The Autocrat
December 14, 1988
AKS/News Item Gallery = jcap 1988-12-12 (0431)
Condensed AKS/News Items = See Below
Summary = needed (Sneeded )
Diagrams = See Below
Transcript = See Below
0431 video grab
And Kyroot Said…
Even if you don’t know THE secret you can know A secret.
(And even if you don’t know A secret you can pretend to know SOME
thing.)
***
Even deep-fried theologians, after grueling hours of
religious debate, will finally turn to politics and court gossip.
***
That without limits cannot by City minds be possessed.
***
Were it not for the continuing acquisition of new toys and
trinkets, how would City folks even appear interesting?
***
All “sound” advice is much too loud.
***
Conversation Delta-Y: “May I help you with your packages?”
“I have no packages.” “May I get you some?”
***
Why be 8 1/2-by-14 in an 8 1/2-by-11 world?
***
While others in the City may continue to debate questions
of morality, propriety, and proper conduct, let me ask you more
specifically: Can you see — can you even imagine seeing any
conflict between “nature” and intelligence? (In case you didn’t
notice, that’s a wrap on that subject.)
***
I am disturbed by the similarity of the words “art” and
“fart”.
***
Since everyone wants what’s in short supply, would it help
to warn of a coming run on dumbness?
***
You know, a fellow could make a fortune in the intellectual-
office-place if he could develop a “white-IN”.
***
There’s this chap with a seven band equalizer who lives near
Kyoto who sez he knows of a certain undiscovered natural law that
doesn’t seem to apply to anything.
***
If you “aim to please” you’ll hit ’em in the knees. (Heads
up, y’all.)
***
A Real Revolutionist would do ANYTHING for profit. This
sounds harsh and venal to those who don’t realize that the whole
trick is in actually knowing what IS profit.
***
You can always take at least ONE step out of your way.
***
In the City, when it comes right down to it (which it may
yet do), to be an expert in any area is just to be learned in
naming the tools of the profession. That is, in being skilled at
identifying the laws, principles, and statistical and measuring
instruments of the discipline while having no actual possession of
the information for which the tools ostensibly exist.
***
Everything built in the City is made to be repaired.
***
Those who seek sexual advice fucking need it.
***
In the Law ’tis said, “You can’t slander the dead”, so how
come they don’t enforce this idea the OTHER way around, for
christ’s sake.
***
In that night time peculiar unto them, Revolutionists sleep
with giants.
***
Transcript
LET THE PEOPLE SAY WHAT THEY WANT,
I’LL DO WHAT I WANT!
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 431, December 14, 1988
Here is some more on debt, knowing the ropes, and the conduct of state. First let us begin with the Affaires de Court. There once was a ruler who said, “Let the people say what they want, and I will do what I want.” Think about this for a second. We’re talking about a real ruler here. That is, someone who would fit the definition of a real autocrat. And yet he says, “Let the people say what they want, and I’ll do what I want.” I remind you again that I am not simply talking about external affairs: this statement can also apply to an individual’s inner state.
Can you see how direct and simple (yet complex) a utility this idea could serve for someone involved in This Activity? Can you see this as being the ultimate divergence between action and thinking of action? That such a person could have an almost unremovable monarch — a single internal force; a single kind of intelligence — that could take the attitude: “I’ll let the people (the rest of me) say whatever they want, but I’ll do what I want.”
Can you also see that it would take a truly revolutionary internal leader to do this? Such a ruler would have to be stable, strong and self-directed. And at the same time he would have to be flexible, intelligent and ever increasingly complex. You should remember that this is not the first time I have described a revolutionary internal ruler in this manner. I have previously compared this potential internal monarch to what people in the City call a “tyrant.” In the external world, a good efficient tyrant would be ruthless and intolerant of any dissension. People generally use these descriptions in a pejorative sense when describing a tyrant in the external world. But the same situation can be seen as positive if used in one’s own internal state. Coevally, what appears to be the exact opposite of the external situation is internally really a “1/4” opposite. (That is really not the term for it, but then there is no verbal name for what I mean.) That is, the situation is not totally reversed. The internal ruler does not say that he has NO control over the people. Instead the statement is reversed only 1/4. This ruler says, “Let the people say whatever they want.”
