Hey–Look Through Here
August 26, 1988
AKS/News Item Gallery = jcap 1988-08-24 (0384)
Condensed AKS/News Items = See Below
Summary = See below
Diagrams = See Below
Transcript = See Below
Diagram # 178A video grab
Diagram # 178B video grab
Summary
8/26/88 0384
Notes by WB
WETHTI–Whatever the hell this is…
HLTH– Look through here…or Hey, look through here.
What is there to study about This? To study: aka, dumbness. Ideas are not things to be studied. They are holes in things for people to look through. Major ideas were not intentional but from serendipity.
What do you think you want to discover Here? New ideas? Whatever you set out to discover–you won’t.
What J says is not about stuff. Always– he wants you to “look through here”…
In your looking, if you find a flaw, look through it–don’t entertain ways to patch it up.
Ultimately This Thing is something to Do.
And Kyroot Said…
A Man has no ears for things he cannot hear. Dig it,
troops.
***
The unrecognized pickle in the Garden of Eden story: If you
got sex appeal shallowness ain’t no crime.
***
It’s surprising how a good explosion can quickly calm things
down.
***
Steady, moving and complex sight is not an attribute of this
activity, but IS this activity.
***
When it seems I am speaking most directly to you is when
your army of upper molecules are most on the move.
***
I say there, old stick, if this is your standard model I’d
like the deluxe, and if this IS your deluxe, I’d like my money
back.
***
Although many apparently know, or at least say that, “Man
does not live by bread alone,” not many notice it is now almost
by TALK alone.
***
If your sense of morality makes you unhappy, be assured that
you have a fine set of City morals.
***
May I now point to that Revolutionist who sang out, “My
flanks are breached, my rear is rent, and my front ranks are
giving way… Hah! I am exhilarated beyond belief.”
***
Words To Live By In The City, (or at least to weasel by
with): The wrong way usually seems the right way… no it
doesn’t, it just SEEMS that way.
***
In the City, the secret of how to “live properly” seems to
be solely in the hands of those who can’t.
***
Only a Real Revolutionist can CORRECTLY ever expect
something for nothing.
***
Regarding many routine City matters, a Revolutionist might
say, “Call me back later,” and then leave town.
***
If a Revolutionist couldn’t be somebody else he wouldn’t be
anybody. If a Revolutionist couldn’t be himself he wouldn’t be
anybody. If a Revolutionist couldn’t be somebody else AND
himself, he wouldn’t be anybody.
***
In the City, plan to deal only in safe statements, if you
plan to stay in the game at all.
***
Never trust a god who travels.
***
I heard another one of “those guys” who hang out around the
Bushes, apparently addressing himself say, “This burg’s not small
enough for both of us.”
***
Over in that City park where random speakers hold sway, one
man cried out, “The world as we know it now cannot live at the
level of ‘excellence’ as propounded by those great men of the
past,” and a member of his audience pondered this a moment, then
shouted back, “In that case, what is needed is either a lowering
of our expectations, or some new, flabby definition of
‘excellence’.”
***
Quote Update Number 47: What this country needs is a good
five cent remark.
***
Being ‘human’ is, at best, a part time job.
***
Transcript
LOOK THROUGH HERE
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 384, GSIBM, August 26, 1988
What does it mean when people say they would like to go study something? Specifically, to study with a great teacher of some kind? Let’s say someone who knew something which you wanted to know did allow you to come. And they say, “Look through here.” If you are my Fictional Reasonably Insane Person, what is there to study? You notice that I, in a sense, am making This more and more simplistic, yet some of you have more and more difficulty hearing it. Like you think you missed something. What is there to study?
Why would one go study mathematics? The math professor gives a lecture on quadratic equations and writes the thing down. There it is: a quadratic equation. What is there to study? But is that the way the intellect normally works in people? Not in any of the people you know. To speak of the body in isolation, when it studies something the process is quite direct. That is, practice. You do a physical activity until you get proficient at it. Yet Life is wired up in such a way that when it comes to Yellow Circuit operations, people believe that to study something is a very time consuming proposition. And especially when it comes to inquiring about the nature of life.
Could anyone see that “study” is a synonym for being a deaf mute? For extreme dumbness? “All right, I’ve got it. I see what you’re talking about,” “Good, then let’s move on,” “Wait a minute, could I stay here and study on this?” A split second after people say, “I’ve got it,” they want to study it. How much simpler can I make it? (See, that’s the problem. Some of you think at times that it gets very convoluted and obtuse, but in a sense Life has arranged things so simplistically that for me to say, “What is study?” just seems dumb.) If you’re going to learn something, you just learn it. You don’t study it. Study is not learning. In the City, of course, study is study. Study in the City is absolutely de rigueur for learning anything. But I’m telling you that through another piece of eyesight, study is a lack of knowing something.
