The Loose Wire
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Transcript
THE LOOSE WIRE
Document: 29, July 1, 1982
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1982
You should start trying to Consider what I mean by Consider. For a long time this idea of Considering seems particularly elusive, so now let me give you one more description of how Considering operates. Anyone correctly drawn to This begins to personally feel and experience what I mean. Indeed, it is all but certain that each of you has already accidentally experienced it but never recognized it. You will recall my definition of Considering as remembering something without thinking about it. If you feed that description into what appears to be your ordinary mind, into the cognitive seat of what seems to be you, it makes no sense. Your mind would say, “You cannot remember something without thinking about it. And furthermore you have to think about it to even remember it!” And that’s true. But it’s also not true. There is an unknown reality behind what I am talking about and Considering is the bridge between the entire spectrum of human knowledge and the extraordinary.
Diagram # 005 illustration
A Horizontal Line at all times everywhere on earth divides everyone’s brain, varying to no profitable degree from one person to another. And at the Line-Level of consciousness, the mind is correct in insisting that you cannot remember something without thinking about it. The alternative is incomprehensible. At the ordinary level, the brain itself cannot escape the requirement that nothing can be conceived of, nothing can be remembered, nothing can be thought about without thinking about it. To think about something requires that it be named. It must be able to associate with something else that has a name, a definition already existing inside of your nervous system. Within the ordinary mind, everything seems to fit into an eminently reasonable structure. At that level it is impossible to remember without thought.
There are small pockets of people who, at any given time on this planet, can sense a greater potential to themselves and Life. These Few are capable of hearing the supra-ordinary; the unreasonable. One of the descriptions of how people like you end up here is that you have a loose wire right at the Line. It resides where ordinarily the last of the substance is extracted from the blood; where the energy that sustains consciousness is spent. When the blood hits that ceiling, the substance and energy that could potentially activate the nervous system above the Line are depleted. So everyone remains predictable and repetitive.
To understand anything — to be able to See — requires Vertical extension above the Line, an activation of the unknown. Literally, physically, within the brains of people attracted to This Thing is one particular open channel. This channel is what I have called a loose piece or loose wire, and it was not completely cauterized by Line-Level consciousness. Through it, the energy can reach the area above the Line.
Everything else has been solidified except for this one loose, flapping nerve ending. Regardless of how dissatisfied you were before you found This, you still had absolute convictions. There were things you knew. And it was all solidified into a structure I can call “reasonable.” Because everything Life produces below the Line is in some way reasonable, only that one loose piece can Hear This Thing: the unreasonable. That is your only possibility. And that one loose piece made you even more dissatisfied than the average.
A parallel could be drawn between those with this loose wire and those ordinarily classified as crazy or terminally weird. But the parallel is, in actuality, specious because those involved with This have an Aim. If you did not have the Aim to activate the higher nervous system you would have more potential to, if not be put away, at least be far more dissatisfied than the average homo sapiens.
I continue to point out that all of this is insane and irrational, yet you listen and it all makes new sense. Well, parts of it do. And you remain incapable of rejecting what doesn’t yet make sense. Still, the descriptions do not fit into your ordinary machinery. But remember, from the common viewpoint all of this is insane. Let’s say that all of you suddenly attempted, with my encouragement, to go out and tell everyone you know what I’ve been talking about. Try and get your friends and family interested. You’ll find that once you try to reproduce this, it becomes insane. Under certain conditions it is worse than insane; it can be dangerous. The machinery of things cannot tolerate This beyond a certain saturation. This Thing is not made to be paraded through the streets on banners and placards and waved in the face of the Machine itself. (If you try that too successfully, one gigantic foot will teach you a lesson. It will step on you like a bad blister.) To the ordinary, This is insane. To the loose wire of a few human systems, it is a secret symphony. That’s what Hears me. That’s what I talk to.
If a person does not have that one loose wire, no unusual growth in one lifetime is possible. You might imagine some interest in This for the rest of your life; you might even feel, “I have found a certain kind of communal nirvana here on earth.” But no real growth would transpire without that one piece. And all of the tricks, all of the methods you’ve ever heard of — such as the attempt to be a continual observer, to remember the gods with every breath, prayer, chanting, dancing, and more — all such activities are aimed at that one loose wire.
