Seek to Disengage from Species-Wide Colloquy
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.
Summary = See below
Edited Transcript = See Below
Condensed News = See below
News Item Gallery = None
Key Words =
Summary
7/30/04:
Notes by TK
Enlightenment is the disengaging from the endless conversation-game. Consciousness seeks inclusion in the species-wide colloquy. When alone, the dialogue can take the form of daydreaming: replay, recrimination, remonstrance over past events, or rehearsal of the imagined or actually planned. When in company, talk always entails a statement, accusation, or question from one to another, which renders one helplessly prone but willingly obligated to respond.
More than helpless, consciousness proactively seeks to engage in the infinite, meaningless thrust and parry. There is, however, a remnant of it somehow that wants disengagement, and it is that which drives the Few. (39:03) #3180
Notes by DR
What if there is no individual consciousness? It has got to be impossible for a person with extraordinary interests to look at these two talking heads in a TV drama and see it is not a conversation of separate individuals. It is not two entirely different kingdoms or kings with the ability to control their own thoughts. It’s something else. They are this forced ping pong game that never ends.
It would be fair to say that enlightenment is disengaging. You’re looking at one small part of the conversation and the conversation never ceases. If you look at your own consciousness it is relentlessly seeking engagement with the species wide conversation. Does it ever stop? The conversation is either making a statement or making an accusation. “Let me tell you what kind of guy I am…” Even walking by a window and reading book titles, their consciousness wanted to be engaged in the world wide conversation. When someone reads the title of a book his consciousness either agrees or disagrees, but his consciousness engages with the cold print of a book title. Wanting to wake up is wanting to disengage from that endless meaningless conversation, and yet your consciousness does it 24/7 if you’re not aware of it. If you are aware it stops.
Transcript
07-30-04 #3180
Edited by S.A.
Last time, I asked you to consider this question: what if there is no such thing as individual consciousness? I gave examples that encompassed everything from soap operas to Shakespeare to everyday life, along with my strongest encouragement for you either to look at ordinary life, or to turn on your television and watch dramas, soap operas, or real-life shows on which people were being interviewed.
It has got to be impossible for anybody with an interest in understanding the concept of ”waking up” or ”becoming enlightened” to study such human interactions, real or fictional, and still accept the idea that there is such a thing as individual consciousness. Someday, this will hit you while you watch a politician being interviewed, or a drama that some human wrote featuring a husband and wife talking, or two partners in crime talking. Actually, you’re perfectly normal if you can look at two talking heads and it never strikes you that their conversation is not between two entirely different kingdoms with two individual rulers, each of them with free will and the ability to direct their own thoughts and select that which interests them mentally. When this hits you, you will not see two people with such abilities holding a conversation, but something else entirely.
What I see is that in each of those people engaged in conversation, consciousness is helpless. I know of no better word than ”helpless.” At the end of my last talk, my consciousness came up with a picture that I still like. You’re in prison, and you’re locked into a ping pong game that never ends. Think about that. You’re in prison, and that should be enough—but in addition, you somehow have been pushed into an endless ping pong game with a continuing string of opponents on the other side of the table. Your various opponents come and go, and many of them return repeatedly, but you remain imprisoned in a never-ending ping pong game.
That brings us up to date. It would be a fair description to say that waking up, becoming enlightened, is disengaging from the ceaseless ping pong game. Conversely, a better place to start might be if you look at the very thing I’ve been talking about. If you look at other people, what you see and hear is that consciousness, by its nature, obviously wants to be engaged, and will engage itself in an endless conversation, but not a conversation between two independent consciousnesses, two independent tongues, two independent minds. What I was trying so hard last time to describe is that when you look at people in a drama, or someone being interviewed, you’re not seeing a conversation between those two people. You’re looking in on one tiny part of a gigantic, never-ending conversation taking place inside a prison like Alcatraz, but with six billion people inside.
