If You Don’t Like It, You Can’t Believe It
Audio = The first 10 minutes of the audio stream contains Kyroots that are not on the video.
December 17, 1987
AKS/News Item Gallery = jcap 1987-12-17 (0304)
Condensed AKS/News Items= See Below
Summary = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = See Below
Summary
Jan Cox Talk #304 ** Dec 17, 1987 ** – 1:37
Notes by TK
Kyroot to :10.
“The best way to teach men is to do so as if not teaching them”. Is this not Life’s method with men? Yet it also arranges the “do not look” structure in men at the same time. Unseen lessons are everywhere. Example of news programs now using part of their time to advertise upcoming news features. This is a kind of lesson coming from Life; very subtle, and people can’t see it. How can this be used internally? How can you teach yourself while apparently not teaching?
Note that you continually attempt to overtly teach yourself (remediation) with resounding failure. Consider the Operational Directive ( O.D.) to not tell yourself what you’re doing. There is a specific kind of knowledge (lessons and experience) that can only be effectively had (in your lifetime) by being off balance. And what do ordinary people do? Constantly attempt to maintain their balance. The Few must make use of the life-produced events bringing off-balance or be able to produce it for themselves.
The Real Revolutionist must periodically make himself a stranger to himself.
YooHoo Ridicule technique. Question: what can withstand purposeful ridicule? In the City: nothing can (it may survive, but cannot ignore, must react). How about use of purposeful ridicule in place of overt attempts to teach yourself? This requires a ‘me’ in you that is capable of withstanding ridicule.
For the Real Revolutionist the greatest, most expansive foe is the ordinary –lessons out of view –not the exotic, the occult, not some supernatural gulf or extraordinary veil of illusion posing as the obstacle to his attempted transcendence.
“If it ain’t fixed –don’t break it!” (if it IS fixed –break it!!). ]
New data: if you don’t like it you can’t believe it. If you don’t like it you won’t understand it. This is an ultimate lesson/fact; one of Life’s greatest masterstrokes. It absolutely eliminates the validity, the basis of any knowledge existing. If you don’t like it–now–not later (because it will have changed later), you can’t believe it. period.
All knowledge is a case of misdiagnosis. Example of Life’s own ignorance-indecision in the issue of abortion. Even Life doesn’t know what it likes and cannot therefore believe it.
View your whole life as a test of your dumbness –your ability to be extraordinary. Life is Ed Koch continually asking everybody: “How’m I doin’?” and constantly answering itself with curses and raspberries. Speaking to itself thru men.
If you insist on extracting 3-D justice in life you will forever miss any 4-D justice and satisfaction.
1:37 Epilogue – end 1:40
Condensed AKS
And I heard a guy once cry out, intellectually pleading, as
it were, “No, no, not facts, anything but facts…they always
prove to be so, so, well, false and misleading.”
***
In what never-ever-land might dwell the right-angle-critic
who seeks excellence and meaning rather than imperfection and
insignificance?
***
What the would-be Revolutionist seeks lies in a teenie-
weenie little sector, while what he doesn’t fills in most all the
360 degrees…(on alternate days, or centuries, this may,
however, be reversed).
***
To say that notions of “gods” are superfluous to Real
Revolutionists is itself superfluous in that the Insurgent’s code
of conduct would actually be more stable and precise than would
be Life’s in general, at any given moment.
***
To be uncontrollably, and unconditionally seduced by the
Muse of Rebellion is to be educated in a multidimensional manner
most liberal, BUT be almost rendered useless for many ordinary
professions, such as Instructor, Priest, or Critic.
***
I know I’ve pretty well just said it “outright” that a
Revolutionist would be free of vices, but to make up for that let
me add that he would also have no virtues.
***
As far as City standards go, the Revolutionist understands
that the basic difference between the Hotsi-Totsi, and the Hoi-
Polloi is, simply, carpet.
***
Do you still accept as the most efficient, the arrangement
whereby the down-trodden dream Messianic visions while nearby the
victors swill vino and piss in the campfire?
***
Once heard a certain, out-of-state rebel shout out to
himself, “Get your head out of that damn book!” and he replied,
“I’m not reading a damn book.” and He countered, “I know, I know,
and that’s even worse…just as bad…the same-thing-without-the-
covers.”
***
If there were any literal significance to the old
allegorical idea regarding the “truth being light,” then the
Revolutionist would be seeking a source SO intense that shadows
would be impossible, (there could exist no contrast between light
and not-light).
***
Last Thursday, I believe it was, I saw a notice posted back
in the City announcing an upcoming lecture entitled, “The Human
Race, and Other Rigged Events”. (I’m telling you, the City’s not
to be missed.)
