Jan Cox

The poking of oneself in the eye, in the effort to locate an optometrist surely is a situation…the inspiration for carousels, ferris wheels; human debates and all other forms of circular entertainment.
 
 

The few must face it: the more-or-less normal human brain has no interest in, or even much tolerance for, thought looking at itself.  It is the very entry way to that which the few seek.  Men have called it by disparate names, and have attempted to describe what it is using a variety of terms, but it is all one thing – the very thing for which the brain has a natural aversion:  thought simply looking at itself
 
 

To ever see through man’s collective fog and satisfy that special hunger, you have only one small area of choice pertinent thereto:  you either have thought sit and simply look at itself, or you let it run its routine course.  One will see you sanely through your appointed days, the other will eventually result in something quite extraordinary and unexpected – which will blow open the can and let you eat.

…”Oh waiter!  Waiter:  there’s a fake me in my me.”

J.

You can weave various verbal rugs about the matter forever, but it still comes down to just these two availabilities.  When not irresistibly engaged with the rest of the brain’s activities in helping protect the organism’s health, thought is left to either sit and look at itself, or chase rainbows. (Colorful attractions without actual substance are the contents of man’s second reality.)

From one angle, the entire creation of the second reality could be viewed as the brain’s consciousness coping with the ever present question:  “What to do with these thoughts irrepressibly produced in me, when they are not forcefully engaged in their primary activity?” All of man’s cultural creations can be validly seen as the brain driving off-duty thought into creating its own make-believe world.  A world in which to run about and amuse itself as an alternative to sitting still, looking at itself.  (An activity that is clearly not acceptable to the near totality of human brains.)

From the few’s advanced perspective this situation could be:  let thought look at itself or let it be distracted.  (In classic mystical terms: be mindful or be asleep.)  Though as it turns out, per the brain’s inherent preference, it is not in practice as much a matter of letting thought do one or the other.  If left to its own proclivity, the brain will simply let off-the-clock thought chase after any passing rainbow-distraction in preference to allowing it to be still and look at itself.  So pragmatically, it is really a circumstance of having thought look at itself, as opposed to allowing it to do what it finds more agreeable.  It is like a free roaming dog randomly chasing passing cars:  thought chasing other thoughts.  The activity which constitutes man’s non-essential, non- physical, second, cultural reality.

What can be wrong with having a hobby?  As long as it is not eventually taken to be something more and its origin forgotten, which is precisely what the brain has generally done, and which is exactly what is behind the few’s desire for a change in the condition of their brain’s consciousness.  The disgusting though spirit-raising, pig-in-the-hungry’s-pantry, is that in the attempt to alter the way their brain deals with off-duty thought, they routinely become thoroughly distracted in the pursuit of distractions which purport to be instructions in how NOT to be distracted. 

J.

In its personnel file, thought’s job description is: Trouble-shooter/advisor, which is clearly its raison d’être.  When circumstances threaten survival, the brain instantly stops whatever thought is doing, and automatically turns all of its attention to helping fashion a defense.  But when conditions are not so, thought has two things it can do, either:  sit and look at itself, or chase rainbows.  In ordinary people, in ordinary practice,  the first possibility proves most improbable.

The brain is never still.  Even when its thought is not engaged in a survival pertinent activity, thought continues to be produced.  (A matter, were it not for the brain’s unique consciousness of this activity taking place within itself, would pass unnoted.)  It would trouble no one.  The longing in some for another condition of mind would be unknown, it would not even be under present discussion.

When thought, is employed in its primary responsibility of helping the organism survive, the brain’s awareness of thought ceases.  All of its available resources are totally devoted to defensive operations in times of danger and the brain constructively ceases to be conscious.  As ‘tis normally thought of, in that it is characteristically diffused, free flights of frivolous fancy come to an immediate halt.  All of the brain’s resources become focused solely on the threat.  Thought has no choice to be involved or not, and for the moment becomes but another faceless soldier amidst a mass repelling army.
 

Nothing more pertinent to our interest here need be noted concerning the matter of thought’s instinctive and primary responsibility.  But of supreme significance to the few seeking to see beyond routine horizons, is what happens with thought when it is not so gainfully employed. Like children at recess, workers on break, thought can either sit down and ponder itself, or else go out and chase rainbows.  Either reflect on its own existence, or do something to keep it from doing so.

J.

There can be no non-physical pleasure that comes anywhere near the exhilaration.  The almost unbearable joy and excitement which the sane few feel, when they first run across a sentence in the context necessary and appropriate for them; which boldly declares the existence of a generally unknown fact whose knowledge instantly explains everything and transforms the knower.

