Introductions

One guy's approach to introducing yourself and that you have to say: "If you don't want 'em to understand what you're talkin' about, give 'em a name they can't pronounce."

Quiz Pop:

How can you spell "thinking" with just six letters and starting with the letter C?"

The problem with trying to discuss the mystical philosophy
is that there isn't one.

One man said, "Those who know the Secret are still more-or-less like everyone else."

And someone asked, "You mean there's still things they don't know?"

And he replied, "I didn't say that."

J.

One-Half of a Tiny Island

Once you comprehend the fact that half the people are right half the time and the other half are right the rest of the time, you're then faced with the realization that….You can never "turn the corner" as long as the corner keeps moving in sync with your attempts to turn it, and it will continue to do so as long as you believe that it is doing so.

To discount those things that are not true and cannot be is to banish yourself to one half of a tiny island that is sinking anyway.

To believe that the thinking you think now will ever get you anywhere is to have faith in a rowboat powered by a one-armed blind man.

Within the world of man:
The discovery of the "soul" of a thing is the creation of its soul.

A man wrote to The Break-It-To-Me-Gently Doctor and asked,
"Is everyone destined to discover that their most prized possession is a fake?"
"If they're lucky," the doctor replied.

J.

Zoology from Zero Ground Level

Anthropology from Above or Zoology From Zero Ground Level:

When one lion doesn't like another lion,
he'll piss on him;

When one human doesn't like another human,
he'll talk to him.

One general claims he was urged on by some unidentifiable voice to: "Send out a large man to secure a small gain, and a small man to secure a large one.”  (“But whatever you do in local battle, never send out a man who doesn't seem at all upset.")

A speaker addressed the crowd, "To be free, our minds must be like an open book."
And one man turned and asked another, "Did he say 'babbling brook'?"
And the other man replied, "I don't think it matters."

And the mystic from our last episode reminds you of his comment that "no one ever awakens in a crowd," and of your responsibility to figure out whether this is meant literally or otherwise.

J.

Dimensions in Thinking

The word "freedom" contains none of the same letters which appear in the word "conditional," and nothing in the usual "question and answer workings" of the mind gives any clue as to the serenity and certainty inherent in The Secret.

When (for instance) 4-D creatures die, they go to a heaven of five dimensions, whereat both sides of all arguments are admitted.

Thinking composed of even-numbered dimensions
has no place to go.

So concluded Life in the conditions of one reality: "There's no better hiding of a prize than to surround it by searching, searching."

And still more from our Straightened-Out Transcendental Thesaurus:

Improving One's Mind:

Something you can attempt to do with it
until you discover what to really do with it.

J.

Mystical Methods - Part II

According to one legend:

Life lets all sentient creatures be born here, free of charge, but for those who're gonna become thinkers, it records a debt to eventually be paid, and for collateral life holds--you guessed it--your mind.

Inquiry:

To whom can kidnappers pay ransom for the end to their own captivity?

Just think: If you think that just thinking is hard sometimes, just think about what it must be like to think beyond that!

 (Okay, I'll tell you what it's like -- great, that's what.  See, when it comes to the matter of things being "hard," it's not just sexual libertines who derive pleasure therefrom.)

There is no mysticism without mystical methods, and the usual fate of it is that the method becomes the extent of the mysticism.  This is how it begins and how it goes, but not necessarily how it must end.

J.

Mystical Methods - Part I

In a related health item: since we first reported on this story last week, new findings have come in proving even more conclusively that there is a fresh limit to how much the mind can take--with fresh supporting statistics reaffirming the fact that no one yet knows where this cutoff line might be.

If you want to, we can do this:

I'll describe a man who knows the secret as someone who can look at everyday, mortal existence as an ongoing cartoon, without losing the awareness of it still being what its participants take it to be.

One man's explanation for his present condition is that shortly after he was born, and just as he was beginning to think, a wild, unidentifiable beast, covered in a gooey adhesive, streaked by him, and his mind became affixed thereto, and he has yet to be able to detach it therefrom.

...Come on, folks -- what d'ya think? -- it's gotta be worth at least an 8.5!

And a reading from our Revised Mystic's Guide:

Working on One's Self: What you can do 'til you get a real one.

