Scoreboard? What Scoreboard?
Audio = Stream the audio from the arrow or download from the dots.
AKS/News Item Gallery = jcap 1988-02-11 (0361)
Condensed AKS/News Items = See Below
Excursion / Task = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = See Below
Summary
Jan Cox Talk #0361 – Jul 1, 1988 – 1:09
Notes by TK
Kyroot to :09
Complex ‘systems’ of mystical endeavor completely tie up the attention, which pre-empts the Real Method: Look Around. Any real method depends on operating at ‘top form’ –optimum performance level. Since everyone is already operating at peak efficiency for Life at the ordinary level, the Real Revolutionist’s top form is at another, unmeasurable level of excellence. If you can measure improvement in yourself according to any ordinary standard-you are not operating at Real Revolutionist primo forma.
Revolutionary stages of sight: material reality; metaphor; material reality renewed.
The Real Revolutionist should be attempting to live out all pertinent ordinary religious ideas in his own nervous system. Make the “lay down with the lamb” in his own Nervous System. “Give birth to new man”; “be like our father”; etc.
Life uses man as its “project” —just as he is the onlooker wondering what is going on behind the project fence as well.
1:12 end.
Excursion
[1:09 Epilogue. Is This Thing a “what to do” or “what NOT to do”?]
And Kyroot said…..
Criticism, even hostility from the People is praise indeed.
Just their indifference can almost bring you to tears of joy.
***
Another semi-old sorehead noted, “Doesn’t really matter who
you marry ’cause you end up with someone else anyway.” Yet they
still expect one plus one to equal the predictable. Ha!
***
Efforts and funds can certainly make crooked roads straight,
but without them, crooked roads ARE still roads, and they will
still take you somewhere.
***
Anyone who believes that “great deeds are done,” and
“history made” when Men struggle with other Men have not the
slightest suspicion of where the real conflict lies.
***
“You know,” said he, “death is just a pencil without an
eraser.”
***
The Safe Statement Award for 1988, given posthumously to he
who first said: “After all, SOMEthing must be left to chance.”
***
Over at one of those City Houses of Still Repute, I heard
this rather poetic prayer of relief, (at least I think that’s
what it was), and it went thusly, “God knows I’m not what I
should be. God knows I’m not even what I COULD be. But thank
God I’m not what I once THOUGHT I was.”
***
“Specialization,” declared the gentleman, “specialization
must be the proper approach to things. General knowledge just
couldn’t be of much real value, or the military wouldn’t have
it.”
***
You could guess bricks, blocks, or poured concrete, but you
would still have missed it. The most common foundation is fear.
***
The dead rise slowly.
***
The “thing” about Bush-Logic is that it is absurd.
***
Revolutionist consciousness is somewhat like a symphony
conductor in that what he appears to be presently doing is not
all THAT important; the REAL work was all done in rehearsals.
***
Would a Revolutionist attract any recruits were he to say
that the point of all this was to, although being middle class,
common and ordinary, not to care?
***
May we not either “hear it for” or have a “moment of
silence” for those in the City who would verbally, and
intellectually, dissect an abstract painting.
***
In times of great political stress and social upheaval, Men
will right-off accuse others so as to divert attention and
suspicion away from themselves. Nope, no personal significance
whatsoever.
***
“Well,” admitted one ole lacky, “I guess I can find it
acceptable to be marginally congenial.”
***
And now today’s lesson in the surrealistic measurements and
executions of City logic, and its unresolved entanglement with
unaccounted time. Things must surely be improving, day by day,
year by year. Do you notice how few new cars you see immobilized
by the highway, but how many older models are so? And, note the
dates on headstones to realize how many more of the elderly are
in the cemeteries than the young.
***
I recently ran across an elderly man who was sitting with
his head in his hands, and softly moaning. I asked him, “Crying
over opportunities missed?” “No,” he whispered. “Tears for
youthful dreams not realized?” I queried. He shook his head.
“Ah, then,” said I, “regrets that life caused you to ultimately
abandon your high ideals and made you ‘sell-out’ to the highest
bidder in the crass marketplace?” “No,” he groaned, “I was just
thinking that HAD life ever noticed me, how cheaply I COULD’a
been bought.”
***
Guilt: The ultimate feed-back.
***
I heard this one on the bathroom wall of that new City
joint: “We’re the boys who make the noise to suit our private
ends, and there’s the ass who rose too fast, and gave his brain
the bends.”
***
Beware, the vapor lock of the mind.
***
If you insist on being merely human, with its ordinary
program of choices, then you must accept that fleas-biting-your-
knees, and pigs-rushing-to-slop also have their own personal
agenda.