Prisoner A and Prisoner B are talking. After a while, Prisoner A moves on and starts talking to Prisoner X, then to Prisoner Y, and keeps going from person to person. The other prisoners are doing exactly the same. The conversation never ceases. If you look at yourself, you will see that your consciousness is relentlessly seeking engagement, seeking to be a part of this species-wide conversation of consciousness. You don’t have to be talking out loud to be engaged in this conversation. When you’re daydreaming, or you pick up a book or a newspaper, turn on the radio or television, go to a movie, or call up a friend, your consciousness is actively and relentlessly seeking to be a part of the conversation.
The world-wide conversation never stops. Under our civilized conditions, consciousness has the body turning its head not simply for the sake of physically monitoring the environment for danger. It’s noon in downtown Philadelphia. You car is stopped at a traffic light, in the middle of a sea of traffic. You know you’re going to be sitting there for at least eighty seconds, and you know there is no danger. What does consciousness have you do? You immediately look around. For what? After all, you know you’re not in danger.
An ordinary person could come up with all sorts of answers. The obvious one is, ”I just want to see who’s in the next car.” But why? Again, you can come up with all sorts of answers. If you’re a man, you can say, ”I look around to see if there might be a good-looking woman in the next car.” You can say that, but if you observe your own consciousness in light of what I’m describing, you will see that if consciousness sees another person, consciousness begins to talk to itself about that person. Consciousness may even engage itself in an imaginary encounter with the person.
Maybe if you’re a man, and there’s an attractive woman in the next car, you imagine yourself rolling down your car window and saying, ”Hey baby, what’s happening?” Then you picture her pulling down the top of her dress, pointing to the hotel on the corner, and saying, ”Meet me.” An ordinary person might tell me, ”That’s just a sexual fantasy. I have them all the time.” Sure, but that’s also consciousness continuing to engage in the species-wide conversation, because for that, consciousness does not actually have to talk to people. Daydreams will do, as will reading, listening to the radio, or watching television. Any of those may be sufficient for people who prefer to live a relatively isolated life, but that varies from person to person. Some nights, you’re satisfied to sit at home and watch television or read a book. Other nights, you turn on the television and within a few minutes, you’re restless. You call up a friend and ask them to meet you for a cup of coffee and a conversation.
Consciousness is driven to be engaged in the species-wide conversation. Over the last couple of years I occasionally used the terms, ”Man’s collective mind,” or ”Man’s collective consciousness.” I tried to provide a picture for you of the collective mind as a sort of invisible stratum of atmosphere encasing the Earth. In that metaphor, all of the people on Earth were like individual telephones plugged into a world-wide network, or like separate speakers in a world-wide intercom system. Nowadays, I find it more productive to investigate this phenomenon as if it’s a huge floating ”something,” rather than a mind, but they are both metaphors for the same thing.
I challenge you, because this pays off, to look at your own consciousness. You will see that consciousness, by its nature, never stops. Use whichever metaphor seems most helpful. They both may sound a bit silly, but they are meant to describe a huge floating conversation that is not your consciousness’s individual conversation, and not anybody else’s consciousness’s individual conversation, but the human conversation. This is right in front of you, and if you keep looking and listening, one day it’s got to hit you.
You’ll be watching television, and see a reporter and someone being interviewed—although you’re just as well off to look at a drama, because human consciousness wrote the drama. You’ll see two detectives talking, or two lovers talking—who they are doesn’t matter. What does matter is that generally one of them is making an accusation, asking a question which is just short of being an accusation, or making a statement about themselves, which is usually something like, ”I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to put up with the evasive answers you’re giving to my questions and accusations!” What all that comes down to is that there’s actually only one basic rhetorical device that humans use.
Listen to people talk, whether in fictitional dialogue or in real life, and tell me if anything is going on other than one of those three kinds of rhetorical operations. Someone asks a question: ”Where have you been all this time?” Someone makes an accusation. ”You’ve been out cheating on me again!” Or someone makes a statement about himself: ”You’d better know that I ain’t the kind of guy to put up with my woman running around on me!” Three different types of statements that boil down to just one rhetorical device: ”Let me tell you what kind of person I am.”