As soon as such a person reads this, they immediately feel: “That’s IT!  That is what has been bugging me all this time, which no one else understood or could explain to me.  There is a fact about life that everyone does not know, and apparently most are not interested in knowing, but now that I know about it, I have got to have it!”  And whether they realize it clearly or not at that moment, their life in their head will never be the same, and for the true few of the few, it is around the hunger for this fact that the rest of their life will revolve.

But no one the person can find seems to know what the fact is, not even the one who wrote or edited the book in which he discovered the revelation of their being the secret, all-elucidating fact.  The commonly run course is for the person to align himself with one of the several so-called, “mystical systems” which have historically claimed to have the key to the door which hides the transforming information; which are always, unavoidably based on behavioral change.

 
Sit motionless ten hours, two hours, twenty minutes a day, or pray constantly to a supernatural, metaphysical power.  Dance ‘til you drop; chant a meaningless phrase ‘til you’re batty.  Do not eat green foods on Fridays; give half your wealth to a guru; do not have sex; do not wear warm clothes; do not sleep more than…etc.  But where else can a person start? 

What else can a person do to “accomplish” something.  You must “do” something – something!  “I am doing something!  I have come a thousand miles from home, given away all I owned, am sitting here in silence and freezing while going crazy trying not to move a muscle.  Too little food, too little sleep, is this not ‘doing something?’  Surely I will be rewarded for such efforts and sacrifices; people have been doing this for thousands of years, so it must eventually pay off.  The one here in charge has so assured me, and those others struggling here likewise believe it.  It cannot be a mere sham.  There must be something to it, my efforts will surely one day reveal to me the secret fact, (or some variation thereof).”

J.

Of the various pictures of what people imagine, “waking-up, being-enlightened,” to be, perhaps the most thrilling is the one of secret knowledge.  Scattered throughout the five millennia of thinking man’s history are stories from all four corners and cultures concerning: The Mysteries, The Ambrosia, The Alchemist’s Stone, The Ark, The Grail, The Secret Name of God, and others.


When raised above their most simplistic interpretation,  (that of gaining supernatural physical powers from their obtainment),  they all represent man’s innate belief in the existence of some fact normally kept from man; whose knowledge would give him supernatural understanding; would answer all of man’s otherwise unanswerable questions and make everything about life that is confusing clear.

It is certainly not necessary that a man be mystically inclined, (a dazed-eyed, wooly-brained, occultist weirdo in a cape and funny cap with the aroma of camphor about him), to be interested in this matter.  All men are interested, (even scientists), for wired into the thought-producing operations of man’s brain is an automatic positive response to the idea, regardless of whether the individual who hears it ever attempts to actively pursue it.

It matters not a man’s religion, race, culture, wealth or education.  If he is ordinary and sane by the prevailing standards, his brain has available in its repertoire a thought that will immediately agree that somewhere, in some form, must be a piece of presently unknown information which would explain everything, (and not necessarily metaphysical in nature).

One bruising this has suffered is its commonly conceived connection to things and people irrational, other-worldly, and just plain old spooky.  It is as though life does not want the majority, or even many humans, to take an active, sane interest in the matter, and indeed has motivated men’s minds to create the marginalized category of, “metaphysics,” as opposed to real physics and objective knowledge.  But none of this stops the few, whose neural wiring concerning the subject has either an extra soldering juncture, or lacks one.

J.

Those who believe, (or at least go along with the pretension to), that the activity of thoughts automatically appearing and passing through their brains is “thinking,” do not know what real thinking is, (or at least can be for those who give up the pretense).  Those of ordinary mind, (at least in theory), hold themselves responsible for their thoughts: for what they think, not like their view of the strange loners in the street, expressing their thoughts aloud and who are clearly not responsible for themselves.

It is easy to picture this situation as beneficial, if not required, for man, an animal with thoughts and speech, both of which can differ more from individual to individual than with any physical distinctions between creatures of the same species, to live collectively in relative peace.   Simply put: humans must accept the thought that says, “Each man is responsible for himself – he MUST be to make this civilization thing work.”  An unstated, unexamined corollary of this is that a man, a sane man, is responsible for his thinking, but just in case all is not always in order, it is best not to go around, saying aloud, the thoughts in your mind.

Forget about second party strangers in the street, talking-insanely, if not at least, inanely, to only themselves; you have one in your head, and if you settle for being just ordinary and commonly sane, you will never see or be able to usefully admit it.  But doing so will make you secretly sane in a manner that defies all description and comparison…and which accomplishes nothing…other than: releasing you from the mass hysteria which everyone else is forced to in all “their thinking.”

 
To say the least, the brain is a funny organ.  Your heart is not conscious of its pumping nor your lungs of their respiring.  Only the brain is “conscious” of its own operation in part, and the doubly funny thing is that the only part of its activity it is conscious of is its consciousness.

