Trusting Yourself, and Stratographing
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Summary
Jan Cox Talk 140, Jan 10, 1985, runtime 1:40
Notes by TK
Trusting yourself. Line-level consciousness cannot be trusted. Only above the line can you trust yourself. The great dictum of “Know Thyself” applies to another, higher level–an injunction of a higher order.
Nobody can forgive you. The function of religion is to provide comfort thru forgiveness, but it is all an illusion once you taste higher reality.
Must not scoff, criticize or ridicule any manifestation of Life’s growth attempts, which must necessarily include the 0 force/recoiling mode. The isolated individual instances of obvious 0 (i.e. fatal) events are not a statement of the overall expansion of Life. To see this provides an “astounding breathing room”: relief from your own recoiling mode. The right angle surprise: Life at its own level is not more infallible or contradictory than you are.
The grid itself has its own electromagnetic field, which pulls consciousness back to its lowest value/mode; pulls everything back into shape. Drunk becoming teetotaler = no real change, no change of charge–still traveling down the same street but now in opposite direction. Need to explore streets across town. Notice that everyone’s eyes are trapped into a horizontal mode of movement (esp. when hesitant or uncertain of response). Notice that your own general awareness hardly ever goes above eye level, that you hardly ever look up.
Neuralizing: two levels of: 1st could be called “method”, 2nd, “condition” or “state” of actuality. 1st level: to remember something without thinking about it. 2nd level: being consciousness of anything without remembering it. You are remembering something at every instant–only ordinary way to function deals with memory. 2nd level of neuralizing is extraordinary, beyond memory: being consciousness without judgment or comparison.
New term: Stratigraph (stratum = artificial layer) associated with the 2nd level of Neuralizing. It relates to actual use/creation of the right angle surprise or triaxial corridor. Like seeing on your own the reality of Life growing. Going from binary level to the triaxial perception. Discovery that allegory is physical fact–a direct self-statement of truth.
In ordinary perception those of This Thing are seen as “shallow”. This is absolutely true compared to the incredible complexity of the mechanical. Beyond complexity, beyond sophistication = shallow. Out of touch with conflict and complexity.
“It takes all kinds or there wouldn’t be all kinds.” The Few are all kinds. Shallow. There is a continual fascination at ordinary level with the themes of destruction: e.g. the history of military warfare. Deep seated longing for direct excitement and simplicity. The activity of higher circuits apparently meeting with disaster and throwback to the more primitive mode (e.g. survivors of nuclear war living in caves).
Death as a drastic recycling of energy. Immediate and total.
Excursion
Look up. Ongoing TASK: Make conscious effort to look up as much as possible. The physical, literal act of looking up is part of what goes along with activities of higher circuit, expansion of consciousness.
There is a way to “run” the blue circuit–engage yourself in a dramatic act. e.g. “My GOD what a BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!” to those standing around a bus stop on a rainy day. Exaggerate and be expansive, disregard “you crazy fool!” looks. Works in same way as running to get rid of the blues.
2nd task: 3 times do a dramatic act which makes other circuits uneasy or upset.
TRUSTING YOURSELF AND STRATOGRAPHING
Document: 140, January 10, 1985
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1985
In the beginning, the idea of trusting oneself can appear to be a very simple matter. If you randomly asked people whether or not they trusted themselves, you would get various answers. And if you could objectively ask yourself, your response would vary, depending on the weather, how hungry you are, whether you’re hung over, whether you temporarily have the blues. But I assume that all of you suspect that I refer to something a little deeper than such variables.
Line-level consciousness is constructed to take the question as being a valid one, and it will respond with what it considers to be a quite real answer. Someone might say, “Yes. I trust myself. I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs, and I live a sedate life. I know who I am.” While someone else may say, “No. I don’t trust myself and that’s why I’ve been in analysis for the last fifteen years.” As disparate as those answers may sound, they both fall within the same category because at Line level, people cannot be trusted.
We’re back to the problem of words turning on themselves, because, in a sense, people can be trusted. I know exactly what someone living at Line level will do. I know how far people can be trusted. It’s not simply a magic trick that only I can perform. It’s a matter of Seeing what people are, understanding the nature of ordinary consciousness.
