The Double–I Alliance
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Summary = See Below
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Transcript = See Below
Summary
Tape 128, Oct 11, 1984, runtime 1:41
Notes by TK
The “double-I alliance” (I & it)–Example of two men tasting a casserole: “this casserole has no taste” and other says “I must be getting a cold, I’ve lost my sense of taste”. To ordinary consciousness, both can’t be true. Consciousness takes casserole as objective thing possessing qualities in first case, or in 2nd statement as subjective quality truth. Division into objective and subjective either overtly or implicitly in ordinary operations in Life, but neither exists independently. No way to be “I” without existence of “it”.
The double-I alliance. The thing-in-itself if it existed, would be un-experiencable due to its incommensur-ability. Apparent objects give a sensation of motion to “I”; make energy exchange possible: separates and defines I. If there is no out there, there can also be no “in here” either. This is the basis of all conflict: subject/object division.
“We’re not dealing with the disease, we’re just treating the symptoms”. Tacit understanding we’ll never get anywhere in such activity. Seeking to treat the cause, when everything is a symptom. Growth = symptoms. Any change = symptom. Only the dead have no symptoms. Relates to why consciousness is so drawn to the past, to history: it’s safe, dead,symptomless. Yet when the problem to be cured is supposedly identified, it is really just another symptom. Being alive is a symptom. The Few of This Thing can’t be their symptoms.
All growth is controversial. All departure is controversial. E.g., departure from the “symptom center” –your grid location. With blood kin you should cover your tracks in this. Avoid all controversy. The voices as controversy.
Heating/cooling and the E-C gate. Heat as external input, always, to your system–as seen by line-level consciousness except for the moments you have of This Thing, when you can find no external source. Neuralize that this is mathematically, scientifically impossible. In sexual relationship one partner is cooler, the other hotter. Music concert can be for heating or cooling for either audience or performer.
“Life doesn’t know where it came from “–but humans do?
Excursion
Neuralize what other transfers of energy you can come up with (other than heat, pressure, light etc.)
Transcript
THE DOUBLE-I ALLIANCE
Document: 128, October 11, 1984
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1984
The time will come when you will See something new. Not spirits, nothing mystical at least by the ordinary definition of mystical. You will simply See what is going on in a way that would never have been available to Line-level consciousness and you will have the feeling that, “Hey, he said that six months ago. I feel like he said it ten times and I never heard it.” I caution you not to get bogged down with any passing belief that I am simply, continually rehashing and renaming the same material. It’s all multidimensional layers: it seems as through I spread on another layer of description, but at the same time I strip another layer from your ordinary “I” sight.
Here is a slightly different version of what goes on in a certain ordinarily unrecognized relationship. A man bites into a casserole and proclaims that it has no taste. Or a man bites into a casserole, thinks to himself that it has no taste, but knowing that he has a cold, states that it is he who has lost his sense of taste, not the casserole. Line-level consciousness does not See a certain, peculiar, sustaining nexus that I am temporarily calling “the Double-I Alliance” — the double I’s in this case being I and the casserole. And I am, of course, not talking about casseroles.
Line-level consciousness cannot See that neither the statement, “the casserole has no taste,” nor the statement, “I have no taste” can be true by itself. Line-level consciousness operates on the unseen basis that either of those two statements could be true in and of itself and it is how consciousness regards everything from casserole-tasting to relationships between people. But it is a fallacious assumption. Neither statement lives by itself. Neither is a complete statement of reality.
I’m pointing to an inseparable dance. There is no such thing as a casserole sitting on a counter having taste. A casserole cannot have taste without a human to taste it and, by the same token, a human cannot have a sense of taste unless there is something to taste.
Take it further by Neuralizing the concept of objective versus subjective observations, that an objective conception as opposed to a merely subjective interpretation is possible. The man stating that the casserole has no taste might say that he has made an objective statement. “I’m telling you, the casserole is sans flavor.” On the other hand, if the person seemed to take responsibility for the tasteless casserole, “I’ve had a strep throat for the last few days and my sense of taste is gone,” he will believe that he has made a subjective statement. But consciousness can’t see, again, that neither the objective nor the subjective statement can stand alone; they are part of an inseparable whole; an unseen alliance exists between them.