Back to tonight’s point. Let’s say that we are watching a drama on television, and two detectives are talking. One of them says, ”Did you interview that woman on the third floor?” The other one responds, ”Give me a minute! I can’t do but one thing at a time!” The first detective says, ”Hey! You’re going to have to start pulling your weight around here! I ain’t the kind of guy that’s going to do somebody else’s work!”
Either in real life, or in fictional conversations, when one person’s consciousness makes a statement, asks a question, or presents an accusation, the other person is helpless and must respond. I thought about coming up with another word that sounded more mystical and psychologically pertinent than ”helpless,” but ”helpless” truly is the best fit. All of this is right there in front of us, and nobody realizes it. An ordinary person might be standing on a corner, waiting for a light to change, and suddenly someone they’ve never seen walks up to them, saying, ”You are disgusting! It’s people like you who are ruining the world!” Sure enough, the first person will respond to what is clearly an insane statement. People do that constantly. Family members, people at work, even strangers do it.
My descriptions may sound overblown, and your consciousness may be saying, ”No way! People are not helpless! What one person’s consciousness says does not grab another person’s consciousness and force it to respond!” Your consciousness, upon hearing my words, may be waving them off, which means—in case you didn’t catch on—that your consciousness is helplessly responding to what I’m saying.
You can look at this in yourself, or in other people. Both can be fertile grounds for your investigation. If you keep watching two people talk, ultimately you will see that there’s something else going on besides Person A being fully independently conscious, planning what they are saying, and being completely responsible for every personally-pertinent word coming out of his mouth.
If you tell just about any ordinary person on this planet that you’re doing a survey, and ask them to answer your questions, they will agree. You’re walking through a mall, and you go up to a stranger and say, ”Pardon me. I’m taking a poll. Would you answer a few questions?” Especially if he’s alone, he will stop, and rather than pushing you out of the way, his face will light up, and he’ll say, ”I’d be delighted!” He doesn’t know the questions. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know why you’ve picked him. He doesn’t care. He’s helpless. His consciousness wants to be engaged. His consciousness, just like yours, is eagerly seeking to be actively engaged in the world-wide conversation. That alone is crazy! I admit I may be hyperbolic in my choice of words. Forget the word, ”crazy.” How about ”extremely weird”?
Let’s say that the person you stopped was slowly walking past a bookstore and intently gazing at the books in the windows. If you ask him whether he plans to buy a book today, he might say, ”No, I don’t read all that much. I never buy books.” Then consider why it took him twenty or thirty seconds to walk past these two big glass windows studying all those books. He was obviously reading the titles of the books. He just admitted to you there’s not a chance he’s going to buy a book today or any day, and yet he was reading the titles. Why? Because his consciousness wanted to be engaged in the world-wide conversation.
Let’s say that the man’s consciousness reads a book titled, America is Going to Hell. What happens then? The man’s consciousness engages in conversation with the dead ink on the cold slick paper cover of that book. It doesn’t matter whether his consciousness agrees or disagrees with the statement made by the title. That book may as well have been a talking head in that window. The man’s consciousness looked, and instead of a book it saw a head sticking up on top of a pile of books, and the head said to him, ”America is going to hell!” The man’s consciousness might have responded, ”Tell me about it, brother! It’s those stupid politicians!” Alternatively, the man’s consciousness might have said, ”I’m heartily sick of all of you doomsayers! We live in the world’s greatest country! I’ll bet you’re a communist!”
If you think I’m exaggerating, then you haven’t looked into any of this, because this is what’s going on in your own ordinary, automatic consciousness. Your ordinary consciousness is helpless, and it is, by its nature, actively seeking to be engaged in the endless and meaningless worldwide conversation. Your consciousness does this waking or sleeping, every minute of the day, until you die.
Waking up, becoming enlightened, is the consciousness in your brain seeking to be disengaged from that meaningless species-wide conversation. That is a very decent description of wanting to wake up, even when you’re not exactly sure what waking up is. Wanting to wake up is wanting to disengage from endless participation in a meaningless conversation that has nothing personally to do with your consciousness. Becoming aware of that pointless automatic conversation stops the conversation for the moment. Of course, then your consciousness wants to talk about how it stopped the conversation, and you’re back in a Shakespeare drama. Worse yet, you’re back in ”Days of Our Lives.” Worst of all, back in ”Meet the Press.”
