Consciousness Only Talks to Itself
The following recordings are from Jan’s final years, when his voice was diminished and he spoke in a low whisper. Some listeners may find these tapes hard to listen to, or difficult to understand. Thus, as another option, transcripts are being made and will be posted.
Otherwise, turn up the volume and enjoy! Those who carefully listened to Jan during this period consider that he spoke plainly and directly to the matter at hand, “pulling out all the stops,” as he understood that these were to be his last messages to his groups, and to posterity.
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Transcript = See Below
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Summary
7/16/04:
Notes by TK
It’s not: ‘what consciousness does to a man’, but ‘what consciousness does to itself’. Consciousness has no one to talk to but itself; this is disguised by the fictional ‘you’ to which it addresses itself. To all the unanswerable questions it poses to itself, consciousness makes up the answer: ‘we’ll know all the answers in the great by and by’. Awakening involves the literal expansion of conscious operations into abnormal, unnatural areas of the brain: the enlargement of its purview. (49:02) #3174
Notes by DR
Jan Cox Talk 3174 Whatever consciousness is doing it’s doing to itself. Ordinarily people distinguish between their thoughts and you. And then someone says “after you die you’ll understand all the questions, or someone diagnosed with a terminal illness might miraculously recover. The doctor says he’s seen people with a spirit takeover and they do not die. Your consciousness is surrounded by words written and spoken making reference to things that are unaccountable like consciousness reaching down to the brainstem and affecting the immune system-but it’s not miraculous. It can’t do it consciously. People have done it but not to the extent that they could explain it.
Your body has the facilities to ward off everything. “My consciousness at its best should be able to contact some part of the brain and cure it.” They may chant or pray and cure it, but consciousness can’t come back and say this is how you do it. It’s not you that did it but consciousness has enlarged the area in which it operates in the brain. Their consciousness in their brain had its very first original thought, the one and only consciousness that’s in their brain. It’s consciousness doing it.
Transcript
07-16-04 # 3174
Edited by S.A.
A delightful, painless way to wake up is to consider what consciousness does to itself. Until a few weeks ago, I would casually say, “What consciousness does to a person.” In other words, what consciousness does to you. Now, since you’ve all made the big breakthrough, you see that whatever consciousness says, whatever thoughts are in consciousness, consciousness is doing to itself. You now realize that there is no self, but that consciousness pretends that there’s a self, which relieves consciousness of a lot of the pressure.
To get back on track, let’s start with a little humor. I find it humorous to consider how common it is that when people talk about why it was that somebody died at a very early age, some religious person will say, “We may not know why God decided to take Joe now, but at least we’ll know the answers to everything by and by, after we die.” The other religious people will nod and agree. “Yes, yes. We’ll be given the answers when we die.”
Let me be clear. We are not laughing at religion. We are not laughing at our fellow human beings, not saying, “Dumb old humans, they’ll believe any kind of silliness.” We are laughing at consciousness and the story it tells. Remember, though, consciousness has no one to talk to but itself. One consciousness can talk to another consciousness, but still, that’s consciousness talking to itself—and to other consciousnesses. Consciousness has made up this image of a self, of a you, so if you’re an ordinary person, you distinguish between your mind—consciousness—and you, between your thoughts—consciousness—and you. That, of course, is where you get roped in. What consciousness has really said to itself, and to other consciousnesses, about death is, “After we die, thanks to all kinds of supernatural forces, we’ll know the answer to all these questions we don’t understand now.”
That is hilarious—except that most of the world takes consciousness’s little story quite seriously. Very likely, you have friends and relatives who do. Here’s how this began: someone’s consciousness told itself that it would understand everything after it died. That consciousness liked its concocted story so much that it told the story to a second person’s consciousness. The second person’s consciousness immediately loved the idea, but had a question. “You’re saying that after we die, we’re still somehow alive and conscious, and we’ll know the answers to everything that puzzles us now. How do you know this?” When the first consciousness couldn’t think of an answer, the second consciousness said, “You just made that up! Still, that’s a great story.” The second consciousness smiled, shook the first consciousness’s hand, and wandered off.
The first consciousness thought about what had just transpired, and decided to add to the story. That’s when that first consciousness not only made up the concept of God, but also wrote the story down in a book. That consciousness practiced saying, “Look here! I found this book that God wrote. The book says that after we die, we’ll understand the answers to everything that puzzles us now.” After that, when the first consciousness told his story to other consciousnesses, and the other consciousnesses said, “That’s great, but how do we know that what you’re telling us is true?” the first consciousness could respond, “Glad you asked. I came prepared.”
