You Can’t Remember That Your Memory Is Bad
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Diagram #157 video grab: Bad Memory
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Summary
Jan Cox Talk #329 Mar 31, 1988 – 1:33
Notes by TK
More on the organism’s tendency to stare vs. the newer need not to stare; the spasmodic, episodic, or continual need not to stare of the Yellow Circuit. Another of Life’s great Masterstrokes: “Bad Memory” (BM). The Real Revolutionist finds his memory to be so non-uniform, so unreliable as to be useless. Thus he quarantines it. Life depends on ; history has greater molecular impact than the present (or the past event when it actually occurred); that passage of time enhances ‘importance’ of any event.
This is true of self-memory –I assumes mythical proportions. Consider the relation between and attempts to change: if you can’t remember, how would you know if you changed? Also, were it not for Bad Memory nobody would attempt change because they would remember that it never works. Criticism/judgment is based on memory since people can’t remember their flaws and must then deny criticism of same by others.
The supreme manifestation of staring is habit; it is supreme for efficient use of humans by Life. Another built-in conflict: struggle against habit, to break habit. It is equivalent to the conflict of struggle against staring by Yellow Circuit need not to stare. Within this efficient infrastructure of habit the Real Revolutionist can fiddle, interfere with it; do mental exercises while jogging, hold body differently etc.
Be internally detached from a marital friction habit (insincerity). To change any triad the binary linkage between C and D can only be broken by energy drawn from E. Life too is limited by this arrangement; it can only effect change from the pool of the irrelevant.
Life has been every way before. It leaves trail markers that can be seen by the Alert. Real Revolutionist Hunger is for these trail markings.
Some more aspects of the “Stupid Religion”, the fountainhead of all religions: it told completely impossible stories of creations that turned on their creators.
1:35 end
Excursion
1:33 Epilog for NP excursion: 2 x 30 min. walks each with three 10 min segments–be aware of Yellow Circuit in first segment; Blue Circuit in second; Red Circuit in third.
Transcript
THE BEAUTY OF BAD MEMORY IS
YOU CAN’T REMEMBER THAT YOUR MEMORY IS BAD
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 329, March 31, 1988
If you haven’t noticed yet, part of my job is to sing the praises of that which people overlook, or to sing the praises of those things that life in the City condemns. Here is a great one: Bad Memory. Bad Memory is ordinarily looked at as a flaw, but it is one of the great master strokes that Life uses on humanity; it is a weapon that is used against everyone and if pushed a bit further could kill us all.
Let me pull some things together. Someone observes that there is a group of people meeting together for some length of time and someone new comes into this group and hears tales about how the group got started and the things that were done and these things, these tales, take on a mythical quality. That is a proper observation; it would happen in any group. I point out that is the way memory works. Bad Memory will do it every time.
Or how about this: I received a note the gist of which was what relation has the past with the present and the future? There is a connection and if a person had the slightest possibility of becoming my fictitious, reasonably, insane man, what I have of late been referring to as a would-be Revolutionist, he would discount the past not on the basis that it is unconnected to what’s going on here but more on the basis that, “My memory is so bad that I’m going to shelve the whole area of memory until I can find out how to control it and use it in some uniform, predictable manner.” Of course that doesn’t happen because part of the beauty of Bad Memory is you can’t remember that your memory is bad. From the point of view of trying to make some change in your life down at the genetic level the would-be Revolutionist must realize that, “My memory is so disjointed and unstable that I’m just going to set it aside.”
Life itself can think and let information out about all sorts of things that are in our future: things that come out at the genetic human level as being the dreams of secret information. Let’s assume that there is this thing called “truth,” and you’re on a quest looking for it. Do you realize that Life could just let “truth” pour out on billboards, TV shows and films and it won’t do you one bit of good as long as you have Bad Memory. As long as Life can depend upon man having a Bad Memory everything is safe.
