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This is tape #2617 recorded by Jan Cox December 13, 2000
Notes by DB
Begin:
If a person could think differently, or think originally and do it continually, do it hour by hour, minute by minute, then everything would fall into place. You would then no longer be confused or be asleep. The struggle to do this, is to me, like skirmishes. Like an attack or assault on the status quo. This is the only real form of rebellion, the only real form of originality, and unlike rebelling against the physical status quo (which is futile), this is an internal struggle against the status quo.
01:47 There is one long range battle that I have not talked about frequently. Lately I have been referring to it more and more on the web pages because this battle effects all views, and effects everything. It is that… the whole world knows what’s going on but pretends that they don’t.
03:00 From one view everyone is awake yet Life forces them to pretend. I have found the struggle to see this to be both useful and bountiful.
In all systems, disciplines or methods to awaken it is a “given” that humanity is wrong. That humanity is in the dark…that humanity is asleep, and that only a few men can, with much effort, awaken. I have never heard this view questioned by anyone.
Holding this view is, for those within a system, a method of saying that, “Everyone but us is wrong.” I am assigning no blame to any particular system here. All systems are merely reflections of men’s minds. It has to do with the mind and not the system.
06:49 As with all things that I have found useful…I discovered this. I made it up. I had never heard of it before.
It is a radical and potentially useful fact that no one else had discovered.
07:15 One day while trying to figure out what’s going on…my more awakened thoughts latched on to the following: What if everyone in the world is pretending? Why can’t people just face what’s going on and just say so? Why can’t people face the fact that everyone who ever died just stayed dead? Why do we even have undergraduate and graduate schools of theology? A man graduates from such a school and stands beside a grave and states that, “He is in a better place now…he is with God.” How can an otherwise lucid man make such a statement. He must know that it is untrue. Then it hit me. Everyone is pretending!
This was not just a one shot thing. It was a battle that lasted years, and the results have stayed with me for years… and I continue to benefit from it. It is very productive and very useful. Everyone is pretending!
12:00 When something catches your mind it is because you approve of it or you disapprove of it. Mostly the judgment is on a negative basis. Judgment that is approving is very short in duration while critical judgment lasts a long time. By placing the template “everyone is pretending” over what has caught your attention… you will answer a multitude of curiosities in this world!
‘’Everyone is pretending’’ is not a theory. I see it as a given. I see that it could be true. All sleeping, mechanical behavior being the pretence of men taking the second reality to be the central reality.
(The great grandmother of all of these and one I have given you before is, “What if the whole world is awake and I’m the only one who is not?” I can see that this could also be true.)
18:50 I tried to talk to others about this. I put up posters etc., but no one wanted to hear about it. I even tried to talk to philosophers about it…about thoughts potentially not being judgmental…about the possibility of thoughts not taking either side…I tried to talk about there being another state in which your mind saw things differently from everyone else…no one wanted to talk about it. Even though there is nothing about this that is offensive, people would become irritable and even hostile when I brought it up.
Why is this? There is obviously a great deal of pressure on them to keep pretending and my bringing this subject up places pressure on them to “not” pretend. This, understandably so, is irritating.
22:47 How was/is this so useful to me? This is like a magnified version of trying to think differently. This is a radical opposite view of the paradigm held by all mystical schools. People are not asleep. They know what’s going on and yet they cannot help speaking mechanically and thinking the thoughts of others. They know that they are doing this and yet they can not help it. Men are living in a dream and it’s as if they know it and can not help it.
25:00 From a physical standpoint you can literally be asleep at night, be having dreams and know that you are dreaming.
In everyday “waking life” some traumatic event can occur and all of a suddenly you realize that life is not as the mind normally takes it to be. You realize that you have been living in a dream world. You realize that you have not been fully conscious. Not alert to circumstances. Not fully aware and appreciative of other people. All of a sudden you see this.
Then for a moment you are out of that dream. For a moment you are almost shocked into reality instead of your dream of reality.
27:00 Knowing that everyone is pretending is a total shift in the way you look at life, and it has an effect on your struggle to escape from the status quo. Everyone knows what’s going on. They can see it from the same viewpoint that my mind sees it while in my most awakened state. But they are forced to pretend otherwise.