***
Those fully stocked with holiday, and revolutionary
confidence would be those who would proclaim, “Gee, I wanna be
JUST LIKE ME when I grow up.”
***
In the City I once saw an advertising slogan that assured
potential buyers that “A million people CAN’T be wrong,” and I
thought, “No? Well, if not that, then what COULD they be?”
***
One philosopher declares, “The future is unclear.” Another
avows, “The future is uncertain,” and yet another proclaims, “The
future is inscrutable.” And a Revolutionist thought, “They just
use such euphemisms to cover their 3-D fear that the future is
UNBELIEVABLE.
***
Although I’m not absolutely sure of what this signifies, I
feel inclined to pass this along to you. Once, after a number of
orbital whirls about the floor with the ever popular, ever
vivacious, Jack Daniels, I heard a certain Revolutionist
explosively smile and devilishly confide, “I got a CURE for the
future.”
***
Beware, the icebergs of the mind.
***
A certain Revolutionist formulated a slogan for His
enlistees: “Never cease to plan and never cease to act, and NEVER
EVER interrupt one to do the other.” (And from a nearby
Confronterry tree, dropped the query, “Should both then be going
on all of the time coevally?” ….”But Daddy, what does coevally
mean?”, “Shut up, and eat your equilibrium.”
***
Things, stuff, problems don’t “happen” to Man, LIFE does.
***
And another Rebel then noted his version of that previous
slogan/melody, and his went like this: “Act, then consider, then
act some more. OR, consider, then act, then consider some more.
But by ALL MEANS, don’t just do one or the other.”
***
In the City, of course, what is “fair” is what you like, and
“unfair,” what you don’t. But out in the Bushes the
revolutionary concept of fairness is: Things as they are times a
madman’s efforts squared.
***
In the City, rubes, intellectuals and other dimensionally
impaired people will jump into the jaws of the obvious and leap
into the arms of the apparent. (And just look at the money they
save on playground equipment.)
***
Amidst all the talk about Man’s “multiple selves,” within
the morass of descriptions regarding all of those inner
alternatives his conscious-self, his unconscious-self, his
subjective-self, and his objective-self; his mind, his body, and
so on, while up to your neck in such talk just remember this —
You’re in there SOMEwhere!
***
Heard a guy, last Friday, I believe it were this time, cry
out in a loud, although piercing voice, “Humility sucks!” and I
decided to correct him, but just as I started to do so, he was
struck and killed by a low flying lottery number.
***
A certain “let’s-have-it,” would-be philosopher in the City,
proclaimed that his charge was to “find the key to tomorrow,”
and a nearby Revolutionist seemed obligated to think, “To what
purpose? when all of your doors are made of yester-wood, and
fitted with hesitation locks.”
***
And here the certain Few be; neither total captives of the
City, yet neither babes-of-the-Bush. Here, yet neither here-nor-
there, and dealing only in things, that for some reason, must be
said.
***
No matter how cocky and independent they may sound, all
shadows remain captives of the sun.
***
True Revolutionist activity is and has always been the only
philosophy with soul, the only conflict with compassion, and the
only warfare that IS art.
***
And on a rainy Tuesday, if I’m not mistaken, I heard this
chap say, “There’s no doubt about it, I can be generous to a
fault, but only if it’s been generous to me.”
***
The greater the ambiguity, the deeper, the more intense the
Contrast.
***
No matter what City you’re in, if you hear a powerful
Spiritual Leader begin braying about the “Evil of whores, the
dangers of sex, and the lustful downfall of Man being imminent,”
put both hands over your head and your other two over your
private parts and run for the hills, or the valleys, or the
shores, but run-dammit-run, cause no one of either sex, or any
sex, is safe (save the priest’s personal pornographer).
***
A small, (although, real small) Inner-City-Epic: He wrote
his books, He drew his crowds, He asked for learned donations;
And from his head, The flames did roar, Fed on by mighty
quotations. The King Is Dead, The King Is Dead…Long Live The
Footnotes.
***
After a serious-night-of-drinking, I once heard a would-be
pundit say, “You know, I was THAT CLOSE…I was within four beers
of actually knowing what I was talking about.”
***
Transcript
IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, YOU CAN’T BELIEVE IT
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1987
Document: 304, December 17, 1987
In the city (life at Line level) it has been said that the best way to teach humans is to do it in a way that looks as though you’re not teaching them at all. Now, from a certain view, you have to admit there’s a lot of validity to that, because look — isn’t that the method Life itself uses? If Life is in fact teaching humanity anything. (I’m going to be drifting back and forth between city talk and Bush talk for a while, so you’ll have to listen sharp and find your own way.)