***
A City Philosopher was once out-a-musing, “Ah, the
temporary, and unsatisfying nature of force. You may subdue a
people today, but you later must subdue them again. And later
still, subdue them you might, but conquer them, never. Ah,
alas.” An old Major passing by thought, “‘Alas,’ my khaki
knickers. What do these civilians want from life? At least the
muther-fuckers’ld be subdued.”
***
One amateur City thinker said, after a heady bout with
certain “problems,” “My brain feels like it was rode hard, and
put up wet.”
***
Even with as much leeway as I try and give ’em in the City,
can you believe there are still those who want to raise a stink
about famous people “lying” in their autobiographies? Can you
believe that?
***
The past is a horrid thing to remember.
***
Regarding a comment he had just heard about a particular
incident, a chap exclaimed, “Jeeze, that’s depressing,” and a
passer-by added, “Hell, EVERYthing’s depressing.”
***
If the rich were truly rich, they’d have more minutes in an
hour than everyone else.
***
Let us never forget that historic case, that great legal
precedent upon which we base our right to abandon the City, the
case of The State vs. Whoopee.
***
The Revolutionist has never “seen better days,” or “known
better times.” Right now is always “It,” (or at least as near as
the present can come to it).
***
If you come in second don’t give interviews.
***
TRANSCRIPT
Transcript – Jan Cox Talk 0361
SCOREBOARD? WHAT SCOREBOARD?
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 361, GSIBM, July 1, 1988
People everywhere believe that there is available certain information which will enable them to do something spectacular, whether to trim fatty thighs or gain higher states of consciousness. But notice what Life does. Life arranges that there is always available some kind of specific template. That is, some apparent system such as “religion,” “metaphysics,” or “mind improvement.” And these systems and methods are always very precise. Do you get a glimpse as to why? What if I told you that This does have a system (and it’s as good as any) called “The Look Around Method”? Do you realize that Life normally produces these very specific methods to keep you from doing exactly that? If someone happened to stumble in here and express some interest, and I told them that the method is to simply Look Around, the person would say, “That’s too simple. I want something good.” And what Life normally provides is “something good.” Something to study, in other words, so that you won’t succeed. The more complex the system and the harder it is to comprehend, the more people are assured it is something real. And so everybody who thinks they are interested prepares to buckle down. And the longer they study the book, listen to the words, and eat the maps, the more they are kept from using such a foolish and superficial “method” as the Look Around Method. They would say, “I want something real to do. Don’t tell me to just look around.”
To continue with my descriptions of a Revolution: there is another way you can look at what it means to be a Revolutionist. What you are attempting to do is to operate at top form — “primo formum” — no matter what you are doing. Even if you are doing nothing, do it in absolute top form. Not slack-jawed or dull eyed; not looking “peaked and poorly,” as they say in the South. And not having any conversation about what you are doing. No prologue and, god forbid, no epilogue. Otherwise you cannot operate at top efficiency.
How is there any connection between the actual performance and a prologue or epilogue? There is none. You can talk to yourself about running before you run, and you can rate your performance when you get back, but it has nothing to do with what you actually did. There is a way in which all of This is about operating in top form. But you must have a new understanding of it. There is another level of top performance. What all humans at City level consider their best (including you) is shit compared to This. Because everybody does their best. So what? It is not a rationale, either. Everyone is doing their best, and everyone individually knows it. If I held you down and pistol whipped you as Freud intended, you would have to admit that despite your apparent flaws and shortcomings, all your life you have done the best you could. Boy, is that a revelation! Everyone knows it about themselves, but not about everybody else. They are idiots and philistines. They are not doing the best they can or you would not be surrounded by dullards.
You must have a new definition of primo formum to begin with. That is the itch which you can’t scratch — you need a new definition because you are already operating at peak efficiency, no matter who you are. But this new level of top form operates in an area where the game is unknown. You need to understand that this level cannot be properly measured by any such standard as outcome, conclusion, or scoreboard. There is no way to score This. None. There is no way to measure it. And if you’ve heard it described, what you heard was nothing. And if in any way you feel that you can judge your improvement — that is, you are becoming a better person by some City standard — it is a waste of time. You are playing the same old game, because there is no way to measure This by ordinary standards. It is just your nervous system making the same old noise.
In other words, only the Revolutionist himself keeps, knows, and understands the secret agenda. Only you can know if you are operating primo forma. And if you talk about it, the peak efficiency has decreased.
Once it happens, you understand that nobody else knows. And whatever you think the score is going to be if you succeed, it won’t be. That scoreboard is not even valid. If you ever get in this game, you are going to look around and find yourself in a 4-D stadium with no scoreboard. And you’ll understand it. Then, as far as you know, there is only you and me in the stadium. Who the hell is going to run the scoreboard if there was one? Nobody. Where are the judges and the referees? Nowhere. Life is not arranged for there to be any kind of widespread scoring of This.