To a certain degree, all of you still operate within the same parameters as ordinary people; you feel as though there are times that you do trust yourself, and then there are times you’d say you don’t. But the fact is that there is only one place where anyone is trustworthy. It is only above the common level of the Line that you can trust yourself.
All of you have some knowledge of the great, eternal, historical dictum “Know thyself”, and I have even made reference to it. By now you should have a suspicion that the dictum operates on another level. Knowing thyself is not saying, “Yes. I know myself. I know at times I can be irrationally mad, and at times, I can be greedy.” Making such statements does not demonstrate knowledge of oneself, because a person in that position still takes it all seriously. He still takes his faults — that is, the structure of the system at Line level, as being himself.
To “know thyself” is to be able to trust thyself. You know what your warts really are. You know that at Line level you are wired up to experience greed, anger, and everything else considered to be a negative attribute of humanity. And the only way you can know this is to have some knowledge of yourself from a higher viewpoint.
The part of you above Line level is the only part of you that is now stable. Producing your own growth into this area is the reality of a virgin birth. It is you giving birth to something else; it is Life growing in you, beyond you, to a place that was not wired for activation. It is a place not required for ordinary existence, and it is only in that one place that you are not subject to the swings and shifts, the tension of the Line. It is the only place something doesn’t become its own opposite, where one moment’s love doesn’t become the murderous urge to kill. I also suggest to you that it is only in that one place that it is possible to be a Real Jew, or a Real Buddhist, or a Real Christian. It is only above Line-level consciousness that you can say, “It wouldn’t matter if my neighbor insulted me. You can depend on me to be a good Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist,” if indeed you found it necessary to say anything.
I’ve never encouraged any of you to consider me as your personal, living hero. And I still don’t. But let me ask you this: where would any of you be if I took “you” personally, if I did not Understand that at Line level no one can be trusted? Where would any of This be if we could not trust me?
There is a kind of stability available to those who seriously pursue This Thing, and it cannot be faked. There is no way to tell yourself, “Up until now, I am sure I have been as dependable and trustworthy as anyone.” What you’re saying is, “I am dependable if you don’t push me.” As long as you allow room for conditions, you cannot trust yourself. And you can’t immediately go from Line-level consciousness to the area wherein you can trust yourself completely, just by deciding to be trustworthy. You can’t fake it.
I am not here to preach you a sermon, to induce a gnashing of teeth session about how miserable you all are. That’s what happens in ordinary life. Preachers wave holy books, pace the stage and attack the crowd: “You people are no good. You can’t be trusted. How in the world can the gods trust you?” And the crowd goes, “Hear, hear.” Whereupon he proclaims them all forgiven, and sends them home with the admonition to do better. But at Line level people can’t do better, because people are already doing as good as they’re supposed to. But if you’re seriously involved with This Thing, you do begin to become trustworthy, and you can be held accountable for your acts. You reach a point where it is no longer acceptable to say, “I slipped up and behaved in an ordinary manner. Surely, I should be forgiven. Surely, I should be excused.” The question is, forgiven by whom? Who is going to forgive you?
It is built into man’s ordinary machinery to seek forgiveness. You can see it all the way down your nervous system. The confessional is an excellent example; though your own Neuralization should take you further. But it’s a shining example and reflection of the urge for external forgiveness: you spill your sins to someone who has some connection to the gods, and they forgive you. It has a real effect, or it wouldn’t exist. And it’s not a psychological effect. Look to yourself; look in yourself; it’s the structure of the system to seek external forgiveness, external approval, external reassurance.
Once you peer above the Line, once you have any taste for what it means to be above the ordinary limits of “you”, there is .panobody to forgive you. And once you have tasted enough of consciousness above Line level, you can’t be forgiven.
That’s not to say that once you get yourself above the Line, any slip will spell eternal doom. It’s not as simple a matter as there being an identifiable, irrevocable, “unforgivable sin”. There is something that comes close, something I could identify as being unforgivable for the Few of This Thing. It would be for you to deny your own Understanding; to experience the reality that lives above the Line, and then deny it by your behavior. There is truly nobody to forgive you.
