Shut Down and Only Think-About-Thinking
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
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Summary
10/21/05:
Notes by TK
You should take some time every day to completely shutdown the mind’s activity that is not thinking-about-thinking. I.e., any thoughts other than “who or what am I?” or “what is in me that can be aware of this self?” Before the threshold of individual thought, man participated in a collective thinking, like a herd or flock or ant colony.
Collective thinking never produces anything constructive, innovative. The self is so ingrained in man that he is incapable of considering the possibility that there is no self in him, that the stream of passing thoughts gives the illusion of a substantial self. (21:03) #3365
Transcript
10-21-05 #3365
Edited by S. A.
Years ago, I used to encourage everyone to periodically shut down for a whole day. Now I want to tell you that you’re missing out if you don’t shut down for an hour every day. There is no down side to this. You could do this when you get home from work. Don’t turn on the radio or television. Don’t open a book. Don’t call anybody on the telephone or talk to anybody in your house. You might pull a chair up to a window. Then for thirty minutes or an hour, just sit there and watch thinking. Ignore any thoughts that are not about thinking, but if one comes to mind, like the annoying traffic jam you were in just an hour ago, don’t think about the actual incident. Don’t think about anything that happens outside your head. Instead, think, ”Why do I think about that traffic jam? That’s all over. What could be the purpose of thinking about that?”
I have really been stressing the importance of putting in the effort to make consciousness observe itself, be aware of itself, ask itself, ”What am I?” Instead of consciousness, we can speak about the self. Everybody is convinced that they have a substantial self within them. A variation of the question to ask is, ”What is my self?” Better still, ”What is it within me that says it is aware of a self?”
Almost all animals live in groups. Herds of cattle. Flocks of birds. Schools of fish. Men also live in groups. At the physical level, living in groups can be quite advantageous, as it is when men or other animals are defending their territory.
Now let’s move into the area that is unique to man—his consciousness, and the thinking that goes on in what we call his consciousness. There arises an interesting question that’s at the heart of wanting to awaken and achieve enlightenment. For a long time, I pondered why we insist that we have a self. We talk about the self so casually that the question of the self’s existence doesn’t even seem open to investigation, but as you know, I propose that we clearly do not have a self. The lack of self can be felt by you if you put in some effort. I don’t think it’s that much of a hidden metaphysical cha-cha-cha. You can see for yourself that what man describes as his self is not in you. In that case, how did the concept come about?
Consider the post-Neanderthal cavemen. Whatever thinking men did up until that time was a form of collective intelligence, collective thought similar to what apparently transpires in an ant colony. If you see a large ant colony, and you go over and start stepping on ants ten feet away from the entrance to the colony, the other ants will be instantly aware of it. Some say that even ants a mile away from the colony will have that awareness instantly.
When Adam, the post-Neanderthal caveman, showed up, thinking appears to have crossed a line. Man would never have developed the way he has if there had not appeared in some people an individuality of thought. There was no group of cavemen who one day suddenly announced that they knew how to produce fire. One man made that announcement. Adam Caveman walked up to the other cavemen in his group and said, ”I have observed that frequently after lightening strikes an area, I see fire where the lightening appeared to have hit the ground. You all remember those rocks that make sparks when we rub them together? I believe that if we take two of those rocks and rub them against the same kind of dried grass that burns whenever lightening produces fire, we could produce fire for ourselves any time we want it.”
Every piece of man’s advancement, every idea that has been of benefit to man, came from an individual thought. Here is a rule for you: collective thinking never results in anything constructive. On the contrary, I say that nothing constructive ever comes out of collective thinking unless we are considering the physical defense of a group’s territory, and even then, collective thinking can be extremely destructive.
Consider a group of ranchers out west a hundred years ago who have caught a guy that somebody accused of being a rustler. The ranchers don’t really know if the man they caught is the one who committed the crime, but suddenly one of the ranchers says, ”Look at his squinty little eyes.” Another rancher says, ”Yeah, and that slicked-back hair and his big ears.” A third rancher says, ”There’s not a doubt in the world. He’s guilty.” Now everyone in the crowd is saying, ”Yes, he’s guilty. Without a doubt the man’s guilty.” That is an example of destructive collective thinking.
No man will ever understand everything behind life’s intentions, but we can look at what life has accomplished through man. It appears that somehow life recognized that anything that is of benefit to its own survival would come from individualistic thinking and not from collective thinking.
The man who discovered how to make fire was not standing with a group in the middle of his tribe when they all said in unison, ”We’ve observed that whenever lightening causes a fire, blah, blah, blah.” That man came up with the idea of how to make fire when he was off by himself, with no help from the group’s collective thinking. He alone was responsible, whether he was correct or incorrect.
