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Condensed Transcript
This is tape #2615 recorded by Jan Cox December 12, 2000, and is in MP3 format.
Notes by DB
Begin:
00:53 I can see the desire to awaken, or seeking to become enlightened as being a longing for originality and independence.
At our instinctive or animal level there is a common desire or instinct to be liked. You know that all animals that are pack animals seek to be liked or accepted. In the human realm people dress like those around them, they speak like those around them and they literally want to be liked.
I see people who have the desire to awaken as having been born with a certain kind of rebellion. Another way of looking at it is being born with the desire to be original.
03:00 It is not possible to be original in your instincts…it would be destructive. With most people the desire to be original plays itself out with them behaving eccentrically…trying to come up with “catch phrases”, slang dialogue… and dressing just different enough to not get exiled from the group. They express their originality through something visible, something tangible…like the car they drive.
04:40 For people like us the desire to wake up is instinctive…you desire to be original in your mind. In addition to wanting to wake up and/or to be enlightened (which are the most common descriptions of the aim of this) is the desire to know the secret…the big secret…the great secret…the secret of life.
05:49 I say that people like us are born with the desire to be original of mind. We are born with the sensation that (in our paradigm) there is no such thing as originality and no such thing as independence. People like us begin to sense a kind of confinement. They sense that in their mental world there is nothing original going on. They sense it from their parents religion, from what’s going on at school, from listening to adults talk. They catch on that there is nothing original going on. That is what is driving the desire to awaken…the sense that nothing original is going on in the world of second reality.
08:12 I say that you sense a kind of extreme dullness. A complete lack of vigor and excitement.
Now if you had come across the idea that there is a big secret and that the purpose of life is to discover what that big secret is …and that very few men ever understand how to go about uncovering the secret …and that, that is what being a mystic is all about…then something really exciting would have become present! A quest…an understanding that the purpose of the mind is to understand the big secret. Is that not exciting?! It gives vigor to the mental world.
11:15 Notice the mental excitement that satisfies the rest of the world. Need I say more than two letters? T…and…V….and of course novels, newspapers and movies. You know what movies are…gossip…all of these are gossip which is an ancient form of entertainment. These are the things that excite the rest of the world. Ordinary minds turn out what is exciting for ordinary minds.
12:44 I say that people like us have a wiring schematic that finds everything else we are exposed to as dull, unexciting and plagiaristic. Snakes eating their own tails, people chasing their own exhausts, depleted walking ghosts. This is not particularly criticism… and you either know what I’m talking about or you don’t.
15:00 I say that people that want to awaken want to have an original thought. They want to be original of mind. They want to have an original thought. Just one, because just one is enlightenment! I say that if you can have an original thought then that thought will be the secret of life. That thought will be enlightenment. That thought will be awakening.
16:47 It is literally impossible to be original. What can be original inside this Universe? Where is it going to come from? Even black holes pull things out of the Universe …they don’t create or put new things into it. No one ever thinks about it but the idea of anything being original is ludicrous. There is also no such thing as independence.
If a physicist were sitting here and I said, “Do you people still believe that matter can neither be created nor destroyed?”, he would say, “Of course, I agree.” If I said, “Would you say the same thing is true intellectually?”, he would scoff. He would claim that in the “world of ideas” new ideas could be created and he would even say, “Your idea that new ideas can’t be created is a new idea to me and therefore proves your original statement as wrong.” Yet, we all know that we cannot create matter. We cannot make something out of nothing. This idea is basic to our view of life.
26:45 The closest thing to originality in ordinary life is a “refutation” of something someone else already considers to be original. Criticism or outright rejection is, in ordinary life, considered original.
You cannot create matter. You cannot make something out of nothing. And I even say that there is no such thing possible as an original intangible creation. And yet …this is damn near an exception to that!
Another way to put it is to say that in this Universe the closest thing to an original thought is to say that, “There is no such thing as an original thought.”
For you the closest thing to an original thought in your own head is to realize that.
29:00 I have said in the past that this whole idea of awakening is the mind wanting to understand itself but, it is unable to do so. No more than an eyeball can see itself or a hand can reach out and grab itself. But there is something close and that is the mind realizing that it can’t understand itself.
Another way of looking at it is to realize that the whole idea of waking up is just a dream, an illusion. Realizing that is waking up.
31:12 I have found it very useful to realize that what you are seeking is to be original. This is not the kind of originality that will make people like you or make you become very popular.
What you are saying is not original…everybody knows it but they don’t want to face up to it.
Waking up is the closest thing in the entire Universe to being original. So in summary I say:
1. Everybody wants to be original.
2. There is no such thing as originality.
3. But there is something that is damn near the exception and that is waking up and realizing what‘s going on!
And there is your best shot at being original… but no one else knows you are doing it. The justice of all of this is that you find this diamond that you have been searching for and you run back to show it to other people and they can’t see it. Isn’t that great! I sought it, I found it, I brought it back to show it to you and all you get in response is a yawn. And the reason why this happens is that everybody already knows it.