To expect me to forgive you is to fall back to the level of your Life-produced consciousness. You’re the “you” you were before you approached This Thing. By your own efforts, you no longer have any god to forgive you. And it was you who did it. You didn’t reach the age of responsibility when you turned twenty one, because people at the ordinary level are never responsible; but once you have Seen something, you do reach the age of responsibility. And there’s nobody to forgive you for anything. There is no way to backtrack.
I have pointed out to you that it is not allowable for a person involved with This Thing to seriously entertain the inner voices that resist, ridicule, or scoff at Life’s attempts to expand, no matter what form those attempts take. And I’ve told you that in resisting those voices, you would experience a kind of reverence, a knowledge of the sacredness of all of Life. You’d know what it is to be a living saint. But in a less poetic manner, let me point out to you that the experience also gives you a new, astounding kind of breathing room.
Many of you have already had tastes similar to this, but I’m speaking in a different context now. The running static of the wiring system — whether the voices seem loud, whether they seem quiet, whether they speak to you actively, or whether they’re a low-level background noise, and of course, no matter what they say — is constant resistance.
I chose the word “ridicule” quite specifically. At Line level, you see only those aspects of Life’s expansion which appear to be primarily negative, recoiling, or D-based. If you could completely isolate one instance, which is what Line-level consciousness does, it could well appear to be pure “D” in action. And so it seems quite proper to attack it, or to laugh at it.
For example: you hear of one person killing another, or one country attacking another country. And if that were indeed the total statement of reality, if Life suddenly said, “Hey, I like that! I’ve been pretty nice up until now, but I’m getting pissed. I don’t like those people so let’s kill them off.” That would be real evil. Life would be killing itself. The one instance of someone killing another, or even one country attacking another, may in and of itself, appear self-defeating. But that one isolated instance is not a fair statement of what Life is doing, even from the horizontal, historical perspective.
On the surface it continually appears that humanity is on the verge of massive catastrophe: there are world wars, the threat of nuclear holocaust, and the periodically rising and ebbing fear that humanity is going to pollute the planet to such a degree that all life will die. But things will only reach a certain point and Life stabilizes itself. It’s as though Life says, “I haven’t been feeling too well lately; I’ve been drinking too much. Time to cut down.” Life’s movement is always directed toward positive growth, not self-destruction.
I understand that it takes a while to see this. When people first hear it, they take it as a justification for what seems to be evil forces at work in the world. Or, they may have voices in them that believe I’m setting forth my personal optimistic opinion: “Listen, it doesn’t matter if it’s the worst thing you’ve ever heard of. It’s all alright.” It’s not a matter of everything being either alright, or not alright. It’s a matter of seeing that nothing goes in a straight line. There cannot be growth without destruction. The new can’t be built until the old is torn down. The destruction might take years; it might take a century. And in fact, the destruction may never reach a final, definable point of completion. It’s like the revitalization of a building. They may tear it down to the girders, but before it is totally destroyed, they start building a new, internal structure. It’s a matter of being able to See Life-in-progress, Life in it’s process of multidimensional growth. Life doesn’t go in one direction, no matter how it may appear to you. Life can’t go in one direction. Except for the fact that Life, in its own way, is no more perfect, no more trustworthy than you are.
Resistance of your own internal, critical static gives you a kind of breathing room. And it is a taste you will never forget. You may fall back into being a partial critic at times, but you will never forget the taste of being able to resist and rise above your own recoiling voices. I hesitate to say any more about this specifically, because what you See is what you See. And if I suggest what you might See, you might See less. But it is a truly astounding, and yes, even mystical experience. Time seems to stop. The criticism was on your tongue; you resisted it, and it’s as though you took a sharp, right-angle turn through what you’d always thought was a wall. It opens up whole vistas and possibilities you never knew were there. You can suddenly swallow an Understanding that verbally may have almost no connection with what you thought you were about to condemn. Among other things, that should also spur you to note the fallacy of the Yellow Circuit when it says, “Well, this is this and that is that and there’s no connection. You can’t get there from here.” Contraire. You can get there from here, but it all lies in a direction you never knew existed.