If Life IS teaching mankind anything, or if it’s attempting to teach mankind anything, or if it is teaching people but on such a large scale that the process takes place within hundreds of generations and not within one single lifetime — even considering all that, I still ask, “Isn’t the best way to teach humans to do it in a way that looks as though you’re not teaching them at all?” The notion is so widespread, isn’t there some validity to it? Of course, there is, as you know.
Supposing we’ve hit on something here, and Life IS teaching humanity in just this way, isn’t it interesting that coevally, Life has constructed Man with a more or less permanent “Do Not Look” sign invisibly tattooed in his brain? Don’t you find that interesting?
Okay, let’s continue with this a moment and assume that this method of “not appearing to teach” is the basic method Life uses to teach mankind. It’s sort of like parents trying to teach children by tricking them into learning something while not subjecting them to a direct, didactic force. So, if Life is actually teaching this way, which sounds vague enough, don’t you find it interesting that at the same time, Life has Man wired up to “not look at the lessons it’s learning”? What could you make of all this? If you’re a 3-D sorehead…nothing. The first part, the way Life is teaching, is preposterous enough without adding any more confusion. If you’re looking to understand more, of course, there’s something here to be “learned.” You have the capability to turn off the “Do Not Look” sign for a moment and See something.
You have to admit it’s a strange way to “teach.” The first part, the “teach without appearing to teach” part that I dredged up from the city, is weirdness squared when you add, “Now don’t look at what you’re learning.” What’s going on here? It sounds so complex.
It’s not complex. Well, maybe I can make it more complex. Remember my saying you should investigate the 3-D topological makeup of Life and that you should ask, “Why are things the way they are? Why is there only an inside and an outside? Why only four dimensions?” Normally, people are not wired up to investigate the foundations of their homeland. They’re not wired up to “look.” Remember my “Look Method”? IF you want to know what the hell is going on, then LOOK. And when you LOOK, you realize that normally, you do NOT look. Here’s a good example for you, a lesson right out of Life’s ongoing textbook that nobody in his right mind ever notices. At 7:30 a.m. you turn on the news. Ok, people notice that part. What they don’t notice is the significance of the next part. Somewhere in that News broadcast the announcer says, “And this evening on the XYZ News, So and So will be covering Such and Such.” Think about it for a second. Part of almost every news announcement is the announcement of another news announcement six or twelve hours later.
If you’re an ordinary city smart aleck, your response to all this is, “Well, hell, they’re just trying to save a little money. The more time they fill up with advertising, the less time they’ve got to spend paying some hack out in the field to pound out more news announcements.”
Alright, I’ll ask again: Why does Life operate this way? Why does it put all these little lessons out there, and then discourage people from seeing that they’re lessons? I’ll tell you why. Because it is efficient. If it weren’t, Life wouldn’t be doing it; it would find another way. For the Revolutionist, however, bulk learning isn’t good enough. For you, the only sensible thing to do is keep looking. Keep asking, without words, “What is going on here?” Because there IS something to be learned. All of LIFE has something to teach you. If it doesn’t, you might as well join the masses and slough the whole thing off onto your great great great great grandchildren. “Let them learn, damn it. I’m too busy trying to get through life.” (Of course, your great great great great grandchildren may still have the “DO NOT LOOK” tattoo stamped in their brains, but by that time, what do you care?)
Musicians have something they call a “fake book,” which is a euphemism for a collection of “cheat sheets” of all the songs they play or want to learn to play. It usually consists of short hand versions that somebody knocked together illegally, without the benefit of copyright or payment to the original composers. This unauthorized collection serves the musician as a handy memory and learning tool. You should be making your own little personal “Fake Books” — unwritten and unauthorized, of all the songs and teachings Life has to offer. Make it infinitely expandable, and add to it and improve it continually. To do so, you’ve got to think big, you’ve got to LOOK big. There’s no point putting things in it about the stupidity of the network news people, or the irritation of advertising. That’s just what the ordinary person sees, and he has no “fake book.” He doesn’t know he’s “learning” anything. A real life Fake Book wouldn’t have words in it, and it particularly wouldn’t have any periods in it.
Put this in your Fake Book. Part of almost every news announcement Life has news announcers make is a news announcement announcing another news announcement. What is going on here, anyway? “It’s dumb,” you say. No, it’s not dumb. It’s just subtle. It’s too subtle for almost everyone on the planet. You’re not special here. It’s too subtle not because people are stupid or somehow to blame, but because that’s the way Life has put it together. It has lessons lying around all over the place stamped with invisible “Do Not Look” signs. If you’re the rare type that has the curiosity and ability to remove that sign — both “out there” and “in here” in your brain, you may See what’s going on. Otherwise, you can’t See or Hear anything beyond the 3-D obvious. It all just goes right by you. Oh, maybe you catch the words, but what is the normal response? “That’s dumb!”