One man said: "The proper diagnosis is half the cure."

And a second man responded: "Then you're stupid."

To which the first man replied: "Thanks, I feel fifty percent better."

J.

The Poetry In The Air

The Poetry In The Air

                         One man wrote sonnets to summer only in winter,

                         and odes to spring only in fall.

The literature already inscribed in man's collective thought too closely tracks the cycles of the seasons; to think freely and afresh, one must struggle against all things normal to a normal mind, for the secret poetry that transcends has no meter or rhyme grounded on popular consciousness.

All personal views and opinions are, by their very nature, hostile and aggressive; only impersonal comprehension of the unity of things is free from this.

Now from our Realigned Metaphysics Dictionary:

Trying to Find One's Self:  Something you can do to help show you how far away you are from having one.

J.

A man wrote The Agitation Doctor and asked:

     "In thinking: is specific redundancy of thought really the problem, or simply the fact that meaningless repetition is the natural fuel of the mind?"

Time Will Tell

An Expansion:

Once you've attributed two characteristics to a thing,

any third one you might try to add will appear irrelevant.

If the first two convey a sense of "we are important -- we are informative,"

a third will have the feel of "it doesn't matter."

On one world was once a race whose concept of paradisiacal afterlife was of a place, not only where no one could ever conceive of three possibilities, but where no one even ever thought about trying.

 Without the physics of two-armed deities,

the winds never blow, the tides come not and go,

and those who fail to slay the gods

ne'r know the serenity of the secret.

 While ordinary people (as they age) seem to either go through great change, or, else no change at all, mystics either apparently go through great change without actually going through all that much, or else seem to go through very little change while actually going through a lot.  So, come on gang, let's hear it out there for all the fine folks who keep our great rail system running.

People who say that "time will tell" are the same ones who won't admit they didn't learn a thing from space.

J.

Thoughts are Not the Material to Accomplish Change

One afternoon a fox and a lion were lazin' around in the high grass, and the fox gazed off into the distance and said to his companion, "Have you noticed the difficulty in trying to reverse the mortal concept of 'fables' to fit our circumstances--that is, to tell stories concerning the normal affairs of man, and then turn them into metaphorical teaching devices pertinent to us?" And as he stretched real good and engaged in a leisurely yawn, the lion had to admit that the fox had something there.

 In all of the territories just beyond the horizon, thoughts are not the material by which change is accomplished.

One transcendentally active father said to his similarly agitated son, "If you wait on any outside assistance from life or anyone else to help you scratch that itch that we have, you're in for a..." and the lad smiled and made a hand gesture signifying, "No need to say more."

At a certain point, just for a brief moment, every good mystic thinks what it might have been like had he had himself, as he is now, for a father back when he really needed one.

The reason that it's neurons that turn into metaphors and allegories is that hormones have their natural limits and can't.

Across a chasm that separated one kingdom from an even greater one was a bridge, a bridge guarded by a two-eyed beast;

The beast said that he originally had three eyes, but that his sight was so good that no one could ever get past him, and for that reason, one of them was taken from him.

There was once a certain group who claimed that the greatest danger of talk is that it makes you believe that you've just had a thought.

J.

Enthusiasm

The young need no lectures on enthusiasm,

and they are wasted on the old,

so who does that leave who must have conceived of the word originally?

The promotion of routine affairs must be limited to but two pitches at a time, such as the sign at a restaurant that announces: "Good Food -- Open 24 Hours."

Or one at a bank: "Friendly Service -- Competitive Rates."

Or at almost any ordinary commercial enterprise: "Highest Quality -- Lowest Prices."

For, should they press on to a third description, it would turn out to be funny and not at all conducive to normal business success.

(Thus it is that aspects of man which appear naturally at one stage in his life, then just as naturally fade, must be but briefly thought about within this dichotomous context, or else your eyes might explode and you glimpse the unnatural.)

And a viewer writes:

"Just about the time I think you've gone as far afield from reality and reason as is possible, while still almost making some kind of sense, you surprise me and outdo yourself all over again, and I just wanted to write and thank you for this while I am momentarily in that special mental condition wherein it is possible for me to do so.”

