Thumbnail sketch of Jan Cox talk given Sep 30, 2005

If automatic thinking doesn’t bother you, you’ll not do anything about it. Automatic thinking is the basis of your personality; it makes you witty, popular, brilliant, kind etc., and also the reverse of these. Another method of struggle against automatic thinking: never give voice to the first thing that comes into your mind in reaction to some stimulus. Indeed, don’t even think the thought. The first thing arising in your mind is NEVER of benefit for awakening. (30:03) #3359

Thumbnail sketch of Jan Cox talk given Sep 19, 2005

There is no “right” way to pursue enlightenment; but the successful end result is simply to know what consciousness is. Night dreaming is automatic thinking written in a different hand, in different ink. Supreme automatism is to be in the groggy twilight zone after waking up and STILL want to think about the dream, even when you know it is a dream. The only thing we can think about is what happens outside of us…AND how we feel. Under ordinary conditions, the mind cannot think about itself: introspection is an illusion. The mind can think/say that it does…but it does not. (34:25) #3354

Seeing vs. Understanding

The Nature of the Physical World, by Douglas Harding, author of On Having No Head

Science -- or rather, science misunderstood and gone haywire – has come up with a great deal of unscientific nonsense in its time. And the most prevalent, the most silly, the most absurd piece of pseudo-scientific nonsense is the dogma that consciousness is a by-product of matter -- a kind of incidental and accidental effluvium or subtle radiation that matter gives off when it gets sufficiently complex, as in human brains. The one thing led to the other, as if brains happened to grow a bump of consciousness in addition to the other bumps! As if the protuberance on the top of the head of images of the Buddha were the bump of that superconsciouness which he called enlightenment! In the beginning was a lot of stuff, and in the course of time it got around to noticing itself! Clever stuff! Wonder of wonders, object gives birth to subject. Are we astounded at such a maculate Conception and Nativity? Not at all. We take it in our stride. The primacy of matter over spirit is simply taken for granted. It is among the least challenged of the myths we live by.

That things should produce awareness of things -- and by chance, at that -- is, when you think of it, quite weird. It's like supposing that the movie-projector is operated by one of the actors on the screen. Equally odd is the notion that the subject can be examined from outside as if it were some kind of object. How can the subject be discovered except from within, by subjectivity itself? In any case there's not a particle of evidence of material things giving rise to consciousness. No one has ever observed it happen, or explained what to look for. In fact, the very idea is nonsensical.

What is a material object, according to science itself? It is a collection of phenomena (from the Greek phainein, to show), a set of regional appearances/pictures/readings which the scientist picks up and pieces together as he hovers round the "thing" he's surveying from various angles, at various distances, with the help of various instruments. What these regional appearances are appearances of, what nestles at their center, is hidden from him. However close he gets to that thing so-called, he remains too far off to say what it really is, intrinsically, at no distance from itself. The scientist, as such, is an outsider.

But he does have two clues to what's inside:

His first clue is that the nearer he gets to the thing the less "thingy" and the more empty it becomes. Progressively stripping it of assets, he comes to regions where all that remains of that seemingly solid object is space haunted by twists of energy, so to speak. Beauty and ugliness, utility, life, color, opacity, shape, even precise location -- all are left behind by the approaching observer. There's not a quality or function that will stand up to close inspection. It is distance that lends these enchantments. Go up to anything and you lose it.

But just a minute! Who goes up to that thing and loses it? Who registers the dismantling and disappearance of the object and its reduction to virtual emptiness? Why, the scientist himself, of course, as consciousness. He leaves all behind except awareness. You could say he takes it with him wherever he goes, because that is what he is. It's impossible for him to explore the physical world of cells and molecules and atoms and particles and leave it merely physical: his active presence there infects it through and through and at every level with spirit. As for the space that underlies all, how could his awareness of it be separated from that space? Just as there's no way of entering an [imaginary] house, so there's no way of contemplating mindless space. No wonder subatomic physics is forced by the facts to bring the observer into the picture. In fact, while the picture fades on ever-closer examination, the consciousness that illuminates it shines all the more brightly. Matter dissolves in favor of spirit.

Let me put it in another -- and I think better -- way. Things can be moved and carried around. Not so consciousness of things. It isn't a torch which the scientist takes along with him to shine on things, or an air freshener he sprays them with, or a laser beam he directs at them. Wherever he goes it's already there, inseparable from the very nature of those things. If for the word consciousness or spirit I read God (and there are many worse names for It) then I can say with the Psalmist:

Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou are there: if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

In short, spirit or consciousness underlies all, and there is no such thing as the merely physical. A phenomenon or regional appearance by itself, without a central reality of which it is an appearance – what sort of nonsense is that, for heaven's sake?

