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.

Rainer Maria Rilke

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying. And so I hold myself back and swallow the call note of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need? Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.

Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we take into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.

Oh, and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for -- that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart so painfully meets?

Is it any less difficult for lovers? But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate. Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the bird will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

Yes -- the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing...

More and more in my life and in my work I am guided by the effort to correct our old repressions, which have removed and gradually estranged from us the mysteries out of whose abundance our lives might have become truly infinite. It is true that these mysteries are dreadful and people have always drawn away from them.

But where can we find anything sweet and glorious that would never wear the mask of the dreadful? Life -- and we know nothing else -- isn't life itself dreadful? But as soon as we acknowledge its dreadfulness (not as opponents: what kind of match could we be for it?), but somehow with a confidence that this very dreadfulness may be something completely ours, though something that is just now too great, too vast, too incomprehensible for our learning hearts -- as soon as we accept life's most terrifying dreadfulness, at the risk of perishing from it (i.e., from our own Too-much!) -- then an intuition of blessedness will open up for us
and, at this cost, will be ours.

Whoever does not, sometime or other, give his full consent, his full and JOYOUS consent to the dreadfulness of life, can never take possession of the unutterable abundance and power of our existence; can only walk on its edge, and one day, when the judgment is given, will have been neither alive nor dead. To show the IDENTITY of dreadfulness and bliss, these two faces of the same divine head, indeed this one SINGLE face, which just presents itself this way or that, according to our distance from it or the state of mind in which we perceive it -- this is the true significance and purpose of the Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus."


(To Countess Margot Siszo-Noris-Crouy, April 12, 1923)

Reverie Upon A Mountain High

I sit upon a mountain high, above familiar scenes,
Of dusty browns and ocher hues and living shades of green.
All the well-loved landmarks there surround me in the vibrant air,
So old and wise, yet strangely new...inscrutable and fair.

I sit upon a mountain high and think of days gone by;
Of meadow flowers and enchanted hours with lizards and butterflies;
Of peaceful afternoons and starlit nights with bedtimes come too soon;
Of trees and rocks, of falls and knocks...the mystery of the moon.

I sit upon a mountain high; my favorite place I occupy,
To think of all that's gone before, a part of which I am no more;
Of all the untold thousand things and more that I have never seen:
For in every field in every spring, there is a new and different green.

I sit upon a mountain high and think of long ago,
Of those unborn who'll see a world that I will never know.
Aye, poignant 'tis to feel so, yet with joy my heart still sings,
As ever does it know the way, where the Bird of Time has no wings.
For appearance holds us all in thrall where REALITY bursts asunder.
And what seems all separate, is in TRUTH together...

I sit upon a mountain high, knowing all that was...is yet to be!
Feeling future deeds and unknown lands and seas to be but silver moonlight memories...
'Strange thoughts' you say, 'A fool's repast'--
But Oh! Perfection of Wisdom shall tell at last,
The Open Secret...hidden for all to seize.

I sit upon a mountain high, a silhouette against the sky,
United in mute harmony, I am all things...all things are me.
Just as ever have I been and ever more will be.
Oh Infinity! Infinity: the dewdrop is the shining sea.

Whereof We Cannot Speak and The First Myth

WHEREOF WE CANNOT SPEAK, THEREOF WE MUST REMAIN SILENT.

and:

THE FIRST MYTH

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s densely and meticulously reasoned Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published in 1922, concludes with the elliptical statement above (not the subtitle). Ludwig, in his preface to the work, paraphrases: “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.” Is there anything the human mind can’t talk about? Without intending here a nuts and bolts analysis of Ludwig’s philosophical argument, we will instead use his conclusion to launch an exploration of our own within the labyrinthine corridors of the purview of the mind, or, what is meant herein by the term “mind”: the conscious part of the brain (also known as the cerebrum).