Jan’s Daily Fresh Real News (to accompany this talk)
EVEN ENDLESS PACING GETS YOU
NOWHERE IN A PRISON CELL
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Words That Walk-The-Walk In The Minds Of The Few
JULY 30, 2004 © 2004: JAN COX
One man likes to listen to what other people say they are thinking –
it cuts down on him having to.
A non verbal hippo confided to his son:
“Parrots only talk because all the other parrots do.”
Yeah – but if they could speak, that’s what they would say about the affair.
Though both hormones and neurons do as they must, it is somewhere between impossible and inconceivable for normal humans to see one half the truth of this.
(“Well still, being only fifty per cent deluded is better than being completely so.”
Don’t bet on it — not for a few.
“But that’s totally irrational.”
Salute when you say that.)
One man had two houses –
one in the city, and one in the country;
everyone does –
not everyone knows it.
One guy found he could get his drugs cheaper elsewhere.
“From another country you mean?!’
Yeah – so to speak.
As they sat in the morning sun, rocking on the porch, the ole man said to the kid:
“On this fine day – I — your father say:
‘A man with an extra chair may always expect company,’ ”
and the nipper scratched a body part and replied:
“Yeah – but if I was an ordinary off spring I could counter by saying that
such a man could just be a guy who has one too many chairs,”
which brought the elder to his feet, exclaiming:
“Ah yes – BUT! – your not saying that proves my point!”
(And upon further reflection [and additional scratching] the youth was about as impressed
with this exchange as one could be [under the circumstances].)
On one world, through the development of a special herbicide,
they have all but eradicated from the consciousness of the people
the entire concept of: under-the-circumstances, (and say that things have
vastly improved therefrom [which of course is easy to say — when you’re on another world.])
A cry was heard coming from a relatively new world:
“Things were going nicely until they got too nicely.”
If everyone who knows what’s-wrong were given unrestricted power,
they would soon regret it.
“If they were awake to what is really going on, you mean?!”
Okay, but the way things presently are is that the only people who fully grasp
why ordinary men find life to be forever askew (and are thus theoretically
the very ones who would know how to correct the problems),
are the ones who never mention such matters.
“To my normal ears that sounds most strange?!?”
Don’t it.
Found written in the dust under a bed in a secluded monastery, these words:
“The only good mystic is a deaf mystic,” followed by a later addition:
“The only better mystic is a mute one.”
A man had a balloon which he blew up SO big that it disappeared.
You ride the train until it vanishes from under you.
“But the real trick is realizing when it has, right?!”
Punch your ticket when you say that, son.
One man had two houses –
one in the city, and one in the country;
and while everyone does (but never realizes it),
he not only did, but made impossible improvements to one of them.
There are no pseudo secrets in the consciousness of escapees.
One man’s car would periodically stall –
which he took to be his fault –
had he been an inner seas rebel sailor, he’d’ve been correct.
The Hardships And Travails Of Secondary Reality Sojourns
As Exemplified By An Excerpt From A Certain Sailor’s Diary.
“After alternative days of fair and foul,
and months of winds favorable, then ill,
we rounded Cape Hope and with spirits tried,
fought our way upwards through those dark and confused seas in the lower latitudes below the subcontinent,
and after much tacking, plotting, danger, dread and continual revision of our course,
we finally emerged into the calm sunlight and made a secure landing
in the beautiful bay at the foot of my pre frontal lobes.”
Even though from the perspective of the prisoner therein, his one person cell seems to offer the height of privacy: there are no secrets in prison;
everyone there is inescapably plugged into a prison wide mental network
whereby everyone’s thinking is uncontrollably connected to everyone else’s.
There are no secrets in prison.
If your consciousness is clear at least you can never be guilty of duplicity.
The real rule of civilization (same as for men’s thinking) is not one of individual reason, but one of a greater, collective rationale;
just as all good does some harm to some,
so does all individually perceived rationality contain its own larger IRrationality.