If we take it beyond casseroles, I can point out an area that is a bit more complex. But it is the same thing. Take an ordinary person’s apparent relationship and attitude toward, instead of a casserole, another human being. One man says, “yes, I know Fred. He’s a liar and a thief.” And he would believe that he’s made an objective comment. But if the same man could take this same expressed opinion, “John Smith has no chance of winning the election,” he would say that the statement was just his subjective feeling.
Get ready to expand this picturization. I could also turn the example around to where our man would start out believing that his comment was definitely subjective. But if you insisted that he align himself with either the objective or subjective camp, he turns his own comment into an objective statement. “I’m telling you the guy has no chance of getting elected, but I don’t care who wins so it’s not a subjective opinion.”
I am calling this alliance between subjective and objective, between casserole and taste, the “Double-I Alliance”. There is “I” and there is “it”. There is a thing, be it casserole, a stranger on the street or your sexual partner, and there is “I”. This “Double-I Alliance” is not simply a redoing of the equation I + Not-I = Everything, although it is a variation. But I want you to use this new picture to look at the indivisible, though invisible relationship of everything to everything else in a slightly different way.
There is another level to this, which I’m simply mentioning for the time being. You should Neuralize that there is no such thing as a noun, “casserole.” Unless you eat it, it is not a casserole. And when you eat it, it’s certainly not a noun.
I want you to Neuralize that although the word objective may not pass through human lips out on the streets each and every day, I am simply mapping out for you something that is so pervasive it’s almost invisible. People operate on the basis that there is a distinct division between objective and subjective observations. They use the word subjective to describe something someone has a personal feeling for, whereas by definition, to be objective is to be freed from personal feelings or attitudes. But the act of defining itself requires, at the very least, the participation of what people call “self-consciousness”; the participation of personal opinions and attitudes. Without such involvement the word objective, or any word, would have no definition. Without it’s own definition, “objective” could mean a table, a feeling, a car, a dog, or a color. There is no such thing as objectivity and there is no such thing as subjectivity apart from each other.
I assume all of you are familiar with the famous old conundrum, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” That was a fair attempt on someone’s part to pose the question of whether the observation can exist apart from the observer and I’m telling you neither one can exist alone.
Line-level consciousness operates on the basis that there is “I” and then there is “out there”. And out there is where the “it” lives: the sounds, the tastes, the actions, the attitudes, the opinions, etc. “I am inside my skeletal framework. I am “I” and I can clearly distinguish all the “its” out there, apart from me.” That is, the casserole has the attributes of either taste or tastelessness and these attributes are in some way separate from one’s sense of taste. And that is what people mean when they use the word objective. They mean that the thing under their observation has attributes or lack of same — which is of course an attribute — which exist apart from their participation, their consciousness of the thing. And it is a physical impossibility. And conversely, there is no way to be subjective, as Line-level consciousness would put it, without there being an object. There is no way to be “I” without having an “it”. And if there is indeed such a separation between I and it, the two could never meet. I could never participate in it.
As always, I don’t bring these things up to point out the folly of ordinary humanity. As always, everything that exists does so for a purpose. And part of Seeing the reality to something is Seeing the purpose it serves in the body of Life. And in this case, look at the exchange made possible by this distinction between “I” and “it”. It is an exchange that endows Life with an apparent movement. If indeed any one thing could exist objectively, if there were a self-contained something, anything that could truly be described as objective, there would be no exchange possible. If indeed there were a something from which I was truly separate you couldn’t see it; you couldn’t taste it; hear it; smell it. You would have no way of knowing its existence. You would never be aware of it. And you should not limit this to my example of the casserole and taste. There is a continuing exchange between taste and casserole, between subjective and objective, between that which seems to be “I” and that which seems to be “it” — which is everything that does not seem to be “I” — and the exchange itself gives the appearance of motion.
This exchange also gives a kind of unanalyzed, undescribed validity to the notion of “I”. If you give it your best effort and try to Remember to maintain an unspoken awareness of what is going on in your circuitry, you will discover that all day you do “the casserole and the taste”. You are continually saying, “The casserole has no taste.” It occurs not only at the Yellow Circuit level, but also in the area that never reaches verbalization, the Red Circuit level. You may do it overtly or you may be simply entertaining the surface voice noises inside of you, i.e., “talking to yourself”. But in either case you continually say, “the casserole has no taste. I don’t like that. I don’t approve of this.” You are giving voice to one negative reaction after another.