To speak of the grid itself is to speak of something that is alive. It’s not limited to the two dimensions of a piece of paper. You can rightly picture all of humanity living on this Grid of interconnected points, with each person occupying an intersecting point of the graph lines. It’s the truest representation possible with pen and paper. But even so, it’s dimensionally limited. Ultimately everything is connected in this Grid.
If none of you have ever Neuralized it in this particular way, let me point out: the Grid itself has an electromagnetic field. The whole, perceivable environ within which humanity lives has its own electromagnetic field.
One of the most observable and pertinent manifestations of this is that the electromagnetic field is what pulls consciousness back, and keeps it at the lowest possible level, which is the proper level of humanity as a whole. Taking into account the fact that there are slight variations in the level of consciousness from one society to another, it is the magnetic force field of the Grid that establishes and maintains the level of consciousness.
Everyone has a particular charge within the grid, within its magnetic field. And your efforts in This effect, rather than a “personality change”, is an alteration in the general charge that is you. I’m not going to tell you anything more specifically in words. It’s not simply a matter of Fred being a positive charge and Mary being a negative one, and Jethro being three quarters positive and one quarter negative. It’s not that simple, unless you See it. And then, of course, it is. But there is a charge; there is a specific way in which your awareness, what seems to be “you” at Line level, is always pulled back to the current operational level of humanity.
When I say that consciousness is pulled by the magnetic field of the Grid itself, I’m not talking philosophically. It is a physical force field and it manifests itself in the fact that, at the ordinary level, change is almost impossible. All you have to do to See it, to feel it, is to try to change the most mundane aspect of your ordinary existence. If you always run in the afternoon, change it to 4:30 in the morning. “You” are wired up to be “you” in all three circuits, and it’s all a part of consciousness. Some people mechanically run at 4:30 in the morning. They’ve got a particular charge in that area so that it’s almost impossible for them not to get up and run at 4:30. Whereas your charge might be, “Gee, I sure would like to be able to get up at 4:30. In fact, I believe I will. If they can do it, I can do it.” And the simple fact is, that left to your ordinary wiring resources, you can’t do it. And of course Line-level consciousness has at the ready a reasonable explanation. But the simple fact is you just can’t do it. And Line level humanity can’t face that fact. People must have an excuse because it serves no profitable purpose for them to be able to know they simply can’t do it, whatever “it” may be.
The electromagnetic field of the Grid pulls everything back into shape. You cannot stretch consciousness. At Line level there is no way to become a better person because the Grid will always snap you back. Or, take my oft-used example of the man who ceases to be a continual drinker and instead becomes a passionate teetotaller. In the beginning almost everyone finds it insane for me to say there is no difference between the two behaviors. But I’ll tell you again. His “charge” amounts to this: he was running down Boulevard A in an easterly direction and now he is running down Boulevard A in a westerly direction. Which is no change. He is still on the same street; he still holds the same charge. His behavior apparently changed, but the charge of his connection in the Grid hasn’t changed.
Ordinarily, it is impossible to expand even your lateral connection to the Grid. Using my continuing maps of the nervous system and Line-level consciousness, what we are addressing here is the expansion of your own level of awareness above the common level; and from this expanded, horizontal I-sight you See the Grid. And you see that everyone, including yourself, is trapped within the Grid. You can See the level of the Line in the eyes of everyone from presidents, to ministers, to people on the street. You See their entrapment all the way from Red Circuit fright to Yellow Circuit embarrassment; “Hey sir, you’re an expert on so and so. How do you explain this?” “Well, I do have a PhD in that, and uh, it’s an interesting question. Uh, it shows a great deal of insight on your part to be able to ask me that question… Uh, it’s a very…”
My examples are, of course, exaggerated; and I do it for the purpose of pointing your attention toward something specific and observable, but something you would never have seen on your own. You might well believe our PhD is stalling. But when you ask someone a question he is unable to immediately answer, you See how he is trapped. And in that sense, everybody is stalling; they are stalling for time because consciousness is the last to know.
Whenever you see someone shift his eyes from side to side, you know he’s stalling for time. People do it constantly: they look to the left, then look to the right. And it ordinarily passes for a sign of deep thought; weighty consideration of the matter. But it’s a sign of one thing: they can’t answer the question and they’re stalling for time, for consciousness to come up with something reasonable and appropriate.