Everything that is knowable is apparently from the past, including, “I learn from my experiences.” People don’t learn from their experiences and mistakes, because if they did they would have learned beforehand. You can’t learn after you have made a mistake because it doesn’t appear to be a mistake. If it was a mistake you would have known it beforehand and you would not have done it. Let me see if I can make it a little more simplistic. How could a reasonable, insane, would-be Revolutionist learn from his experiences when he suffers from Bad Memory? You’d have more chance getting a straight answer from an IRS agent or a politician than you would your own memory. And yet all of City consciousness is based on the belief that the past is stable. There has got to be that assumption. People must operate on the basis that the past is stable. If not, you couldn’t go out and find where you parked your car. If you were away from your house, you wouldn’t even try to go home; your house may have gotten up and moved. But if a person had the kind of perception that is laughingly referred to as objective in the City, you would realize that your memory of the past is not uniform. It is not dependable, and no one notices.
Now everyone notices that the memory of everyone around them is faulty. No two people can agree on anything. “I asked you this morning to please stop and buy some butter so I could bake this cake.” “You didn’t ask me that.” “I was standing right here when you went out the door, and I said on your way home would you get some butter, and you said okay” “I did not.” That’s just two people; it could be husband and wife, friends, business associates. It’s just obvious, but it’s always a matter that other people are not paying attention. A would-be Revolutionist has got to see that everyone, not just everyone else, has Bad Memory.
When the past is remembered it takes on a quality of being greater than when it occurred. If the past did not take on this quality it does not become history; it is not remembered. Whatever the historical event was, it wasn’t all that important. You can argue, “Well, how about the American Revolution or the Siege of Leningrad? They were events that affected thousands or hundreds of thousands of people.” I know all that. I read it just like you. But the way those things are remembered now, not only in history books, but also in the consciousness of those who are tied to history, is greater than the event itself in the way it affects their nervous systems. Once something is strong enough to become a piece of history and it falls into the nervous system of a group of people, the effect it has now on the nervous system is actually greater than the event itself. That is part of the hold of the past. It is part of the cohesive effect of the past.
To do This you’ve got to free yourself from the past; you’re not dealing with a thing or an event. It’s no such thing to a Revolutionist. It’s not a thing. It’s not even a verb any more. It’s hardly a noun anymore. A memory is not the same thing as whatever it was. Just because it’s been 2000 years, 200 years, or twenty minutes ago gives it no validity in the Revolutionary sense. Nay, nay, contraire Pierre.
The whole feeling of the importance of the past is in the genetic makeup of man. It’s not psychological; it’s not cultural. It’s part of the feeling of family. It’s the same thing that makes people go to cemeteries and kneel down next to the headstone of a relative and cry and feel something. What they feel is real, but for the Revolutionist, it is useless. The events don’t matter; it’s the belief that is important. To the Revolutionist the most dangerous aspect of this is that there is something of value to be learned from the past. And not only does there seem to be something of value to be learned but there is the continuing, nagging feeling with many people that the older something is the greater its potential importance.
If you think that Life just comes up and slaps you once or twice, you don’t have stereo feelings yet. Life sets things up so that when it slaps you in one direction and your head goes that way it then slaps you the other way. It’s set up that the past is very important and then you’ve got a bad memory. Life sets up these arrangements so it appears there is one thing happening, one way in which you and all of humanity is being pushed, and then the total milieu in which you are alive is pushing you another way. People read odes to and sing the praises of the past. They wish they could have lived in another time. They feel something genetically. It is real, but for the Revolutionist it is, at the very least, unreliable. There’s just nothing to use; you can’t deal with it. If you can’t forget the past, at least realize this: Life has wired you up to believe that there is great importance to the past. Then use the Look Around Method and realize that you suffer the world’s worst case of Bad Memory. For now, at the very least, you should shelve memory until such time as you are capable of using it.
The mythical quality of memory can also be seen on the individual level. How else do you account for the myth of “I”? You, thanks to Bad Memory and other things, have memories of you that have taken on mythical qualities: how you have suffered, how your first husband left you, how you lost your business, etc. Whatever it is, it’s a myth. It’s a story. The past has taken on mythical qualities. The memory of you as an organization, as a group, the we’s, the partnership has turned the event into something of mythical proportions thanks to the ever popular, all pervasive Bad Memory.
Can you see the direct link between Bad Memory and any attempt to change? Life has you wired up to feel uncomfortable and as though, “I should change. I’m not up to the benchmark.” Can you see that if you’re memory is bad you don’t know what you want to change? If you’re memory is bad how will you know if you have changed?