And it occurs on a level that you would never, ever ordinarily notice, unless I suddenly leaped into your consciousness from behind a closed door and made you See it. At times you comment on things as if from an objective viewpoint and at times you comment as if from a subjective stance. But then a subtle shift occurs and you put the two statements together to form what seems to be a singular entity: either the casserole doesn’t taste good or “could it be me?” It is a particularly sticky phenomenon to you people because it ofttimes passes as superior consciousness. “Perhaps it is just my opinion…Who am I to judge…I should watch myself and not just react because all that is the subjective voice in me.” On the surface it sounds like real progress. It just smacks of extraordinary self knowledge.
Except for the fact that none of it matters. The recognition of your apparently subjective opinions does not matter, because you can’t have one — subjectivity — without the other — objectivity. If you leave it at, “I can notice now when I’m being subjective and just being my old self. I’m not really commenting on the casserole or the candidate, I’m simply giving my useless opinion”, you haven’t really done anything. You cannot leave it at believing, “We would all be better off if people could recognize the difference between their opinion and the facts.” At Line-level consciousness there is no difference between objective fact and subjective opinion. That is why the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” cannot ordinarily be answered.
It is a great question. It’s so slick nobody can answer it because they look at it as being a matter of distinction between “I” and “it”; they look at it as being the objective versus the subjective. As far as anyone knows, when a tree falls it makes noise; that is an “objective” fact. But what this riddle poses is if there is no I to hear, if there is no subjective aspect present, would there still be noise? The question can’t be answered because it is fallacious to start with — neither can exist by itself. If we’re going to look at noise as being objective, there is no such thing as a noiseless tree nor is there any such thing as a noisy tree. Scientific reality would have it that the noise of a falling tree is objective. But what if the only person there when it falls, is deaf? It’s all subjective. But I’m telling you again neither of those two alternatives can stand alone.
The world’s greatest chef could prepare a casserole and set it on the table; but it is still fallacious to say that the casserole has a taste, be it good, bad or indifferent. It is further fallacy to taste the casserole and operate on the basis that you are making an objective observation when you comment that the casserole does not taste right: Fred does not live up to my expectations. To operate on that basis is to continually render yourself incapable of Seeing that there is no “out there”. And in line with our current considerations, if there is no “out there”, then there is no “in here”! (In here being inside a man’s circuitry).
For there to be an equation, for the equation to equal anything, you have to have both the casserole and an “I” to taste it. You can’t have just one; if you have anything, you’ve got to have both. Yet Line-level consciousness does not and cannot operate on that basis. And mercifully so. Can you See that without this dance, this Double-I Alliance, everything would simply stop.
There must be an “out there” and there must be an “in here”: there must be things and phenomena that exist in a describable, recognizable state and there must be consciousness’ subjective response to them in order for Line-level consciousness to function as it should. There is simply no sense of taste without something to taste; there is no hearing without something to hear.
It all produces a sensation of momentum, a feeling that “something is happening”. And part of the sensation of “something happening” is external conflict. “There is objectivity and there is subjectivity. I can’t promise that my reactions to people and to what occurs in Life aren’t subjective, but on the other hand I can make objective statements. I know right from wrong.” But both statements are held in an unanalyzed, unrecognized nexus and neither can be true by itself. Neuralize this exchange and its resultant appearance of movement with the transfer/exchange of heat in Life’s body. There is a connection and you should See something from Neuralizing that connection.
Moving from casseroles into the wonderful world of human relations. You will discover that this shift from apparent objectivity to apparent subjectivity is the unrecognized operational basis of human interaction. Line-level consciousness operates on the basis that it is either doing something in a subjective manner or in an objective manner. Your attitudes, opinions, what you believe to be facts, your reactions, everything you take to be consciousness itself operates on the basis that there is an absolute, distinguishable line between subjective and objective. And there is not. It is absolutely, mathematically impossible for them to exist separately. Subjective and objective could not be pried apart if you had the world’s largest crowbar. If you had the greatest solvent in the world you could not unstick the two because they’re the same thing.
Life continually speaks and monitors its growth through Man. You should listen to Life. That is, listen to what comes from the mouths of humans in your own continual quest to See what’s afoot here as well as to produce fodder for your own growth. And Life now has Man talking about symptoms versus causes. The most common visible manifestation now concerns the treatment of social ills, such as alcoholism or what to do with the criminal element of society. One group of people will, for instance, advocate a new set of penal reforms. They say that punishment for criminal behavior is not enough; that convicted criminals should undergo psychiatric treatment as well as imprisonment, “Otherwise, we’re just treating the symptom rather than dealing with the cause of the problem.” And the phrase strikes a sympathetic vibration in the nervous system. “We can’t continue to treat the symptoms. We can’t just slap higher penalties on drunk drivers. That won’t stop the problem. We have to get to the root of the problem. We’ve got to find the cause.”