“P.S. Is this, per chance, part of what you're up to?”
Yours Until It Happens Again (I Hope) etc.

Now for our Transcendental Thought for The Day:

'Tis a sorry civilian who'll accuse a mystic of being almost comprehensible.

One man's personal take on life was, "We're all a bunch of dick heads." (While his private member had a variation thereof.)

J.

Lock All Your Doors! Here Comes More Info!

And the cry arose:

"Board all your windows! -- Lock all your doors! -- Here comes more info!"

Now it's "Once Upon A Time" time:

Once upon a time there was a man who decided that he'd talk about extraordinary matters to those who might believe they were interested in such, and to keep the focus more where it belonged, that is, on what he had to say. He initially addressed them in a monotone while standing motionless, but soon realizing his audience's negative reaction to this method, he revised it and began pacing the floor, waving his arms, and speaking to them in a highly dramatic manner, but soon found that just as many who had originally seemed interested were leaving now as did when he employed the opposite approach.  De End

A man went to a mystic and said, "Can I ask you something?"

And the mystic said, "Uh huh." 

So the man said, "Well, sometimes it's hard to work up the energy just to get the little, everyday things done in life that we have to do."

And the mystic said, "Uh huh." 

And the man continued, "And when circumstances unexpectedly demand more of us, it can be an even bigger challenge to come up with the effort needed to deal with whatever it is." 

And the mystic said, "Uh huh." 

So the man said, "Well, I figure the kinds of things people like you are involved with must really require an extraordinary and constant degree of some special kind of enthusiasm." 

And the mystic was almost able to work himself up to replying, one more time, "Uh huh."

J.

New Intelligence Dating Tip

"Knowing what you're doing" at the herd level doesn't amount to anything, though other cows will tell you otherwise.  The door‑to‑door mystic knocked on yours and said, "What the hell's a person with your potential doing listening to cows and sheep?"  (Don't forget:  For a "good night's sleep" keep your doors and windows locked.)

One mother said to her child, "Not only go out and play but stay out forever!"
And consciousness was so crushed to hear thinking talk like this to it...Not!  For some!  Surprise!

A New Intelligence "Dating Tip":

Thinking will continue to play word games with you just to keep you from going to see consciousness. This is why it's so difficult to pin down a rebel's real loyalties. And why commoners dream that mystics can fly.

One man has a plan regarding how to become a mystic without having to spend all that time and effort going through any of the various, rigorous traditions. His approach is to simply, surgically remove all of the mental hostility from your body.  ...(The line forms over here.)

J.

Dining in the City

One man asked his mind, "What would you do if I kept drugs in you all the time?

And his brain replied, "What do you mean 'if'?"

A city sewer worker, (on lunch break), took some mayonnaise off of his white bread sandwich onto his finger and began to write on the back of a nearby, dozing rat:  "I've been down so long that it looks like up to me."  And one of his coworkers shook his head in disagreement. "Nah, you should say, I've been down so long that it looks like the norm to me."  And just then the rodent awakened and added his opinion, "No, what you should do is go join that street singer in that previous story."  And El Whamo!  The guy and all his buddies in the man hole were once again struck, and amazed by the non sequential, though pertinent and collateral insight of our below ground, furry neighbors. 

               Now for Some Educational News:

               In one city, rather than teaching the children, "good manners,"  they simply shot them.

And now another feature from our series of "How Certain Things Actually Began":

Men originally started recording "history" because they simply couldn't believe what was happening to them!

                 To be ordinary is to be combative, and to insist otherwise is to be super ordinary.

How People Intellectually, "Dine" In The City: They look around real quick and say, "I'll have whatever they're having."

J.

A Sports Update

A Sports Update Somewhere Beyond Athletics:

             When you can think with one eye closed and your arms tied behind your back

              it's hard to ever get yourself to take up the matter of consciousness.

For the "talent" portion of the competition, one man came out wearing a full‑skirted, lavender, off‑the‑shoulder gown, which, when the runway lights were lowered, became luminous, and around the hem revealed the message:  "I may be wrong, but I think I'm marvelous, and when you're as marvelous as I am how could you ever be wrong?"  The judges however disqualified him later in the "High Diving Humility Round."  He's threatening to sue.

