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Tape #2614 recorded by Jan Cox December 06, 2000
Notes by DB
Begin:
I have been thinking about what would be, as much as possible, the perfect system to awaken…as far as presenting it to someone. Based on what I know now… the basic flaw in all systems for waking up is that you believe that you are making progress. The way the mind works is that you believe that in this matter you can make progress, that there is a gradual awakening….yet, there is no such thing.
02;29 As far as the perfect system to present to someone… here it is: (Understanding that no person starting out would find this system to work…here it is anyway.) In talking to a person who is genetically predisposed to this thing you could say, “Have you ever heard of enlightenment or waking up?”… and they would say, “Yeah”
.Then you would say, “Well… are you aware that there are two states that you could be in right now? Are you aware that you are not ordinarily aware that you are conscious? You have to make yourself conscious of being conscious.”
And they would go, “Yeah, well you are right.”
And then you could say, “Are you aware that you live your whole life not being aware that you are conscious?”
And then they would say, “Ah-haaa!”
Then you would say, “The way you feel right now…that’s being awake…that‘s all there is …there is nothing else.”
04:40 All of the many working models that over the years I have come up with and personally used… and have presented to you have been…unintentionally…unrealized … involved with the sensation that you are gradually becoming more awake, that you are becoming less identified with dreams in your head, becoming less driven by imagination …and, it is not true.
05:40 One of the reasons that people don’t realize this is that as you get older, reach menopause, reach middle age,…you begin to gradually experience hormonal change. You begin to believe that you are becoming less “asleep”. You begin to believe that you are becoming less imaginarily engaged with life. What is really happening is that you are having less of a direct real engagement with life …period. You are not as sexually interested in life. It is a feeling that often passes for wisdom. Older folks may say, “I now realize the futility of trying to become rich…I now realize the fleeting muse that is fame.” But they realize nothing! They are no more wise than when they were born. They are just getting old.
07:20 This is an “either” ” or” situation. You are either awake right now or you are not. You are either in one state or the other.
People pursuing enlightenment never realize this fact… and the only thing that keeps them going is believing that they are making gradual improvements in waking up, gradually getting better, or becoming less asleep.
07:40 I have often used the model that we have two different minds. One of them being verbal and producing thoughts which we call consciousness and one of them being silent and totally and absolutely instinctive or automatic.
08:30 The assumption that trying to wake up can produce gradual changes reflects the idea that because everything else in the secondary world must be achieved gradually then enlightenment can also be achieved gradually. You can not learn mathematics or chemistry instantly. You cannot learn anything in second reality (the world of the intellect which is based on and nourished by human thought) instantly. Here you can expect a gradual achieving. There are all sorts of first reality physical tasks that can be learned instantly, but in second reality things must be achieved gradually.
10:45 I repeat …there is no gradual achieving of enlightenment.
The biggest part of this is the gradual ageing process. The other component is that the more often you get into the state of not having your consciousness captured by your own thinking the more it seems that you are getting better at it. I believe that the best model along these lines is that I have two absolute minds in my conscious mind. One part is the mind that I call being awake. Then I also have my old mind which I also call my “kid mind”…my childish mind. This sleeping mind does not change. You have the same sleeping mind that you had when you were six years old. And you also have the same mind you had when you started trying to awaken. The sleeping mind is no more awake than when you started this endeavor.
16:01 Let’s call it the awakened mind and the sleeping mind. The world’s population only lives in the automatic, mechanical sleeping mind. People like us have the potential to live in another part.
All systems present the problem as an imaginary circle representing the brain with one line drawn over the corner representing the part of the mind that is awake and the rest, the larger part, representing the sleeping mind. The notion is that gradually and with much effort the segment representing awakeness increases to occupy a larger and larger part of the mind. This is a lie. The old mind never disappears.
22:22 The old mind ( the ventriloquist) cannot be changed. The mind you had when you were five years old has not changed. It only gets older and gives the illusion that it is softening. When you see this the question, “Why don’t I make progress?”, will be answered.
A lot of times in religion you will hear people talk about how hard it was for them to struggle with and defeat their “demons”…and how they have changed from what they were. Give me a break!
26:38 The best thing I can say about this “gradual” thing is that you can gradually wake up to the fact that you cannot gradually wake up.