Can anyone begin to See that all of Line level existence is “treatment of the symptoms”? Can any of you begin to get glimpses of the fact that ordinary consciousness will never find “the problem”? I’m talking beyond sociological phenomena now. You can see, in what Man talks about, the direction of Life’s movement. But things are not going anywhere in the way people ordinarily believe. Man is not about to uncover a cure for being ordinary. At that level, everything is the treatment of symptoms.
I can give you more symptoms for your Neuralization. Growth equals symptoms. Any change equals symptoms. In fact, Life = symptoms and by death I’m not referring simply to dead people, but to that which has no potential for growth. Understand, too, that I am using the word symptoms in the sense that they represent a seemingly negative aspect of something.
As long as the Yellow Circuit has been activated in Man, people have always been concerned with treatment of those who are socially disruptive. And no matter what suggestions surface the feeling remains, “We’re not really getting to the root of the problem. All we’re doing is trying to deal with an endless flow of symptoms.”
And it couldn’t be more true, although those who are driven to say it never understand its truth. “It is an almost endless stream of symptoms and all we keep doing is trying to catch up with the symptoms.” But please note that no one ever says, no one can say, “What is the problem? Just name the problem and we’ll have this mess cleared up in a jiffy.” They didn’t do it in 500 B.C. and they don’t do it today. Because ordinary consciousness can’t see the problem.
People do attempt to point out “the” problem. They proclaim that the problem behind crime is poverty. But what they’ve named is not the problem. They’ve only described another symptom. Anything Line-level consciousness can name will be only another symptom, because everything consciousness looks at appears to be a symptom of something else.
Why does no one notice this? What possible need is served in Life for the majority of humanity to be led to believe that it is the problem that must be treated, yet no one can find the problem? And further, no one notices that they can’t find the problem.
Can you See that prior to your real entry into This Thing, all attempts to help yourself, to analyze yourself, to be objective about your shortcomings, were a treating of the symptoms?
Everything is arranged so that nothing too much out of the ordinary will happen. The grid connecting everyone and everything will not tolerate abrupt breaks. It will not allow anyone to routinely run up against the problem. It will not allow for cures. But it does allow awareness that there is a problem.
I suggest to you the possibility that no one ever finds the problem because the symptom is the problem and Line-level consciousness cannot see it because it is confined to the attempt to do the very thing that it says is ultimately fruitless — treat the symptom. At the ordinary level, people discuss symptom after symptom and cry out, “When are we going to make any progress?” And, can you See, that may well be the progress.
Let me caution you again that I’m not pointing out the flaws and follies of ordinary consciousness. It is rather a way of showing you how beautifully, how intricately complex and how ultimately simple Life and you are. Because remember, there is no out there. And if there is no out there, there is no in here.
The symptoms are the problem. The problems are the symptoms and Line-level consciousness is not made to deal with anything but the symptoms. From the beginning of your involvement here, I told you that I did not want to hear about what you call your problems. And now I’m telling you again that you have to ignore them as well. I also warn you not to assume that hearing This will alleviate some of your symptoms. It may do away with them, but it’s not going to help them, which is not the same thing.
This Thing does not cure symptoms. To say you’ve got symptoms is to say nothing; to say you’ve got symptoms is to say, “I’m alive and talking.” Anyone who is alive can talk and anyone who’s alive has symptoms. Everything you call a symptom is a part of being alive.
And you make a mistake to lend an ear to even the feeling that you still have symptoms. Just because I’ve told you not to talk about them, just because I don’t ask you about them, doesn’t make them go away. But, you will begin to See for yourself, that suffering is just part of the nervous system equipment and it’s meaningless. It’s a part of the tension that holds everything together at the Line.
Some of you still seriously entertain voices that say you have some real symptoms. Symptoms that must be dealt with and you could move at a much faster pace in This Thing if you could get rid of those symptoms. I’ll tell you again, being alive is a symptom, but you cannot take that as an excuse. You can’t be the symptoms and you can’t continue to believe that symptoms can be dealt with. That is Line-level consciousness. And that’s all it is.