This situation would not operate efficiently or survive for any length of time in the external world. It would be a bastardization of a tyranny. In the City a ruler must control the people’s behavior. Or, he must control what the people think, and then what they think will apparently set the course for their behavior. (That is, the ruler would be doing indirectly what he would be directly doing by controlling the people’s behavior.)
Now I have opened up another possibility for a revolutionary ruler: “Let the people say what they want, I will do what I want.” (There is a tacit inference, I might add, that this ruler is going to do what he wants and no one is going to stop him.) This would be going a step further than simply allowing the people to think what they want. This revolutionary ruler does not even care what people actually say as long as they do what they are supposed to do. In the external world this would be a most risky, if not doomed approach. But internally, for a would-be revolutionist, it is another matter.
First off, can you get a glimpse that even at City level, this is what is already taking place? Is this not what has always passed for being the self-reflected description which man makes of his inner life? Is it not a fair, albeit new, description of the ambiguity of the human nervous system — the duality of man’s “good” side and his “bad” side; his conscious mind and his unconscious mind? Is it not a fair description of what I have been calling the Partnership? That there is a part of man which talks and creates a verbal reality and another part which does whatever it wants? Is this not a description of people having thoughts and plans that may or may not bear any resemblance to their actions? Is it not the fuel which keeps the fire burning — keeps man’s breath going in and out and his blood circulating — and gives him the apparent reason for getting up in the morning?
All this has to do with the difference between, “The people say one thing,” and, “I do something else.” Or, at other times, “I say what I want to,” but the people do whatever they want. And every time it flip-flops, ordinary consciousness takes what seems to be the spokesman at that moment — the one that seems to light the fire right then — as the real “I.” Consciousness will take whichever voice seems the more appropriate at the time as the “real me” and the other voice as the “not-me.”
Let’s go back to the external example for a minute. Take a ruler of a country: a man who sits firmly on the throne; a man truly in charge. One day he decides, “Let the people go ahead and say whatever they want, I’ll do what I want.” Can you see that if a man could pull that off, you would have a situation which is beyond 3-D description? For that to be possible the ruler must possess an unimpeachable force, over and above what is available to the populace. In the 3-D world, for a ruler to allow the people to say what they pleased and then for him to be able to do whatever he wanted, he would have to possess a physical force which was unconditional. But do you understand that out in the physical world, if you have that kind of power, it WILL execute itself. That is, if a ruler has a power in place which is potentially all-encompassing and destructive, the power cannot go unexercised. If someone has that kind of power it is impossible, in the City, to then allow the people to say whatever they want. It would literally be impossible. (Remember, I am not simply talking about politics here. I am talking about the way Life is arranged in its innards; its blood and guts, which are a part of everyone and everything.) In the 3-D world, that kind of statement would be moot and useless if made by a ruler who had an unconditional physical force behind him. And yet, history remembers the statement. The human nervous system vibrates to that arrangement of words.
Now let’s take this back to the internal terrain. “Let the people say what they want, I’ll do what I want.” This seems to be a fair description of the way things ordinarily work, that is, the way things work without being involved in This. It seems to be a fair description of the internal situation within everyone: the nervous system — or as people would say in the City, the unconscious mind, the subconscious, the lesser self, evil spirits — talks and plans. And yet, people do not take action on what they say. Look at your own life. How many times have you had internal voices go, “I should punch that guy out for insulting me,” or, “I’d like to strangle her for saying that.” And yet, of course, you never actually carry out the threat.
