The Story of General So
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Summary
Jan Cox Talk #339 ** May 5, 1988 ** – 1:34
Notes by TK
More on Yellow Circuit (YC) and the time-lag between the Upper Circuit (UC) and the Lower Circuit (LC). Re: any ‘problem’ you can become aware of –it already is too late to do something about it! The Real Revolutionist must recognize that attempts to struggle against this are useless. The pure working of the YC = the rules of logic, whereas, experience ≠ logic.
YC analyzes experience or you would not be human, and it is a deductive process whereby the conclusion was contained in the original premise {c.f., petitio principii – ―begging the question}, i.e., nothing can be learned which was not already known (although perhaps attributed to supernatural powers: god). The process involves your experience and YC deductive analysis of that experience, which is nothing more than the experience; it is nothing more than proving that A = A.
There is no real info forthcoming. People can’t hear it and don’t want it. When some piece of info does not prove A = A, it is not liked, it is simply dismissed, discounted. The rules of logic upon which the YC functions, only establishes the form of the resulting conclusion/knowledge.
Primitives for instance, lack the sufficient word analyzing/processing function to describe their reality to an interviewing anthropologist, thus they are limited to the extent that their description can’t be fit into the anthropologist’s belief structure; he can’t believe their tales.
Imagination = analysis of an experience “never had”. The Lower Circuit doesn’t have sufficient communication skills/rules to make the UC understand its experience. Rules = analysis. Heroes = people of action, not thinkers of action. Note that the heroes of intellectuals are not intellectuals.
The closest approach to a Blue Circuit hero would be one who committed suicide! Tactile geometry vs. visual geometry (e.g., sensory difference between a barbell made of balsa wood but looking like a real one) resembles the difference between thinking of a person vs. touching that person. Analysis always happens via memory. Consider the internal application: the ‘touch’ partner vs. the thought partner, the analyzer; these two don’t communicate.
The three forces. There is insufficient energy for change in just two opposing. All energy is consumed in a process of stabilization/stand-off, or else the situation would not be what it is. Time is a form of E-force; i.e., energy to change an otherwise stabilized situation. The story of the Chinese general “So”: Life raises everyone to become loaded down with opinions/knowledge vs. the Real Revolutionist who lives a stripped-down, lean, warrior-like existence.
The burden of knowledge: the analyzing of experience, the touching of life.
The Insulting Force = the 4th force: the ‘Fearful Force” which forces change.
“Arranged marriages” are the solidification and preservation of continuity of power. It seems to divorce ‘love’ from feeling into a business concern. The Real Revolutionist must use this idea of arranged marriage to augment his own power, to supplement a weak area thru a planned, business-like alliance. This has an internal application.
end 1:38
Excursion
1:34 epilog: comments to video-watchers. Everybody should have a ‘silent’ time periodically.
Transcript
THE STORY OF GENERAL SO
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 339, May 5, 1988
I’m going to say a few things in response to questions I receive from people newly introduced to This activity once they begin becoming curious about the operations of their Yellow Circuitry. First let me say there is a difference when I talk about City life and when I talk about this Revolutionary activity, its potentials and purpose throughout time. A prime example suddenly comes to mind that I mentioned not long ago of how the lower circuits are running, generally, an average of 24 hours behind the upper circuits. If we could separate just the physical side of man and use food as an example, we can say that no matter how you are feeling right now, whatever kind of energy you have is not based on what you ate just before you arrived here. Under general circumstances it is not what happened to you today. What you are now experiencing stomach wise, digestive wise, is what you did yesterday.
I don’t bring this up merely to talk about the physical being, that’s hardly even worth it. But it’s this: Can you now realize that at the City level, by the time a problem (whatever that seems to be to you) is fully operational, and you are fully conscious of it, it is too late to do anything about it. I don’t mean in some metaphysical way. I mean molecularly — consciousness is the last to know. You are always in the past even to the point that whatever you just heard me say, if you thought, “Hey, that’s meaningful. I caught some of that,” I could have, by the time you heard it, changed my meaning and direction. By the time you hear it, the words are already gone, much less whatever the intention was if I had any. So let’s continue with an example of a problem. Maybe you have suspicions that your mate is running around on you because of a comment you overheard yesterday. Today he or she is out of town and there is nothing you can do about the situation so you sit and replay whatever you heard or saw over and over and you suffer. At the City level, once you are fully conscious that a problem exists, that you’re jealous or hurt, there is nothing you can do about it. You are at least 24 hours too late.
