Jan Cox

In man’s mundane mental world there is no creation sans imitation, which is why, to some, it is so redundant, boring and unenlightening, but which is how routine minds are kept from disintegrating.

Outer physical reality has a natural consistency upon which man unthinkingly relies.  His inner mental reality, upon which he also much depends, has no such inherent coherence.  A man knows that the rocks in his yard will be the same today as they were yesterday, as will their atoms.  But from one day, one minute to the next, he has no such assurance that his wife’s attitude, or even his own, will be likewise concordant.

Outer reality has a natural consistency.  Man’s inner reality has none.  It must be begot, and in this mental realm there is no creation sans imitation.  An arrangement that both allows for change while not severely disturbing the status quo.  The only part of that of interest to the few is the fact that it restricts change and thus the explosive mental expansion they crave.

In the normal play of man’s inner reality there neither is, nor can there be, anything literally original, and ergo, truly creative.  Everything new is derivative – an altered imitation of something extant.  The actions of atoms are consistent from moment to moment by nature, while those of men’s verbalized thoughts, (the only ones of even apparent significance in their lives), seem so only by the repetitive use of familiar ones.   In the Arts periodically pops up attempted resistance via painting that represents nothing in the outer reality;  music not confined to local scales and harmony; writing that is gibberish and nonsensical.  But such are mere momentary notorieties and never become accepted: the familiar marches on.
 

Everyone is in favor of this.  No one wants to wake up every day not knowing if water will still be flowing downhill and out their showerhead, or if electrons will still be acting in such a way as to heat their toaster; or if the personality of the person they went to bed with last night will be the same one they find their self faced with in the morning.  Nothing would destroy a man’s sanity faster than being in a world in which everything he expected to happen, failed to, and the only world in which this treat exists is man’s mental one.  Thus, it is of overriding importance that everything which asserts creative, be in large part imitative.

J.

For the few with that special itch, this ongoing, routine human activity means nothing, proves nothing, and leads to Nothingville.  But unless you see it for what it is, you IS part of it.  It is a 360° scene which, if you look at it normally, will stick to your eye/I-balls and make you blind.

It makes no difference to a Real Rebel if other people claim/believe they know why interest rates fluctuate; why wars start; the purpose of life; why some people are so stupid; what happens after death. An air conditioned man with his own outdoors fish to fumigate understands that what other humans are made to say, that they believe they know about any and all matters which they can talk about but cannot physically touch, has no bearing whatsoever on his cookout and search for exotic food.  The onliest instance in which pretending-to-know-when-you-do-not affects his existence is when it occurs in his own backyard.

If you truly want to remain ignorant, just keep noticing how ignorant everyone around you is. Just keep mentioning how even experts and world leaders act like they know what they are talking about, but that you know better.  They don’t fool you!  They’re all a bunch of idiots and frauds!  Sure they are, but that IS man’s second reality; from an immediately meaningful perspective, that whole world is a fraud.  Who is going to keep such a world going other than frauds – willing frauds.  Stop being one yourself and their existence will cease disturbing you.
 

In one sense, those who long for the awakening/enlightenment are reacting to a feeling of theft; that the routine conditions of man’s mental life have stolen from their mind.  Stolen its innocence, its pristine-ignorance and original capacity for extraordinary joy, and forced it to imitatively adopt a façade of claiming to know things which it and you clearly do not know.

Being asleep and unenlightened is being pretend-ignorant;
 being awake is the real thing

J.

Every accusation against man amounts to one thing: his believing he knows that which he does not.   (Save theft), every condemnation man can or ever has leveled at his fellow creatures, (that they are stupid, asleep, unenlightened), all indirectly and unwittingly point to the one thing:  man’s believing that he knows things which he does not.

The only accusations non-thinking creatures make always concerns theft.  Theft of what one creature physically possesses, (food, territory, mate, or its life), and the complaints are physically registered, transiting the mere animal sphere.  The accusations unique to man always concern something non-physical he claims to possess – knowledge.  Without clearly realizing what they are involved in, men constantly condemn one another under a variety of verbal indictments,  but they all boil down to but a single pimple:  men believing that they know things which they do not.

A man will peacefully accept that another man knows nothing about plumbing, as long as he admits it and does not attempt to pretend otherwise.  Unpretentious ignorance is always acceptable everywhere, but what men are unknowingly made to find verbally intolerable in one another, when they believe they sense same, is a person insisting they have knowledge of a particular matter when, to the accuser’s eyes they clearly do not.  This, however, is a quite limited and forcefully subjective game amongst the ordinary, and leads no one to new insights and discoveries.  The sport is confined to an endless cycle of: accusations, defenses and counter accusations.

One man’s thoughts cause him to say that a second man’s professed political beliefs are foolish and without rational foundation; that he does not know what he is talking about.  He does this without him ever questioning the basis of his assured-felt accusation, not that he would find one if he looked for it, any more than one could be discovered for the beliefs of the second man which he condemned.