Some foreign visitors on a "Mystical Tourist's Tour" stopped long enough for one of them to ask what this had to do with anything serious and meaningful?  And being uncertain thereof, another of them quickly made a snapshot of the whole episode to take back with them to study later. Which, based on the home folk's ultimate reaction to the photo's existence, and professed purpose, proved even more uncomfortable to the travelers than their original uncertainty.  "How true, how true, and now if you'll look out the port side of the boat, you'll notice again how difficult it is to make conclusive sense of the local terrain if your mind is otherworldly.  Oh yes, snacks will be served later."

A sane, stable mind is always super obsequious toward itself. 

It must be!  In case no one else is.

Every ordinary person who once rebelled was a potential mystic.  So what happened?

J.

The Mystic’s Motto

An ordinary mind's proper response to any transcendental ideas: "You don't impress me!"

(Same as a transcendental's toward the ordinary):  "Have you got that!?  Have you got that!?

 Are you listening to me!?"  Is this why adults holler at children? To be sure they're not listening?  "Are we talking about children?  Are we talking about actual children?"  Or are we discussing the nature of each person's normal mental growth, with at least a nodding‑hint toward what might be possible somewhere beyond?

                         The Mystic's Moto:

Only the yet‑to‑be

                         is of any interest to me.

                         Historical Footnote:  Once dead, a mystic is no longer a mystic. Something to do with the irrelevancy of the past?

The city street singer strummed his accordion, and began to moan, "Ohh, I was born under a bad sign."  And just then, local conditions passed by him and added, "And I am the bad sign."

 Another weird, unknown fact that's interestin’ to ponder: 

All rebels started off as really nice, friendly guys.

(See what's interestin' is to then reflect this back on the matter of your own original intellectual attitude as regards how everyone else's ultimately turned out to be.) 

You visiting veterinarians might care to note that this is precisely why mama cows are driven to continually warn their calves that,  "If you keep playing with that thing you're either gonna go blind, or else, maybe start thinking enough so's you'll begin to resemble humans!"  And consciousness sang to thinking: "Get along, little doggie, this sure ain't my home."

Sign on the out‑skirts of one planet: 

"Mystics Got A Bum Rap When People Began Associating Them In Their Minds With The Religious."  But it had to come down to this due to certain zoning restrictions.

J.

A Helpful Hint for Sleepers

A Helpful Hint For Sleepers From Your Mattress‑Packing Friends Here At New Intelligence:

If you try to awaken, and don't quite make it ‑‑ it can drive you crazy,

but if you never even try ‑‑ you'll be just fine. 

And local conditions said to the whole herd, "Go on, and roll over ‑‑ I can take you all on."  And by god it can!  If you continue to just lay there.

In the city, some people seem more important than others. They're not!

And that's why they want to seem to be.

(And consciousness had enough smarts not to ask thinking if it "got it," lest the question itself might jog the old darling into mucking about in fresh affairs into which it could bring nothing new and interesting.)

In a far away solar system, a priest and a mystic were talking, and the priest said: "It's just of late struck me that if everyone realized that everything other than eating and sleeping and screwing is just various forms of entertainment, we'd both be out of work."  And the mystic replied:  "Not only that, but we wouldn't be sitting here on this planet, able to talk about it."  And the priest both, "kinda‑got‑it," and kinda "didn't‑get‑it" ...'Bout like would be the case with most everyone else.

Definition time again:

History: Man's continuing attempt to justify what he presently is.

And just like everything else, singular to the life of man, it both,
"kinda‑works," and kinda doesn't.

Then over on a nearby world, one of their leading medical experts announced his conclusion that, "Most of the stress on this planet is caused by overly serious people."  And local conditions sent a shill to ask the doctor, "Don't you mean to say that stress in people may be caused by them being overly serious!?” And the researcher replied, "No, I said what I intended."  And the undercover agent muttered to him, "You better watch it!"

 J.

Creation Myth Update

Thinking was addressing a crowd of consciousness and declared, "It's hard to be humble when you're great and harder still to be great if you're humble." 

And some consciousness in the crowd called out, "Exactly what does that mean?" 