There exist two distinct kinds of things (so-called) which are available for the scientist's inspection -- the observed thing and the observing thing. That is to say, other bodies, and his own body. We have just seen to what conclusions his examination of other bodies leads. Now let us find out whether they are confirmed by his examination of his own body, the specimen he carries around with him all the while.

Here, nearer than near, is his second clue to what things really are, as distinct from what they look like at a distance. Here is his very own sample lump of matter, always handy, requiring no laboratory or instruments for its most searching examination, constantly reporting on its true and intrinsic nature, transparent through and through to his direct inspection. If (and it's a very big if) he takes seriously this unique and precious sample -- if and when he dares to look at what he's looking out of, inspecting it from inside that one thing on which he is the final authority -- why then he finds it to be quite
empty, and in fact no kind of thing at all. A nothing keenly aware of itself as just that. Such is the view of himself at no distance from himself, provided he is honest and attentive enough. Which is to say, truly scientific.

Notice how nicely these two clues confirm each other. Whether looked at from outside or inside, bodies dissolve, matter vanishes, spirit remains -- once we bother to go into the matter. "Spirit is the living body seen from within, and the body is the outer manifestation of the living spirit." Extend this statement by Carl Jung to all bodies from electrons to galaxies, and you have the ultimate physics.

To understand the primacy of spirit is good. To realize it, to see it, wordlessly to experience it, to be it without thinking about it -- this is incomparably better. And incomparably easier: in fact, understanding must always be about its object, hovering round and about it and never gaining admittance. That is why the rest of this chapter is a heartfelt invitation to the reader to do one or two little experiments, which will surely lead to this direct perception of what would otherwise remain a mere set of lifeless concepts.

Observe this thing you are now holding. What in reality is this object called "book"? I mean this actual wad of paper with printing. There it is, a solid enough lump of stuff a few inches wide and long and less than an inch thick, weighing rather less than a pound, covered with (I trust) meaningful black marks on a white surface. Now where are these meaningful patterns that you are currently taking in? Are they over there, some 12 inches away, or are they where you are? Well, let's put the matter to the test. Go right up to the page and see. Apply your eye to this printing, as if you were putting on a
contact lens. Yes please, all the way. If you feel a bit ridiculous, remember what's at stake. Namely Reality itself, and your status within it. Go on ...

What did you see? I venture to say that what you found there was not meaningful sentences, not loose words, not a string of letters, not even fuzzy black marks on a white ground, but an illegible blur. And, on contact, nothing at all. You lost everything, but you didn't lose consciousness. It was the book, not you, that passed away. The nothing you found wasn't just nothing at all -- whatever that monster could be -- it was Nothing but Awareness. "There is a Light by which things are
seen," says Ramana Maharshi, "and if divested of things the Light alone remains."

So much for where these printed words are coming from. Where are they going to? Who is reading them now, on present evidence? What is taking them in? In your firsthand experience at this moment, is it a solid, rounded, hairy thing with two peepholes in it? Only you -- you who are your own closest inspector -- are in a position to say. Again, isn't it true that what you go right up to you lose? You certainly go all the way to you. So it's no wonder that you vanish, just as the page did, leaving only awareness. Intrinsically, then, the Reader is the same as the Read, and none other than Spirit which is indivisible. To put it picturesquely, this page of printing is a letter from Spirit to Spirit, a love-letter from You to You. And, of course, what's true of this page is true of the other pages in this book when you come to them, and of the hands that are now holding it, and of the furniture in the room, and of all that's going on outside. They are views of You, messages from You, displayed to You. At root, all you perceive is Yourself, heavily disguised as someone else, for your entertainment
and refreshment.

It would be difficult to overstate the practical importance of this discovery, its consequences for everyday living. All alienation, all separation, the many-sided threat of hostile things and persons and situations -- these are no more than bad dreams. All is You. How could you fear Yourself? How could you despise, resent, be bored by Yourself? How could you not love Yourself?

All this and more than this. Everything you see and hear and handle is something you want to say to yourself, something well worth saying, something significant -- even if it's only about an oncoming bus. There can be no dreadful or garbled or meaningless messages from you to You. News about You, read by You, is good news, however bad it may sound to the hearer who is deaf to its Source and Destiny in himself as Spirit. To him Ramana says: "The imperfection appears to you. God is perfection. His work also is perfection. But you see it as imperfection because of your wrong identification ... Find out if you are physical."