I want to pick up another little piece of something I touched on recently. It has to do with a kind of ever-changing Revolutionist sight. Since I am now using the term “The Revolution” as a map for This, take that for an example. Consciousness, hearing that term for the first time, immediately takes it as a one-word description for reality as it is. People accept it as being a material reality. A little later, it strikes a person as being a metaphor. (Bear in mind that I could have called it “The Struggle,” or, “The Road.” We are talking about changing sight.) But then, with increased expansion, the really good part is the third step: you go back to seeing the Revolution as being reality. It is like reality renewed; and it is not simply a ride on a merry-go-round.
It is not that a Revolution initially sounds materially true, then sounds like a metaphor, and then sounds materially true again. Not “again” — renewed. It is then a new order of reality. It is then no longer a metaphor. If it was a metaphor, ultimately we’d be dealing with a great template: “Yeah, well anything to quit dealing with life…I want to do something extraordinary.” In other words, “I want to do something to keep from having to live. I want to phone my life in. Give me something to work on which will lead me nowhere.” Ah, to read the holy book or the remembrances of the teacher…it’s like sliding in to home base and dealing with a blind umpire. You’re safe. You’ll be dead before you understand the system. But between here and there you have a hobby; and you can score yourself besides. And obviously, someone else will periodically rate your progress as well. That is the sequential nature of life in the City. But you have to see that the reason of the Bush is the real reason. The ultimate reason. There is no sequential description of This available, and there is no way to measure it.
This changing sight from “material reality” to “metaphor” to renewed reality takes place in you. If it does not, you are not in the Revolution. It is as real as looking around. Much of what I say at times sounds insane, but you look around six months later and, “Good god! It’s true, then it’s a metaphor, and now — hell, it’s true!” And the renewed reality of it does not negate the fact of the first two stages. It was metaphorical and still is. Just because things appear sequential to ordinary consciousness does not mean that “what was” has now disappeared. If it has, I’d like you to tell me where it went.
Something else about the Revolution. In a sense, the Revolutionist is attempting to actualize all the pertinent religious ideas of history in his own nervous system. I’m not speaking of little rules about not eating bologna on Tuesdays. Take for example an old line out of the Bible: “The day will come when the lion will lie down with the lamb.” Does everybody understand that that day will never come? Lions can’t even lie down with other lions. What the nervous system is dreaming of is something else. But in the City, people believe paradise would be where lions no longer kill fluffy little sheep. Cannot be. Will not be. Not in the 3-D world. What that would be is destruction. If it were possible, why would there already be opposing forces? Why would there be the eaten and the eaters? If two people dance, one of them has to dance backwards. Somebody has to eat, and somebody has to be eaten. If nothing else, simply look around: that is the way it is.
But what you are attempting in This is to make the lambs and the lions of your own nervous system lie down together. That’s it — there is the secret. That is what is possible. Go ahead and take it as metaphorically as you want. But it is not simply a metaphor. If so, all of This would have a template, and a bible, and a specific measurable direction. All of This would be bull shit. Or bologna, according to how sensitive you are.
You are attempting to make the very forces which hold the dance together, live together. Those very forces at 3-D level keep the necessary tension in Life. There must be strong cellular walls; there must be one group who hollers, “Sports is my life!,” and another group screaming, “Sports is for uncivilized dumb asses!” And another group (normally not accounted for in the same breath) who could not care less about either side. There must be that tension. There must be lions and lambs: there is no way out, except destruction. That is, for the 3-D universe to collapse. In the City it is believed that someday we will all lay it down and there will be peace and quiet; C and D Force will lay down together. You’d better hope not. It will all stop if that happens. The clock will have run out.
Within your own nervous system something else is possible. It is unnatural. It is to take C and D Force and to make them live together. It is to take one and one and get three.
Rather than sticking with the religious idea of the lambs and lions, what about these ideas — scattered throughout all religions of the world — that a man must be born again? It is not singular to the Christian religion. In the City it is taken literally in some cases. That is, someone was literally killed and came back to life. That is 3-D impossible. It never happened, and it’s not going to happen tomorrow. That is not the way Life is arranged. But in your nervous system, that is exactly what you are attempting to do: to give birth again. It is unnatural and unnecessary, and it is for a mutant strain within Life’s body. (Some of you belong to a certain genetic stream. In a sense you and I and some of these others are related closer than you and your parents. It is not in some kind of sham “let’s all hug each other” way, either. There are mutant strains of genes which keep popping up. That was the case historically when a few people seemed to make a bump in the memory of Life in Man. The people involved might not have like each other all that much, and they did not necessarily live together. But at another level they had a mutant genetic similarity which they did not have with their parents. It is not superior to blood relationship; it is in another direction.)