And thinking made a break for it.

Later, some blocks away, after it had caught its breath and was ordering a chili dog from a street vendor, thinking said,

"Sometimes it's dangerous tryin' to talk to aliens."

     One city philosopher, over coffee, so confided, "To everything in life, there seems to be a bad side, and a good side; a questionable side, and an honorable side, a shameful side, and an admirable side. And man has been given two eyes so that he can see the baleful ones twice as well.

     (Well, I said he was from the city!)

       How To Become A "Religious Prophet" In Two Easy Steps:

       first: Become a mystic,

       then second: Talk too much --  And there you are!

 Creation Myth Update:

One day when god came to the Garden to visit the special pair he'd put in charge, he suddenly stopped, jerked his head around and shouted, "Okay I heard that! You two ‑‑ outta here!" It's still not known exactly what they said ‑‑ but that seems to have been of little consequence (!?!)

J.

More About Maps

Since all maps are non-living sketches, the cartographer must be available to furnish the necessary breath-of-meaning, or else the maps become but additional markers in the graveyard of the lost.

The quicker and more explanatory is a map, the less is its attraction.  Little, fragmented,

piecemeal maps, apparently pointing to particular “problem areas,” are always the most welcome.

A more alert man would not have to carry about the worry beads to placate nervous movement. He knows where a better version lies in the skull.

The ordinary mind is made to be troubled.  Stilled waters are useless seas, and the only systems at rest are undertakers on strike.

During the past peace time of the Kingdoleum Empire there arose a certain military scholar.  He carefully studied the recorded and oral histories of all the world’s great battles, their generals, and their tactics.  His subsequent writings and explanations of warfare raised his fame therein to an unparalleled height, and the whole Empire recognized him as its greatest military theoretician.  The day came that the Northern Mongols declared war on the Empire and the emperor immediately placed the peoples’ defense in the hands of the military scholar.  A great army was raised, and the scholar, along with all his notes and knowledge, led the forces across the Dion Plains to confront the unruly Mongols.  Once over the Plains, the scholar rode up to the crest of the first mountain in the early morning astride his trusty steed, his notes and battle plans in hand, looking toward the opposing ridge where over the Mongols were soon expected to charge.  Suddenly, far in the distance, a rumbling sound was heard.  Dust began to rise over the opposing ridge, and as the mighty Mongol hordes began to crest the ridge, the scholar’s fine reputation was forever lost as he was heard to scream, “Ga-ad-damn, where the fuck did all those guys come from?”

J.

Just A Hobby

All forms of creation require the destruction of some other form, and the so-called evils of mortal life could be viewed as an intrinsic after-effect of the original creation.  (And This Thing might be seen as certain men’s attempt to reverse creation’s original destruction.)

The mind uses words so that the expectation of alternatives are offered, while the end result is just the opposite.

All news is bad news because it is from the past.  (Doesn’t that give anyone a hint?)

A hobby can never be a real hobby unless it’s just a hobby.

Once the tricks are exposed and the methods explained and a man begins to see, the aim of This Thing is no longer seen as the attempt to make a quickened person from a sleeping blob, but as an enterprise to produce an extended process from a limited system.

J.

Unfillable Prescriptions

The past is properly implanted in the lower levels of the nervous system, and ordinary games such as psychiatry will not be somehow allowed to do that which appears to be their aim, that is, undo a man’s past which would leave him blank.  A man’s thorny past and desperate memories are now him, and this growth process up the spine in time is not to somehow now be undone, or the man himself would become undone.

In the struggle to do This, anything you have already thought of is useless.

To have any real potential, a person must have had the inherent wiring potential to be everyone, that is, every mortal type of nervous system transformer.  These wiring possibilities must have been biologically and genetically conceivable, and one’s psychological environment must have been so that such unlimited potential was not destroyed.

Even among those passionately discussing their notions of This Thing, there is only a need for new, unfillable prescriptions, and no demand at all for a final cure.  (And you can quote me on that.)

No system, including man, can conceive of itself from its own level.  And no system can be both studied as a certain object, and as a continuing process.  (And the question of, “Which shall it be?” is not even available to those who have to ask.)

J.