If you are going to see the Revolutionary possibilities, it’s not a matter of, “I know, everybody’s weak, even the pope sins, so why worry about it?” That’s not it, but since everyone is still tied to, and will die still tied to the traffic in the City, you have got to see that which is personally profitable, and that which is useless. In the laws of 4-D physics, what seem to be problems in the City sense cannot be changed or helped. There is nothing you can do about them. You are at least 24 hours too late. That does not mean there is no other possibility, or This would all be a waste of time. But you have got to see these two levels going on: At the first level, in the City, people do not have any conception of this phenomenon. They are wired up to believe they can struggle against problems and forge an appropriate outcome. That amounts to thinking of action — what I should be doing about this situation, etc. You can’t do anything about the problem NOW, you’re 24 hours too late.
All a Revolutionist can do NOW is realize that he can’t do anything now — that he’s at least 24 hours too late. He must begin discerning what is useless and what is potentially of real value to him and his Aim. Then he must move past the useless and cease wasting his energy.
In the strict City sense, you could say that what are called the rules of logic or reason equal the pure workings of the Yellow Circuit. But experience and Yellow Circuit human analysis of experience are not equal. They are two different things. Both are necessary, or you would not be conscious, but the analyzation of experience I can quite correctly limit in location to the area of the higher circuitry (remember all such isolations of the total human organism are artificial). If this is a correct detailing of what occurs, then what does that suggest to you about human experience? You could ask yourself the question: “Do the upper circuits, the pure operations as such of the human intellect, actually have experience?” If your own City consciousness were to give an immediate answer it would be “Yes.” Are you sure?
Getting back to my comment that, in a strict City sense, you could look at the operations of the Yellow Circuit, the pure operations, as being equal to the rules of reason. Someone in the City who could be called intellectually inclined would point out that you are not thinking, you are not actually engaged in mental activity, if you are illogical or unreasonable. There is validity to that in the City, but I mention it only to lead into another piece of the City you should find of interest because it is in you. It is called deductive reasoning. Within the rules of logic, everything that is available is said to come from deductive reasoning. The part they did not put together, because they are not supposed to, is that in the 3-D operations of the mind there is nothing to be learned except what is already learned. Everything you now know, you already knew. And it can go no further because deductions are based on original premises that have been accepted without question; premises considered to be self-evident. For example, what about the initial premise that, “I’m me.” Or, “There’s an internal me and an out there.” — these are the never questioned givens.
What you’ve got to see is that what you know is a combination of your experience and your analysis of it, but it is all deductive. And if you keep “deducing” you finally get to the point of: “I don’t want to fool around with this anymore. I’ve got a headache.” There is nothing to be learned by deduction that was not already present in the original premise. The normal operations of the City intellect amounts to a proof that A = A, and that’s it.
So, what is new information? In the City it comes down to the dream that the gods or one big G god is going to come to Cleveland and give the big secret. The secret will be something you already know, such as, “Love one another,” and everyone will go, “Ahhh. I knew that.” Sure you knew it, because if it was something other than what people already knew, they’d all stand there and go, “What did he say?” or not hear him at all and ask, “When is he going to start speaking?” The normal operations of the human intellect are not interested in, they simply cannot hear, the new. This is not a curse, or some sort of intellectual or spiritual faux pas on Man’s part — consciousness is not designed to be able to hear the new. Every book you read, lecturer you recommend etc., are all a confirmation of your own personal A = A wiring. The mind has unrecognized limits and what it gets down to is that the rules of the game are unknowingly the final score.
Let me take this further with an example. A western anthropologist is visiting aboriginal people who speak to him of their experiences. He has sufficient language to follow their descriptions plus he sees that within their ways they are sane and civilized. Yet they describe to him absolutely unbelievable experiences — and they describe them with an unequivocal certainty. (Remember, I’m talking about anthropologists and aborigines, but they’re not in New Guinea. They’re down in your lower time zones.) The anthropologist asks enough questions to find that the people are not describing their dreams, he even sends tree bark samples to his labs to check for hallucinogens. The people are describing absolutely unbelievable experiences and they seem to be perfectly, appropriately, serious. Consider this: They can claim these unbelievable experiences because they lack sufficient wordy analysis to properly limit their descriptions to fit into the anthropologist’s conception of believability. They do not have sufficient wordy analysis to limit their experiences to fit into this other person — this other area of circuitry — to make them believable.