I have mentioned that the world is full of pseudo-groups. They appear to be forms of This Thing. This is not an attack on any form necessary in the Life-of-Life. The point is for you to learn through your own spine the history of humanity’s attractions. These groups are simply a variation of the church. “Join us and you’ll become enlightened. You’ll become full of love and Life will treat you better.” And it doesn’t happen. But note — nobody ever complains. They stay for ten weeks or ten years and never become “enlightened.” But nobody demands his money back. Remember, nothing can happen without the loose piece. And in a sense, people without the loose piece don’t expect anything extraordinary. And nothing extraordinary can happen without a leader who understands how to expand the nervous system.
Consider the methods used by different systems, such as a man attempting to continually observe himself. It’s no longer so extraordinary to show people that much of their life, of everybody’s life, is just mechanical reactions, mechanical gestures. For example, suppose you and a friend are discussing “serious business,” such as, “Well, what’s going to happen now in the relations between our two governments after that faux pas in the Indian Ocean?” and suddenly one eye catches a woman in a low-cut dress. Your posture and speech change. Suddenly you’re tilting your head so that the warts won’t show. I can show anyone with an interest that he’s always lived by reaction — such as making gestures subject to instant change by another person’s presence. And I can make him See that he’s never been aware of this.
He might say, “Yeah, you’re right. A whole lot of my life, and I guess everybody’s, is just mechanical stuff. I never noticed it. Like if somebody really comes on with an opinion that conflicts with mine and I don’t know what to say or I don’t have a snappy comeback, I’ll do things like raise my eyebrows and go, ‘Oh, really?’ You’re right, I do that and I never thought about it.” And after a minute he’d look at his watch and say, “Well, look, I’ve got to go.” And he’d see no significance to the conversation.
Now let us suppose that I went as far as to say, “Well, I’m involved in some kind of mysterious work here, and it could be of benefit to you if you attempt to see these mechanical routines and bring them under willful control.” Under the right conditions, if I had anything to prove, I could get a man to say, “You’re right. All right, if you can teach me that, I’ll show up. I’ll buy your book or I”ll come sign up for a course.” And I might continue, “All right, the trick is you have to undertake an extensive study of yourself; be continually on guard. You have got to find out that you can be aware of what you’re doing in a way that does not interfere with it: that internally you can almost stand back and become an impartial snapshot-taker of what’s going on.” And again, under the right conditions — which I could create if someone showed any interest — I could make him admit, “You’re right. I can see my hand doing this and I’m aware that I’m doing it, and there’s a piece of me not involved. Wow.” And then, of course, he’s gone again, because suddenly he’s just thinking about it.
All methods and tricks are two-staged, but no one ever gets past the first stage, the stage of pointing out “the human condition, the problems.” Let us use as an example a man walking around saying, “Everyone is my brother.” If he could say that with every breath, to himself, even if somebody stepped on his foot, something extraordinary would happen. That’s true and it’s untrue. Something extraordinary would happen, but with an ordinary man it will never really be extraordinary — because it takes an extraordinary man to be able to do it in the first place.
What never occurs in Life is for a person to surpass the attempt to become an impartial observer of himself and be nudged into the second stage, in which you finally See. If under the right conditions you attempted to become an impartial observer of yourself and you persisted, a slight nudge such as a joke or apparently innocent question from me would trip you upwards. I might ask you what time it is, or “What do you think of ducks?” And then I’d nudge you ever so slightly and point out, “You’ve been attempting to observe yourself. Have you found that there is no self to observe?” And then you might See something.
To return for a moment to our relatively ordinary man, I could make him see just temporarily that much of Life is mechanical. And I could almost induce in him, for a few seconds, a state wherein he was almost a detached observer of himself. It would be unprofitable, if not impossible, to take an ordinary man much beyond the point of seeing the mechanicalness of his physical habits. I might get him to glimpse an additional fact, using the example of his talking serious politics with someone when suddenly a beautiful six-foot blonde walks by in a low-cut dress and it affects him. I could say, “All right, that’s more than merely physical. You’ve been affected, let’s call it emotionally.” I might get him that far. But that is as far as you can get a person to see, to conceive of this. And even then, it’s all gone in a snap of the fingers.
What cannot be done, except with extraordinary people, is to activate that one piece on the high end of the system as an observer of the system itself. The second stage is getting you to See that there is no little person living in your brain. And to do that you must be extraordinary. You cannot take someone under ordinary conditions and make them see that inside there is nothing, no stable “I”. They’ll never know “I” as a process; they’ll never See “I” as a nobody, a stranger.
Only someone extraordinary can turn this one little piece, this loose wire, on its own system. Then you realize that you can bring on an unnatural state. Forget instant enlightenment or anything like that, but it’s almost as if, “For this moment the whole world has stopped, and in some detached way I am aware of Life living and breathing in a thousand examples — which I never noticed before.” And almost simultaneously you are aware of the fact that you could continue to live out your entire life without doing this again.