The best way to teach people is to act as though you aren’t teaching them anything.
Well, if that looked like Life in operation, how about jumping from that to what looks like YOU in operation? How in the world could you possibly teach yourself something by apparently not teaching yourself anything? How would you go about it? I realize this looks like an even more impossible question than the one about Life, but it’s not. It just seems more personal. How does this possibly apply to you, or how can you apply it to yourself? Let me ask you this: What success have you and everyone else on this planet had trying to teach yourself something directly? There! For those of you who are playing this game correctly, I say, “There!” How else can you explain all your attempts to teach yourself directly, such as: “I shouldn’t do this.” How long have you been doing that? “Oh, I don’t know.” How old did you say you were? “I should be doing such and such,” or, “I’ll tell you the truth,” — when you say things like this you’re not talking to someone else, you’re talking to yourself. If you’re trying to teach yourself something, I’ll ask again, what kind of success have you had for the last 20, 30, or 40 years? And if that’s the method you’ve been using, have you learned anything about that method from all your experience? Is it so weird now to consider the possibility of trying to teach yourself directly? “Of course,” you say, “of course,” except for one teeny-tiny weensy little thing — “How on earth do I do THAT??!”
We’ve been through the background of “how” many times before. You remember the close friend you have in the method of not telling yourself what you’re doing. Or, to put it another way, that you no longer seriously entertain all the noise going on up top in the old noggin. There’s not much more for you to gain from my discussing this further at the moment — I’ll leave it for you to play with.
Carrying on with the theme of education, consider this. Some kinds of knowledge and experience can only be gained — or can most efficiently be gained — when one is off balance. But in the city, what is the very thing everybody’s most concerned with? KEEPING one’s balance. Being OFF balance leads to what? It leads to everything from minor irritations to major problems. Well, let’s just say serious problems. Well, let’s just say problems. Everyone, if their balance is upset, immediately tries to regain it. You’re supposed to. And, of course, here I don’t mean just physically. Why? Well, for one thing, and in one sense, because the normal state of humans in the city is to feel continually off balance, continually tugged one way and then another; which, of course, is always upsetting. On the other hand, and in another sense, humans are also wired up to retain a balance of sorts, within certain limits. We’re not talking about the far extremes of the city, where people really ARE always off balance by any proper city dweller’s definition of the word. No, we’re talking about Good Ol’ Joe, the bourgeoisie, the heart beat of Life’s cities. Ordinarily, people are strongly wired up to attempt to keep their internal, personal balance.
So here we have the normal order of human life to be, on the one hand, a constant losing of one’s balance, coupled with a constant attempt to keep regaining one’s balance, to keep “putting it all back together.” What can we learn from this? The first thing you can learn is that everybody — EVERYBODY — is knocked around by Life. Everybody is knocked off balance all the time. If you’re alive, and you’re human, you’ve got no choice in the matter. So, apparently, being part of the bourgeoisie means having a sort of gyroscopic hemostat inside that tries to steady you within the boundaries of “you,” while Life continually knocks you around. You go bouncing around, back and forth, for sixty or seventy years, but never really move from the area of the city where you were born. You’re constantly in motion, but you never go anywhere — you just jitter back and forth, around and around, trying to keep your sanity until it’s all over and you can relax while also not having to breathe, six feet under.
Sticking to THAT program won’t get you much Here, as you already must suspect. You also might begin to realize that no matter what you might do Here, you are not exempt from that buffeting of Life in motion. So what to do? How to use it for your own benefit? It’s not going to go away; it’s there all the time. You’ve got to find some way to use the motion, or there are going to be lessons you’ll never learn. You can stay Here until you die, and you still won’t learn them.
How? You must go beyond that which happens to one and all, the constant knocking off balance, coupled with the need to immediately regain it. For example, on slow days, you’ve got to be able to CAUSE it to happen. And what is the ultimate in causing yourself to be off balance? The ultimate is to periodically make yourself almost a stranger to yourself. You’ve forgotten that one already? How’s that for an off balance job?
Let’s do more on education. And what’s more appropriate to education than a quiz? Alright, here’ my quiz. What in the ordinary affairs of the city can withstand purposeful ridicule? Here are two versions. First, what can withstand ridicule? Second, a bit more complex, if not sophisticated: What in the ordinary affairs of city life can withstand “purposeful, directed, controlled” ridicule?