In conclusion, then, the spirit which is one and the same in all beings is the true nature of what we take to be the physical world. Things as such have no substance and no reality and no power at all. You could call them pictures of God held up by God for his own inspection, and in themselves less than paper-thin. All you have to do to live from this realization is to go on seeing who's doing it. And I mean seeing, not understanding.

Summary of Talk given by Jan Cox on 1/4/1988

Problems, unless due to a physical chemical imbalance (i.e., physical illness) are hierarchical position problems. No exceptions. Depression is a chemical imbalance. Note the nondescript character of the limbic versus the cerebral systems. What if the limbic/emotional is developed exclusively for the processing of hierarchical position problems? This is not a province for the Neural Revolutionary; it is unfitting for a NR to care about pack position. 

The ordinary treat problems by denial, a lessening, a withdrawal of consciousness of the problem (e.g., taking a drink to escape); this too is unfitting conduct for the NR. Such withdrawal of consciousness is a form of chemical self-protection for the ordinary. The so-called answers to problems require a price no one can pay: giving up a part of themselves, the part which is affected by the solution. Connected with this: any dream you can specifically formulate (put into words) can not come true; it will not have the specific experiential taste you anticipated. 

Absolutely forget every definitively imagined solution you've ever come up with for your problems. Consider: something introduced by Jan ( in the fits and starts common to his method) which you gained some significant insight from, and when later enlarged upon turns out to be opposite from your insight, makes your insight wrong--yet nevertheless the original insight (still 'wrong') benefit continues! This is a commingling of contrast which yields a super-fund of new data. When some problem between two in the Group results in Jan becoming involved as the third member with a mandated solution--if the problem resurfaces, it's your fault in a willful manner.

Time/consciousness contrast. If consciousness is slow relative to time flow, then time seems too quick; not enough time to deal with problems. If consciousness is quick relative to time flow of events, then time slows, becomes adequate to manage problems. Quick consciousness = dominant force. Slow consc. = submissive force. The lessening, withholding of consciousness = submission; submission is the slowing down of consciousness. 

Despite the fact that in every instant case the dominant, quicker force triumphs, ultimate victory belongs to the slower/submissive force in the 4-d view. 

In the social structure of humanity (lower, middle, upper) it is only the adjacent levels that try to impress/dominate each other. The extremes never even attempt it. The bourgeoisie/middleclass attempts to imitate the upper and dominate--force submission--on the lower in order to enhance their sensation of upward mobility in the hierarchy. Consider the internal use of this; the king (higher understanding) ignores the commoners (the ordinary, oblivious neural functioning).

God/Religion and the Dominant/Submissive Dance

[A thumbnail sketch of a talk given by Jan Cox, 1/28/1988]

God/religion is the ultimate dominating agent. Men are dying to submit, even to the extent of not needing positive proof of God's existence. Ordinary consciousness takes love to be a 'thing' which has been improperly used. But love is behavior, not a thing. Love is cellular-level behavior, functioning at the efficiency needed by Life right now.  All “dissatisfaction” is a crying out for love. Whatever is held admirable and noble, divine, by Life is by definition unattainable. All definitive dreams are ipso facto unachievable. 

“To err is human”: human foibles/flaws are the primary flow system/mechanism for energy movement in humanity; without the ordinary feeling in men of incompleteness, of falling short of the mark, civilization would be impossible.

Any form of criticism = hostility.  Hostility is an absolute block to New Information.  Hostility is a response to your own limits, thus you cannot see beyond them— cannot see/hear what any situation says to you. 

To be truly rich is to not care about it.  The Neural Revolutionary has got to be so rich in New Information as to have no care about his ordinary self. Don't try to be anything; don't tell yourself what you think you are.  If you do, you immediately preclude learning anything extraordinary.  You’re stuck fighting the “tar baby”.

A Real Hobby is the enjoyment of a favored activity without the need of an audience.  Private enjoyment.  Everything else is a cry: “Look at me!” and unworthy of a Neural Revolutionist.

A way around the Ruling Powers of Ordinary Consciousness: don't talk to yourself about what you are doing (remember, consciousness is the last to know).  Consider: what is the use of talking to yourself at all? Who is talking to who?  Don't respond to your internal voices; nothing fruitful happens when you tell yourself what you're doing.  In this regard, note the continuing existence/success of diet books and self-help books/tapes in mundane life. This is proof-positive they're failures; they can’t work. If they worked, they would soon have no market to sell to.  They are a form of Life's talking to Itself and accomplishing nothing. The first real taste of strength/power comes in being able to not talk to yourself.