J.

The expressing aloud of the thoughts in the brain is diagnosed by the majority as an involuntary activity of an ill mind.  As compared to themselves, in whose brains, the same activity involuntarily occurs.  They manage to keep that to themselves, except under tacitly, collectively-agreed-upon conditions: conversations with two participants, and authorship, the writing down of one’s otherwise, silent, private thoughts, which for some reason, via this process, is rendered acceptable.

Only those who have not directly looked into this matter, (read: most of the human population), can live with the common assumption that their “thinking” is voluntary; that the process which occurs unceasingly in them, 24/7, from the age of speech to death, (or noticeable dementia), whichever becomes most apparent first and assuming a distinction is discernable.  No question but that the brain’s thinking operation is not normally tuned to confront this matter, or even have the slightest interest therein.  

It is simply not possible for an ordinary human to see, to face-the-fact that what he and all of his majority-making-peers call, “their thoughts and their thinking,” is a completely mechanical, impersonal activity of their brain.  This is not substantially different than the heart’s pumping, the lungs’ breathing, the pancreas’ insulin production.

This is a simple, obvious and undeniable reality, and yet, six billion educated, sophisticated, sane human beings do deny it.   (If asked, the rest of the time, they simply ignore it), and they do both, (also quite obviously), as directed to by their involuntarily thought-producing brain.  Life-the-universe is nothing if not tidy, and it has no choice.  Where does it have to sweep dust or dispose of leftovers?

J.

Since those who talk to themselves aloud are publicly deemed deranged,
everyone else then is – privately insane.

Ordinary people, (quite surprisingly!), do not see it this way.  What goes in their head they do not equate with the activities of a lone figure on the streets, mumbling audibly to an invisible listener, but a difference between the two exists only in their own words to themselves.

Sophisticated, sane-by-the-majority’s-definition people, are always apprehensive of those who audibly and publicly, (as ‘tis commonly called), talk-to-themselves, and have no doubt that such people are not part of the normal majority.  They are routinely felt to be in fact, dangerous, in that a human must be extremely out of touch with reality to engage in such behavior, and be so apparently unaware of their condition.   Indeed man, institutionally through law enforcement, the judicial system, and the medical profession, treat the audible talking to oneself as a prima facie sign of mental illness.  Yet, unheard, in private do all men, judges, gendarmes, psychiatrists, and everyone else, suffer-from or, engage-in, would be their preferred term for the phenomenon in their instance.  It is the exact same thing, but as applicable to themselves, as the majority call it – thinking.

Quite a fascinating, unpublished photo we have here.  Picture it: a certain human something that if you do it quietly in private, you are okay, but if you do the same thing vocally, in public, so that everyone else is forced to be aware of what you are doing – you are crazy.  Throughout it all, everyone on the planet does it silently, in private, and by merely changing its defaming name from “talking-to-yourself;” to “thinking” to cleanse it of all reprobation.

J.

In his thoughts, a man lives a thousand lives, but in actuality, he lives only one; the one an observer would see him live.  But just this visible one is not the ordained life of ordinary men. They are destined to live a thousand unseen lives, all but one of them imaginary and without meaning, save for the insensible significance passively granted it by unawares, daytime dreamers.
 

At night, with eyes shut tight, asleep and dreaming, you and the brain know that the scenes you see yourself in are dreams.  But in daylight, with eyes open wide, the brain commonly ignores that the scenes of you that it shows itself are dreams, and have no substance.  Lacking the presence of some overriding physical stimulus, thought, in the daylight hours, customarily fails to make real time.  Exact distinctions between things it remembers has occurred and it imagines could occur are the life you are actually living at the ever-present times of these ceaseless day time dreams.

The brain, being the tricky devil it is, (what with it being both the magician and the audience), is subject to yet an additional layer of self-deception, (or at least a routine pretending to be), in that if the above is noted to a normal man he will readily agree that such sometimes goes on in his mind.  But lacking its pathological over indulgence, he shrugs away its significance with man’s common collective attitude:  “Everybody day dreams – so what?  It doesn’t mean anything as long as you don’t let them interfere with your real life.”

The overlooked legerdemain herein being that, from their private, internal perspective, an ordinary person’s “real life” IS in large part made up of day time dreams.  Even this more extreme fact, (when pointed out), a few people recognize, but even they and their brain, (it being subject to more or less standard construction dictates), will instantly forget this a split second after having just acknowledged it.

That operation within the brain which produces what men call thought and day dreams is observably incapable of both day dreaming about you, and being simultaneously aware that it is doing so.  If your brain is showing and watching imaginary scenes of you, and you suddenly make yourself aware of this – the scenes cease.  This is an undeniable fact, readily apparent to anyone who wants to look.

J.