The Third Leg
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Summary = See below
Excursion / Task = See Below
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Transcript = See Below
Summary
Jan Cox Talk #326 Mar 22, 1988 – 1:38
Notes by TK
Everything is based on a triad; in music, harmony is based on triads. Ordinary consciousness cannot see the third leg, cannot see that every interaction is a triad. The third leg supports like the third leg of a 3-legged stool, but is unseen by ordinary consciousness. One of the legs of a triad is always in the air; in flux. To see the third leg is to see how it is situated, see how it exists.
Medevesqo is used by the Real Revolutionist to cure “self-ills”, i.e., unfit hobbies; status problems. The investigation of what would never have been looked at will affect it; this is the looking at the ‘silent’ side of the partnership –at the unacceptable partner, the one you don’t want to acknowledge, to hear about: the ‘unconscious’.
Thinking Of Action (TOA) vs. action. The Real Revolutionist has got to bring his TOA as close as possible to action; bring the generals as close to the infantry as possible. This will alleviate unforeseen consequences; you will not then act in a way unprofitable to you. Planning really makes almost no difference anyway, but still it is necessary to plan.
Information is alive; it is energy. Talk is energy; it is a kind of magic. It is used by the ordinary as a kind of public solo sex act –messy and transitorally satisfying only. The Real Revolutionist has got to use his talk silently, secretly to himself and only re: self-evolution. Then his talk has a real magic.
1:00 Paradigm presents. ]
Excursion
1:38 Excursion for NP: 1. write down your greatest fear. 2. give a passionate, sincere thank you for a non-existent favor done by some clerk in some store. (“You probably won’t remember but I would just like to really thank you for……..).
Transcript
THE THIRD LEG
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 326, March 22, 1988
I will start by reading an observation from someone: “I believe I’ve learned a new trick from you. Whenever people have gotten behind on their work here, seemingly from having too much to do, you give us even more to do. Not only is this at variance to what ordinary life would say should be done, it actually seems to work! What is going on? If we cannot manage what we already have to do, how can adding more work provide a boost?”
Damn, that’s my kind of question. It is back to what I asked you before. That is, does anybody know what in the hell is going on here? I noticed nobody answered that, and it’s a good thing.
There is no beginning and no end to the area of what I refer to as the triads. It is so basic to our life and time, and to the way in which Life has told me all this stuff, that it will be returned to again and again. In everything that takes place here on planet Earth, everything is based upon a triad. And, furthermore, ordinary consciousness cannot see it. Period. It is not because you are dumb, and it is not because only I know it. Ordinary consciousness can see only two things involved. Always. I don’t care if it’s as large as a world war or as small as your personal relationship with your mate. It is all based on a triad; it is as though everything sits on three legs. Listen to me right quick: if this be true, can you imagine the pregnant possibilities which a continual view of the full triad might unfold? All that seems inexplicable and self-defeating in the life of humanity might be absolutely otherwise. And it’s right before your eyes.
In every situation you should try to see this for yourself. Ordinarily in any situation, circumstance, relationship, thing, noun, verb, mass or energy, you immediately see two aspects. And as far as ordinary consciousness is concerned, that would seem to be sufficient. In any recurring problem, for example between you and your mate, one leg of the triad may appear as some sort of demand or pressure: “She says I spend too much time on my hobby.” And of course the other leg is obvious: “I don’t.” And it seems to go around and around. There is a triad to any conflict between you and another person.
The continuing movement of Life could be likened to one of those toys with suction cups. You would stick it on a wall and it had several little legs. The weight of it made it begin to flop over in all kind of strange directions and it would run down the wall. Like a little animal with legs made of “slinkies.” One or two legs would always be holding it. Whatever the apparent movement in Life from volcanoes to love affairs, it is like a little animal with three legs. If it is alive and not static (if it is static it ceases to exist — it is no longer a problem) then it moves like this: one of the legs is always raising up and it is flopping over into a different position. It may apparently flop more or less back where it was, but it is never exactly the same. If nothing else, the humidity has changed.
Now listen: one of the three legs is always off the ground. Ordinary people do not know this. But once you begin to see it, you have a continuing opportunity to make the thing shift from where it would have been. While one of its legs is up, it creates what amounts to a split-second in which there is a vacuum. It is a kind of four dimensional uncertainty. If you do not do something, what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen. That is, the future will become the past all over again. That is, nothing changes.
