, you're okay on those, really, you are.

     Last, "Get out and stay out of debt."  (Ha!  I had the last word on that one, didn't I?)