Is that not hilarious? But remember, we are not laughing at religion. We are not laughing at people’s beliefs. If you’re still laughing at people or their beliefs, then you’ve got a sophomoric sense of humor. You need to be laughing at the real funny stuff, the only funny stuff—consciousness. Consciousness said, “After I die, I’ll understand everything. After I’m snuffed out. After I’m turned into dust. After I’m nothing. Then I’ll understand all these questions that now drive me crazy. That is, I will understand all these questions that I made up.” Man wasn’t bothered by any questions until he was conscious, which makes it clear that consciousness made up all the questions such as, “Why do bad things happen to good people like me?” That’s a question nobody can answer.
Consciousness had many unanswerable questions that it had made up but could not answer, so consciousness made up an answer: “We don’t know what the answers are now, but after we’re snuffed out and destroyed, then we’ll know.” And consciousness asked, “Really?” And consciousness replied, “Sure.” And consciousness asked, “You wouldn’t put the shuck on me, would you? You wouldn’t jive me?” And consciousness replied, “Me? I’m all you’ve got. Would you lie to you? Besides, isn’t it nicer to believe that my story is true?”
Closer to the general subject, and still about consciousness—in my last talk, I gave the example of automobiles for the first couple of decades not having tops. I should point out that even then, there were a few people who figured out that it made sense for cars to have tops, so they built one for their car. There is always somebody who sees beyond the common understanding—or should I say misunderstanding—of a situation. There are history books that claim that until the late Dark Ages, or the beginning of the Renaissance, most people believed the world was flat. Nevertheless, there are written records from Grecian times, from twenty-five hundred years ago, of individuals who understood that the world was not flat. They might not have known that the world was a sphere, but they knew that the part they saw was round. They could look out to sea and watch fishing boats sail away until first the mast and then the whole boat disappeared. There were people all over the world who figured out that we probably lived on a sphere.
My point is, the understanding that the world was a sphere was not part of man’s collective consciousness. The people who did understand might even have told other people that the world couldn’t be flat, but it still took two thousand or so years for that knowledge to become part of man’s collective consciousness. Regarding automobiles, it took roughly twenty years for the need for tops to become part of man’s collective reality. It may take anywhere from decades to thousands of years for an idea that’s later self-evident to become part of man’s collective consciousness, his collective thinking, although there are always many exceptions.
What I’m trying to get to in this talk is something I used as an example when I talked about consciousness a couple of weeks ago. I’m trying to shift you over from thinking of “you” and “your consciousness,” to an understanding that when you think, you’re not thinking about your consciousness. When I talk about consciousness, that is not “me” talking about “consciousness”. That is consciousness talking about consciousness. When you think about consciousness, that is not you thinking about consciousness, but consciousness thinking about itself. That is simply an operation of the brain, and not split in two—not consciousness and you. There’s simply consciousness. Everything else in the brain is not consciousness.
By the way, if I make a comment about something a mainstream physician says, I’m not referring to a single physician. I’m referring to mainstream medicine, the collective thinking of man about medicine. Nowadays, a mainstream physician may say that it’s not unusual that once they tell a dying patient that they have exhausted all the medical options and there’s nothing else they can do, then frequently the part of the patient’s consciousness that we could call “spirit” will come into play. When some people hear that they have a deadly disease, their “spirit” is broken. They will go home and give up and die quickly. But for other people, once modern mainstream medicine has done all it can, their “spirit” takes over and somehow cures them. Religious people would say that a supernatural force intervenes.
Remember, we’re talking about medicine. We’re not talking about preachers. What medicine is referring to is consciousness being able to give a boost to the immune system. Preachers see this happen and attribute the success to their God. Mainstream doctors speak of this with no religious overtones. They are speaking from experience, saying that once medicine has run out of options, then some patients manage to cure themselves. Those patients will tell themselves, “I’m not going to let this disease get me. I’m going to fight this.” Those doctors will say, “Something seemed to kick in, and in spite of our past experience and our predictions, that patient did not die. His cancer went into remission and disappeared. That person lived on for decades due to his indomitable spirit.”
I’m bringing this up because your consciousness is surrounded by words written and spoken, from religious sources to science and medicine, making reference to things that people experience that are unaccountable—miraculous cures, miraculous feats of strength, bouts of insight that seem to be supernatural. The explanation for this is that the consciousness of an individual’s brain extends its scope into that brain’s operations beyond what had been normal. In so doing, consciousness might give the person an astounding flash of insight that explained things that were not part of the general consciousness of the people of the time, or consciousness might do something miraculous in the individual, such as curing the person of an illness that by all accounts, by all diagnoses, should kill them.