If you are conscious and inflamed over something, then for you that triad is still alive. And it is continually in motion. You can change it by knowing that one of its legs is always off the ground. The first trick is to see beyond the obvious two legs which everyone can see. You have to be able to see where the third leg is and how it exists. (As a historical aside, how about the religious ideas of tripartite gods? The first and second parts of “god” are always easy to see — a pretty good guy, and a not so good guy. But when it comes to the third one, the religions say what amounts to this: “We’re not sure what’s going on with the third one, but it is spooky. And he’s not the kind of guy to fuck around with. He’s like a whole different league.” I just thought some of you might be interested. Forget gods: it is a literal, physical reality.)
You can die and never see it, and it won’t change the fact that it is there. If everything does stand on three legs — not two — do you not see the possibility that it would explain, shall we say, a lot? Could you just theoretically consider that it might throw a whole new light on everything upon which you turn “your great gaze of consciousness”?
The last time I mentioned Medevesqo, I do assume you understood that it is not limited to the examples I happened to use at that time, because I did not use the most blatant. But I’ll go ahead and be blatant now. How many times have you had an ill and gone to the doctor, who pokes around, asks a few questions, and finally pronounces you “sound as a dollar” — and you leave the office recovered? You go through the big process of making an appointment and waiting around in one of those little rooms reading two year old magazines. The doctor examines you, you pay a horrendous bill and are no longer sick. That is Medevesqo. Absolutely. You should hear what I am saying. In ordinary life people do not recognize it because (to give you one description) they can only see two possible legs. That is, life in the City is reasonable. By whose definition? Binary consciousness.
Some of you may be able to hear this, because it has happened to you. Some of you have been cured of an ill simply by calling up the doctor’s office and attempting to make an appointment. You have to understand triads to understand that such things are reality. (If I tried to use this example with a psychologist, he would say it is simply evidence of a “psychosomatic illness.” I got news for you if we’re going to play that game: all illness is psychosomatic, except death. And I’m only saying that because you can’t see past the graveyard.) Ordinary consciousness cannot see Medevesqo as being a useable reality, but you have got to see that it is. You can use it to cure what appears to be self-ills — unprofitable and unfit hobbies. It is the bringing of yourself up to the minimum level of so-called health; and in the upper circuits, to the minimal threshold level of being conscious. That is, of being able to look around and not stare.
The minimal threshold level of being a conscious person entails not believing all of the internal voices you have. It entails not taking the same old chemical feeding which goes on in your brain as being the only possible reality. If it is, you’re in a world of trouble. If it is, then I am some sort of con man. (I hesitate saying that, because how could I con you if you were that dumb? That’s like the old thing of people coming to hear me talk and wondering if I am “a fake” — if they are going to “get taken.” Think about that for a second. A fake what? Of course, I’m refraining from being sarcastic. To point out the obvious, think about most people. It’s like, if what they are now is not a fair representation of someone who’s already “been took”…how could they be in any worse shape after hearing me?)
What I mean by the curing of self-ills does not refer to actual real ills of the lower circuits. Self-ills are the problems of being alive: sex, weight, color, religion, etc. The treatment begins with this: it is to understand that there is a continuing reality to the use of Medevesqo to investigate the problem. Just the scrutiny of a problem can have a salubrious effect — to the point that it appears many times to be a cure. You are examining that which the partnership does not wish to talk about. The side of the partnership which is you at any particular time does not wish to hear about the other side, which is the side which has the self-ills (at any particular time). But it cannot, for you, be passed over without scrutiny. There is nothing holy about it, and certainly nothing irretrievable. It is not locked away in some dark, dank mine. There is no unconscious mind beyond reach: it is very close, as close as your partnership. Everyone should feel that, even if you don’t like my terms for it. You and “somebody else” is in business — in you. Every human is a natural partnership. Sometimes you are Smith, sometimes you are Jones, all depending on who’s on the phone. To Smith, Jones is “the unconscious drives which plague me.” But that is also what Smith is to Jones. Now you are Smith bad-mouthing Jones, but two minutes ago you were Jones bad-mouthing Smith. You can use Medevesqo, in the beginning, to look at that which the other partner doesn’t want to deal with. All you have to do is real quick — turn and look at you. You don’t have to look somewhere for an unconscious. Smith (or Jones) is standing right here next to you.
I have heard, in the City, men pointing out the danger of generals being too far removed from the battlefield. That is, they could fail to see the possible consequences of their decisions. It holds true for the worlds of business and politics also: if the leaders are too far from the action, grave consequences can result. Does this sound familiar? We’re talking about thinking of action and action. The generals, who would, of course, love to be up on the battle front except they have bad colds, make a plan — which is thinking of action to those who must execute it. Do you see that this is absolutely true for an individual human attempting to do This? But look at it on the basis of the great separation between the lower, older, nonverbal circuits and the younger, upper, verbal circuits. It is these upper circuits that are in charge of thinking of action, and the lower ones which must execute the action. A would-be Revolutionist must bring these two elements in a sense unnaturally together. It is not a matter of the distance between planner and battle front being too great: from the revolutionary view, if there is a distance at all it is too much. You have to bring them so close that at times they are interchangeable. When the acting lower circuits are brought that close to the talking upper circuits, you have then cut down on the possibility of unforeseen consequences arising. You then need neither foresight nor hindsight, because you would not do anything and later regret it, and you would not fail to do something and later regret not having done it. Do you understand? Do you understand the difference between having the generals fifty miles from the battle lines, and having them in the trenches?