The rule is: people do not look upward. Line-level consciousness is the confines of “I”; and it has nowhere else to go but back and forth, back and forth, like an animal trapped in a cage.
Look to yourself. The ordinary movement of your eyes reflects the level of your entrapment; it reflects the confines of “I”. Your normal field of vision is like a small horizontal slit, and under ordinary conditions, consciousness hardly ever moves above that level.
It takes something drastic like a helicopter buzzing your house to get you to look up. It is quite common for people to look down, and again, it passes for weighty consideration, for great concentration. If you’re tempted to think of it as a psychological phenomenon, reverse your consideration.
The Seeing of this will eventually hit you as a minor jolt. Literally, you hardly ever look up. Literally, your eyesight stays right at the horizon. And the more one is entangled in the ordinary affairs of Life the more he looks down. No one walks around saying, “My, my, what will I do?”, while looking up. Try it. If you want to ruin a perfectly good bout of suffering, look up. If you want to interfere with the horizontal entrapment of ordinary consciousness, look up.
Every time you are outside, remember to look up. Not at anything in particular. Just look up. Look up at the sky. And don’t put words on it: “This is great. I’m enjoying nature.” Simply feel the fact that normally, ordinarily, you never look up. It doesn’t even feel right. And don’t listen to the reasonable explanations of voices, “You know your posture is bad and you’re not in the habit of looking up.” It doesn’t feel right because it’s unnatural. It’s that your vision is a reflection of where consciousness is held.
I could make the attempt to look upward sound allegorical. And in a sense everything is allegorical to start with. Everything is allegorical until you find out nothing is allegorical. The allegorical is where all would-be systems and religions stop. “The great prophet spoke in parables and allegories because the truth cannot be directly conveyed.” I’ve said almost the same thing, but there is another level behind the allegorical. It is the level where allegory becomes physical fact.
When you begin to look upward, you drag consciousness above Line level. It gives you the opportunity to See that “I” is normally at the center of everything. I warn you that this may sound so simple as to be meaningless. But in truth, it has more meaning than average people can even understand. It has so much meaning it’s unnoticed. You have lived your whole life, as has everyone, with your consciousness focused right at eye-level. “I” is the center of everything and that is the way it’s supposed to be. The only times you’re conscious outside the horizon of “I” are the times that someone else sticks his fingers in your affairs and you think, “Something’s got to be done about this”, or you have a “problem” and need someone else’s help with it. But at Line level, everything revolves around “me”. Everyone is a world-class egomaniac. Everyone — from the drunk in the gutter, to the movie star, to the world’s most humble man. “What I’m aware of is the only thing that exists right now. And it’s .pathe only thing of value because it’s the only thing I’m aware of.” Case closed.
As you begin to expand your consciousness, you will begin to See the reality behind the admonitions given by almost all the world’s religions to “love your neighbor”. It has nothing to do with your neighbor; it’s an attempt to See that “I” is not the center of anything. Nobody is. Everything is the center; Life is the center, and we’re inside the center.
Expand your consciousness to the point where you see that everything is affecting you; if it weren’t affecting you, you See that you wouldn’t even be aware of it. Then as you See more, you discover that the things that don’t interest you, interest you; you See that things you would have sworn had no effect on you, do affect you. When you See this, you have reached the level beyond allegory.
I want to tell you something else about Neuralizing. There are actually two describable levels of Neuralizing. One is the method, or the struggle, and the other is the actual condition. Or, the first is the struggle, and the second is the success. (Except within This Thing when something is a success, then it’s not a success: it just is.)
The first level is being able to remember something without thinking about it; i.e., it is the attempt to use the method. The second level gets closer to being a “condition” rather than a method: it is the condition of being conscious of anything without remembering it.
It is quite possible to remember something without thinking about it. Neuralizing is the method, the attempt not to let something reach the screen of consciousness. Impressions enter the system at the speed of light; they leave the projector and almost simultaneously hit the screen which seems to be you. But you can catch the smallest molecule, the smallest particle of this one thought or this one feeling: it is simply a flow of energy, and you can stop it before it reaches the screen, before you actually think it. You can’t say, “I’m not going to think that.” By then it’s too late. You have to act faster than “you”; you have to act faster than consciousness, and it is possible, because consciousness is the last to know.