How about your life? Must I point out to you that by and large you have been run by aborigines, by your gut, sex organs, desire for comfort. That’s not unusual; you’re supposed to be. But the upper circuitry attempts to analyze it and the rules of logic keep running into dead ends. You cannot explain your life to you.
Life itself does not leave the situation at that. It then gives man the distinct impression (it’s wired into the nervous system) that these experiences are inexplicable, unbelievable. One vehicle it uses is for man to claim that, “It was my imagination.” But notice that nobody can define imagination. (Do you know what imagination would be? It would be the analyzation of an experience you never had.) The second vehicle Life uses is that the experience is explainable but not to mortal man; it is an eternal mystery that “man was not meant to know. After we die, then we’ll know.” (This shows the real power of logic for people: man believing that when people are dead they’re more intelligent!)
Within the nervous system is this heretofore unspecified conflict. It’s not you personally; everybody has these unbelievable experiences mumbled almost in a foreign language within themselves. I strongly suggest to you that they are unbelievable on the basis that the lower areas have an insufficient ability to analyze them. The lower areas do not even have the ability to verbalize, and analysis requires verbalization. For the upper circuits to find an experience believable requires that it be limited by language. Only then could it make “sense.” There is this great gap again. You and others have had these unbelievable experiences and it comes out in these kinds of descriptions: “Uncle Charlie saw a flying saucer,” or, “Uncle Charlie says god talked to him.” Uncle Charlie seems perfectly logical and normal to you except that he had this apparently unbelievable experience.
So it always seems to be, in the City, a struggle — a struggle between two parts of you that can’t communicate. These two peoples or areas in you do not have sufficient lines of communication to do what Life says Man should be doing. The communication is quite sufficient to keep you as you are and to live out your life doing just what you should be doing. But the lines of communication are insufficient for you to ever make sense of what is going on.
Here’s a subparagraph: Those who attempt, in the City sense, to go by the rules, are always too late. You cannot, for example, become a Muslim by going by the Islamic rules. You’d be too late. If they’re rules, then they’ve been analyzed in parts of Life’s body and codified and they’re too late. They will not do what they’re purported to do. Another part of this I wasn’t going to get into particularly is that people who most vociferously claim they are after new information are not. They may be after the person who has new information, but they are not after new information. They can’t separate the two — they’re looking for a hero. Everyone needs heroes in the ordinary world, and don’t tell me you don’t. If you didn’t have to have heroes, you would never have read any of the great books of the western world or the National Enquirer. But have you noticed that all of Man’s heroes are heroes of action, not thinking of action? Even intellectuals in the City don’t have intellectual heroes. This is not some modern malaise. Just consider the heroes of history. Some of you with a slippery Yellow Circuit might try to think otherwise, but you should be able to feel it — who is actually remembered as a hero? People of action. If that’s true, then what can you make of it? To push it further into another territory, if the Yellow Circuit has no Yellow Circuit heroes, what about the Blue Circuit? Find me some Blue Circuit heroes. Those of you that seem to be in the arms of the Blue Circuit, let me say this: about the closest thing Blue Circuited people have to Blue Circuited heroes are people who committed suicide.
As long as I’m on this subject, I’ll give you this one for free. Those of you who believe you “feel too much,” or “feel deeply too often,” I’ll give you a little treatment. Get yourself a good old textbook on symbolic logic and every time you think you’re feeling too much sit down and read it. At the very least, you can focus all your negative feelings on the book.
Let’s look at another field that seems to be the purview of the Yellow Circuit: Mathematics. Mathematicians have always pointed out that there was a difference between tactile and visual geometry. Let us speak about geometry as a spatial analysis of reality. (I was going to ask if you could see a connection between an experience and the analysis of experience, but let’s not stop there.) For example, if you saw a stage prop — a barbell with a 500# weight on each side and the visual reality of it was the reality of its geometry. It LOOKED heavy, but then you went over, got real close, TOUCHED IT, and you suddenly realized it was made of balsa wood and was almost weightless. You could not tell from a visual standpoint of just several feet away that its visual and tactile geometry differed. Now, mathematics would take that and go on and on, but what I want to ask you is, “Could you see a connection between that visual and tactile geometry and thinking about and touching another person?” There are good old stories about men being angry and saying, “I’ve had it. I’m going home right now to throw her out.” And he gets home, slams the door, and she’s standing there nude, hugs him and suddenly it’s, “Well, no hurry. I can always throw her out later this afternoon.” Or, you find out you’re child broke a piece of your stereo equipment while running through the house, and you’re furious. You storm through the house looking for him to punish him, and find him cowering in a closet. And you melt. You can really be angry at the kid, but once you touch him it’s all over. Notice that you can be mad in memory, mad in analysis — and it’s always after the fact. Analysis is always after the fact. Here again is the difference between visual geometry, analysis, and tactile geometry, the dynamic of the relationship in action.