Let me refer you back to the “Yoo hoo” technique. Remember “Yoo hoo”? Well, if you don’t, I’ll let you stay off balance for a moment while you try to remember. It may help. Let me first ask in the city sense, “What in you can withstand ridicule? What in anyone in the city can withstand ridicule?” Nothing! If you need proof, the proof is that everything in the city reacts to ridicule. If you get close enough to where they’re wired up, they’ll react, every time. They’re supposed to. What’s going on here? What’s going on is people can’t stand to be pushed around, which is what ridicule is. City consciousness can stand being approved of, it can even stand being disapproved of, but it can’t stand ridicule. And especially since everything in the city is deadly serious, it will react to ridicule, every time. It will react.
The “Yoo hoo” technique is good for seriousness, and it’s good for ridicule. If you really want to torture humanity, you can go down the street, lean out of your car window and yell, “Yoo hoo!” in just the right tone of voice to somebody standing on the corner, and you’ll prove to yourself just how little ridicule ordinary humans can stand. If you really want to play around with sticking your finger in one of Life’s live sockets right quick, and let it out, that’s up to you. But in the time since I first spoke about the “Yoo hoo” method, you should eventually have come to the point where you suspected I meant you to turn this method around and turn it…where?
Does anyone see any connection between the possibility of using purposeful ridicule on oneself, and my suggestion that the best way to teach oneself is to do it while not appearing to teach oneself? So here we are back to my opening paragraph. Don’t you find it interesting that Life has wired humans to learn while never knowing they’re learning?
Do you begin to see the value in finding the part in yourself that can See Life’s lessons, and then yelling, “Yoo hoo!” to the rest when it becomes overly pompous and overly serious? If instruction is happening, there has to be a teacher and a pupil, so there has to be somebody inside who can hear, “Yoo hoo!” What in you can withstand ridicule?
I hear a voice from the back of the city muttering, “There’s gotta be an easier way.” Right, mister, but you should live so long.
Have any of you stumbling around in the Bushes stumbled onto this thought: Your most powerful foe is the ordinary? Perhaps the most common definition of “foe” is “immediate adversary.” But how about a foe being something you can’t reach? How about a foe being lessons you can’t quite make out? How about a foe being those things that are going on continually around you and you miss them? How would you describe the nature of that kind of foe? Well, I just did.
What is it that distracts you in Life, after all? It’s not the extraordinary, it’s not the exotic, it’s not the esoteric, it’s not the metaphysical, it’s not the paraphysical, it’s not the meta-paraphysical — it’s TA DA — the ordinary! And you can’t blame Life for being so subtle. Oh, you can if you want to go back to the city. But if you want to be Here, you’ve got to realize that men are wired up individually, including you personally, to see only that which is continually broken down into the ordinary foreground, plus all these irrelevant peripherals. You cannot, under common circumstances, go around using the Look Method. Ordinarily, all you see is what Life wants you to see.
Given all that, who’s the foe? It’s not the extraordinary. You get hold of a bit of the extraordinary and then you realize 99% of the time, you don’t live in the extraordinary. You live in the ordinary. So, what keeps you in position? Something extraordinary? Is it because some cousin of Halley’s comet flashes through your bedroom every morning? Is it that every morning when you get up, an infinite string of pickup trucks filled with red necks rides through your bedroom insulting you and throwing beer cans? Is it that every day your mother dies and on the day she doesn’t, your father dies? And on the day that doesn’t happen, you lose your job again, even if you just lost it yesterday? Is it all that? Noooo! It’s the ordinary! The ordinary is the most powerful, the most expansive foe of any Revolutionist. Once you see that, I don’t have to go through all these histrionics; you just see it’s true.
But don’t stop there. Send your regards to Broadway, to the gods, to Life, that it arranges things in such a way. Everyone else in the city — the philosophers, priests, rabbis, bar stool philosophers, everybody — believes that whatever stands between Man and “enlightenment” is something extraordinary. Everybody believes it has to be something extraordinary because, after all, if it was something ordinary, something right there in front of your face, you’d see it, wouldn’t you? Right! Now, do you see how good this is? Now, do you have your hat off to Life?
It’s a master stroke. As long as it’s molecularly ingrained that the barrier is something invisible and extraordinary, then it’s just one small step from there to understand how impossible it looks to overcome, comprehend, or deal with the events and forces of Life. As long as people believe the foe is the extraordinary, then how safe is the fact that the real foe is the ordinary? Well, it’s just as safe as the pope at a fashion show. It’s all safe.