Within everyone there is this babble which no one can seem to stop. And there also seems to be something within which operates as it pleases regardless of what the voices say. And so, an ordinary person’s nervous system could say that, “Let the people say what they want and I’ll do what I want,” is a fair description of their own internal situation.
But it is not. Let me ask you this: Who IS in control? People say that there are internal voices which babble and rabble-rouse about things which are immoral, condemnable and perhaps even illegal and yet, they have never acted upon these voices. Does that mean the part that has not acted on these voices is in charge? And if that part IS in charge, why doesn’t it put a stop to the voices?
Men do not execute their worst dreams. They do not act on these terrible noises (which, in the City, they attribute to childhood traumas and the manner in which they were raised). There is another part of them which does not succumb to this verbal venom; there is another part which apparently is stronger and will not act upon these “terrible,” “evil” voices. Is that part the real ruler? Is that the part in control, as opposed to the part which babbles on about knocking off people you dislike and running people off the road who cut in front of you on the highway? Is it that those “evil” voices are not really you — at least not the REAL you? Are they the part which is out of control? So the part that IS in control never follows through on those voices? And that part is closer to the REAL you? Well, if one part really does hold the power, why doesn’t that part take the rest of you, which is making the noise, and make it shut up?!!
Who is in control? We’re back to another one of those areas wherein people cannot believe the evidence of their own senses. You can ask, “Who is in charge?” but if you are that foolish you should be prepared for an almost infinite discussion, because people cannot face up to the very thing which they would say is the intellectual birthright of free thinking people; that is, the evidence of their senses. Because the evidence of their senses is this: there is NO ONE in control. And no one in the City can see that.
I have previously pointed out the fact that any organization, from the post office to a religion to a government, grows and develops almost like an egg and sperm. The organization has a stated purpose (i.e., to grow into a human) and it splits and divides and grows by establishing bylaws, rules, principles, directives, etc. What I pointed out was that no one person knows all of the rules and principles of an organization. The head of a religion does not know all the canons or psalms of the church; the head of the postal service does not know every last rule or law of the post office. No one knows everything necessary in an organization to keep it going. And yet, the organization can operate. And do you know why? It’s because no one is in control! No human, anyway. Things operate in a way that, on the basis of their own stated purpose, on the surface seems impossible. I’ve been calling this mode of operation “some success.” That is, everything operates enough to at least stay alive; to apparently fulfill some overall continuing purpose within humanity. Yet, no one person knows everything necessary to make the thing work. I ask you: HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? It is possible because no one is in charge. But City sight cannot see or believe that is possible.
I remind you again that I’m not simply talking about external governments, rulers and populaces. I am using, for the time being, the illusion of man as his own state, individually and collectively. Man has internal “governments,” “rulers” and “the people,” and these in turn contain all the apparent factions found in the external world. There is noise which goes on within everyone’s system. Another way to describe this is: the people talk; the people are divided into different factions and groups (i.e. opinions and beliefs). And if you take any time to really look internally at these voices you must realize that to say, “I’ll let the voices (the people in me) say whatever they want,” is already a fait accompli. You must see that the voices are already saying whatever they want. If you were an intelligent courtier in this court you’d be standing behind the king and when he made the proclamation allowing the people to say what they want, you’d have to say to yourself, “As opposed to what? Since when have you been able to shut the people up?”
That is what all the meditation techniques, self-help programs and certain kinds of drugs are about. What people are attempting to do is make the complexity of the nervous system a little more simplistic, to wit, they are attempting to shut the voices up. And to the degree that people have success with these methods it is “some success.” They may be able to do it for a few seconds. If it was possible to do it any longer it would, in fact, be destructive. I know that people believe they can do it for longer — ten seconds, an hour, half a day — but I’m telling you, they would soon be blowing their brains out with a gun if they succeeded in shutting off the voices for any length of time. They would be like the waitress I’ve mentioned before who, when someone said anything about their mind wandering, would reply, “I can’t afford to let my mind wander, because I’ve always been afraid that it wouldn’t come back.” If ordinary people could in some way stop the internal chatter for an indeterminate length of time it would be as if their mind had wandered off and didn’t come back. They would be ready for an institution.