How about all forms of criticism that others level at you? If indeed we can learn from our mistakes in the City, and if indeed people are here to help one another, and if indeed your friends and family would tell you, at the drop of their hat or yours (depending on how dirty the floor is) some of your flaws on the basis that, “I’m your friend and I’d like to help you.” Assuming that’s true for a minute, why does it not help? Think of all the times you have, out of the goodness of your heart, tried to help your fellow man by pointing out some egregious flaw. What happens? Do you ever get a thank you note? Are they still speaking to you? Of course, psychologists will jump up and say, “People resist criticism; they deny the very things they are properly accused of.” It is a simple fact that the human organism tends to deny the validity of criticism. Does that mean that anyone who criticizes you is deluded or that the criticism is completely invalid? Are people criticizing you for things for which there is no basis? If that’s true then how is it that everyone in the world feels unjustly criticized? That means that everyone in the world but you are verging on psychotic; they’re hallucinating. That’s the only possible answer right? No, there’s one more — Bad Memory.
You can be justly accused and you’re not psychotic. They’re not psychotic; they’re not hallucinating, and you’re not overly defensive. You simply, like everyone else, have Bad Memory. One more time, try and put all that together with any ability, with any attempt to change. People will not only offer criticism; they’ll tell you how to cure yourself. Your parents told you all the time when you were growing up. You kept telling them, “It hurts when I do this.” And they said, “Don’t do it. Just stop that right now. You naughty little person.” They told you, but you couldn’t remember what they said. You’d come right back and say again, “It hurts when I do this. What should I do?” They’d tell you again, but you can’t remember it.
Look at all the great things that are possible thanks only to Bad Memory. If it weren’t for Bad Memory who on this beautiful planet would ever attempt to change a second time? Everybody would try it once. At that real early age, the first time you said to your mother, “This hurts,” and she responded, “Don’t do that!” You’d go, “Ah, that’s it,” and you’d realize you couldn’t stop doing it. You’d try one time and realize, “This doesn’t work.” But look at all the great things you’d miss: “Sure they repossessed my car, but I got a better job now. This time I’ll buy myself a Corvette.” “Oh, what’s five marriages? Six has always been my lucky number.” “A new diet book! That’s what I’ll do. I’ll lose some weight.” I don’t know about you, but I’m going home tonight and fall on my little knees to thank the gods for Bad Memory.
Now I want to drag you to the supreme manifestation of staring which is habit. Habit is a masterfully put together, double edged weapon in that Life makes us depend on habit to operate efficiently and coevally gives us the desire to free ourselves from habit. Were it not for habit the City would fall apart. Out of pure, blind habit, you’ve got to be able to go out and get into your car and drive. One or two of you can just go and walk and talk to one another and almost not look where you’re going. Habit is of supreme use in the efficient operation of humanity.
Habit also comes into play in what seems to be memory. In one sense, the efficiency of habit is that you sort of remember what you know, and the habit is that you don’t question the flaws in memory. You don’t question memory’s instability and non-uniformity. Whatever seems to be your ability to think is solely based on habit. So you have habit and what appears to be the need to break free from habit. Everything that people believe they’re attempting to do could be described as the struggle to free oneself to some degree from a present habit: the desire to get ahead, to break the habit of being a failure.
Can you see that the struggle between habit and the desire to break habit is synonymous with the struggle between staring and not staring? When it gets outside things that have been described here, it goes into areas you would never think of. How about the class struggle, the struggle between the workers and capital? Can you see it as a struggle between staring and not staring? I am going to show you that it could be either way. A spokesman for the workers begins to curse the suppression of the capitalist, the employers, the landowners. He could describe capitalists as staring: “Greed, the bottom line, money. They stare. It’s only we workers who don’t stare. We’re alert. We see the need for change. We’re trying to bring about the greater eventual good.” But I could slap him around a bit and get some of his neurons going and he could say just the opposite. “The capitalists don’t stare. They’re always on the lookout for a fast buck. They’re always looking here and there. Where can I buy new property? What business can I take over? It’s only the workers who have the ability to stare at one goal.”
Struggles, all the way from good and evil, capitalists and workers, Republicans and Democrats, to fascist versus socialist can be seen as a struggle between staring, the need for the organism as an individual and as an organism being a collection of individuals, staring and then the need to not stare. You can look at it and I can shift it on you, or, if you get that good, you can shift it on yourself. Shifting the opposites does not invalidate what has been described. It just shows the limitations of 3-D consciousness.