Regarding matters in man’s non-physical second reality, experts exist only by pretending to know things they do not know, and those who listen to these experts, know that they do not know, but they pretend not to know that the experts do not know.  No two way pretending, no world of culture, entertainment and civilization.

J.

There is nothing “wrong” with playing word games, engaging in mental entertainments, but recognize them for what they are, and do not take them to be any more than they are. 

The mass of the mortal universe is aligned against you.  If you have a thought which heard the heart of what was herein today noted – then it is you and that one thought against the whole world.

Keep the conflict to yourself and you can win, for that one thought in a few which wants to do This Curious Thing is smarter than every other thought men have normally ever had put together, for it is their revealer.  That one anomalous thought in a few, understands more about all of man’s institutions than they do about themselves, for that one thought sees them for what they are, which they can never do.

That one thought – the one that vibrated with singular excitement when it first heard the strange ideas of: “Awakening-from-a-dream; Stepping-from-shadows-into-light; Going-from-captivity-to-a land-of-freedom,”  that one thought in the few is the only thing in man’s entire mental world that does not take itself to be more than it is – and that thing, dear reader, is what will take you home.

J.

If people who love literature did not feel that there was more to it than there is, literature would not be loved.  Same with music, morality, politics, religion, reputation, and every other thing that exists in the lives of men, and which does not exist in their lives physically.  They are one and all treated by man as though there is more to them than there is – that they have a significance beyond even that which to them men verbally attribute – which is all they have from beginning to end anyway.  But this normally un-admitted additional weight given thereto is the key pickle that keeps the barrel rolling.  A child does not just say that they saw, “a ghost” – it is always a ghost, “twenty feet tall, with eight eyes and a hundred arms.”

A man whose consciousness consists of naught but the thoughts life normally provides to everyone, cannot be made to see what is herein being noted – it is simply not possible.  He can interpret it as being an attack on some specific area of man’s cultural world, with which his thoughts may mechanically agree or disagree.  If he hears it as an assault on religion, he/his thoughts may say:  “I do not believe in God either,” or “The comments are wrong.  There is a God.”  But it makes no difference whether your individually provided thoughts approve or disapprove of any feature of the second, mental reality – all that matters is that your thoughts are in-the-game; that your thoughts take the matter seriously – that it is serious whether a man believes there is a God, or does not believe.  Your position in the question is not important, just as long as your thoughts treat it as worthy of having one.

From the goal of developing clear sight, if you play the game you lose.  It does not matter which team you are on.  If you play – you lose.  If you let your consciousness, chase after the same balls as everyone else’s – you lose yours, (your potential potent ones). 

If your consciousness is restricted to thoughts which take the question of whether God exists or not, or whether there is Life after death, or whether Good will eventually triumph over evil; truth over falsehood, Sociology over Psychology, Socialism over Democracy, Impressionism over Abstract Expressionism, et roll on, you are forced to treat the questions as though there is more to them than there is – but there is nothing to them.  They are words; sounds with accompanying, personal mental images.

J.

Not only does having thoughts cause men to feel that there is more to them than there is, thoughts also make it seem like there is more to life than there is, which may be the easier of the two to initially see.

It is quite tricky to get thoughts to realize that they contribute a factually overblown impression of a person to a person.  Since their activity is constructively unrestrained, they have no conception of literal limitations, and thus are struck non-plussed by statements concerning their contribution to men’s overall sensation of themselves.  How do you tell a mirage that it is overdoing the illusion bit?  How can you convey to an intangible the concept of:  How-much-is-too-much? That without physical substance is not constrained to acknowledge the limitations of that which does?  Thought’s view of man is not the same as his body:s.  One is not right and the other wrong; they are simply different, inasmuch as thought has responsibilities distinct from anatomy, one of them being to create in him the impression that there is more to him than physically there be.

This role of thought extends outside individual men, and affects entirely their intangible world of culture, and makes it seem that there is more to it than there is.  Thought is not only the creator of this second reality, but also its unrecognized unflagging huckster.  It not only produces the parade’s balloon figures, but overfills them as well.   This is easy to say but hard to see. 

It is not that thought is engaged in a nefarious activity of exaggerating the importance of particular parts of man’s cultural reality, nor is it involved in overblowing the overall significance of this intangible realm to man’s harm.  The way in which it achieves its end in this matter defies ready observation, in that it is an integral component of this whole world from its inception.  Man’s cultural reality comes overblown.  It is born exaggerated; its natural state is hyperbolic, and as always: when a situation is understood, no matter how apparently askew, it presents no problem to the few.

If you but coldly look upon any of the things that occupy part of men’s lives, which they cannot touch, (and you are truly one of the few), you will somehow begin to see/feel/sense/realize beyond any description, the plain fact that men treat such matters as though there is more to them than there clearly is; that even though they have no substantive existence to begin with, they are afforded even greater recognition than many things which do.  This is no attack on man’s cultural world, nor denial of any particular aspect’s significance; merely a calm limning of the territory.

J.