Based on our language and what we can see about the way the mind works, that man, Adam Caveman, might also have been the first man who ever said, ”I.” He said, ”I observed blah, blah, blah, and I think, based on that, blah, blah, blah.” That could very well have been the origin of human consciousness expressing the view that there is a self, and that the self has thoughts. ”I’m not expressing the collective thoughts of a group. These are my thoughts.”
There had to be some way for Adam Caveman to differentiate the thoughts that he was presenting, and it seems a short step from there to life having everybody, whether they practice individualistic thought or not, begin to express the view that they have a self, a ”me,” an ”I,” and that their self thinks. When individual thought first appeared, life must have realized that such thought had survival value, and found ways to reinforce the production of individual thought.
I could even suggest that that is why men talk so incessantly about the self, which is now so ingrained in our normal consciousness that you can’t get a man to consider that he might not have a self. If you tell him he doesn’t have a self, he’ll reply, ”That’s ridiculous, because it’s my self that just said, ‘That’s ridiculous,’ and it was the self in you that told me I didn’t have a self.”
Nevertheless, if you haven’t already gotten a whiff of this on your own, then try the kinds of approaches I’ve talked about for the previous two nights, and you’ll quickly discover that there is no self in there. If you sit alone and just observe thought for some length of time, it will hit you in flashes that there is no substantial self. There are passing thoughts, one after the other, but there is no self. You don’t even have to be certain that there is no self to get the benefit. All you’ve got to do is study thought relentlessly.
Jan’s Daily Fresh Real News (to accompany this talk)
WHEN YOU DON’T REALLY THINK
YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU DO
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The Cortical Rebel’s Crucible
OCTOBER 21, 2005 © 2005 JAN COX
A guy who wrote made note:
“Those with a torqued sense of humor take my writings seriously, and those with a stilted sense of seriousness believe they are attempts at humor,” and a voice shouted: “I say throw ‘em both in the pit and let ‘em fight it out!” “Yeah!” “You said it!”
“Damn straight!” – came cries from the crowd.
Whenever he starts to feel better one man will say: “That’s a good sign,”
and when he begins to feel worse, will say: “That’s a bad sign.”
Note: Everything’s a sign of everything.
Hormones Pucker Up On Literature.
One day while surrounded by pockets of ordinary people engaged in normal conversations, looking at their ever-moving lips, and him knowing generally what was issuing therefrom, a man mused: “I feel like a Proctologist In Wonderland.”
Before offering his views, one man likes to preface his remarks with the words:
“We astronomers like to look at the big picture” — which seems to please many of
his listeners, and particularly tickles him (especially as he takes into account what a
parochial pinhead he is).
The older the institution – the further removed it is from its original aim.
“Well,” chirped the Cheer Up Man, “one nice feature of periodically going into
a physical tailspin is coming out of it,
and the one nice feature of going into a non-physical tailspin is nothing.”
The older the institution – the dumber.
Pondered a chap:
“What is freedom of thought? – how free can thinking be?
It could be free from thinking what it has thought before,
and it could be free from thinking what everyone else is thinking…..but after that, what?…..”
Representatives from each of the cultural areas agreed: “No whining – no art.”
Trying strenuously to sound sincere when talking about any second-reality matter makes a man sound like a complete fool (at least to the few who are not so themselves).
Everything There Is To Know About Advice
Plus What No One Can Grasp.
Elder: “I don’t want you to become a musician; all they do is drink and chase women.”
Younger: “What did you do when you were young.”
Elder: “Drank and chased women.”
The older the institution – the pushier.
Anything that can be analyzed from multiple, conflicting perspectives
can be dispensed with.
One man said: “The day will come when you stop lying about your age
and start bragging about it,” and another chap who heard thought:
“And that’s the day you will have become really old and have the feeling that you squandered your years.”
A sick man thought: “I don’t mind dying, as long as it’s not today…………..but hell – every day is today.”
The older the institution – the more self-referential it becomes.
Surveying his basement, a man commented:
“Mold will slip up on you faster than everything in the world,”
and from the attic came a voice: “Not everything.”
Some men dream of religious freedom, some of political freedom,
some dream of social freedom, and others of financial freedom;
the neural-revolutionist dreams of a freedom that cannot be described.
If you have a grievance with Life or man, you have a brain tumor
(commonly known as ordinary thinking).
Another Super Safe Bet.
Operate on the assumption that everyone is as incompetent as you can be.
The older the institution – the less significance it has for anyone who can independently think.
A primo example of the astounding divide between what seems absolutely so
to normal thinking and its total fallacy is the feeling that “I” is a thing of substance.
Says one guy: “I’m a stay-at-home dad,” and his neural son was also not quite sure
what this signified.
One man’s biggest intellectual challenge is trying to determine whether he is suffering mild or medium Alzheimer’s.
“You once said: ‘Only the free can see,’ but don’t you have to see to be free?”
“Si.”
J
Jan’s Daily
Eye To “I”
News
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