The amount of water that can support a skiff can spell disaster for a schooner.
Preparation & Comprehension.
One man cooked only for himself –
that’s all he could do –
‘cause he’d always eat everything as fast as it was done.
(P.S. He was the chef on a train — on a line owned by his family line.)
A clean house is a happy house —
a dust free house is a happy house —
an uncluttered house is a happy house,
but the happiest house of all is one entirely cleared out (least for the certain man).
How Consciousness Works (Part 243).
The ad asks: “Have you ever known anyone who died with too much life insurance!”
This e-mail just in: “In reference to an earlier story today:
do you think that in men’s well known urging to have-a-clear-conscience
they somehow got the last word confused with consciousness?”
The ole man said to the kid:
“Remember: anything that can be divided into two,
and which man’s natural consciousness finds satisfactory,
is either: not worth any notice, or can be split into three.”
There are no secrets in prison.
A kid pondered; “Why do adults in their proverbs specify a certain individual
when it is everybody who wants to have their cake and eat it too?”
Two kids were playing around in the kitchen,
engaged in verbal volleying and one proposed:
“What is the difference between listening to other people’s words
and sticking a blender into your brain?”
Beneath the surface of one world flows a stream,
whose felt presence has caused the creatures there to propose the existence of
underworlds, spirit spheres, mythical domains, sub conscious realms and the like – but none of those are what the stream really is.
There are no secrets in sheep pens.
There’s a special train that runs in the direction-of Elysia,
but to get on it, you’ve got to really get on it! – and stay there! –
long enough to be able to realize when it has run its course.
(“You’re really referring to your own thinking, aren’t you?”
Ultimately.)
City Sports.
Prison jockeys will only ride a dead horse.
The Dirty Little Secret.
Anyone can be more clearly conscious – right this instant – by just trying to be.
(Question: Which do you think this is primarily: Dirty, a Secret, or Little?)
A father said to a son:
“If you don’t find the idea of internally, being-in-prison hilarious —
you’re not my kind of con.”
An empty house needs no secrets.
The Literary Life & Unlikely Recognition In The City.
He who can make endless footnotes with his neurons
will never owe on overdue books like the rest of the population.
The true inner adventurer goes (at no additional cost) where other men care not to go.
Life wears a skirt –
and is always walking up stairs and standing on high places –
without any underwear (at least for the rebel’s eyes/I’s).
One man,
soon as he got out of bed,
was already ahead (because you see):
he’d get up alone.
J
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Today’s News concludes with more excerpts from the forbidden secret writings
known at various times as: “Words Of Cryptic Knowledge,”
“Ideas Of Unpredictable Results,” and: “Advice Of Apocryphal Value.”
(And of course as always, also known as: UFN’s: Unidentified Flying Nevers.)
______________________________________________
Never grin-and-bare-it unless you’re the m.c. at a flasher’s convention.
Never fly on an airline which has the term, cul-de-sac in its slogan.
Never offer to go one-on-one with a bus load of amphetamine crazed
Iranian nude wrestlers.
Never seek a degree from a university whose motto is: “Would We Lie To You.”
Never smile at a man with a used car for sale (or an extra wife).
Never let a mid-level IRS agent lead-you-in-prayer,
(or anywhere else for that matter).
Never speak to a child during puberty.
Never vote for anyone in the belief that one day it may do-you-some-good.
Never waste your bullets or wit on a dead man.
Never ask a judge if you can adopt a Girl Scout troop, “just for the weekend.”
Never appear to be willing-and-able-bodied.
Never dress up and put-on-the-Ritz
(unless you know for sure that the Ritz appreciates such humor).
Never demand extensive employment benefits when applying for a job as
a sperm donor.
Never take serious anything you might see out of a hotel window.
Never be the first-on-your-block.
Never actually stay all night at an all-night restaurant.
Never defend to your death their right to say anything.
Never respect-your-elders – they sure as hell don’t respect you. (And):
Never hesitate to laugh at things you don’t understand – how else will you ever learn.
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