35:45 At the cellular level the whole world must know what’s going on. Everyone you pass on the street must know everything I sit here every night and talk about. They know their mind is not their own, they know they have never had an original thought, they know that they are asleep and that they are living in a dream, they know that they have no I, they know that when they say, “I think this” or, “I think that,” they are just blowing smoke up an imaginary pig’s ass. Everyone knows this but they are just pretending otherwise.
Why are they pretending? Life makes them. Why does life let them know what’s going on but make them pretend not to know? This knowledge, and meeting every night to talk about it like we do, would destabilize things as we know them. Life wants things to be as they are now or things would be otherwise. If everyone had this view and was aware of this knowledge then things would genuinely be otherwise. So life can’t stop everyone from knowing what’s going on… but it stops them from doing anything about it.
Another answer might be that people are just not interested. This answer often strikes me as more acceptable.
40:38 Both of these answers require a certain amount of pretense. Everyone in ordinary life is having to pretend. A major part of life is pretending. Pretending that you like your boss, pretending to like a girl just to have sex with her, pretending to agree with somebody just to be nice, pretending to believe one thing when you believe something else. I say that another way of saying that people are asleep is to say that people are pretending. I also say that people know that they are pretending. How could they not know it? Yet people do not want to hear about this and it is almost impossible to get them to admit it.
Knowing all this takes a lot of your criticism of others away. They can’t help it. Can you help it? Unless you are more alert than others can you stop yourself from giving an automatic pretended response? When you do so you are asleep. You are unoriginal. You are engaged in mimicry. You are part of the one big mind of this planet…You are pretending.
47:38 To be awake is to not pretend. To be awake is not to mimic. To be awake is not to criticize. To be awake is to be as independent as possible.
To be awake is to not have any thought about any other persons thoughts or ideas (your dog is chasing them down the street). The closest thing to original thought is to not have thoughts about anyone else’s thoughts. This does not mean that you don’t have any thoughts, you just don’t have thoughts about anyone else’s thoughts. Now you tell me that that’s not original!
50:45 The totality of second reality is other peoples thoughts. To hear these ideas of others and to have no thought about them is damn near an original thought. It is the closest thing to an original thought in this Universe as we know it.
To have no thought about another person’s idea …that’s an original thought.
END.
Jan’s Posted Daily Fresh Real News
December 8, 2000.
Our base camp today is in Derisive, Ireland,
where legend has it that Bach would come to dry out
whenever his taste for atonality would
threaten to get the best of him.
This place is not to be confused with the nearby village of Irony, which we visited earlier this year,
(and I am still shocked over the mayors expressed astonishment that I used the towns name as a springboard for metaphorical comment regarding the matter of incongruity!)
So, even though nothing here reminds me specifically of the subject that is the subject of these worldwide reports, as long as were apparently here for the day,
I guess I can come up with something
relevant to talk about.
An organization hired a man to run its
Research & Development department,
which included keeping records of all its operations.
At times the job could be quite challenging,
and rewarding, and the man was obviously
made for the position,
but overall, the work gradually became perfunctory,
and the man could discharge most of his daily duties
almost in his sleep.
But since all he was trained for was planning,
during the lengthy periods when there was nothing
specific to do in his sector
as he would drift into daydreams,
they were, understandably,
exclusively concerned with either
imaginary schemes for the future,
or reviews of past R & D activities.
I have no idea why I bring this story up
since there is certainly nothing surprising,
or of interest about the fact that
the main habit of a rabbit is — rabbit!
You know, just over the channel in England
is the city of Newcastle wherein locals have
voiced bewilderment at people coming there,
lignite laden.
But I understand not why any of the above should
concern us here?!?!
Why should a man trying to rid himself of a rash
have any interest in learning to identify faux rashes,
or sillier still,
being made to realize that what he has been calling a rash
is in fact — epidermis. ?!?!?!?!?!
Jeeze.I dont know..
were really gettin off the track here today..
Okay, lets try this:
There is a town just south of here where
the fire department will definitely not show up
IF they are summonsed.
The truth is that they NEVER show up,
but it is only when they are summonsed that
this fact becomes obvious.
well — I say, obvious,
what I should say is, momentarily obvious
for no sooner is the reality of this
curious situation grasped by the townsfolk
than do they totally forget about it.
Over on the French coast is a man who
believes he is dying,
but every time he thinks about it — he feels better.
Doctors have no explanation for this —
since the man has never mentioned it.
Hell, the man has never even realized it himself!
Damn! I wish there was something around this place that I could write about that at least had some slight relevance to the matter of interest to us here!
You know, its kinna ironic that I traveled this far
just to find a dry hole.
I musta been out of my mind to come here!
I don’t know WHAT the hell I was thinking!
Well — damn!
I guess this time you’re gonna have to dig out
something useful from this trip on your own.
Still — as long as your sense of the ridiculous is properly placed,
and your ability to utilize theatrical derisiveness is intact —
its good to have you along.
JAN
P.S. don’t refuse to take wooden nickels.
First, look in a mirror over your shoulder,
and see that one of them is you.