You are attempting to give birth to yourself anew. You are attempting to abandon that which is already you, and to get out of the genetic lifeline in which everyone is born — what I have been calling “born in the City.” And it is not a struggle with “me” to make “me” better. It is not to crucify yourself. You aren’t worth crucifying. The City self is not good or bad; there it is, and it has to breathe. It has to carry you. What you are attempting is to give birth, not to a new person, but to parts of the nervous system which are laying there not being used. (Actually, they are being used, or I wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t be able to hear it. But it’s at a right angle from here, in a different time zone.) It is not giving birth to a new person. You are still you. It is subtle beyond belief, but ordinary consciousness takes “subtle” to be something real. If you had your choice, would you rather be subtly rich or grossly rich? In the City everyone says, “Well, grossly…” — because subtle doesn’t mean much. They don’t understand. It is a subtle change in the nervous system. It is quite real, and it is quite metaphorical, and then ultimately, (just before you die at the very least) you realize it is just material as hell. “No wonder I couldn’t find a book on it. No wonder he never would or could say exactly what it was: it wasn’t funny-money. It wasn’t some kind of philosophical template. It wasn’t a system. It was fucking reality: that’s why you can’t talk about it!” But it’s reality that doesn’t exist yet.
Another pertinent religious idea is that we all should be like our father — our source. Think about that. Of course, it ends up as an old man with flowing hair painted on black velvet. But what do they describe? What do they say are the attributes of our source? I’ll tell you what they describe: two inches up past where construction has been stopped on that freeway in your nervous system. And what you are trying to do in This is to go that two inches further. A Real Revolutionist can stay in a closet and tell you what our source is like. All he has to do is get the nervous system going, and there it is. There is this generation’s god. There is the next generation’s god.
As long as I’m here, let me pull out my story about The Project. I have never fleshed it out and finished it, but I told you enough. It was about a group of people who buy a piece of land somewhere which can be easily seen. First they put up a six foot fence complete surrounding two or three acres. A six foot fence, so those outside can’t see over it. Maybe they put up a sign: “The Project.” And from inside the fence they make sure there’s always a lot of steam, smoke, and dust coming out — and a lot of noise. There is a gate visible through which travel is going in and out. No press releases, no parties, and the mayor is not invited. But every week passers by notice this much: the fence is up another foot or so. Still smoke, and maybe a little more noise. Then a couple of weeks later, the fence is higher. And it goes on and on. The sign gets bigger, of course: “The Project.”
Now, can any of you see that in a sense Life has used Man as being its Project? But in an astounding manner: Man is not only the fence and the sign, he is simultaneously the passers by. Both. Man apparently has the ability to stand aside and look at himself — The Project — and wonder, “What in the hell is going on?” But in the City, if they followed it far enough, they would say that The Project represents the great religious “Secret.” That is, “the inexplicable nature of god.” They’d miss it. They have no choice. Because in the City you’re not supposed to see this kind of absurd reality. Man, individually and collectively, is both the passerby who wonders what is going on, and The Project itself.
The City would say that that can’t be, and that I’m obviously speaking metaphorically: Man is either the passerby wondering about the secret, or he is The Project on which the gods or the fates are working. If you say so. Go deal with it, and tell me what you get out of it. Or do you want me to save you the time? Nothing. You might as well believe in Santa Claus. You might as well believe that if you see a big fence and a sign saying “The Project,” something is actually going on inside. You can be assured of this: the fence keeps getting higher. The sign keeps getting bigger to fit into some kind of apparent relationship and ratio to the size and height of the fence. “Yeah, but something’s going on in there. It only stands to reason. Why else would somebody keep building this fence higher? Why all the dust and noise coming out?” People going by never know. Never. They do know that there is a sign and a growing fence.
This cannot have any validity to ordinary understanding, or everything would fall apart. But for those of you who can avoid that great vapor-lock and let your mind cool off, have I not simply described the nature of what people in the City ordinarily think of as being religious interest in the ultimate secret? The supreme mystery which cannot be understood? And do you understand the beautiful arrangement? As long as that is how consciousness is made to believe, the mystery is indeed forever. And everybody remains convinced there is something in the center of the mystery, or else there wouldn’t be a mystery. “You mean there’s nothing inside? Just three or four guys throwing dust up in the air, banging on pots and blowing whistles? And it’s the same four guys driving the trucks in and out? In other words you are saying there is a sham of some kind?” I did not say that. I’m speaking for City consciousness.
By the way, it’s no more a sham than you are, to give you some hope. I didn’t want to leave you feeling pessimistic.