When you have some awareness of this, it has a direct effect on the way the triads move in you. You have then cut down on the lapse time as the triad moves — you are not waiting on information from afar. I put it to you this way: what seems to be the natural planning necessary for a human is then open to a great deal of further interpretation. Another way I put it in the past (which some of you liked for a few seconds, until you let it fall back in the hands of ordinary consciousness) is that it doesn’t really matter much what you plan. A Real Revolutionist must still plan, but he understands that it has almost no effect on what he actually does.
I say that human planning is then open to further interpretation; how about an aside? Everybody out in the world seems to have some, at least verbal faith, in the idea of intuition. That is, occasions when people have flashes and they just know exactly what to do. For them it’s just a flash, but what if there is a literal reality to it? No one has noticed this, but you never hear of anyone having operated on the basis of their so-called intuition and regretting it. “I just knew what to do, and that was all.” Boy, it would be horrible to live like that all the time, wouldn’t it? “You mean you just do stuff and that’s it? Nah. Martha, the man’s talking in god damn parables again.”
Let’s see if we can round up some more of the little doggies. How about the magic of the talking paper? You recall my example of a banker looking through a stack of old mortgages. Every now and then his little face lights up and his little fat fingers get all excited: “Ooh, here’s one that’s still active!” People believe that all kinds of things are not alive, but that example is proof that paper is alive. I was pointing out to you that everything is alive. Let me expand on that a bit. There is an idea floating around to the effect that, “Humanity must learn to use information to produce new energy.” But it’s not a matter of using information to produce energy — information is energy. It is not metaphysical, and it is obvious once you get a glimpse of it.
To stay with my example of the banker looking over old mortgages, how else can his behavior be explained? A religious person would say that it’s an example of greed in action. A psychologist would say there is an unconscious drive in this man to exert power over his father. A politico would opine that here we have a living example of the class struggle. But these are simply explanations — they are not an explanation. I and I alone am explaining to you that information is energy; it’s just not recognized as such. It’s just that ordinary people are “third leg blind.” They are absolutely blinded to the fact that there is no such thing as a nonphysical anything. If you can read, if you can hear, if you can think, it is all dependent upon what they are calling, and have always called, the physical senses. It is information being processed by the circuits.
Then the question becomes — once you see all this — what information is useful, profitable and satisfying to you in your lifetime? Other than This, there has been none. You should be able to see that in hindsight. That’s the way Life is arranged. There is not information from any ordinary source that will satisfy the few certain people who end up here with the likes of me.
Just talking about paper is not the end of all this. Human speech is energy. Speech is a kind of magic, even. But let me tell you how ordinary people use it. Back in the City (that is, you at that level) the potential magic of talk is that people want to use it on each other, but they use it in what amounts to a solo sex act in public. It’s all messy and it gets all over you, and it has no lasting effect. It’s not as satisfying as sex normally should be. That’s the way people attempt to use this energy of talk on other people. Talk is energy, and the Revolutionist has got to use it on himself. But notice, you have not improperly thought that I bad-mouth excessive talk. I remind you again of the potential magic of talk: talk is energy. The Revolutionist must use the potential magic of talk, not on other people, but on himself. On himself, on himself. He must use it in a silent, secret and personal way which has to do with one thing only: the evolution of himself. Not the apparent change of somebody else, or worse yet, the righteous need to “help everybody.” If that’s the case, you sure don’t belong here. The world needs you — the City needs you. But I should not be wasting even a moment of your precious time. You get right out there and help them. God knows they need it. God knows god needs it.
It is a secret use, but you have to know how to use it. A Revolutionist does not talk to himself about what he is doing — how can that fit with what I just said? It can’t, if binary consciousness is hearing it. There is magic in not using words in the ordinary way. When you talk to yourself ordinarily, the energy is spent and you get it all over your hands. “Boy, I’m sure glad I did so and so. I sure do feel better since I quit doing such and such.” The communication lapse between planners and executioners is being extended by that. There are grave consequences awaiting you. You know what they are? Grave consequences: you will stay just like you are. The way everyone uses talk is just like energy being splattered. It has no effect on you; it does not change things. That is not magic. It does not get anybody pregnant for one thing. It does not get you pregnant.