Screen the Screening
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Key words = reptilian brain, filter, filtering, diencephalon, screen, screening
Condensed Transcript
Jan Cox Talk 2551 : July 14, 2000
Copyright Jan Cox, Jan’s Legacy 2014.
These notes prepared by DC on2/28/2008 from audio file.
Suggested title : Screen the Screening
Begin: First off, a private message to you people I know by name, my friends out of town: Plus what I was mentioning on the last tape, that I wish all of you would come down for St. Q’s on the 23rd of September, I would also mention again, that if any of you in those other cities where I used to show up, NY, California, Oregon, places I never had on a regular schedule at one time, even Arizona or Philadelphia, if you people in some way would find out, ascertain through some method if there were enough people that would be interested, that I sure would like to get out of this place more often if not permanently. And I would certainly consider going back to once a week showing up in your fine city if it was worthwhile, if we had enough fresh blood, assuming I can still attract fresh blood. I may have polluted the ocean. Plus, if any of you people out there in the other cities had my best interests at heart since my birthday’s coming up, you would spilt up and some of you would take different cities, like someone would go to Copenhagen, Paris, London, Rome and stir up the same kind of activity. There’s enough interest throughout Europe. All you’ve got to do is round them up and I would go over there instead of coming to your city. On to the tape:
01:35 Since I’ve already put it to you last time and talked about it, let me give you the general idea in less inflammatory words. Last time I put it to you that everything ever said deserves to be ridiculed. And even though I told you I didn’t mean it overtly…let me put it in less rambunctious terms…Nothing ever said is worthy of attention…
02:27 And the serious corollary if you’re attempting to clear your mind is that if you don’t realize that and operate on that basis, I fear that you’re forever stuck where you are because you think that there are things that are worth attention…
03:18 Now to keep my promise from last time and to speak on those two great classes…of reptilia and wanna-be-waker-uppus. It’s based upon something I read and then tripped my mind many, many, many decades ago, before I met any of you people, before I ever started talking about This out in public…it hit me…back in the early ’50’s…It has to do with the physiological development of the brain…notions of how the brain developed in mammals…what we now call the diencephalon, where the brainstem connects with the cortex…that the frontal lobes grew out of the olfactory lobes of the reptilian brain…our brainstem…before it gets to the thalamus, the diencephalon, before it branches out into what we know as the mammalian brain, that that part of the nervous system, up to the brainstem is still…exactly like that of a reptile…
12:41 Our hemispheres, the cortex itself was an expansion of the olfactory lobes which also helps explain…why man has such a poor sense of smell…man…gave up part of his sense of smell for the development of the cortex, the development of what we call consciousness, or thought…
14:17 When the brainstem expanded into a brain and men could think…consciousness began to act as a screener…
19:24 Once we developed consciousness the eyes could look around (at sudden movement) and see exactly what it was before we reacted, before we either lunged at it or began to run from it…anything that had cortex, instead of just the reptilian brain, could take a closer look…it required non-muscular memory…that you had had experience and that you could remember it.
21:43 Without memory the ability to “make some choice” instead of to automatically react , to blindly react to external and internal stimuli — you have to have some experience upon which to draw…
23:41 If you’ve ever been with a married woman and the front door slams…
23:57 The autonomous nervous system as controlled by the brain stem, still in us…will go ahead and send all the messages. It has already started the body to run or to fight…but when you’re conscious…it [can assess] and ignore it…
25:37 Once you have consciousness…then that part of the brain can screen sensory information coming from the outside world and can also screen internal information, hormonal stimuli.
27:57 What I’m saying about screening is that there is a time lapse. There is an analytic process going on between the brain stem’s directions to the body…[and their execution] …consciousness can override it.
32:09 It does not stop the operations; it has not changed the reality of the operations of the old brain.
32:23 I’ve got a strange way, if you ever look at these lectures like jokes, have you ever noticed…that my setup takes 59 minutes and the punchline one minute?
32:56 From one view, without any doubt you could say that man has developed, has taken over authority over every other creature, is what he is now, lives the leisurely life he does, has the culture he has…it’s all thanks not only to the development of the cerebral cortex, but looking at it functionally it’s all thanks to the ability not only of having the cortex, but the cortex’s ability to screen, to select from and ignore — but to screen…external and internal stimuli.
34:47 We are truly singular in that we can select the stimuli to which we will react…
37:23 You can decide to overcome something as absolutely required on the species-level basis as sex; you can absolutely overcome it…screening…can be referred to…as the absolute gateway to civility, to the human life as we know it.
38:16 I could say to you that the best approach to awakening would be a kind of metaphysical screening. The brain is already doing it…
40:23 I could propose a whole mystical system and that be the key word, not self remembering…screening.
40:46 In one way, I could say that it is this screening process that is what we call the state of sleep…with humans even though the stimuli has been screened…analyzed…as not a threat…[though a deer with its mammalian brain would forget about it] not so with us…that’s what I say is actually the state of sleep: it is a continual rehashing of a stimuli, both internally based and externally, that we have screened and very likely did not react to, did not allow…unlike the deer, once we have screened…we don’t forget about it. What are the daydreams we have? What is the constant automatic running of the mind other than a replaying of the screened and previously analyzed stimuli both internally sourced and externally sourced?…What the hell’s the point that we’re still going over it?
45:58 This is still part and parcel of the cortex’s need to have a readily available, adequate storehouse of memories…
47:00 But then the question is…if that is continual practice…that sounds good until you ask yourself this, if you’re my kind of mystic: “To your knowledge, exactly how often have you called upon this continual daydreaming and it has proved to be of value?”
48:08 And I answer it this way: Not enough to keep people like me from calling it “a state of delusion.”
51:21 Anyone who takes themselves to be important…there is no greater description of being asleep.
52:04 …consciousness, that part of the brain is continually checking on memory…you couldn’t be asleep without memory. You couldn’t be conscious, you couldn’t think; it’s all dependent upon memory…
53:04 This ‘being asleep’ is based upon the screening process, the natural, the normal job of consciousness, to screen and to analyze stimuli…and that’s all this state of continually running, rambunctious, uncontrollable daydreaming, this sleeping consciousness, this deluded state of mind, all it is, is a rehashing of this earlier…screening…
54:42 Another level of screening, since the brain is already doing it…to wake up, the whole process is simply to move this natural process of screening up a notch. You screen the screening. (That’s my best shot at a wrapup punchline.)
56:08 It’s a higher-order, unnecessary [level] of screening…you’re screening the mechanical screening…
59:07 If you hear it and you don’t like it, I know why. It’s too blunt. It’s too doable.