In the City, the belief is that through study you can slowly creep up on knowing. You have heard the maxim, “All journeys begin with a single step”? In the City, the little single steps never end. There you are, 86 years old, you’re about to fall into the hole, and you’re still taking these little steps. And the truth is, you’re no closer to where you thought you wanted to go than when you started. But that’s in the City. Here, to say you are “studying something” is an excuse. It’s a hobby to hold you from here to the grave while not discovering what you wanted to discover. Because as long as you seem to be in motion, everything seems to be all right.
If someone was a full-blown user of the intellect, they would realize that the very things which seem to plague the few people who become attracted to This cannot be resolved by studying. The truth is, you can take all the little steps you want and be no closer than when you started. No book has ever brought you closer. And if you get excited over a book, you begin to look for others. Then you’ve got a whole new hobby. Now you’re studying how to find the book, where to get lists of rare esoterica…it’s study, study, study. You’re like a fighter shadowboxing forever. It’s like being in eternal rehearsal to actually learn something, except you don’t know it.
Now I’d like to ask you another question. First let me point out that Life has made many men throughout history almost slobber over themselves about “the power of ideas.” Pick up any decent book of maxims and look in the index. Next to “love” or “debt” it’s probably the third largest section of the book. People in the City who badmouth guns and knives will say, “Ideas will survive when sabers are rusted.” (I just made that one up.) The power of ideas.
In the City, it is taken without analysis that ideas are things. As always it’s of no consequence what they think, but that’s what they think, and they don’t even think about it. That is, that that’s what they think. That is, that ideas are things. Ideas are not things. Ideas are holes in things for people to look through. And I don’t mean just This. In the City, any idea of historical significance was not originally a new production of something. Freud’s idea of subconscious motivations and Newton’s laws of mechanical physics had widespread effects on humanity, but those ideas were not things. They were holes in the fabric of what was going on at their time and place — and people went and looked through the holes. In that sense, there is no such thing as an idea.
Everyone who stays around This activity for any length of time begins to think that perhaps, for the first time, they’re actually having new ideas. They seem to be potent ideas; so real as to make your little mouth smile in the dark all by yourself. But the idea is not a piece of goods. It is not a new piece of material which your mind has suddenly added to the collection. There are no collections, because ideas are not things. There is really no way to describe this. Ideas are new holes in things. And people look through them and go, “Wow.” And, of course, what they see becomes a new “thing” and the hole expands. When it becomes an accepted idea, the hole rips open and everybody forgets. By then, perhaps, entire civilizations are looking through the hole. What was seen becomes a thing; it becomes reality.
Much later the new thing, now widely accepted, is studied and found to be no longer sufficient. For example, take the growth from mechanical physics into quantum physics. Suddenly, a person somewhere says, “Ah! This!” — and a new model, theory, matrix, or proposal begins to catch on. But it is not that there was a dearth of this idea in the market place. One person said, “Hey! Come look through here!” That is an idea. It’s a hole, not a thing. It’s a hole.
I have just described something which in the City goes unnoticed. But in This it is even more astounding. You have to tap dance backwards.
Here comes my question. Let’s take as a given the common notion that most of the great discoveries in the sciences were things for which the investigators were not looking. There is a great deal of validity to that. Now ask yourself: what are you trying to discover by fooling around with This? What if you could be reasonably assured that if you ARE successful, it will be in discovering something that you weren’t looking for? Would that discourage enough of you? Would that bewilder enough of you? Would that make enough of your Yellow Circuits put up signs saying, “Closed. Please Don’t Call Again”?
Again I can’t resist pointing out the beauty of the City. If I got someone in the City to listen and I said, “Why in the world would anybody try to discover anything, because whatever you discover, it will not be what you are looking for” — what could they do but be extremely discouraged? What else would YOU do? If people in the City ever saw this, they would quit playing. “The hell with it, I’m not going to put up with that!” (Which I always love, because in the City people will put up with anything.)
For people who are properly born into This and who stay with it, all questions as to ultimate purpose and “What I want to discover” become…there’s no word for it. Put “moot” in neon about ten feet high and have it whirling around. That may be getting close. And yet, there is a vague sensation of the possibility of discovering something, or people would not continue it. The chemical nature of Life always has what appears to be some aim: the continual inconclusive statement between here and the grave. This nervous system and the flesh around it is going to keep driving to stay alive; to eat again, to sleep again. And the Yellow Circuit’s drive is also for nourishment: the need for new ideas. The whole organism that is you is trying to discover something.
The very basic something is, “How can I stay alive one more minute.” But inside the organism, the part which you feel is “me” believes that there are things in This which you want to discover. What if you’re not exempt from what I’ve just pointed out about discoveries? You don’t have to find that disappointing, because I don’t like disappointed people. But you should find that real funny. Interesting. Curious. What could you do with that information? Now, you’ve got to be a FRIP who at least suspects that there is a corner. You have to be able to look down this street that appears to stretch into infinity, lined with buildings, and down which you seem to be taking an absolute journey. And you’ve got to have at least a very strong suspicion that somewhere down those walls is an alley, and that some people turn the corner. Even though you can’t see it from this angle.