I am completely aware that many of you still find the concept of Neuralizing strange. You feel as though you almost have it, and then, later, it literally makes no sense. But I assure you that you are surrounded by people here who have tasted the reality of Neuralizing. And to them, my description isn’t worth a pound of beans.
The thoughts, bad dreams, fears, phobias, traumas — everything that seems to be unique to you — is energy running through your nervous system. It is as though your projector shows little snippets of the same films over and over. But you can be aware of it all, you can be conscious of it before it hits the screen. And you can stop it from reaching the screen. You can remember something without thinking about it.
No one has ever questioned me on my use of the word “remembering”. You must note: you’re remembering something all the time. Even though it appears otherwise, if you’re alive you’re remembering something. You may say, “I’m not remembering something right now. I’m thinking about the future.” No you aren’t. You’re projecting the past into what you think of as the future. The circuitry runs on memory. The ordinary system can’t conceive of the future; it can’t conceive of the unknown. It conceives, it perceives, only what it already knows: what it already is. And it does it over and over. The act of remembering is the sin of repetition. And it is the modus operandi of Line-level consciousness.
Neuralizing is not: “It bothers me, so I’ll try to remember to not think about it.” The first stage of the process is not to try to remember something, even if it goes under the guise of remembering not to think about it. Because whatever’s going on is a form of memory. But you can Remember it and not think about it.
The second level of Neuralizing, the taste of success, is to be able to be conscious of anything and not remember it. You do understand that the second level completely cuts you off from your mechanical past, because you have no basis from which to judge, or even think about whatever you’re conscious of. You’re left with, “I don’t even know what the heck it is. I’m just conscious of it.”
You know exactly what “you” thinks it is. As quickly as the projector is turned on, as soon as the film rolls you go, “Oh, that. Here comes the memory of what ‘I’ think about that,” and you can stop it from reaching the screen.
The second stage, to be conscious of anything and not remember it, is a condition; it becomes your normal operating condition. You can be conscious of anything, and yet you have no baggage. Someone asks you, “What do you make of that?” And you reply, “Darned if I know,” when, of course, you do know. Your hard wired, sane, civilized, educated self knows exactly what that is, but you, personally, do not. And you don’t want to know what anything is on the basis of what “you” remembers about it.
And along with my double-decker definition of Neuralizing, I have a new word for you: stratograph. One of the definitions of stratosphere is “an artificial layer” and my term, stratograph, shares the same root. Forming a stratograph is the true, profitable use of what ordinary people think of as imagination, and to do it, you must be close to the second stage of Neuralizing. You must be able to be conscious of anything and not remember it.
If all someone can do is say, “I’ve always had a problem with believing my mother didn’t treat me right,” he can’t do anything. At that level “you” can’t do anything. But when you can mentally form a stratograph and somebody hollers, “Mothers are the downfall of the American male,” somewhere in your Yellow Circuit there’s a slight variation of “Yeah. I had no great complaint with my mother, but I know what you mean. I can feel a piece of it.” In other words, you can understand how someone could say anything.
I’m not going to tell you how to produce a stratograph, because then you’d worry about whether you were doing exactly what I described. It’s a more immediate, hands-on use of Neuralizing. Rather than thinking of Neuralizing as being a passive “something”, or as a kind of Yellow Circuit “condition”, stratographing is a way to get yourself involved. And since I’m not going to explain it, Neuralize it. What would a stratograph be?
Neuralizing and stratographing buffers and protects you from all the untoward, unprofitable urges and energy flows that come through your system. It enables you to actively use any information that reaches your consciousness. And that is the form and function of a stratograph. You realize, “I do react noticeably (and if it’s noticeable, it’s worthwhile) to this every time I hear about it.” And that information is now stratographing material. You divert the energy flow from its habitual nervous system route, and you create your own right angle surprises. That is, you suddenly discover new directions, new possibilities of movement, where before there was only a wall. Where before there was only what “you” already knew and remembered.
Try to Neuralize, try to remember, what I am saying without thinking about it. You should know from your own efforts that I don’t pull these descriptions out of the blue. You’re all experiencing pieces of it already. What I describe is what’s already happening in you.