It’s an accepted fact that the missing something is cosmic, metaphysical, or spiritual; and if not those, then there is simply an impossible intellectual gulf standing between Man and understanding how Life actually operates. And between you and me, that’s a damn lie. Because there is at least one person on this planet right now who actually knows how Life works. But that Understanding was not gained through some kind of “breakthrough,” it was not gained through scaling the heights of metaphysical knowledge, studying with somebody, or piercing some kind of extraordinary veil. It won’t be for you either. The foe is the ordinary.
Maybe some of you reached some little bit of Understanding accidentally — like in the good old story of the thousand chimpanzees with their IBM’s eventually typing out all the sonnets of Shakespeare. But I’m telling you where the foe is. You don’t have to look any further. Don’t wait for calamities, don’t wait to take it out on the gods someday, on fate, on chance, on even a low flying lottery ticket number. The foe is everywhere. That’s why you don’t have to dress up and go to war, the war will come to you. You don’t even have to look for the battlefield. You don’t have to say, “Hey, Charlie, which way is the front?” — you is the front! The front is always here unless you want to look off, and when you look off, it’s always, “I believe I hear exotic sounds of heavy artillery, yo, in the distance.” Hell, EVERYBODY, hears them in the DISTANCE. “It’s the sound of artillery fire so exotic I can’t recognize it. It’s the sound of the titans, the gods clashing, way over the mountains.”
For those who would really stage a Revolution the noise of the battle is not “out there.” But again, that’s the master stroke. As long as the sound and the fury of the war is somewhere else, it’s not your affair. There’s nothing you can do about it. If you’re in the city, you’re all right, and there’s no danger of you being forced to learn any sort of extraordinary lessons. You can keep your balance, more or less, for seventy years. The front is somewhere else; and, therefore, the foe is somewhere else.
I don’t really like the term “foe,” as you know by now, because it has too many religious connotations; it’s been used too long. But it’s what seems to be the resistance to what you are doing, what seems to be the ignorance; what seems to be the lack of proper experience. That kind of foe is not extraordinary — and that’s part of the beautiful arrangement that Life has, for whatever reasons. The so-called foe, the struggle, the battlefield, is the ordinary. And everything is wired up, everything is arranged in the city, to say otherwise. And as always, that’s an understatement. Who is going to waste their life struggling with the ordinary? Not us, right?
Here’s something else. A few weeks ago I threw in the idea, “If it ain’t fixed, don’t break it.” Unless something apparently is stable, unless it is all fixed up, unless it is on course, on balance to a Revolutionist, why would he bother to fool with it? Why would he attempt to break it? And then, if you could do justice like this you could say, “Well, of course, would anybody want to break something in their life that was fixed?”
Why indeed? Here you’ve been following me so far, and then I throw in something like this. Well, look at it this way: what if something does look broken? What then? Well, all the force of the city, all the force of the universe as we know it from the city view, is to make you either attempt to fix it, or certainly to die believing that you should have made a better effort to fix it. So you could say that, to varying degrees, everybody is attempting to fix up their stuff. You can’t escape it. Within that spectrum lies everybody to the city born.
Since that is the nature of the way things are established, and since you have had all of your life heretofore to do that, then I have got to ask you that damn dirty question again, “What good did it do you?” Which is, of course, the answer — which is worse than answering, “None.” So what would be the other immediate possibility? “Take all those things that apparently are fixed and break ’em.” Oh, I guess enough is enough, we ought to go on to something serious instead of…
If you want to get really serious, here’s one that could stop your little heart if you saw it all at once. Ready, here goes, “If you don’t like it, you can’t believe it.” “If you don’t like it, you won’t understand it.” The words are simple enough, but what the hell does that mean, if anything? It can’t be true, can it? Yeah, it is, and if you don’t like it, you can’t believe it.
If any of you who hear any of that, it should almost scare the hell out of you because let’s all say together, “That can’t be true.” Oh, yeah? What if it IS true? What if that is one of the unrecognized laws of physics: that if you don’t like it, you can’t believe it? What if that’s true? What if it’s worse than that? What if it’s correct, but you hear it and you don’t like it? That doesn’t scare you to death?
It’s bad enough if you think you hear me and don’t like it, but how about all that stuff out in Life? The drunken red neck in the pickup, the treatment you get from strangers, from friends — what if it’s true? What if it’s correct that you hear it, you see it, and if you don’t like it, you can’t believe it? What if this thing I’m telling you is the link pin that you need to know? What if it’s the lesson that you have been waiting for? What if it is the piece of information that would perfect your data in general? Forget about the gods looking after you, or whether you were born under a lucky “sign” or lucky guitar case and you believe somehow “everything will work out.” What if what I’m telling you is a fact, an inescapable fact: that if you don’t like it, you can’t believe it? I didn’t put conditions on it. You just can’t believe it.
