Vying for Control
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Condensed Transcript
Jan Cox Talk 2600 – November 3, 2000
Summary by Cfish
Suggested title: Vying for Control
begin:
I mentioned last time a power struggle. A person’s mind could try to explain away that everyone is immediately agreeable to the idea that there is a great power struggle going on between two opposing forces.
03:12
….there is no rational ,societal explanation for why people are immediately agreeable to the notion that there is a struggle between good and evil.
03:47
I told you I could see the struggle to awaken as being a vying for control…it gets so subtle, I can not put it into words. I do not know if it can be put into words.
04:32
Just bring on the feeling, “ That this is me having this thought that this is me”, while knowing that it is electro chemical activity in my brain, potassium flowing back and forth. its just activity in my brain — that I am sitting here now.
05:48
That is connected with this vying for power.
05:48
It is no battle between good and evil. I simply point out, you could take it to a deeper level.
06:32
Picture it as being a struggle between.. . the instinctive and the conscious.
07:00
A developmental shift of emphasis inside you.
08:05
A struggle between good and evil outside of you offers no help.
But once you take it inside, it gets more interesting and of course I mean more useful.
08:50
Once I found the idea that man is asleep and could awaken, then to me, the struggle took on the rightful costume and I took it all internally.
09:03
It was a struggle between my ordinary state, apparently my natural state and now my struggle was between that and my struggle to awaken, Now that I knew I was asleep.
09:25
And for a long time that was it until I finally realized I did not know what that means. I know the term seems to fit. “I am asleep but want to awaken.”
10:00
If you only speak French, you don’t ever know what speaking French is. But you can not know what it is (term sleep), if it is man’s state. All you can do is say, well, “It fits”.
12:10
Then it came to be a struggle between consciousness…. and instinct. An even better model….
13:02
But it can be seen at an even more refined level.
13:53
It went from an external phenomenon. good vs. evil. to taking internally, the struggle between the state of sleep and the state of awakening, the desire to awaken… and that is where most people stay.
14:14
It is suitable, it gives you something to live for, it gives you something to live by.
14:49
Then it went from that description to a personal description.
15:16
The terms become the terrain, the maps become the terrain. Remember my story of, “The ants and the napkin”. You end up living on the map rather than getting on the picnic table.
( The Story of the Ants = click here )
16:34
That is what happens eventually, by staying tied to the terminology. The map itself becomes the reality of it. It becomes the confines of it. It becomes the limitations. You cannot get away from the mental picture you have of it.
16:58
So anyway, I went from that to my own terminology which is consciousness versus instinct. What I call asleep was what man is instinctively in consciousness.
18:00
I knew what “not being” in my natural state was, but that was quite sufficient. So I just called it consciousness, that that was consciousness operating at its best, no instinct, because instinct is already operating at its best. There is no such thing as awakening instinct.
19:15
I don’t talk about it as consciousness any more. It is thought.
Consciousness is too vague.
19:59
Your consciousness is not limited by the thoughts in your brain.
20:00
I looked at it as the battle between consciousness and instinct.
Between one small area of my brain and then everything below that.
It is physiologically, anatomically, and spatially true.
And the cortex wraps around the top of the brain.. So remove that and everything below that is instinct. Even though they are intertwined.
20:50
If you get it, that is the progression from the struggle between good and evil, to the struggle from being asleep and wanting to awaken, to a conflict, a contest between instinct and consciousness.
21:10
But there is to me, and very useful, there is still at least, a refined level below that one. It is not between consciousness and instinct. I can see a refinement of that. And it now makes more sense to me, the term, “vying for power.”
21:56
It’s a vying for control and what is it? What is it I see? I do not know why you can’t see it if you try.
The whole thing, what we are doing, us and everyone else who went about it in a sort of……sane and practical way.
23:22
Now back to the level, just before the one, that I am now hinting at. When I first read that Man is asleep and can awaken, “it fit.” But I had to get away from it. I am encouraging you to consider it. You can see it in your own way. To see it is a “physiological reality”. I can see everything in life,…as an “evolutionary thrust.” but it is in consciousness. If it is in us instinctively or physiologically, its not really showing. . But it is consciousness, seeking to evolve. So you can see the struggle in your own way, that the desire to awaken can be stripped of all…. spiritual, mystical connotations.
26:00
With ordinary people what we call being asleep , from my model, is simply consciousness still more or less, under the control of instinct. An ordinary person’s consciousness is driven by instinct. You see the vacuous-ness of people’s opinion about non physical matters. like a Jew arguing with a Muslim….
28:03
You realize it or you don’t. Its meaningless, not wrong, because it is not wrong or life wouldn’t have people doing it. It is one person insisting that they are going to vote for Cinderella and you should too.. And you saying ” oh no ” its the Cheshire cat for me.
31:01
Everyone’s consciousness has the potential to be more awake. Consciousness operates in the area of preference, meaningless opinions, prejudice… non tangible matters.
33:00
What we call being asleep other people find no fault with.
The consciousness of your time and place is almost totally controlled by, fueled by, instinct.. You could call it instinctive consciousness, .. mechanical consciousness. If you can see the struggle to awaken in your own way….our consciousness, the desire to be freer of instinct… That consciousness knows there’s something else, another possibility if you can see that. There is a refined level beyond that.
I call it a “vying for control.”
36:00 The electrochemical activity in the cerebral cortex, it is struggling against instinct.
Not that instinct’s wrong.
End