A right angle surprise is like a triaxial corridor that leads from your ordinary, binary-based activity into another dimension. And remember that everything from mathematics to physics, to religion, everything at the ordinary level that happens outside of one’s own effort, is the operation of the binary level.
Try to actively create your own stratographs and you’ll suddenly jump down what amounts to a triaxial corridor. You’ve moved from your binary limits into another dimension. You are no longer captive of the simplistic world of Line-level consciousness, where everything is a great puzzle and an almost endless stream of conflict, heartache, and disappointment. And you’ve taken a right angle turn from all binary-based interpretations of that world. “Wait a minute! Human suffering could be seen as an allegory; it’s almost as though there is a gigantic football game going on between different people. I am obviously becoming more conscious, because I can see things in an allegorical way.”
There is another place down the triaxial corridor, at right angles to the binary world. And when you travel down this corridor, you see, “What I thought was allegory ain’t no allegory. Mathematics is not an allegorical statement; suffering isn’t allegory; the football game ain’t allegory. It just is. It’s direct, simple, physical fact.”
Everything is a direct, simple statement of itself. That is fact. All allegories are facts. All lies are the truth. All tales are a specific detailing of something quite real. And the triaxial corridor is the place where you can See it.
Someone who had been around some of you once commented to me that he did not mean it as an attack, but he found you all to be rather “shallow”, as he put it. Compared to the mechanical complexity, and the automatic degree of self-conflict within ordinary people, the further you pursue This Thing, the more you .pacould be seen as being quite shallow, although I would never have used that word.
As you might imagine, there are two ways I want you to try to Neuralize this. On the first level, ordinary people are quite direct and mechanical reflections of the conflicts, the complexity, the apparently self-defeating behavior of Life.
On a different level, you, in all your shallowness, are a better reflection of Life. Because to have increased understanding is to Understand the necessity of the apparent complexity, the problems, the self-conflicting forces within Life and other people. You see the necessary, sustaining arrangement of everything, and you understand your place in that arrangement. You Understand that at Line level you’re right there with everyone else. Shallow though you be, it doesn’t all just go away.
Compared to the apparent complexity of ordinary man, you above the Line are shallow. You see what the commotion is all about. You see that what’s going on right now will be of no consequence tomorrow; tomorrow it will be another level, another expansion, and new conflicts.
Life doesn’t expand in a straight line. It goes in stages, it expands in all directions simultaneously, with one part apparently undoing another part’s progress. It goes in fits and starts. It can apparently take a step backwards. Political observers like to point out, “Nations seem to go through waves of becoming liberal, remaining liberal for several generations, and then becoming conservative, only to become liberal again.” It’s .panot that simple, but their observation is based on the reality of how Life grows.
In many, many areas of Life’s body, read “many areas of the world”, proof of one’s sophistication is in one’s knowledge of the complexities of Life. Listen to people talking in New York, Paris, in any cosmopolitan area. What they discuss is conflict, regardless of whether they’re talking about the theater, music, or the famine in such and such country. To be in touch with the conflicts of the world appears to show your level of sophistication and education.
So, shallow is an apt description of you people. But it’s not because you don’t See what’s going on; it’s not because you’re heartless and self centered. You simply understand what the commotion’s all about. It’s all about growth.
What ordinary people interpret as conflict is simply the fact that every time something grows, something dies. You eat plants; humans fertilize this planet, every time you eat a carrot, you eat a piece of humanity. This planet is a self-fueling unit and you see what it is. You also See the part that you and everyone else plays in it. And then you See why people think you’re shallow.
Both you, and those who might describe you as being shallow, are both being a reflection of what life is doing.
I bring this up because you feel it in yourself, and some of you have been tempted to worry about it. But to worry, “What happened to me? I used to be concerned about things and now I seem shallow,” is to be back in the hands of the philistines running the trial; you’re back in the hands of the past. The more you understand, you become about as shallow as a film of flat water on the pavement.