“Wants” per se aren't bad, but you must understand the basis of them: they are useless for The Neural Revolution.  Remember: ‘wants’ are Life-dictated, and in accord with Life’s agenda, which makes no provision for Extraordinary Neural Effort/Vision.

 

EXTERNAL AND INHERENT TIME

[Summary of a talk given by Jan Cox on 11/04/1988] 

Only humans have a sense of time external to themselves.  Lower animals and all rhythmic inorganic matter have a sense of time that is inherent—based on rhythm and inseparable from its own physical being.  Man experiences a gap, a lag between what he thinks and what he does; between planning and action.  The whole 3-d world is based on and would collapse without time.  At a lower level men have an inherent, non-verbal sense of time but it is overridden by the intellectual sense of time.  There is no division between “in-here” and “out-there” except in Life’s need to have men perceive such a gap.  Time is a party to this perceived gap, but it’s never seen as such; never seen as external, though always acted upon as if independent and external in all human activity.  The non-verbal, inherent sense of time is felt as “you”.  It is a rhythm based in the genes and it can be out of synch with the intellectual sense of time, giving rise to felt-emotions of foreboding, feeling “out of sorts” etc.  To understand the conflict between these two senses of time relieves a Neural Revolutionist of much confusion suffered by the ordinary.

 

When anything makes “perfect sense” it can then move to a new level (can, not will), where it then makes no sense whatever.  This is why nobody can agree on “the truth”—it seems to change.  A new idea is at first, to everybody, nonsense.  The unknown always sounds at first like untruth; it must be in conflict with the already believed (i.e., what makes perfect sense) to be new at all.  The new idea is a force that acts to deform the status quo of the nervous system, within the degree allowed by the limits of its elasticity.  Eventually however, it must “snapback” to its original shape.  The elasticity of the intellect is the potential for people to change or else they would not even believe in change.  The elastic limits must be very narrow however or one’s field of expertise will not make perfect sense.  The expert who radically shifts to conflicting beliefs is not taken seriously anymore.

 

It is almost impossible to learn, feel or do anything new in ordinary life.  If it were possible then everybody would learn something, shift to a new level and then know nothing again.  Life cannot grow on such terms.  When the elasticity of a body has been exceeded it is useless then to its former level.  In the case of the intellect it is insanity; to the Neural Revolutionist it is relief and possibility.

 

Although believed to the contrary by the ordinary, it is impossible to learn from your mistakes.  The importance of this for the Neural Revolutionist: he must be able to learn not only from his mistakes but from everyone else’s as well.  There is not enough time in one lifetime for all possible human mistakes to flow through you.

 

 

Here's a summary of a talk given by Jan Cox on July 2, 1987:

Ordinary men accept Life as something other than themselves; not so the Neural Revolutionary. The ordinary equation: I + my problems = my life, gives a great stability and resistance to change in Life along with the illusion that the opposite is the case. A Neural Revolutionary would have almost nothing to say about his problems. He sees comprehensively, in a unified way, that problems and self are not separate. The ordinary fight their problems and consider that fight to be change. The I + not-I equation is obvious to the ordinary like A=A and B=B; whereas the Neural Revolutionary sees instead A=B and B=A. An example is the reality behind the word 'love'; for in spite of all 3-dimensional logic and reality to the contrary, love still exists.

 

This from the Neural Revolutionary Handbook: Ordinarily, the crude and ignorant make the best tyrants. An extraordinary tyrant would be educated, sophisticated and cultured, yet capable of dealing with the populace as if on their level. Consider the possible use of this fact in your own internal dialogue. The two dialogue partners speak the same language--the would-be controller voice uses the same crude language level as the controlled voice. But what if a 'ringer' could be inserted--an extraordinary tyrant, who could effect change?

 

The Real Neural Revolution is against ordinary consciousness. And it should be rebelled against because ordinary consciousness is unable to think of more than one thing at a time. It takes “either/or” alternatives as a capacity to think of two things at once. But it is not so. Neuralization (Neural + Neutral mental exploration)  is the attempt to think two things at once. 4-D consciousness is the seeing of concurrent pluralities of things and processes without the either/or binary limitation; this is the consciousness of time as a dimension; the seeing of time as a consistent, usable profitable dimension unrelated to ideas of past-present-future seeing; time is an absolute indivisible presence. Time in the absolute sense is feared by man. e.g., "given enough time I'll be dead". Those of Extraordinary Conscious Effort need to seek to see time-as-dimension; strain to acquire 4-D sight. Realize that ordinary consciousness is the supreme ability to keep Reality from all running together; to slicing it up into manageable, conforming-to-a-limited world view understanding.