The person who is willing to battle such a diagnosis may try all kinds of self-cures—fasting, chanting, or just trying to keep a positive outlook. You know what “positive outlook” means—“the power of positive thinking.” That’s the kind of babble you find on a get-well card. You can generally dismiss that, but if the conscious part of the brain of somebody with a terminal illness had the right understanding of “positive outlook,” and could persevere, that might cause the man’s immune system to kick in and overcome an illness that had been diagnosed as terminal. That would not be miraculous. That would simply be that person’s brain unnaturally extending the operation of consciousness into brain areas that consciousness did not normally reach. To speak of this symbolically, it would be as though consciousness could put its hand down into the lower parts of the brain that have direct connection to the immune system, and use those parts of the brain to convince the immune system to cure that illness.
We don’t know how to describe this accurately, but in some people, it does happen. These people may believe that their prayers, or the prayers that a minister or priest prays for them, have cured them. The minister may have told them, “I have a direct connection to God. I’ll put my hands on the place where you have the cancer, and I’ll pray for God to send his power. Put all your faith in God. Pray along with me. God sends you power.”
For some religious people, that ritual will cause their consciousness to make the immune system rid them of their disease. They go back to the doctor a week later, have an x-ray, and the doctor tells them the tumor is gone. That happens. Their consciousness, the consciousness in their brain, cured them—but look at the trouble that consciousness has in doing that cure directly. In fact, it appears that in our present state, consciousness can’t manage to cure directly. Alternatively, if consciousness can effect a direct cure, then consciousness has no way to describe that accomplishment, and therefore I can’t describe what occurred. No one can describe what occurred.
Consciousness obviously can cure its own disease, but apparently consciousness can’t do that consciously, or else somebody who had lived through this could explain what it was that consciousness did. To date, nobody who’s experienced this can explain it, beyond saying something like, “I just kept my spirits up.”
A couple of decades ago, one man wrote a book about how he cured his terminal disease by laughing. He watched Marx Brothers movies, or read books that made him laugh, day and night for several months. That’s all he did, and he lived, miraculously by medicine’s definition. I have no doubt that the man did what he said he did. The doctors said, “We don’t understand this.” The man’s consciousness said, “I don’t understand it either, but that’s all I did.” Notice—that self-cure is no different from what happens when somebody who went to a priest or a witch doctor is cured because he was prayed over. What I’m trying to point out is that neither anybody’s individual consciousness nor humanity’s collective consciousness can explain this.
For three thousand years or so, plenty of people’s consciousnesses have extended unnaturally, unconventionally, abnormally, into other areas of their brains, because that is what awakening is. To my awareness, however, if it is the case that people have caused something physical to occur as the result of their consciousness extending into areas of their brain that consciousness previously had not reached, no one has ever been able to explain that.
Thousands of years ago, someone could have awoken, by which I mean that his consciousness expanded abnormally into other areas of his brain. If that person then became seriously ill, he might have thought, “When I’m not running on automatic, when my consciousness is in this special state, then, understanding what I understand, it is physically possible that my consciousness can have unnatural access to parts of my brain that could send out messages that would cure this illness.”
Eventually something will kill you, but I believe I have made it clear that generally speaking, the body is equipped to ward off all illness, particularly when the body is young. That awakened man would have realized, “My consciousness, at its best, should be able to contact some part of the brain that could do something about this disease.”
Nobody could tell him what to do to cure his disease, because nobody knows what to do. Not consciously. If they did, somebody would have told him. Possibly they tried, by saying “God healed me,” or “A positive attitude healed me,” or “I read this book and I did this chant. I think that healed me. That’s all I did, so it must have healed me.” Still, nobody’s consciousness has succeeded at a cure and then been able to articulate exactly how they effected the cure. Evidently, no one’s consciousness yet on this planet has ever reached a point that they can explain this.
I didn’t mean to get this specific, but since I’ve gone this far, I’ll bet you the closest that anybody has come to explaining a cure-by-consciousness is still the kind of positive attitude I described. “I’ve got Groover’s Syndrome, and maybe I’ll die, but I’m not going down without putting up a fight, even though I don’t know what kind of fight to put up.”
The point of all this is that many people, including me, have used the term, “Expansion of consciousness.” That term is literally correct. That is not a figure of speech. The conscious operation of your brain expands into previously un-activated parts of your brain.