Habit can be looked at as staring. Though not a perfect parallel, an analogy can be drawn between an animal, such as a dog or a lion, and your lower circuitry. By and large the lower circuits seem to be structured to operate in a staring mode. They move when they must move. If we could speak of the lower circuits in isolation, without interference from the higher circuits, they would be moving in measured steps. Animals are either acting or not acting. They don’t have the thinking of acting capability that humans have. They’re either acting or they’re off duty — staring. Nothing else is going on. They don’t have plans for tomorrow; they don’t worry about yesterday. If you don’t have a reason to act, you lay there and stare. Why not take a nap? By the way, sleep can be seen as a kind of acute, stable staring.
You should get some taste of why I started out saying that the organism of man has the tendency to stare. Were it not for the higher circuits I would not even be insinuating that there is anything wrong with staring. Of course, were it not for the higher circuits, you and I would not be talking; we couldn’t talk. But if we could isolate the lower circuits from the rest of the organism, I would not in any way raise a question about staring. It would just be natural. We would either be acting in our own best interest to satisfy lower circuit needs or we’d be staring, and very likely, snoozing. Nothing to think about; that’s it!
Everyone should realize by now that you and all of City life depends on habit. Habit is absolutely necessary for the efficient operation of your life, so I’m not saying you should try and overcome habit, but what you can do is make a small shift within the general structure of the habit which does not interfere with its overall movement. Such as, assuming you run every day, you have a habit as to the way you jog. Let’s say you go out and run for an hour in a manner that is efficient for you. Inside the structure, the envelope of that habit, you can begin to fiddle with it. You can begin by doing some mental exercises as you run or you can point your little fingers out or you can put your tongue on one side of your mouth for half an hour and then move it to the other side for half an hour. It’s not silly, and it’s not wasteful.
How about the structure of you operating in some particular fashion? It seems to be a habit, and you can’t immediately break it. There is a dance with some hostility going on between you and your sexual mate. It seems to be an efficient way that you two get along right now. Inside that habit, and no one knows but you, you can become totally insincere while still being what you’ve always been.
How about things that really make you mad like getting caught in traffic jams everyday? Believe it or not, Life has wired you up so that you’re getting mad is the most efficient means of operation for you. So, rather than worrying about it — “Well, I should stop. This isn’t doing me any good.” But you could, in the midst of this habit, bitch to the moon while smiling internally. You catch yourself, and right in the midst of your being mad, you internally smile and become totally insincere. All habit is efficient, but the super-efficiency for someone attempting to do This is to do that which diddles with the infrastructure of the habit while apparently having no effect on the total structure.
I’m not changing the subject. I want to pull you a bit higher into the area of triads. The only way that you can make any change in a situation is to find the third leg or go into the E pool the way that Life itself does. There are three possibilities to a triad that have been called the C, D and E inclinations, forces, whims, possibilities — the three legs. E is that which is perceived to be irrelevant to a particular situation at Line-level consciousness, and for any change to occur someone has got to go into the E pool. Life itself must draw from the E pool to make any change. With any two observable combatants, C and D, the energies that are possible are already being played out; nothing more can happen.
In a situation where a husband and wife have been arguing over a period of years nothing is going to miraculously change the energies that have been passing between them. If one of the parties picks up and leaves, people are surprised. For that change to take place Life itself had to draw from the E pool, because, in the energies flowing between the parties, no change was possible.
At the most routine level, Life is continually having to draw from the E pool, from that which apparently is presently irrelevant to the situation between C and D. Whether it’s two individuals, two countries, or two theories, Life has got to draw energy from something that is apparently presently irrelevant to the two combatants or no change is possible. If Life itself has to do it, how can you be exempt? You have to look at Life, see how it operates, and take your lessons from Life.
There is an E pool. It is real, and you can learn to see it and draw from it. No change is possible when you’re dealing with the energies of the initial two combatants. When there are two dancers, they’re not going anywhere. You can’t get them off of the dance floor, and you can’t teach them a new dance. No change is possible. You have an equation in which 2 + 2 = 4 and you don’t like the product. “I don’t like it.” “I don’t like what’s going on with me and this other person.” “I don’t like my attitude.” “There are two things being put together that come out to be 4, and I don’t like it.” Let 4 represent what you don’t like. Can you see that if you don’t do something about the 2 and 2 that nothing will happen? You can reverse the 2’s; you can do them vertically; you can change them to Arabic or Hebrew; you can do anything you want, but they always come out to be 4.