Through some sort of miss-wiring life has allowed us few to see it without pretending. Everyone else “sees it” but they don’t think about it…if they did they would be like us.
38:00 What is called being insane is when people can no longer pretend. When they have not brought this state on intentionally…they have not been involved in trying to wake up…and they can no longer live that kind of “pretend” life…then people around them begin to realize that they are acting “spooky.” They may ask questions like, “How did I get here? Who am I? Where am I?” From the ordinary view this is insanity. Yet I can say that it is the opposite. It is the height of sanity.
41:00 I wish I were better able to explain how this has been of use to me. The realization that everyone knows what’s going on and yet pretends otherwise is a realization that I repeatedly return to. It is not used to explain or rationalize why people behave the way that they do. It is used when I see an otherwise lucid person making a comment that defies comprehension…something like, “He’s not really dead, he has just gone to a better place.” I then see that the person speaking, as well as all other people, know what’s going on but are forced into pretending otherwise.
45:20 The concept of faith arose as a defense against criticism of non logical statements like that. When a person is told that what they have just said does not make good sense the person’s response is, “Well I know it’s true because I have faith.”
48:15 It’s not a matter of answering the question, “Is there a better place after life?” Only idiots answer idiot questions. Does a tiger ponder such a question as this? All questions that can be put into words are idiot questions. All answers to idiot questions are idiot answers.
52:20 We are working like dogs to learn that which we already know…and what’s more, what everyone else already knows.
Jan’s Posted Daily Fresh Real News
December 13, 2000.
As opposed to, being awake & enlightened,
(in the world of thought),
being asleep & confused consists of:
Worrying over the irrelevant.
I say that this is every mans normal condition;
I also say that everyone is aware of it,
and I further say that life forces most people
to pretend otherwise.
These daily reports are for those people who are
not part of the, most people crowd.
For thousands of years now
a few people here & there pop up who claim that
men are not routinely as conscious, alert, perceptive, and understanding as they could be.
They then generally tie themselves and their listeners into
mental gordian knots, and run all concerned around in circles
that would make metaphysically inclined,
british wheat farmers proud,
with outlandishly complex explanations for
why men do not avail themselves of this possibility.
It can make interesting reading & argument fodder
for those who will never do so,
but it is all unnecessary,
for if you will but take an instant, clear-headed,
direct look at the world all around you,
and the one inside your brain
you see that there is a totally, over-the-top melodrama
being acted out by homo sapiens
which is the stage-direction-glue
that binds ordinary mens attention
to a level of consciousness that is not the
full representation of what it is known it can be.
Under the routine, everyday conditions of
every ordinary mans life,
much of his thinking is taken up with —
— worrying over the irrelevant —
fretting about the frivolous.
A matter that I call irrelevant, of course,
a man with an interest therein will see contraire.
You can tell a man who voices great concern
over political ideas that his passion is being misspent,
but he will certainly not see it as so.
Same with people who have an attraction-to,
and native interest-in:
golf, music, fashion, religion, football, and so on.
No, what I herein highlight for the eyes of the few
has nothing to do with criticism of ordinary mens
instinctive mental affinity for things in the second reality —
after all,
what could be more natural,
in that this world is the brain-child of mans thoughts?!
When other creatures are not engaged in
life sustaining activities — they nap;
when man is not — he invents new mental pastimes,
and usually puts them into some physical form —
— about which he can then begin to fret and worry about.
When a tiger is not out hunting —
he is on his back in the grass;
when a man is not out harvesting a crop —
he is on his knees in a church, or on his arse in a theatre,
or strolling the aisles of a bookstore.
Having a brain that produces thoughts, 24/7,
men do not find constantly napping
between the periods of survival essential activities
to be an acceptable filling of time.
Men’s minds have created a whole new reality;
a realm dependent entirely on thoughts.
Most of the lives of the people reading these words
is spent in this mentally conceived world;
this alone is neither good nor bad,
here or there,
but it is an obvious fact that
the would-be awakened must realize for themselves,
and thus cease to take seriously.
To be: asleep, confused, angry, uncertain, disappointed, afraid, envious, resentful, revengeful, pissed, and all of the other things
that the few hate and from which they wish to escape by
waking up, (whatever that actually turns out to be),
all involves a man — worrying over the irrelevant,
(more specifically put):
worrying about matters not really necessary for survival.