We have no way of knowing that the area in which consciousness operates is precisely the same area of the brain from one person to the next. That may account for what seem to be people’s obvious innate differences in intelligence. You meet somebody, and he may be very nice, but you realize that he is on the slow side, a bit dim-witted. If you’re ordinary, you may have trouble recognizing that there are people who are sharper than you are. Usually, those people just annoy you. You think they’re rude and obnoxious, and they realize that you’re a dimwit. I hate to break it to you, but I’ll bet you never realized that all the people in the world that you think are smart-alecks—those people recognize that you’re a dimwit.
Back to what I was going to say. The point is, waking up literally is within you. Your consciousness literally expands in your brain past where it had always been, which is what had been normal and natural for you. You have not become awake. You have not become enlightened. The consciousness in your brain that is the beginning and the end of “you” has grown larger. Consciousness has increased the area in which it operates in your brain. Once that happens, the scope of human consciousness becomes irrelevant to you. It doesn’t matter what humanity in general understands about anything, because for the first time, you have understanding that is yours. For the first time.
Throughout thousands of years that men have written about being awake, they have said, “At that moment, I woke up. At that moment when my guru was talking to me. At that moment when a fish salesman was trying to sell me a mullet.” Whatever it was. When one of those mystics said, “At that moment I suddenly, instantly, awakened from the dream. I achieved enlightenment. I was liberated,” that mystic had the first original, individual thought that his consciousness had ever had in its entire existence. The mystic could have been fifty years old when the consciousness in his brain finally had its very first original thought. That is what everybody means when they say, “I awoke.” That is what people wrote two thousand years ago. “At that moment, I awoke, as though from a dream. I was enlightened, as though I had suddenly stepped from pitch darkness into the light.” The consciousness in their brain left its normal confines and had its very first original thought.
Most of those mystics never have another original thought. That is why it’s assumed and believed by mystics in general that enlightenment, awakening, is a permanent state. You’re in the state of enlightenment, and that’s the end of it. You worked for enlightenment for decades and decades. You tortured yourself, studying and studying. Then boom! You finally achieve enlightenment. From my own experience, I understand—that eureka moment was so miraculous that people could easily believe they were now permanently enlightened. I’m not accusing them of insincerity when they say, “It changed my life,” but for most of them, that was their first and only original thought.
That eureka moment is literally what happens, and it happens to the consciousness in your brain—not to you, and not to your spirit. Not to anything but the one and only consciousness in the brain in your head. If you’ll just keep trying to consider awakening in that way, I have no doubt that you will benefit. That type of thinking on your part will force consciousness to face that, “This is me, consciousness, thinking this and doing this. This is not something else.” Remember, this is not you doing something in consciousness. This is not you doing something to consciousness. This is not you doing something with consciousness. This is not you. This is consciousness doing this.
By the way, that first original thought doesn’t have to be anyone’s final original thought. I speak from experience. I had that first eureka moment many decades ago, and I can assure you, that first experience does not have to be the last. I wouldn’t have made myself hoarse talking about this if it wasn’t worthwhile.
Jan’s Daily Fresh Real News (to accompany this talk)
THE STRUGGLE IN PRISON REMAINS BETWEEN TWO SUPER POWERS
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JULY 16, 2004 © 2004: JAN COX
It’s All About TheThing
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To a flea every foot is a foe,
and to a fawn, every lion — but note:
the dangers to each creature are selective and limited,
save with man and the matter of his thoughts.
Said a father to a son:
“Although some things when described a certain way seem to be irrefutable facts,
there are in fact – no irrefutable facts.”
“You mean except that one?!”
“How many times must that be responded to.”
Then the elder continued:
“Everything morphs into everything else, and only snoozing bystanders miss it.”
“So that’s what: being-asleep and unenlightened really is?!”
“Have you ever pondered over how many ways there are to picture this situation?”
“An infinite number?!”
“And questioned why this should be so?”
After a pause, the pater pressed on:
“If thinking was a sport, ordinary consciousness would be like a boxer who,
with every blow taken, becomes meaninglessly invigorated and stronger.”
“And the key word there is: meaninglessly?!”
“Yes, keeping in mind its occult applicability to all of man’s incorporeal activities.”
“From our lineage’s perspective, you mean?”
“Indeed, young snipperwhapper.”
A chap hanging recently about city college’s Poli-Sci department
is handing out slips of paper that ask this question:
“Is the Grand Right Of Man the right of the ignorant to be led by the wise –
or: the right of the wise to have the ignorant to lead around?”