Let me note something else. Do you realize that it takes all kinds or there wouldn’t be all kinds? And do you further realize that those ordinary people who love to feign resignation and say, “Well, it takes all kinds”, are the ones who do not consider themselves amongst the “all” that it takes to make all kinds? Only those who do not count themselves among all kinds say, “It takes all kinds.” Those capable of extending and accelerating their own evolution are all kinds.
Are all of you aware of the continuing Line level fascination with themes of destruction? From the time the Yellow Circuit was functional enough to talk and write down a little history, there have been tales based on destruction. It is a fascination that lives in your Line level system, and I ask you, “Why?” And it’s not because of some psychological problem.
Probably the most encompassing example is the continuing fascination with military warfare and the history thereof. Every bookstore has a large section labeled “Military History”. I strongly suggest to you it has nothing to do with people’s recollection of their animosity and their ill-will toward their former enemy. People read about wars they’ve never been connected with. You can See it in Life; you can See it in your own nervous system.
As a jumping off place for creating your own stratograph, Neuralize this attraction as a very deep-seated longing for the direct, exciting, simplicity of a Red Circuit life? It’s a portion of the Primal flow that makes itself felt at higher levels. Someone says, “My god, it’s horrifying to even consider the distant possibility of out-and-out warfare destroying the planet,” but he’s the first one in line for a disaster movie. It’s a temporary throwback to a directly exciting, simplistic time, and everyone is drawn to it.
I seldom talk about death. But it’s of interest to every nervous system. Do you Understand that death is a drastic and immediate recycling of energy? I am talking drastic. I am talking right there on the spot. And people are continually driven to cry out, “Why is there death?” There could be a very good reason for it.
All three circuits continually process information; they continually transform and transmit energy. The condition of being “brain dead” occurs when one of the three circuits is no longer processing information. In a sense you are dead; you’re no longer a full person. Your body may lay there and breathe for another forty years. But you are dead; you are no longer a human being, you no longer have three circuits passing and processing information amongst themselves.
If you affect one circuit, you can affect them all. As much as you might hate to give up the enjoyment and habit of a good bout of suffering, all you have to do is make yourself go out and run, and you’re cured. It’s Red-Circuit activity, to be sure, but when you affect one circuit, you affect them all.
I have, though not as specifically, pointed out ways to directly affect the Yellow Circuit. One of them being the attempt to not listen to the opinions of your own hard wired “I”; the attempt to not listen to your own internal voices. And I’ve been even less specific in discussing the Blue Circuit. But there is a Blue Circuit equivalent of the Red Circuit run. It is simply to act in a way you don’t feel. Engage yourself in an emotional, dramatic act that is in direct conflict with your current mood. Whether you’re at home or whether you’re on the street corner surrounded by strangers, engage yourself in a dramatic act. And I do mean Dramatic!
If you’re caught up in your latest episode of, “I know I’ve got some dreaded disease and I’m going to die any minute now”, turn to the crowd on the street corner and say, “My god what a beautiful day! You know, I’m dying of cancer and I never felt better. Isn’t it great to be alive. I guess you’re probably thankful for your health, but here I am dying, and I never felt better in my life.”
Put on a dramatic act that directly conflicts with the way you feel, an act so dramatic, so conflicting that your hard wired circuitry reacts, “Listen, I feel embarrassed for you.” That’s what I mean by dramatic. And that’s a Blue Circuit run. Whenever you affect any one of the circuits, you’ve affected all of them.
I am reminded of a true story (one that I just made up) about a poor man who wanted only to get rich. This happened over and over, until he was forced to note, and to comment upon, the fact that there didn’t seem to be much justice in the world. “There’s too much resistance. All I want is a lot of money and every time I try something, something else gets in my way and stops me.”
It just so happened that the gods had been interested in this man, because as I told you, he was the first person to ever attempt to try to get all this stuff called money. And so after his latest scheme flopped, the gods decided to give him a hand. They gave him more than a hand; they gave him all the money in the world. And since the gods weren’t ones to do things in a small way, they gave him everything else in the world to boot. And they thought that would be the end of the matter. They’d fulfill someone’s dream; they’d given him what he wanted. And they were rather pleased with themselves. Until this fellow, who now owned everything, who had gotten what he wanted, realized what had happened. And he looked up towards the gods, and shouted, “Damn!”