If the ruler said, either out there or internally, “Well, let the people say whatever they want,” can you see that it would be, “As opposed to what?” Let me ask you this: why then would .paanyone make that statement? Why does history remember it? How is it even possible to use it internally?
Can you stop your inner voices from talking? If you hear all this and say to yourself, “Yeah. I hear that. I’ll let the people in me say whatever they want,” you’re nuts. Do you really think you have a choice? If you do, you are back in 3-D land. You have no choice as to whether the people talk or not! And if you do not realize that, you’re in the position of the guy in the old joke who says to his son, “Stop beating on that drum!” And the son goes on beating on it. So the father yells, “STOP BEATING ON THAT DRUM!” And the son goes on beating the drum. So the father says, “Okay. Go on, beat the drum. At least you’ll be obeying me.”
Of what possible use is the statement: “Let the people say what they want”? If you have any functional knowledge of what is going on in you and in everyone else, you would have to stop and think, “Wait a minute, that statement is some kind of trick or foolishness, because the people already say whatever they want.” The people are talking. That is the first thing you remember. When you actually heard your own internal voices is when you became conscious. When you began to have internal noise and realized that it was not your mommy or daddy — that the voices were coming from inside you — is when you were first conscious.
Do you see that you cannot start off with “Let the people say what they want, I’ll do what I want.” The people are talking and they were talking before you had any idea that there was a ruler in you. So I ask you: What can you do with this situation, now?
Let me ask my little teaser again: Could this be the ultimate divergence between action and thinking of action? Or better yet, how about all the times I’ve said that you should never tell yourself what you’re doing? What if I have circled back around to another level? What if you could look at the statement, “I’ll let the people say what they want,” and you had an extraordinary ruler on your throne (one who was not limited to the simplicity of the 3-D world)? And he said, “Yes, let the people talk. Let them say whatever they want because they’ve been doing that. They were talking before I was here, and thus far I have not found any efficient way to stop them. So let them say whatever they want, but I will do what I want!” Could this be the ultimate divergence, the ultimate separation, between action and thinking of action (or talking of action)? This is not possible in the City and just barely makes verbal sense. In the City it makes no sense. In the City it sounds silly to try and divorce action from thinking of action. But I ask you: Is it?
Look at it this way. At the ordinary level, your actions have been tied to your thinking-of-action; to your planning. Of course, all your plans have not reached full fruition, but the connection has always been there. You still plan. You still have dreams of what you should be doing and what you may do later on down the road. Action has always been tied to thinking-of-action, even after the fact. You think about what you should have done and about what you’ll do the next time a similar situation arises. What good has all this talking done you? I don’t mean in a moral or qualitative sense, I mean: What good has it done you? How has it solidified the power of who seems to be your ruler? What ultimate and far-reaching good has it done you?
If you have the potential to become more complex, you know what the answer is. The answer is not, “None.” The answer is no answer. The answer is, “It’s self-evident.” Once again I am pressing the extremes of ordinary intelligence, much less 3-D verbiage.
I can take it back to a dualistic level. Up until now, what would you say that your ordinary intelligence, your daydreaming, your short range plans and your long range plans, your after the fact plans, all of the people talking in you, have been concerned with? People all over the planet, throughout the ages, would say, “Well, the very things I should be concerned with. I think about what I should be doing. The intellect is for making plans, learning from your mistakes, and should be a human repository for knowledge and experience.” And at the level of 3-D consciousness, besides the little fun it may have (“Green Acres,” pornography, etc.) what is the purpose of the human intellect? What is the intellect’s utility? “It’s to help me live better. To help me better direct my actions as an intelligent, thinking creature.”