If it were possible to remove all of ordinary Man’s symptoms, you would kill him. There is no separation between what people call themselves and their symptoms.
All change is controversial. All growth is controversial. If anything leaves a wake, it is controversial. If you leave your established alignment with the D Force camp, it’s controversial and it is super-controversial if you ever leave “the symptom center”, because everyone, and I don’t mean everyone out there in the “it” world of the Double Alliance, but everyone in the world of “I” will want to know why you didn’t show up for treatment.
There is no way to depart, even in the most subtle of ways without creating controversy. And to be involved with This Thing is to be involved with a kind of departure from the “you” of Line-level consciousness. Your blood kin will be the most sensitive to this, and I remind you that the more you begin to Understand this, the more you can cover the wake. You should never draw attention to yourself in Life by your involvement in This. Simply act in such a way that you create as little controversy as possible.
By leaving, I’m not talking only about friendships and marriages dissolving. I’m speaking now of actually leaving the grid position you were born into. When you no longer occupy the same old position, when the mechanical grid connection between you and your parents, or between you and somebody you have lived with for years is loosened, controversy is created. And it does .panot exist in external relationships; the controversy rages inside you as well.
When you begin to abandon your internal symptom center, it creates an internal controversy; freedom from suffering gives rise to another kind of suffering. “Ooh…this feels strange. I’m about to fly apart. I’m going to be in worse shape than I ever was.” Or, “How dare I feel so good for no reason? It’s just not right. I feel kind of nondescript.” What can I tell you except that you’re alive. And these voices are no more worthy of your attention than any other.
I want to expand on the picture I gave you of things either being heated up or cooled down. This description is not exactly the same as my maps of the need for a system to be excited or calmed or the general workings of the E/C Gate inside Man, although it’s not absolutely separate either. But I want to get you to look at things in a slightly different fashion.
Taken the way it appears to Line-level consciousness, the heating up process would always necessitate an external source of heat. Such as, “I was minding my own business and opening the mail and there was another bill from that magazine company and their computer. I’ve written them four times, sent them copies of cancelled checks twice…” There appears to be an external cause for your heat.
Forget for the time being what I have been saying about my earlier descriptions of the Double-I Alliance, of there being no division between “out there” and “in here”, subjective and objective. I simply want you to See that by all general accounts of Line-level consciousness, the heating up of “you” can always be traced to an external source. That’s just the way it is. It’s not mass hysteria; it simply is, because at the ordinary level, who’s going to heat themselves up? Who’s going to get up in the morning and say, “Well, I don’t feel very good. I think I’ll send myself a bill I don’t owe and I’ll play like I didn’t know I sent it.” If heat is to be applied ordinarily, if you are to be heated up, there will always be a source that is obviously not you.
What I want you to Neuralize is that there is no identifiable external source for the heat of This Thing. Those moments of heat, those experiences of being and Seeing more than you are, are not attributable to an external source. If you were to put words on them you might say, “Suddenly I was just overcome. I just had more energy. There is another level of consciousness; of being alive and I know what it is; I’ve had it and it’s not just talk.” But note, that is a heating up of a very particular kind and it is a heating up for which you can identify no external source.
Neuralize: “How is it so obvious that everything else that apparently heats me and everybody else — still forgetting anything about subjectivity, etc. — has an external, identifiable cause? For me to get heated up something in the “it” world of “not-I” must happen. Yet there is one exception which only a few people ever experience. I can get heated up and it happens with no external source.” You should find it scientifically, mathematically, very Neuralizable. If everything is a heat transfer, how is it…
And a final scientific comment. There is an idea floating around in modern physics and the gist of it is, light does not know its source. Light does not know where it came from. Can you See any possible pertinence to my bringing this idea up?
“Yes, I’m a solid citizen.” “No, I resent that, I’m a decent sort.” “Now that you mention it, I guess I do have a bad temper, so what? That’s just the kind of guy I am.” “You’re trying to tell me that something as basic as light doesn’t know where it came from? Thank goodness I’m superior to light. I know where I came from. Born in the U.S.A. Raised a reformed Buddhist, proud of it. And don’t take any garbage off anybody. And you say that light doesn’t know where it comes from. Well, shows you the importance of the scientific world doesn’t it?”
Makes you glad that we’re all real people and we don’t have any interest in things like light and matter and nervous systems or consciousness….