“I” is a process. When you turn the loose wire of objective observation on yourself, “I” disappears. When you observe this internal something you call yourself, “it” stops. But then, if you can expand that just another second, try to Consider what I am telling you to look for. What can you find internally during the second instant? What you find is that what you fleetingly .paSaw one second ago has disappeared. It was there just a second ago, just a split second ago. Right? Surely. Where did it go?
It is not a thing. It is a process. It is a pulsating process. As long as you’re alive, it continues to run. When you try to watch it, it stops. The one loose wire is your only possibility of salvation. It’s the only thing that can Hear beyond words. And there is your physical description of, literally, new growth for you — and for Life.
Right now, try to be impartially aware of the fact that you’re sitting there. Just be aware of the fact and try to look at what’s going on internally. You can do it. It’s strange, but it’s not death defying. It doesn’t throw you into a mystical swoon; you don’t faint. But it is unnatural. It does not happen ordinarily in Life, it is not required; a person easily lives out his sixty-five years on the planet without experiencing it. And it is not something that happens by accident. You have to become aware of the fact that when you try and impartially observe what you take to be “I”, something seems to shut off. It’s almost as though time stops. Something is missing. You have diverted electric current into your one loose wire (which, you must remember, is not even supposed to be loose). If you were living in such a way that the machinery greatly approved of you — just an ordinary person, whether you were some great religious figure or you were on death row for axe murders — this piece could not be loose. You would be living in what would amount to a closed system of your own — energy could go nowhere else. People can attempt to read new books, they can attempt to go find a new religion, but it all plugs into wherever that system has already been formed. And in such systems, energy never rises above Line-Level.
The loose wire is your salvation. It is also, in as sense, your weak spot, the place where the machinery of Life did not sufficiently weld you. You’ve got to focus on this weak place that is also your strong place. It can hear the irrational. It’s the place that can think without words.
My drawing of the loose wire has never been known before, nor has this information ever been necessary on this planet. But now I am telling you what the process of “enlightenment” has always been. The physical reality of every idea that you have ever heard and imagined — about touching the gods, about man behaving as he should and returning to paradise, about becoming one with the greater reality — all that is contained in this drawing. I have shown you that you and all humanity live at a level that cannot be surpassed in any way known to ordinary man. Yet people have always dreamed of a wisdom beyond education. Philosophers have attempted to describe a reality they only suspect. And what they were imagining is above the Line in this drawing.
People often feel on the verge of a major breakthrough, that they’re about to become one with the gods. But it never happens. They believe that with one more unusual book, one more change in diet, it will finally happen. All that’s available to the ordinary (and this description is an exaggeration) is a mechanical lateral branching below the Line, like someone going from a B.A. to a Ph.D. As I said, this description is an exaggeration, because that is no extension at all. But it’s the closest reflection of Vertical growth available. It will never lead you to experience the unknown territory above the Line. For that you need the loose wire, a method, and one-who-knows.
The physical reality behind the idea of Considering is the activation of the wire. It is not separate from the nervous system, remember; it’s a continuation. But it’s not limited to what is rational, not limited to the greater reality of all of humanity. It is that one piece that can Hear absolute insanity. It can hear me be blasphemous — not in any ordinary religious sense, but in telling you those things that you’re not supposed to know. Considering is to be able to Hear what I say and then start teaching yourself.
You begin to get glimpses of truly Seeing. You See that the history of everything is contained within your own nervous system. You begin to See the tensile/magnetic forces between everyone. And you’re able to begin to See “I”-the-process in operation. You can watch your own nervous system as it meets someone new: “I wonder where she’s from? Is she married? She reminds me of my Aunt Mary…” This is a crude description of what mechanically runs through people’s minds. And, of course, this description is far too slow, which makes it a lie because the speed of ordinary energy expenditure at “I”-Level is part of its strength and efficiency. This mechanical analysis is necessary at the ordinary level, and I’m not in the least condemning it or suggesting that everyone should stop it. Nay, nay. Actually, if a disease suddenly appeared on this planet which disturbed this ordinary process of mechanical analysis I’d be the first one to look for an antidote. Of course, that won’t happen, but if it did, it would mean mass destruction. You must remember that I’m talking on two different levels. What is proper and profitable at the ordinary level, can be unprofitable for a man or woman with an Aim.