The only reason I bring this up is so you might see that all of that also happens inside of you. What is it that is apparently the King? What is it that is apparently in charge of analyzing? Internally, individually, there would seem to be this dichotomy again between the tactile and visual geometry: the partnership. One part talking and the other listening. There seems to be some part of you that can give you mortal hell. “You eat too much! You’re lazy.” Nobody’s ever looked at it this way, but as a real would-be Revolutionist you have got to be aware that you cannot sufficiently explain how you could be fully loaded with guilt and yet continue to apparently forgive yourself? One part raises holy hell and then you apparently touch yourself in a certain way and forgive yourself. No one can explain that ordinarily. People say things like, “I’m weak. I’ve been smoking almost thirty years. I can’t just stop it overnight.” It’s the difference between visual and tactile geometry.
There is a difference between the visualization of something taking up space and the touching of it. And the two do not necessarily coincide. The way consciousness works is to leave…To run the turbo charger back across my metaphor: one part of the partnership saw the balsa wood stage prop and left, never knowing that it weighed almost nothing. As far as it was concerned it was over 500#. There is nothing to analyze — that part of the partnership says, “I saw it, and I trust what I see.” The other part went up and touched it and found out that it did not weight 500#. But the two never communicate — consider that.
Let me pick up on some pieces I’ve mentioned before. I pointed out that there must be Three Forces for you to be conscious of anything going on. The first two alone give you insufficient data. Another way to describe these forces is that one is the urge to act or move and the other resists that urge. “Yes, I’d love to get more exercise, but the only time I can do it is 5:30 in the morning.” That goes back and forth as a stabilized process; all the energy is used back and forth to maintain stability and it cannot change. Another example is in pursuing a hobby long enough for your skill to level off, drop it, and pick it up some time later only to find out that you’re much better at it than ever before. How can that be? Or, in my first example, you go back and forth on how to get more exercise and nothing happens, and then at some point you find that you can suddenly start doing whatever’s necessary to get more exercise. The obvious question is: What’s going on here? If you can see it real quick, “time” as it is called in the ordinary sense, is acting as the Third force. Time as a form of “E.” Time as a backdrop for some sort of “strange” occurrence except that if you keep looking then you find it wasn’t strange at all.
Here’s a little story I’ve never told you before. It has to do with a certain Chinese general who was known among his troops as General So. As best as I can recall he was rather stingy with words except when giving his troops specific directions in warfare. If he and the troops were just relaxing around the campfire, about all he would say were terse little statements like, “So!” which seems to be how he got his name. Anyway, by all reports, this general was definitely hell on wheels — one of the progenitors of Genghis Khan, or maybe the actual inventor of plundering and looting. But the General discovered that after a certain length of time, weeks or months, of successful forays resulting in piles of loot (so much so that it could barely be transported) it became harder and harder for him to stir his troops for the next battle. Not just hard physically or logistically, you understand — they just had very little interest in another pillaging at these times.
Being the great General that he was he devised a way to deal with his troops at these particular times. He would wait until everybody went to bed at night, then sneak out and secretly set fire to all the booty. Once it was burning he would scream, “Fire. Wake up.” The troops would all rush about, too late of course, to save the loot. Now, reduced to only the clothes on their backs, the General had no difficulty in stirring the troops up for a new battle.
This went on for years and years until one time, supposedly, some of his soldiers caught him burning the loot. These troops woke the rest and they all went to see General So standing there, torch in hand, watching the hard-won booty enveloped in flames. There they all stood, and they realized that it was not some disgruntled villagers who had done this deed — it had been the General all along. And this is where the story gets interesting. Do you know what the troops did? They stopped for a second, and then suddenly all cheered, grabbed torches and helped him burn the rest.
