JAN’S FRESH REAL NEWS
                                                 © 2001: JAN COX
                                            ***************************************
 
November 6, 2001.
 
 

At the routine level, the sanity of both individuals and civilizations
depends on them possessing a secure sense of continuity;
a firmly felt connection to the past;
an ever abiding history of themselves
which whispers its support for their present position.
 

When common people suffer common amnesia, their lives are destroyed;
ordinary consciousness becomes almost useless in an adult who suddenly
has no memory of their self, of the life they have experienced until now;
plainly put: a man with no history is not a complete man,
but in that the few are uncommon people with an uncommon aim,
the very things that underpin ordinary men’s ordinary concepts of life
and which keep them predictable, stable and sane
are the very things standing in the way to their goal.
 

Ordinary consciousness makes men place great importance on longevity & continuity;
the older an institution, ritual  or belief  --  the better;
the greater a sense of its unbroken practice and existence --  the better,
both traits also being (although consciousness does not say so)
supportive features to its own claim for legitimacy.
 

The result of this is clearly exemplified viz:
the more ancient is a religion or philosophy, the more credible it seems;
same with nations, dynasties & mythologies of all other stripes & flowers,
(hummed generally to this tune):
“If something has survived long enough to be this old --
there must be something to it.”
Without question, such integrally helps hold together all civilizations & cultures,
and likewise is essential to holding together that civilized packet of individual energy known as a man’s --  personality,
his über-body, consciousness-derived --  self.
A man “knows” that he is himself each day based on his memory of being this same, “self” --  yesterday and every day before that:
                               (“Hey, there’s gotta be something to it!  Right?!”)
 
 

Consciousness’ most important tool --  thought,
would be fatally crippled without memory;
lacking it, man would, every day, have to reinvent everything from scratch;
without a stable sense of continuity and awareness of the past,
men would go to bed each night civilized, and awaken as savages,
plus their sensation of having an inner permanent self would disintegrate.
 

All of the above is merely mapping of the common terrain,
what is of interest to the specialized cataloguists is, (as always),
the uncommon aspects of the inner landscape, areas not normally plotted nor visited.
The few with that certain-itch hunger for a more expansive,
a more revealing, informative & explanatory mental picture of life 
than life normally provides to mere day trippers;
they want to understand all that can be understood –
not have their consciousness’ innate opinions & beliefs either
reinforced or denied, but to learn the actual, Big Secret (if there be one).
What they want, whether they realize it or not,
is to have their head cleaned out so their eyes can see,
but in the struggle to this end, they too in the beginning operate under the dominion of ordinary consciousness’ perception of longevity & continuity being of
unquestioned significance.
This results in the few-with-the-hunger being initially & inescapably drawn to
so called, Schools which promise to feed their need and whose credentials are the fact that there have been people pursuing their methods for x number of generations,
with their present wise-men-instructors being part of an unbroken line going
all the way back to its usually-considered, semi divine, or irrationally revered founder.
This has an undeniable attraction over an organization that was started last summer by some guy still alive, and in truth is of no particular consequence  --  unless  --
                                    you get stuck at this unavoidable entry point.

To even feel that you have gotten minimally started on
the great search for the great secret
everyone initially, (at least in their mind), aligns themselves with some named School which is identified historically with the search;
due to the serial nature of ordinary consciousness,
it is not possible not to go through this process;
                    but processes are processes and results, something else entirely.
 

Anyone --  even amongst the few  --  who feels a continuity, a connection to the past through their allegiance to some School & its practices
 
                                           will never reach the end.

A man who finally gets-to-the-bottom-of-it-all
turns out to have no connection to anything discernable that has gone before;
no allegiance to any past person;
no devotion to any previous ideas,
and no faith --  nor interest in what his old time consciousness will
forever reminisce about and speak of as though it were, and remains to this day --  him.
 
 

                                                                      J