Back to my description. The nervous system, in you and everyone else, is a magnetic field in either a state of fixed attention or randomness. It may be in a random state wherein you’re sitting around and it’s just going, “blah, blah, blah,” like a cheap radio in the other room. The other possibility is of becoming affixed: the phone rings, and this randomness gets focused. Let us say you think, “I wonder if that’s Fred calling about the twenty dollars he owes me. Hello?” The magnetic field created by the electrical current that is flowing through everyone (called consciousness), is either one or the other, period. Most people can’t abide random awareness very long nowadays. Hence we have t.v. and reading to focus attention. Or it can be apparently held “out here” by something: “Something’s going on.” Perhaps it’s focused on a plan that went awry, or somebody who mistreated me, or somebody who will be able to do a favor. It is a process of mechanical analysis going on, which is of no consequence, except that you have got to See it for yourself. And you’re going to be astounded when you do. Then it seems so obvious, so simple. It seems as if you should have already known it, as if anybody would know it. Except you don’t. You’re not supposed to.
When I say you can remember without thinking, the nervous system in its normal mechanically analytical state rejects that. “That’s foolish. Or else it’s allegorical; you mean something else because that, per se, as you describe it, cannot be true.” What it’s really saying is, “I cannot do that.” And that’s correct. This system cannot do that. But that one piece, your one hope, can. It’s tied to that one little moment that everyone can bring on by trying to — right now — just be impartially aware that you’re sitting here. Nothing else. You’re sitting here, you’re reading or listening to this, and you can in a sense apparently separate your attention. You can still see the words or hear me talk, but consciousness can go back and forth, and you can almost get outside yourself and see “Well, here I sit. I’m somebody called Fred. I go by that name. Just here I am.” You just have an impartial awareness of it. The piece that can do that is one little unsolidified piece of wiring in the nervous system. It is that which can lead a man past the ordinary. It is that which begins to grow up above the Line.
You quickly find out through your own effort and the kinds of descriptions I’m giving you that you can start continually focusing your attention on this one loose piece of potential. And right now I’m not going to get you involved with physically trying to feel that it’s there. Simply remember that you came here for something. It shortly gets to where the purpose in being alive is This, whatever This is. This is the real thing. The rest of Life is a hobby.
There is that one piece that is standing aside. There is that one wire freed from the ordinary flow of current that activates the nervous system as Life has produced it. But now you have to use it. To give you something of a verbal description, for the time being you can simply Consider it as the continuing remembrance of your Aim, which is something extraordinary.
If something happens — and you’ll notice something is always happening — but if it seems “a situation is happening” that in some way catches your attention, you have a great opportunity. Suppose you’re in a situation where you’re observing that you’re about to get angry. The opportunity I’m speaking of is to keep yourself from falling into the ordinary analysis mechanism. Let us say Fred calls and he still owes you twenty dollars. That mechanism might sound something like, “Let’s see. I’m about to get mad at that guy. Doesn’t he remind me a lot of my father — my father used to act just like that. He used to talk that way when he got mad and his face would tighten just like that. That’s it! I bet I’m mad. I’m trying to transfer my hostile memories of my father to this guy who owes me money.” That mechanism is of no profit. If that kind of analysis had any validity, if it could produce real growth, then all of you would already be enlightened. Everyone in the world would be. You need to See that ordinary mentation does not go anywhere. What you have to do in that situation is to suddenly stop internally and try to Consider. That is, remember what is going on without thinking about it. Something is going on, but do not think about it. Simply look at it. And if you keep looking and do not think, and you’re the right type of person, then you have the potential to See. And once you get a glimpse, you know the difference.
Another instance of Considering is for you to truly remember those moments, based upon what I’ve said, when you felt as though “Something hit me.” What is it? You’re not being hypnotized. And strange incense is not burning. You need to find out that a piece of your wiring, a physical possibility — though it seems to be your ordinary attention — is actually your ally.
Ordinarily the blood reaches the Line and to a mathematically beautiful degree the substance in the blood is gone. Just before — just millimeters before it gets up to where you say “I”, where you feel “I” — that last little vestige of substance-potential is gone — except in this one little loose wire. At one end, it’s not connected with anything sensible. You have never done anything properly with it. You have put drugs in it. You’ve read weird books. You’ve tried to hypnotize each other. All in the attempt to do something with that one little loose piece.
You start diverting energy by simply Remembering to do so. Then, the energy that is Life itself — this electrical energy — feeds that one piece. You have to divert energy, focus it, and hold it here. And you must find out very quickly, almost immediately, that you can do that. To the degree that you can do it you have extracted yourself from the ordinary human drama (as I call it when I’m being charitable).