(After reading the query, one of the grounds keepers demanded to know if this was referring to actual people or to certain areas in a man’s consciousness.)
Men came up with the expression: “Everybody has to serve somebody”
to gloss over the fact that everybody is in captivity.
All caged animals (leastwise those in the care of a humane captor)
are always thrown a few entertaining trinkets to distract them from their condition;
even simple minded creatures deserve this much.
One of the zoo’s lion keepers offers:
“Those who appear to strive hardest in life have about them a certain air
of dedicated seriousness, which can be easily ridiculed –
but do take note that they are only following the lead of their captor,
which (wouldn’t you agree) by any rational measure is a smart thing to do.
Regarding the apparent endless labyrinth of routine mortal affairs,
a father said to a son:
“If all that seems available to do at the moment strikes you as being:
too common;
too close;
too familiar;
too simple, obvious and boring — go ahead with it,
and by so doing, the more exotic, complex and unexpected can be discovered.”
(And what could be more fitting for ignorant children than kiddy instructions.)
If consciousness is the bowl and thoughts the salad therein;
if consciousness is the canvas and thoughts the scene painted thereon, then ponder:
is consciousness a noun and thoughts a verb? – or could it be the other way around?
Could consciousness be the only activity in the entire universe that does nothing?
Pursuing this can strip the shellac off everything.
If you take the time to be personally depressed in the midst of an earthquake,
you are indeed an admirably ordinary human being.
How Words Work.
One non-gun-savvy guy thinks a semi automatic rifle is for people already half shot.
One man is given to referring to his self as — living proof. (He doesn’t elaborate.)
Comedians unsure of their wit laugh at their own jokes for the same reason that
people who understand nothing continually talk about their self.
One man concluded that he had been modified & edited to fit his format & time slot.
After hearing the term: “grand and musky museum,” used to describe a space,
one man’s consciousness said: “Thanks.”
(There is another chap who considers his own upstairs as an experimental lab.)
Regarding his TV viewing: one man says he likes travelogues because they
remind him of his own thinking: always-on-the-go.
(One of the previous potential sponsors for his programming said: “Don’t you wish.”)
This thought appeared in a man’s brain:
“If you lived where there was no doctor to diagnose,
would you get sick in the same way you do when there is one available?”
and in sudden, surprising reaction, a non genetic part of his consciousness injected:
“Would you be asleep and unenlightened in the same way you think yourself
now to be if no one had been there to tell you that you were?” —
but the man wasn’t able to grasp the connection.
(“It’s weird, is it not” mused another chap, “to be able to puzzle yourself!” )
Only worms discuss flight – never eagles;
you either know or you don’t.
Definition.
Predictability: The simple’s drug of choice.
Definition.
Choice: What?! — are you playing with me! (And an entire city was unable to get the gist of this one.)
Real Adults’ Getting-Around Tip.
The designated bus stops are not the only place to catch a ride.
(“And my pop says the consciousness you normally hear describing
and analyzing life to you is not the only one available [leastwise in our family line.]”)
Conversation.
“Everyone is going on a most unusual journey:
one whose both duration and destination are unknown:
a most strange voyage indeed.”
“You’re talking about death?!”
“I more in mind had St. Louis.”
There was once a man who discovered an unusual fruit which he offered to share
with others, but they said they preferred the old ones to which they were accustomed;
so he chewed on this…….then told them that the new fruit contained everything
they enjoyed about the old ones – but still they resisted;
he then tried telling them that it was in fact the original – and thus superior form of what their present fruits had become – but they would have none of it;
so he went in the opposite verbal direction and said that the new fruit was a more modern edition of their well known varieties, but alas: still no go – so! –
he finally just took their old fruit and stuffed the new one into it.
This is the concluding line in the fit-for-the-normal-family version of the tale;
the rebel’s ends ergo:
“So: he finally just enjoyed the fruit alone – like you’re supposed to.”
What the certain man discovers when he awakens to what is really going on is that: everything merges into everything else while man’s natural born thoughts are busy somewhere else:
this is what: being-asleep, unenlightened, in-captivity and ordinary is all about.
When he heard that his father was terminally ill, a son cried:
“I can’t believe that you’re dying!”
“You can’t?! — think about me: you can’t help feeling that way
since your very existence depends on me — but me! —
just try to think how it seems from my perspective.”
The Eternal Transition.
Everything in man’s intangible reality eventually segues into everything else.
J
Everything’s About TheThing
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