It’s all black or white…It’s all either this or that…You are either awake or you are not! That’s it. There is nothing else. Bring it on and you are there. That’s it. And if you think there is any thing else… well, you are in for a life time of entertainment.
30:32 I have often brought up these stories, mainly from the Zen milieu, of people with almost no instruction, who hear an off-hand comment, or hear a Monk lecturing and become instantly enlightened. You hear these stories and you know that they can’t be true…unless you consider what I said about the perfect system. Somebody could have made up those stories either intentionally or as an act of their brain cells, as a metaphorical hint that gradual enlightenment was not possible.
33:29 People like us trying to awaken are primarily trying to get at the root of what is behind thought.
34:35 If I had realized at the beginning that there was no such thing as progress …what a different story this would have been.
As soon as I read about Self Remembering I understood what the problem was, and I understood what had been bugging me for all of those horrendous fifteen years of life I had experienced. I realized instantly that, “I do not remember that I am here”, and I thought, “Now that I’ve got that I can get to work. All it is, is a matter of time.” After all had not numerous men spent their whole lives trying to wake up? Some systems even promote the idea of serial lives…one reincarnation after another making progress …working on the problem of waking up.
39:57 The ventriloquist is like the mechanical mind. It is the old mind. If you will just look you will find that mind to be making the same criticisms, expressing the same views as it did at ages five, six, eleven, etc. it is saying the same things and it is startling when you realize it.
43:35 One day it hit me. I was not getting any better. And I realized that this is nature…this a part of the mind. That part of the mind that operates mechanically does not make progress. It is still operating with the same criticisms and views as it did when I was six years old…it has not changed at all. (Although, now days I don’t take it personally.)
Instead of being discouraging this information is liberating. It is never going to change and if you realize that you can abandon a certain kind of interest…or rather, it will just happen. I don’t mean that it is instant and total enlightenment, but it is startling and is a distinct step towards liberation. To realize, “I’m tied to this son of a bitch! I have a deranged, cranky mind”…that is liberating. Captivity is beliving, “I’m getting free from it!” when you are not.
48:00 There is no gradual sliding from one state to another. You are either asleep or awake. And that’s all there is. You are either awake right now or you are not. That is every system…that is the whole thing. That does not give you anything left to think about… does it? If you are making progress you are dreaming.
50:00 In second reality mind it is all story telling. After saying, “Go down two blocks and take a right and you will be at the bus station,” it is all story telling, and one story the mechanical mind tells is that, “You are making progress.” It is the only story it has and to it, it is true. But it is not true. If you look you will see that you have the same mind now that you had as a ten year old. And if your passions have softened it is due to age and not progress.
Jan’s Posted Daily Fresh Real News
December 6, 2000.
Although never described as such,
a man’s desire for the conscious part of his brain to,
“wake up” from a state of, lethargy & dreams
can been seen as a longing to be original-of-mind
while living in a world of total mimicry and plagiarism.
Life has arranged that habit is the most efficient
approach to physical survival for all creatures,
and has chosen same as its method of
sustaining mans mental world as well.
Ordinary men are made to brag about
the originality of their ideas,
but not allowed to notice that
their intellectual activity consists of nothing more than
either sycophantic support,
or vacuous criticism of ideas already expressed by others.
(As an additional insult,
they are coerced into offering as proof of
their intellectual prowess,
their ability to quote the thoughts of others.)
Physical life on this planet obviously changes
in a quite gradual, and coherent manner;
so too does mental life, but not so apparent is it
to the creatures who are its medium.
From a mortal perspective you would conclude that
such a conservative approach must be the safest course —
— physically speaking,
but it is this same caution-of habitual mental behavior that impromptu infuriates the few,
and causes them to give this dull repetitious operation of consciousness such names as,
sleep walking,” and, “living in a dream.
Men accept the fact that the functioning of their
heart, lungs, and liver is habitual,
but with the brains consciousness,
it seems to be otherwise;
there seems to be at least some room for movement;
some room for originality and deviation from
strictly automatic operations.
In practice this proves to be much more a matter of,
seems-to-be
than — is.
For even though the mental world of man does morph,
it does so on a most leisurely and collective level,
affording no actual, real-time, freedom of thought
to the individual.
I would waste my time attempting to preach this
to ordinary minds,
for they cannot be converted to its reality.