Alright, here is its twin brother. If you don’t like it, you won’t understand it. But I gave you enough of the first part. What if that is true? What if that is correct, in the city, and out of the city? Line-level consciousness is wired up to believe it has the ability to hear more and more of the truth about things, about Life in general based upon your increasing wisdom throughout the years, and your attempts to be more perceptive — that you can approach the truth closer and closer. What if all that is just garbage, part of the beautiful master stroke again? What if the truth is, “If you don’t like it, you can’t believe it”? Period!
Do you understand what an arrangement is going on? This is beyond being irrational, it is beyond mere linear illogic — this is a whole other universe. You can’t even find its identifiable opposite. It’s off in another direction. It takes away all of the foundation that there is something objective to knowledge; that things can be true, less true, and downright false. It has taken all of that away; it has taken the hole out of the doughnut. There is nothing left. If you don’t like it, you can’t believe it. And you can’t Understand it.
What if the gods of your forefather’s religion come down to tell you THE TRUTH, THE SECRET, and you hear it and you don’t like it — which, according to all these tales, happened all the time? What then? Well, then you won’t believe them either.
Do you hear the possibilities, do you hear the heart stopping potential? Do you hear that on the 3-D level, on the level of ordinary consciousness, there is no validity whatsoever to any idea of knowledge existing? It has no value, it has no weight, you can’t sell it, you can’t transfer it, there is no deed to it, there is no description to it. Now, I didn’t say that you can’t believe it right off the bat, and I’m not leaving out the possibility that you can say, “Well, I’ll go away and I’ll work on it. I’ll make myself like it.” What I’m telling you is that if you don’t like it, you can’t believe it. I didn’t say that if you don’t like it now, maybe you will like it later. There are no ordinary conditions that will make you like it later.
Do you hear what that does to everybody’s idea that, “I want to know things,” not just THE secret, but just in general, people saying, “Well, I’d like to know why I am like I am.” You already have been told why you are like you are, but you didn’t believe it. Why? Because you didn’t like it.
I think I’d better leave this, but I’ll give you a final hint. Can you perceive of the possibility that the entire basis of so-called knowledge and ignorance is simply a case of misdiagnosis? What is believed and understood is simply what Life, and thus man, likes at any given moment? And those of you with any potential know by now, if Life doesn’t like it, you don’t like it, and vice versa. The great division between knowledge and ignorance, “What I know and what I don’t know; what I have experienced and what I have not experienced; what I may be able to learn and what I might not be able to learn,” could be just a matter, at any given moment (and a given moment could be 70 years to you, Bunky) of what Life likes. Because if Life doesn’t like it, Life doesn’t believe it.
Now, anyone in the city can still believe that I am using Life as a euphemism for god or Allah, or Jehovah, or somebody, and that I’m saying that the gods made it all, and know it all. And so everything that’s here is from their creative spirit, or whatever term is currently in vogue. But if you believe that, you aren’t seeing very clearly. Sometimes I just give you the shorthand and point out that Life will try anything once; because if you ever heard of it, Life tried it, Life thought about it. But Life does not “know” in the sense that you think 3-D knowledge is a certainty.
Here’s an example I’ve never used and that is the so-called burning question of abortion. What if Life is not like a “god” standing smugly off somewhere, waiting to see if Man finds the “moral” answer to abortion? What if it’s not about the legal rights of the unborn or the rights of women to control their own bodies? What if Life itself is stepping from one foot to the other? What if Life doesn’t know “the answer” yet? What if it’s muttering to itself, “Am I really getting too many people down in that part? Should I knock some of them off?”
It is not that far removed from the way Life deals with warfare. Maybe Life itself does not know what to do. Life does not know what it likes, and there it is. It does not know whether it likes killing off parts, as in unborn babies, or half of our population in a war. It doesn’t yet know what it likes; therefore, it cannot believe, and humans cannot believe. Hence, no one is yet satisfied about what should be done. When Life is uncertain, the normal state of affairs is for the uncertainty to trickle down to humanity and it simply becomes a continuing panorama of lessons nobody sees. Oh, they see arguments, they see positions, they see the ability to confront the opposing view, but they do not see a lesson. And binary consciousness can never see my kind of lesson, that is, that Life itself, right now, doesn’t know what it likes. And so humans can’t. If Life is not satisfied, humanity is not satisfied. If you don’t like it, you can’t believe it.