Does anyone know why I remembered that story? The way Life raises everyone, including people attracted to this kind of activity, is that you end up carrying around all the booty — knowledge, opinions, certainties, analyses — just as you carry around your favorite furniture, records, stereo equipment, etc. Consider how there has always been this idea associated with many, many religions that there is something wrong with material possessions. Let me point out that a good, strong, fully digested and accepted analysis of something you’ve done is much worse for the “health of your soul” than a closet full of dresses. There is a way in which a Real Revolutionist should be travelling as lean as possible, almost with nothing but the clothes on his back — and not because there is anything wrong with material possessions. There comes those times when you just can’t seem to make yourself move with This; you feel stagnant to the point of immobility. You remember actively doing something profitable six months ago and now it’s like the booty you looted — you got it and nobody can get you to move. You made some effort, got something out of it, and then it becomes a burden. It is now a piece of your analysis of reality, to the point that the more you seem to supposedly know, the harder it is to make yourself move.
It goes on inside of you: “Why do I need new stuff? I already know what’s going on more or less. Maybe there’s some stuff I don’t know, but…” You can hardly move. General So had an understanding and he had an unusual group following him. When the troops saw what was going on, you might predict that they would have gotten rather upset with their General, but instead they cheered him. They had that split second moment of epiphany where they realized that his destruction of their booty was the only thing that kept them truly alive. Need I point out to you how I periodically must play General So. Subtly, of course, but maybe you’ve noticed how I no longer mention some of the descriptions or ideas you once so liked. You have to learn how to do it for yourself, to see the Yellow Circuit limitations and analyses of what your life has been and what you know. You must go past seeing that A = A, although that is certainly not the use Life usually has for man.
Consider what might be a Fourth force — the Insulting Force. To change, to even consider change, is an insult (or at least a sufficient enough scare to compel you to back down). “What if I change and don’t like it. Can I get back to who I was?” Give me a break. You are looking for change — astounding, long range, cosmic, permanent change — yet you insist that without doubt A = A. If that is all you ask for, then that is all you will get, and you’ve already got it.
Here’s one to finish up with. Out there, the so-called upper classes, those apparently in power do something which is almost singular to their class in this culture, and that is arranged marriages. It is no secret; its purpose is the protection if not the increase of family wealth and position. Love has nothing to do with it. Two people are married, given certain duties, certain times to show up for the public, and told not to do anything that would be physically or fiscally harmful. Otherwise, their families don’t care what they do. There is no question of love, no one cares if the two people even like each other.
Now look at marriage in the main, from a bricklayer’s point of view, let’s say. You go along with the natural lustful flow of attractions, get married, and find out somewhere down the line as the lust cools that maybe you don’t even like this person half the time. You don’t even find the term marriage important anymore. The relationship was based on the idea of love and compatibility and it’s alive only as long as some attraction is there. Then it’s, “Where can I find someone else? What’s next?” Nothing is wrong with this; it’s the natural lustful flow. But I ask you: Is a would-be Revolutionist to just go along with that phenomenon or might he or she profitably use the idea of arranged marriages?
You can help protect what power you already have, nay, you can increase your power by bringing to your marriage bed someone who has some aspect of power that you are lacking. A merger of houses, a planned relationship so to speak. Believe it or not, based upon the sudden quiet in this room, that is a response to many of your continual inquiries regarding relationships. Isn’t it strange that the people who do this are referred to as the upper classes?
Let’s jump inside: The lower parts of Man’s circuitry, the bricklayers, could not engage in arranged marriages. The part that says, “Well, I gotta go with what I like, with what feels natural,” can’t do otherwise. So, be a bricklayer all your life (and I don’t mean that occupationally) — be run by the older, dead end areas. Or, can you see that you could willfully, purposefully arrange, for your own benefit, a relationship, an internal merger. If one part of you says, “But we don’t love him?” then say, “Are you part of me? What’s love got to do with it?” Consider this in relationship to experience, and then apparently the analysis of experience. The touching of people, and then the apparent thinking of them. You have to locate, inside of you, a place and position of power. Then, under the great rule of your own General So you have to get off your ass and actually be it. So before you start your whining about “how” (I’m not making fun of you; you are after all listening to this) I’m telling you — do you see any connection between This Thing and an arranged marriage? The upper classes don’t fall in love; that’s for the lower classes. Everyone always has an excuse, and the excuse is always some version of, “Well, I fell in love. I’m going with the natural flow. You know, I’m naturally weak, etc.” I’m telling you how not to be naturally weak: Don’t be naturally weak. Naw…that’s too simple. All right, when you go to sleep tonight I’ll burn all your possessions. Some of you don’t know they’re sizzling right now. What do you think This is all about?