I say it to you people reading these daily writings,
and you either realize it or you don’t.
Under the ordinary, commonly experienced conditions
of being a conscious human,
the thoughts that endlessly appear in your mind
are not original with you;
they are not products of your independent thinking;
they are in no wise examples of your creativity,
and are merely a few knots
out of a billion-trillion others,
tied on a rope of infinite length.
As is always the case, the truth of a situation
neer troubles the minds of the few,
but you do need to clearly realize for yourself that
what is accepted as,
thinking for yourself in the everyday world
is patently, no such thing.
The routine intellectual world & life of mankind is one of
nothing but mimicry and cannibalism.
In the overall picture,
individual originality of thought has no place
— has no value.
When the intellectual, second reality of man undergoes change,
it does so in the medium of mankind collectively,
(or in some sizable segment thereof.)
Men have an inexpressible, yet,
irrepressible awareness that their normal intellectual
life is confined to one of duplication, quotation,
and plagiarism,
and they in fact indirectly struggle therewith by
attempting to display some originality in the
form of acceptable rebellion in the physical realm,
through such modes as the clothes they wear;
their manner of walking, talking, standing;
all told, their so-called — life style,
(as though):
Since I have no freedom in the way I think,
I will exercise some in the way I dress;
the drugs I take,
the customs I flaunt.
This is the appeal of, The life of the artist.
Men long for the actual mental freedom that
thought has always promised,
but never delivers on — collectively speaking.
Thoughts inherent difficulty in directly comprehending itself presents a situation almost beyond its ability to realize.
How can you make the walls that comprise a closed room
aware that they are the confined area?!
During normal operations and conversations
men go along with the pretense that they are
capable of original thought,
after all,
under normal conditions, what choice do they have?!
Men do not ordinarily take note that
no individual creative thinking is involved in them saying that
they do not believe in Jack Frost to someone who does.
There is no plate for originality when you dine at the table of collective cannibalism.
What creative response is possible to that which itself is mere impersonation?!
Neither agreeing, nor dissenting with ideas that were not
original with their source
is in any way a form of originality on the part of the one
doing the agreeing or dissenting,
but by engaging in such behavior you reinforce your
glutinous seating at the common table of spurious,
intellectual cannibalism.
You cant keep debating the color of Santa Claus eyes
without it supporting a haunting suspicion that he may exist.
If you are thinking about the things that
everyone else is thinking about ,(pro or con) —
— you are asleep,
and your intellectual life —
merely part of mans collective dream.
That covers it
there is no where else to look,
and nothing else to say about the matter:
If you are thinking about things that
the rest of humanity thinks about —
you are not individually thinking
there is nothing at all creative going on in your mind,
and none of your ideas are original.
Ordinary life operates quite well under these conditions,
but if your hunger is to get-to-the-bottom-of-things,
leaving your mind totally in the hands of the
mimicking, plagiarising thoughts that magically appear there
will keep you forever traipsing along the
tinfoil plated path without ever getting backstage
and seeing the real wiz whos really paving the road.
Having an original thought is close to impossible,
but what you can do immediately that will
take you nearer thereto than humans are meant to be,
is to —
not entertain the thoughts that are already out there.
When it comes to the ideas upon which
mankind dines — take no seat at the table.
As regards the ideas over which other men wrangle:
neither a supporter, nor critic be.
If you undertake this course of action
what you can quickly realize is that
what the thoughts in your brain say they believe & dont believe
is of no interest to you personally.
This may sound squirrely,
for how can you have a certain thought,
or belief about a matter that you don’t have an interest in?!?
If you didn’t have an interest in the subject
you wouldn’t have any opinion or belief about it!
Yeah, I know — that sounds right —
but look into what I have today described
without the benefit of
your own thoughts running commentary thereon,
and you can joyously surprise your own neural pants off,
and unexpectedly find yourself
mentally cut loose from a gigantic, invisible, sticky ball of
meaningless mimicry, and wearisome plagiarism.
Rather than thinking of the goal as:
I am trying to — Wake-up, or,
I am seeking Enlightenment,
say to yourself instead:
I long to be — original-of-mind,
but I live in a realm run by mimicry & plagiarism.
This is what past unoriginal men have called:
Mans state of sleep,
but I now see it for what it is.
That to you,
is my very best recommendation for the day.
JAN