There is nothing at all mystical, spooky or supernatural
in this;
ordinary men,
satisfied with their ordinary lives,
live, to a large extent,
in a world that exists solely in their thoughts,
but it is so much a part of their lives that the
activities they pursue therein seem to them, quite relevant.
Thus, to whatever degree your sense-of-self is
based in this second reality,
to that same degree are measurements made therein,
(such as): your reputation and acceptance by those whose
acceptance you seek
integral to your sense-of-self and being alive.
So, to an ordinary man, what other people think & say
about him is important and relevant,
while such is plainly not life threatening.
A man trying to get-to the-bottom-of-things,
and see-thru-all-this,
must realize on his own — for himself — that
some things in his life — with its unique goal —
are relevant,
and some simply are not.
From the most radical perspective,
capable of any expedient verbalization,
the only truly relevant thing in a persons life is —
to STAY ALIVE.
Putting it in these terms certainly does not do full justice
to the singularly rich and complex lives men lead
compared to the non thinking inhabitants of this planet,
yet its validity is beyond question.
No ordinary man, totally plugged into the common,
collective reservoir that normally feeds mortal minds,
can ever make any profitable use of this
objective perspective of his life.
Only a man who truly, wants to get-to-the-bottom-of-things
has any taste — or even, tolerance for,
facts from-the-bottom-of-things,
(e.g.: staying alive is the only really relevancy.)
But of course even a man whose life centers around
his hunger to wake up
has other interests besides just physically, staying alive —
yes, he also has an interest in — waking up.
Ergo, such a man, (same as everyone else sane),
first has an interest in — staying alive,
and sees thereto by not engaging in activities that amount to,
gradual suicide.
He then has the second interest of — waking up,
which he sees thereto by not engaging in activities that
keep him uselessly distracted, and thus, asleep.
Such a man simply does not bother himself with
thoughts about things irrelevant.
Do not let lifes commonly available ideas
misdirect your attention, and cause you to believe that
certain things from the second reality are required to be,
on-your-plate for awakening to ever take place.
For instance: amongst the various systems proposed as
methods by which to achieve enlightenment,
is the routine insistence that a supplicant must be:
religious, or charitable, or deferential to some guru,
(or be a Democrat, or Republican, or member of the PGA,
to take the point to ridiculous extremes).
Put plainly: Nothing — NO THING
from the mental, second reality is needed to wake up —
indeed —
the inclusion of any ideas there from are anathema to the aim.
The only thing suitable to think about when you are struggling
to wake up is — waking up.
Anything else is irrelevant —
totally,
entirely,
absolutely,
completely and indubitably — E-REL-E-VANT!
If an enlightened man learned that he had a terminal illness,
would he worry over an obviously irrelevant matter,
irrelevant in the radical sense of it being inevitable?
Would he be concerned if he heard that someone was
talking about him in an unfavorable fashion?
Would he be troubled by the continuing world wide disputes
between people of different political, religious,
and cultural thoughts?
Would he fret over the fact that
hip hop now outsells speed metal,
or that jesus is coming back, and bell bottoms may not be?
But — here is the grande dame of ALL irrelevancies:
What your thoughts think of you.
To:
be asleep,
thoroughly confused
totally in the dark, languishing in chains
is to be worried over the irrelevancy of what the thoughts
that come & go through your head —
THINK ABOUT YOU.
(Ill give you this much if you temporarily need it):
you can be a little concerned if you
have found out that you’re dying,
but not if you’ve found out that
someone made fun of your ideas.
You are not on the right track yet
if you still fight un-winnable battles;
sweat the inevitable,
and think about what
your thoughts say about you.
If you’re gonna listen to ANYBODY talk about what you are,
listen to your stomach,
your lungs, your kidneys, your heart —
guys who have something to say that is RELEVANT.
Wake up! dammit — if your desire is to — wake up,
and begin to relentlessly distinguish the
relevant from the meaningless in life — TO a
person who truly wants another state of mind.
Todays Concluding Reminder For The Few With The Aim:
Any thought that you can have
that some other person has already had
is irrelevant.
If it is not original — it is irrelevant,
and if it is irrelevant
it is not in any way,
pertinent to waking up.
A life lived by this understanding
is a life of enriched simplicity,
and free from worry.
JAN