People have always pondered, “What is the distinguishing factor of man?” Maybe your fathers or forefathers would have said, “Well it’s his soul. It’s that the gods have put some holy spark in us that trees and rocks and animals don’t have.” Nowadays the belief is in a person’s individuality, his intellect. With contemporary people — which you are — at the cutting edge of where Line-Level consciousness is, your sense of being resides at the upper end of the nervous system, in the intellect.
And when you start talking directly to this end of present mechanical development, at the level of it’s functioning, it cannot hear. It cannot look at itself. It can analyze, it can listen to me talk and can go away and discuss it. It can sit down and think about it. But none of that will help you in This Thing. Nothing can conceive of itself at its own level. Growth is possible on this planet only through the open-ended system that is man. Hence, the desire for change is built into everybody. It is further built in to believe, “It is necessary that I do change. Something is wrong here. Something is lacking.” What a different picture it would be if you could objectively See what you have always — down in the nervous system — imagined to be change. The ordinary system envisions heaven or paradise — what it imagines would be real change — as a condition of no change. A desk forever cleaned: all the mail for the day has been opened, all the bills have gone out, the pencils are sharpened, all the work is done. The bell rings at five o’clock, work is over, and in some way you take a photograph and freeze this moment forever — bronze yourself and your desk. Without anyone knowing it, that is all there is to an ordinary person’s desire for change. “Now, that would be heaven.” No. That would be death.
I want you to start Considering the limitations of words. A part of their purpose is to create an illusion of stability. You hear words to describe everything from “These are sneakers,” to “When people behave like that they are extremely prejudiced. They’re the kind of people, son, that you should avoid.” Entire descriptions of masses of people, attitudes, that seem to convey an emotionality hide in one word. And once this nervous system has adopted and filed the sensation, it believes it’s had that experience. This creates an illusion of stability: “I know just what you mean. I’ve experienced that.” In truth, you’ve only heard the words.
That word, “sneakers,” or “prejudice,” seemed to have described to this particular walking nervous system something that had been experienced. It’s filed away now, and it describes something. And this is the story of your life. It has created the illusion that you know something. I can say “illusion,” but remember that at Line-Level it is not an illusion. It’s reality. The description, the word, has now described something without any doubt to you, something that you might not have had a name for before. “I never even thought about it in that much detail until I talked to that guy. But that describes it perfectly. I’ve had feelings like that.”
But here’s what has happened, and this could only be seen by a person who was extraordinary. An illusion of stability has been created wherein the word, the description that is now available, represents something that no longer exists. There was a sudden amount of insight after certain experiences, certain kinds of descriptions, after a certain kind of conversation. That moment is gone. (And for those of you with strong hearts, I’ll point out to you that all moments are gone.) But the process of describing experience in words, and stabilizing those words in memory, keeps you in your mechanical position. “Aha, I know what negative emotion means. I know what he means by that. I know what igniting the nervous system above the Line means. I know what hate means. I know what love means.”
Can you See for just a split second that that’s the way it must be in Life? Or else nothing could get done, not even the most ordinary of things. There has got to be some illusion, some stability, and, of course, below the Line, some reality. A feeling of predictability is required for Life to function. In general when you say, “I would like to have four dollars worth of regular gas,” you need confidence that the attendant will not pour two or three bottles of cola in your car. Some stability in the ordinary world is essential.
Consider that words must have some value. For you to look deeply into someone’s eyes and say, “I love you,” or for you to say, “All right, we’ve got a deal. You’ve got my hand on it,” those words must have some validity.
It’s time for you to begin to continually induce your loose wire to look upon this entire mechanism called a human being, called “I”. Considering is, in a sense, opposite from all thought processes. To be able to remember something without thinking about it is to remember it without having any words for it. Because any description that you have is an illusion of stability. And the only thing stable that you will ever conceive of is that one piece. But there still exists the absolute illusion of stability: that you are somebody. “I know who I am. I’ve got the same complaints I’ve always had. I’ve got the same kinds of dreams. I still like the same kind of food. I know the kind of things I won’t put up with. I know the kind of people I like.” But an extraordinary person can turn this kind of objective attention on the nervous system below the Line, on this “I”. Then notice, it’s gone. You can’t find “I” — for a split second. Until you think, “Hey, that’s weird.” And of course then you are back in it. But all you have to do is objectively look at it, and the process has stopped. An ordinary flow of current has stopped. An ordinary flow of current has ceased in that particular direction. Everything has stopped. You can only do it for a split second. But were it not for that split second, This Thing would not exist, and none of this would be possible.