But what if you were to then ask humanity, “Has your life worked out as you want it to? Can you do what you planned? Can you go from point A to point B? And once you have not gone from point A to point B and you end up over at point D and you think, ‘I’ll learn from this,’ did you learn from it? When the situation came up again, did you ‘learn from your mistake’? Has any of your thinking actually had any great effect on what you do in the future? Or has looking back over mistakes helped you avoid further errors?”
If I could really make ordinary people see this, all they could reply would be, “My god! Where’s my bowie knife. Where’s my gun? If that’s all there is, I might as well blow myself away!”
The simplicity of what I’m telling you is this: that a few people — those who are potentially wired up to be more complex — can see that what I’m describing is correct and not be stopped by it. They don’t get a fatal case of the blues. They do not stop at the feeling, “I am living impotence. I can’t do squat. Thanks for pointing this out to me.” To experience This is like walking down a street and suddenly you turn a corner. And right when you turn the corner you get a glimpse of what you think is a street sign that says, “Impotence,” “Waste of Time,” “Futility,” but you have to be able to keep on moving. The sign is meaningless. It’s just a blemish on the corner; a piece of mortar falling off the side of a building. The words on the sign are irrelevant to your continued walking. In the City, if I could drag them that far, they would hit the corner and get a glimpse of “The Ultimate Futility” and that would be it.
That is part of Life’s self protection. Life does not produce many people who can see what I’m describing and those who do see it know better than to try and tell others. But the Few who are involved in This — those who can get up to the corner — must see that at the 3-D level, their ordinary intelligence would tell them that all I’m talking about is the futility of things. And I’m not. What you must see is that you cannot get up to the corner and stop there. You can’t ponder, “Well, by god, my life’s futile.” You have to turn the corner and keep moving as though the glimpse you got of the sign didn’t matter. Because, to someone involved in This, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a sign on the corner.
You must see that the questions I’ve been asking you are a simple fact. You must see that in a quite real sense, there is no connection between what goes on inside of you — the planning, the thinking, the conniving, the pondering — and what you actually do; the actions you take. I know there SEEMS to be a correlation. You think about things that you want to do; you think about things you did do. But if you get around that corner, you will see that as far as that having any effect on how you live…
So now I ask you: Can you ponder the alternative? In the City it would be beyond ordinary futility. In the City they simply could not hear that it could be possible to act without thinking of action. That makes no sense to ordinary intelligence and is verbally self-defeating to the purpose of the intellect itself. The ordinary intellect would say, “What’s the point of my talking if no one’s going to listen?” And further, the intellect could not hear me when I answered, “That’s the point. Has anyone ever listened?”
What I’m telling you is that you must simply do, willfully, what everyone else does mechanically. That sounds silly, unreasonable and irrational. In the 3-D world it’s impossible. But you must be able to get a glimpse of the fact that literally there is no one in control in you. There’s an indoors and SOMETHING is in control, but you can’t find a real ruler in control.
Realizing this is beyond being fatalistic or pessimistic. What IS in charge is alive and well and smart as a whip. There is something in charge, but there is not anyone in charge in you. And you must get past the corner and see this for yourself. Then you can try and expand what you see to where I’ve been pointing. You can see that there is no need to get in there and stop the noise; to stop the people from talking. It doesn’t matter that they talk or what they say. You can see that there is no ruler exercising control over the people. But you must also see that there is something in control. If you can get a glimpse of that, you can get closer to This. You might be able to internally get closer to being able to say, “Let the people say what they want, I WILL DO WHAT I WANT.”
Can you see more clearly now why I keep telling you to do something without charting, keeping score or telling yourself what you are doing? If you’re trying to lose weight — throw your scale away. Don’t respond to the people in you when they say, “Oh, sire, I can see you’ve quit drinking.” The people will talk and question you about anything you’re doing. But you do not have to answer them. In the City people are wired up to answer everything. A stranger can come up to them and ask a personal question and, at the 3-D level, it is almost impossible for people to not answer. Someone can walk up and ask, “Have you had sex in the last 48 hours?” And almost everyone’s nervous system will go ahead and give an answer. The ordinary nervous system finds it almost impossible not to answer a question with “the truth.” Then immediately afterward everyone stops and says, “Why did I answer that guy? I don’t even know him.”