Two more things. In the past, I pointed out that every time you feel hostile, every time you feel critical of somebody, it would be useful to assume that secret powers somewhere are actually testing you personally. When people go by in the pickup truck and holler, “Hey, you big nosed, fat son of a bitch,” and you get mad, it’s just a test. They’re actually people from Jupiter dressed up like that. You think you are out of the ordinary, so they keep doing that to you just to see whether you turn around and shoot them a finger or not. They know how you reacted inside. And so it is a continual test.
Beyond that sort of useful game, I wanted to point out to you that you should look upon Life itself, your life, as a test. Not a spiritual test, not that you have to measure up to anything, but a test nonetheless. It’s not that far removed from my little game of assuming that there are secret people from other metaphysical planes and spectrums actually coming down and disguising themselves as fat, loudmouthed red necks to torture you and ask you dumb questions, or to give you the wrong brand of cigarettes every time you order them. Just look at the entire spectrum of your life as being a kind of test to see if the best you can do is react like everybody else.
You can be assured that Life had some reason for everything it does, everything that happens in your life, even if it’s just an experiment, even if it was just a one shot deal. So if you smirk, if you criticize, if you get angry at it, you are just proving once again your ineptness; you are proving once again your commonness; you are proving once again that you are fighting to stay on balance. You are proving once again that you are just as common as spit on a New York sidewalk. That is all you are proving.
It’s as though Life checks itself out through Man, day by day. It hollers, “Hey, how am I doing?” The president, the premier, you — everybody keeps asking, “How am I doing?” It’s not just you, it’s Life stepping through the garbage on the sidewalks, and you ask, “Why doesn’t somebody straighten out this mess?” It’s a test — not a spiritual test — but a straight forward test to see how dumb you are. It’s like Life continually gives you the chance to say, “How am I doing?” And you answer yourself, “Grrrgh*!” And it’s just laughing at you. Well, it gives you the test, but you always fail. That is — you always pass. Life has not lost another little sheep. Life has still got you, you little dummy. I’m so sorry…I mean…You…you reasonable man and woman, you.
I think I’ll conclude with the following area: If at all times, under all circumstances, you insist on trying to extract some ordinary form of justice regarding other people, you are not only going to miss getting justice, you are going to ultimately miss learning how to be four dimensionally fair…correct. You will not only miss getting any kind of justice, but you’ll ultimately miss getting any kind of human personal satisfaction. Without going into it at any great length, I assure you this is a law of physics. It’s not a law of karma. It’s not some law of a previous life. It’s not some law of an upcoming life. It IS the way Life is. It’s part of the off balance nature of Life. It is part of its hit and run nature. It is part of what seems to be continuing problems and irritations; which, as I have pointed out, from a Revolutionary view is simply Life. You feel like your parents abused you, or if you had a relationship that broke up, and feel as though, “I have been mistreated.” It is part of being alive to feel that way, and to feel that you should have “justice.” That is the way that Life is wired up. It’s part of the movement of energy. It is part of staying off balance. It is part of the breathing mechanism of humanity within the bosom of Life itself. You feel, “I have no choice but to act the way I ordinarily do until justice is done. Until I’m satisfied. Until they holler, ‘Uhhhh…give me a break.’ Until they go, ‘Wow, I wish I hadn’t done that!’ Until they suffer over it! Justice has to be done!”
If you attempt to extract justice by any means known to Man on this planet, you are only dealing in the binary. In the city sense, revenge is sweet, if you want to call it that. It’s the kind of sugar that Life obviously needs big doses of. But if you attempt to extract justice, if you insist upon it, you are not only going to miss any sense of justice, you are going to cut yourself off from the potential of human satisfaction. I am at least hinting to you that satisfaction IS possible, by becoming free from the forced desire to believe that justice should be done.
I am not going to wrap this up with any inspiring, flag waving, pseudo-spiritual message about, “Forgive your fellow man, because the gods will love you for it.” If you ever believed in the gods, you’d realize that you’re blind to say that they love forgiveness. Just look at Life. It obviously loves something else more. That is, Life obviously needs something more than so-called forgiveness. But here’s the master stroke again. Everybody agrees that forgiveness IS preferable; forgiveness IS what the gods want us to do; forgiveness is most humane, the more intelligent thing to do. Psssrffff! You gotta be blind! That is, you have got to go along with city thinking. Forgiveness is not what is most required in Life. What is MOST required in Life is to be on edge, to feel that you should be an avenger, to feel abused, to seek out what seems to be justice. But if you do, you will be missing the Real justice, and the Real satisfaction, and all those invisible, stuck right in your face lessons Life has to offer.