The way of using this information would be too heartbreaking — too shocking — for the City. But it is this: whatever you think you want to discover in This, you might as well write it down, wad it up, and flush it down the toilet. Then forget about it. Literally. But who can do that? I don’t mean fake it. Who can do it and understand that it was a splendid, splendid lesson?
Let’s make it real crude. Let’s assume that all of you people are sticking with This on the basis of what I seem to Know and what I talk about. In a sense, I don’t know anything. Not in the sense that these ideas, diagrams, and acronyms are some kind of “stuff.” What if it’s not? There is no stuff; it is holes in the stuff. And you go and look through it and you see other stuff. The laws of mechanical physics have not been repealed so that you or I can produce new stuff. All of This has always been about “looking through here,” not looking AT stuff. What you’re after is a hole to look through. That’s why it has a very short shelf-life, to say the least. That’s why it does not travel well in time or space.
It does not travel well because somebody who looks through such a hole does not acquire a “thing” such as “enlightenment.” Even if they had — to use the old spiritual heroes for example — notice that after a thousand years and two thousand miles away, the idea is inedible. Or, if you CAN eat it, it’s not digestible any more. It may not even look like something to eat. That’s because it was not originally. It was not a thing. It was a hole in things.
That is why, in a sense, This really does not exist. Not as a thing. You may look back at some historical reflection of This and think, “If I’d only been alive when Buddha was around… THIS guy keeps talking around in circles and he won’t even tell us what it is, but at least with Buddha I could have studied Buddhism.” If there was such a person, he never taught Buddhism, because he knew there is no Buddhism. And if he lived long enough that somehow what he did say began to circulate and become known as “Buddhism,” do you realize that to sincere people he .pawould have to say, “Come look through here”? That is, to show them the hole in Buddhism. Literally.
This is not some attempted defense of me. And it’s not really me talking about me and This activity: it’s you and This activity. We are not here to study me or find me intriguing. If so, somebody let me know so I can have a new hobby.
Every human on this planet has some imperfection. The Yellow Circuit can IMAGINE an “El perfecto” paradigm, that’s part of its function. But nobody measures up to that paradigm. Flaws can be looked at as holes in the matrix of “what a human should be.” You have flaws, and everybody else takes them as being what? You guessed it: flaws. And so they look for a new idea to patch up the flaw. A few people understand that if you have nothing else to do, you can go over and try to look through it. Everybody else is calling, in their own strange way, for a plastic surgeon. They are trying to patch up what they call “flaws” with what they call “ideas,” but in another sense, a new idea is itself a hole.
Sometimes I say things that strike you as astounding: “That is so strange, but so obvious — how in the hell did he figure that out?” Figure it out? But I didn’t give you a new idea. It was a hole in everything you already knew. Once you begin to see that, what choice do you have? Everything else is “Big-O Obvious.” Everybody else says, “Things are obvious.” No, they’re not. If things are obvious, why do people study them? “Well, it’s obvious that you have to study to learn anything.”
Holes only last a little bit. Just a little bit. I’m not going to tell you how long. But they sure don’t last a hundred years, forget a thousand. I’ll give you this much of a hint: forget much over a generation.
One other little thing. I periodically insist that This is something you DO. It’s not something you get from me, which may sound easy for me to say. Because if this was a City crowd they’d call it a “Cop out.” “Don’t blame me if you don’t succeed, I’m telling you exactly how to do it.” Like I’m conducting one of those make-a-fortune-in-real-estate seminars. But that’s not what I’m telling you. There is no cop-out, because there is no cop-in. Ultimately, you’ve got to do it. Those of you who survive and keep hanging on have a suspicion of that. You don’t like it; nobody does. It’s something you do. But the basis of that is that there’s nothing to give. I don’t have a secret locked up somewhere. There is, in a sense, a secret which I can’t tell you, but it’s not a “something.” It’s a hole that none of you have any business looking through. There’s no sense in saying that if I tried to drag you over to it, any of you would really see it.
How about you on your own? What is it that you try to do? What is it that you’re trying to discover? It is always on the basis of attempting to acquire something. Holes are not something. You believe that what is lacking is a new piece of information. You believe that week by week I am giving out either piecemeal information or different views of the same thing, and that I’ll either make it plainer or give you the missing pieces. Your own experience seems to give this more .pavalidity and to bring a nexus of the unrelated pieces together. But what if it’s none of that?
That’s what makes it so spooky. I am talking about stuff that does not exist, but I have to make it sound like stuff: ideas, new pictures, new metaphors. There is no such thing as a metaphor in This — there just seems to be. I start off talking about politics, for instance, and then tell you to take it internally. It sounds metaphorical, but it’s not. Ideas, especially here, (because it is only here that it’s of any significance) are not things at all. They are not molecular. They are not physical. The ideas of This are not other things, secret things, esoteric things, hidden things, or new things. They’re not astounding things. They are not things at all. They are holes in things.