By the “conscious part of the brain” we mean the seat of that uniquely self-reflexive human awareness that people refer to when they say “I” or “me”. “Me, myself and I”: the most intimate companions known to any man. Companions? Yes, and without fail every sane human deems it so. But when the mind thinks “I”, whom is it addressing? Itself. And who is speaking? Itself. Hmmmm, how can this be? Isn’t this tantamount to the brain lifting itself by its own bootstraps?! A hand grasping itself or an eye seeing itself is the logical equivalent. How can you see the back of your own head? Not with a mirror: what’s seen in a mirror is a reflection. Let’s see what may be said clearly about this curious state of affairs, and what deserves Ludwig’s silence.

The ultimate question for a man—because the exemplary illuminator of Ultimate Mystery—is “Who is this speaking?” (or, alternately, “Who am I?” )… NOT: “Does God exist” or “What is the purpose of life?” Yet it’s certainly the de facto quotidian practice that the ordinary mind never asks of itself the first question, whereas it’s quite prone to ask the latter two. Also, note that the latter two invite investigation away from the source of the questions; further, they can be answered (viz., all religions are answers) whilst the former cuts directly to the chase—but right up a dead-end alley! Basically, silence is the only proper answer to ‘Who?’ since the responding agency IS the asking agency. You might as well have enquired: “What happens to your lap when you stand up?” or “What’s the answer to this question?” What’s the point? Here then, is a prime candidate for the “whereof we cannot speak… “; for here is…The First Myth: “I”.

What exactly happens when the mind disregards Ludwig’s advice however, and provides the answer to itself of: “I am speaking” or “It’s me!”? It is, in effect, pretending unto itself. And all pretence is known pretence. Thus, at some level the mind must know that talking to itself is just a talking…of the talking! Ah hah! Now, why would the mind pretend to itself? And why isn’t everyone unavoidably aware that instead of “I,” it really is: “Attention on the set!—this is the conscious part of the brain speaking…”?

Another supremely unmasking question for an individual man: “What am I going to think next?” Any self-respecting mind that can ask the question clinically and acutely should be goggle-eyed and struck dumb, for—surely everyone can agree—nobody has the faintest notion of what idea is going to occur to them next, in the willy-nilly chain of thoughts continually arising in the mind! Zounds!: except when engaged in scientific research on some physical-world related problem, the brain is not in control of itself. It cannot dictate what it thinks; it registers and reacts to whatever external stimuli the environment provides, whether a hot stovetop, or a book of poetry or a cinema film or the artist’s blank canvas (or the blinking prompt-icon in a word document on a computer screen, importuning input for the written task at hand…).

Here’s one more killer question: “When did you decide to be born?” Or, “When did you decide to be a sorehead; to be beautiful or ugly or smart or short or happy or glum?” Face it and see clearly: ‘you’ had nothing to do with, have nothing to do with and will have nothing to do with creating the reality within which you move and breathe. Do I have your attention?` It is The First Myth in another form. Perhaps you don’t buy this scenario, yet with impartial observation and careful analysis it’s inescapably true. But the mind will say otherwise, and it is here that Ludwig’s counsel “thereof we must remain silent” becomes apt and essential. Only in silence, both outward and inward, can The First Myth be fully bared for what it is: pretence and misdirection. This is re-cognition and awakening.

Re-cognition? Consider an analogy. You walk into your garden shed to fetch a tool for weeding, when Yeek! you nearly step on a venomous snake curled on the floor at your feet!! Jumping back like a scalded cat and turning to dodge out the door, it suddenly clicks that it’s NOT a snake at all: it’s a coil of old rope lying on the floor. Whew! Pant, pant! Be still my beating heart. OK. So, what happened? The mind was fooled and took an illusion for reality. Sound familiar? Your famous “I” has the same substance as that snake in the shed; it’s just that the “I”-fooling goes on interminably—in everybody but Those-Who-See. Analogous to the seeing-thru (recognition) of the illusion of the snake, when the penny drops, all confusion, fear, worry, unease and self-importance related to “I” falls away, leaving the unadorned (perhaps even laughable) what-there-is-really: the conscious part of the brain talking of, for and to itself. When you see THAT, well, all bewilderment and noise condenses into a blackhole and vanishes. THEN, you re-cognize what’s going on...