A would-be Revolutionist must have the power to NOT do that. If you don’t have that power you are simply a part of the great Christmas tree light string — one light lights up and then the next one lights up. You’re plugged in and you’ve got no choice. The string of lights is a beautiful piece of work and serves the general purposes of Life. But you must develop the ability to short circuit that kind of thing. You must have the ability to do something extraordinary. You must be able to not tell the people, “Hey folks, guess what? I’m going to quit smoking,” or, “I’m going to quit drinking,” or “I’m going to lose weight.”
And you must not only NOT instigate the situation, you can’t listen to The People question you about it. The people can say, “Your grace, you haven’t had a drink in a week. Are you trying to quit drinking?” It isn’t just a matter of what you tell them. Don’t tell them anything! Let the people say what they want and you do what you want.
By doing this you are not turned into a schizophrenic, compartmentalized in your thinking. It’s not that you don’t know what’s going on. You divorce yourself from it and you do not respond to questions or comments from yourself about it. You do not respond to the people. You don’t waste your time trying to stamp them out, or arguing with them. So there are no conditions: it’s not a matter of saying yes or no. You don’t say anything! Literally. What business is it of the people? Have they ever helped you? The situation is this simple: “Let the people say what they want, I’ll do what I want.”
I remind you again that I am not attacking people or Life. But you must see for yourself that to a would-be Revolutionist, the people are useless. I know at times it can sound as though I am saying that much of what humanity does is dumb. But that is not the point. If I were actually accusing people of being dumb, I would be the leader of the dumb army. That would be the supreme dumbness. There is nothing to attack. And This is not something that I’m trying to teach humanity in general. This knowledge would be disruptive to the nature of the way things are now operating, and so cannot be widespread.
There is nothing to talk to yourself about. If you can divorce yourself from the people and actually DO something — that is, actually live what I mean by “Let the people say what they want, I will do what I want.” That is an ultimate willful decision. You must find a place in you — which, of course, is a new place in the nervous system that Life has not already ignited in you — a new kind of intelligence. You are not resisting The People’s talk. You simply let the talk go on without any response.
If you start talking to the people, if you listen to them at all, if you struggle with them internally, or respond at all to what they say to you — whether it be flattery, inquiries, threats, whatever — then you’ve lost. And to that same degree you have not quit drinking or smoking or whatever. Because you have then begun to chart what you are doing. You chart your activity by arguing with the people, and what you’re doing becomes “some success.” That kind of success is a sort of incest: “I told myself I was going to quit drinking. But some of those rowdy people in me made me start drinking again. They made me go out and get drunk last weekend. But I’ll tell you this, I’ve had enough. I’ve finally learned my lesson. I know I said that last week, but you can count on my stopping this week.” That is “some success.” And that is the nature of the City. A person doesn’t have to quit drinking. All they have to do is say, “I have quit drinking. Well, alright, I know I said that and I started drinking again last week but now I’ve really quit.” In the City, no success would be, “I know I said I quit and then I got put in jail for being drunk so the hell with it. I’ve quit trying to stop.” People would say that that was failure. So, in the City, success is to say, “I may not have completely conquered this weakness, but, by god, I’m struggling with it.”
Nothing succeeds as it is purported to succeed. I’ve pointed that out before. Churches do not make people religious; psychiatry does not heal people. No organization fulfills its purported purpose.
As long as you let the people talk and you take their talk seriously, you are a K Mart ruler. You’re on a throne made out of toothpicks. You are not doing anything except having “some success.” And anyone can do that. I’ll say this once more: What’s the use in being king if you don’t get special privileges?