A sip and a grunt, father speaks:  “What men tell you about their lives, tells you nothing. Only the life they live does.  People cannot tell the truth about their life, only the life they lead can, and the one you lead inside can be seen only by you, and it cannot be seen by any of the thoughts which normally comprise it.

From today’s expedient perspective, the historic struggle for awakening, enlightenment, liberation, is a rebellion against the sensation that there is more to you than there is.  But the thoughts that make you feel this way are what make man unique, and what make the few fret and fume.  But who can fight Hercules?  How can you fire Cinderella?

Obviously, to our kind you can’t.  There is no way to lose that ten pounds of illusionary fat other than by leaving town for a while; traverse the universe, then come back around from the other side of town, slipping up on your old fatty self before it/you has time to realize what is going on.  Stealth!  Surprise!  Unfairness! Those are the keys to success, my lad, now spread that jam and let’s get down!”

“But Papa, what about the second headline: ‘Trying to awaken is the attempt to make something out of nothing’?” 
                 

“Hey boy, weren’t you listening?”

J.

Looking over his coffee cup, father says, “The thoughts normally passing through normal people’s minds cause them all to live with a never analyzed, overall sensation that there is more to them than there is, and normally with no way of realizing it.  Thus have they not even a scintilla of interest in the matter.  When thought is certain, it is certain of its certainty.  That is how it can turn manipulations of symbols of the physical world into profitable action, while it’s playing with symbols representing nothing but itself and lead to nothing but distracting dreams.  No planet, no matter its intelligence, confined to this universe can know its true size, having nothing xenolithic by which to compare itself.

Thought is sure that it knows what it says and feels itself to know, but thought does not know what it knows, and normally has access to nothing outside itself which could make it so aware. A tree born into solitude can feel itself to be seven feet tall; forty feet tall; the tallest tree in the world or any height imaginable.  That is thought’s position; useful for everyday existence – a dangling shoelace for anything else.”

The son started to reach for a danish, and father reminded him of the family’s dietary restriction regarding modifiers.  “Having thought always present in your consciousness gives you normally the unavoidable feeling of being more than you are, a sensation, which when useful, is useful. When not, is why we had to bury your Uncle Olaf so early on. Thought, in our family photos, adds at least ten pounds of fat – and at the worst possible location.

Having thought makes all people feel that they are more than they are, and with our kin this ‘feeling-that-you-are-more-than-you-are’ thing, translates into making them feel that they are asleep, in the dark, confused and stupid.  All feelings that everyone else calls by other names, and accepts as their normal mental condition.”

J.

To son, father said: “Can you believe that it is already a new week again?”    And son thought: “Hell, I can’t believe I am still me again,” but did not say it. It was not necessary…not between them.

“So, my lad, what can you make of these two post weekend news flashes fresh off The Few’s Select Wire Service: 
     Having thoughts make men feel that there is more to them than there is, and
     Trying to wake-up is the attempt to make something out of nothing. 
Are the two related?  Antipodal?  Unconnected?”  They poured up a glass of juice, toasted a new week, and commenced the neural roasting.

“How can a thing feel that it is more than it is?  All the sensations of living things are validated by experience.  So how can a sentient thing even have feelings about itself, which it has never experienced…which would have to be the case involving it feeling that there is more to it than there is.  That would be as impossible as a snake feeling it had legs.  How could it even succumb to such an illusion without first having had some experience with what legs are?  Even the best of dreamers cannot dream scenes, no matter how fanciful, that are not composed of things they have actually experienced.  Still, men do this routinely.  It is an inseparable component of their normal life, and yet of it – none take note, because of the fact that: that which does it is also the only one who could take note thereof.”

A pause and continunation:  “The way the presence of thought in man causes him to feel that he is more than he is, is so all encompassing that he is blind to it.  Not realizing it is part of what he is, he independently recognizes it no more than can a lemon its yellowness; nor can an acre lot with eyes to see outward comprehend that its own personal reality is limited to its own boundary lines. 



Having thoughts make men feel that there is more to them than there is, and no thought they will normally ever have will apprise them of this.  No ordinary thought is capable of realizing it – such would be, to such thoughts – counterproductive.  If you have Cinderella doing your laundry, what would be the benefit in exposing her fictional condition?”

J.

Once you know what is really going on all you have to do from then on is just remind yourself of it.  (Psst, one man claims that everybody already knows what is going on, and the whole thing is that they do not want to think about it.)

One father, who was especially hard-on, or informative-to, his son:
 
According to the view you choose, he told him:  “Cut to the catch and face the total fact. You are asleep if you will talk to anybody.  That’s it!  (Including yourself, don’t forget.)

”

One guy was presented the censure:

“You certainly are loose with the way you use language.”
He replied:   “Ah, but I am equally loose in what I intend it to mean.”

And yet another telling of what This is:

It is the subject about which everyone has thoughts, but about which no one actually gives thought.

One man pondered: “I wonder if waking-up initially feels something like
you’re having a mini stroke?”

J.