When things seem to change in the City (between two countries, two conflicting possibilities, or whatever) Life has drawn from the E pool. The situation could be of world shaking significance, an upheaval that may have taken a decade and affected thousands of lives. But its’ resolution, what set it off, was irrelevant and from the E pool. Two and two, the combatants, were constantly churning out four, four, four. What changes the equation is something which seems irrelevant: one person being shot, or some small treaty being broken. Looking at it another way: the combatants, the people, the nations, the ideas were already set up, according to history everyone was expecting it. But what it took to set it off was something irrelevant; something out of the E pool, and that’s when change happens.
You’ve got to know that the E pool is there to draw upon. It is the only way for an individual to change in a lifetime. You can’t depend on the energies of the original two combatants to bring about change. If you did not suffer from Bad Memory, if you were not a dyed in the wool City dweller, you would give up any faith in known methods of change; you’ve already tried them. As I’ve already pointed out, you would have tried to change once and given it up. It doesn’t work. It can’t work.
I’m trying now to point out something to you at the scientific level; something that is not known. If you want to change, you can’t do what you’ve done before. You can’t do what someone else says will work. You can’t read a book on how to change because the author doesn’t know — he can’t do it. If any one says, “This is the way to do something,” ignore it. If a method worked once, it’s too late. It can’t work again. As soon as something has been named or described, it has lost it’s value. It has slowed down to the speed of words and can’t do anything but support Bad Memory. If you’re going to make a change, you’ve got to draw from the E pool.
If I said something that you believe you’ve tried before, you misheard me. Don’t ever assume I’m telling you to go back and do something you’ve already done. Draw from the irrelevant. You can see the combatants; you can see the problem. It can be attitudes in you. It can be the partnership itself. You can see it, but nothing you can do will work unless you draw from the E pool, that which has no bearing on the problem or the desire to escape the problem.
You’ve got to quit staring at what seems to be the problem and the desire to change it. The answer is not there. The energy is not there. Life cannot bring about change in that way. You’ve got to be able to look somewhere else and it doesn’t matter where. Look to the irrelevant. Do or feel something irrelevant to the situation. If you can bring yourself to it, you’re going to get you’re britches shocked off. It won’t be what you expected, but I give you my personal guarantee that everything will work out just fine. You’ll have no complaint. You’ll just be shocked, and you’ll be smiling at what seemed to be the problem.
Life has been this way before. No matter who you are, what you have done, or where you have been, Life has been that way, (as in somewhere), before. Life leaves trail markings that a person can follow, if he can find them. The markings are out there and you can see them, if you ever find out what I’m talking about. I’m telling you that Life has been this way before, wherever it is you are, Life has left what literally amounts to trail markings. What seems to be the hunger that many people have, and let’s say that you people have more than others, is the hunger to find the markings. You are not going where no man has gone before. Life has been this way before, and it left a trail. A person can follow the trail markings, if he can find them.
Some time ago I started to give you a little history of religion based on information that had fallen into my hands. I had to make up my own translation because no one understood the language it was in. Anyhow, it seemed to be the fountainhead of all ordinarily perceived religions, and as best I could translate it was called the “stupid religion.” This was the big daddy progenitor of all other small time religions. All of the information I’m going to give you about the stupid religion is based on my translation of the translation I made up. The great stupid religion told completely impossible closed-system tales. It spoke exclusively to one area of the circuitry of man or the other at any particular time. It demanded the impossible. The stupid religion could not explain itself, and it seemed to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. It seemed absolutely intent on running men in circles and then criticizing their gait. And, the final indignity, it told tales with a straight face of creations that turn on and attack their creators: paintings that spring off the wall and strangle artists. That’s it! Without it you’ve got no religion. And, of course, we would have no religion were it not for the stupid religion.
I’m not sure I was dramatic enough to emphasize the potency of the last part. The tales…you understand…that’s the tale of religion! That’s the tale of man’s ordinary, common sense belief that creations can turn on and attack the creator. And I’ve heard people wonder why the word “hubris” is even in the dictionary.