Zoo Nous

It is not that zoo keepers are cruel, I suspect rather that most of them come from the pet loving population that is such a substantial element of the US population. It is not that they are thoughtless or poorly trained and thus culpable for incidents like the tiger escaping from the SF zoo on December 25. No I was thinking about this, and how someone like Jan Cox felt so deeply the plight of the confined animal. His sense of raw connection to living creatures was something he did not reveal in his public emotional posture, just his actions, and I may at some point discuss more about his concern for animals and how he demonstrated it. But the gulf between the compassion of Jan Cox for anything trapped and ordinary pet lovers makes that gulf comprising the moat around the tigers enclosure mean and mere.

Which is by way of asking how the ordinary can continue to like PBS nature documentaries and train for zoo jobs and have no inkling of what an animal in a zoo goes through. Apparently hardly any whisper of compassion based on the communal nature of all creatures ruffles their actions.

How is this, and what I noticed was the similarity between zoos and ordinary thought. Control is maintained through a strict separation. A separation necessary for the existence of the zoo and safety of visitors, of course. In people this is called binary thought, things cannot get mixed up regardless of the violence this does to reality. This is for the safety of the sanity of the ordinary.

Here in Pinpoint Georgia we are near a big time zoo which has a history of dreadful cruelty. And ongoing and hardly disguised at all is the current cruelty to the huge mammals called whales. They keep dying at the Atlanta Aquarium and it is this excuse and that, and just get another one; the problem that these creatures must have a cage the size of the ocean to live happily cannot rise to the surface of anyone's awareness, at least not anyone on the tourist boards awareness. Reality surpasses conception as it must.

String of galaxies

Someone of whom I have always been very fond recently reminded us in another forum that Jan Cox had us study the maxim "There is nothing out there." Perhaps this person's riff on this was where I got the idea but I have myself always thought that if "there is nothing out there," there CANNOT BE anything in here. And as to where that might leave so-called reality, the picture I got from popularizations of string theory is of lines of galaxies, a so thin wall, between unimaginable voids. A line between what is not out there and what is not in here may be all there is.

Snake Skin and Snake Oil

To what extent could the use of words parallel the way animals roll in the smell of other species? I was going to say the dung,or carcasses, not smell, but the example that most recently came to my attention was squirrels which have been observed to eat shed snake skin and then lick their own fur. The zoologists surmise that this is a protective device, so I guess, that when the squirrels are asleep predators will think they are snakes and leave them alone.

Here is the Reuters article about the UC Davis research:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It's scary being a little, tasty squirrel, but some species of the rodents have come up with an intimidating camouflage -- snake smells.
California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew up rattlesnake skin and smear it on their fur to mask their scent, a team at the University of California Davis reported.
"They're turning the tables on the snake," Donald Owings, a professor of psychology who helped lead the research, said in a statement.
Barbara Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior, watched ground squirrels and rock squirrels chewing up pieces of skin shed by snakes and then licking their fur.
The scent probably helps to mask the squirrel's own scent, especially when the animals are asleep in their burrows, they wrote in the journal Animal Behavior.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox: Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and David Wiessler)

If so, then men using words are warding off some realms (we surmise) they are aware are dangerous but at some level are also aware they are ignorant of. Perhaps words are meant to ward off the very real hazards of ignorance. Of course words have a legitimate function--
to, in the analysis of Jan Cox, break up the external world into rearrangeable pieces (hence what is called human progress). But regarding the unseen worlds---words are simply not designed to provide information or useful analysis. And yet we have philosophy, religion, psychology, et cet era, for thousands of years and no sense that this illusion is wearing out.... How to account for the persistence of the human belief that man's mental machinery can deal with whatever is beyond the obviously physical??? Aside from some cosmic late night commercial for a dice everything machine, how account for the human susceptibility to using his mental apparatus to chop up non physical reality. So my suggestion is this: perhaps part of the reason is that words have a reflected allure, a scent from another realm, that is comforting in view of a sensed void, an intimation of a different reality. Perhaps the illusion of control and insight has a protective function for the species. Hey, it is just a thought.

Point Number Two

The last post mentioned two points in reference to the subject of drugs that Laura Huxley's death brought to mind. Ahem---here is the second point. The drive for freedom underlies the push for the power that so-called 'enlightenment' is. This I base on the one person I know who was successful in a rare and yet much discussed aspect of human existence---the mystical awareness. This power comes certainly though not entirely from understanding and remembering the nature of the obstacles surrounding the path, and the nature of what CAN be accomplished. And remembering, and persevering in the remembrance.

Here's the thing about drugs. Yeah, they work, but they are external. You are dependent on some physcial object so your analysis of what freedom even is is vitiated. They work but the joy of the quest, what Jan Cox once called, "The Way of Real Knowledge", is in achieving the greatest amount of independence possible on this planet. Drugs are the opposite, of this reality. You need something in the external world or you do not have the experience. Meaning you cannot treat the experience as subject to scientific analysis. When I say that drugs work, you have a flat experience compared to what may be possible and you have a total lack of control which is the opposite (so far as any opposite may be said to exist) of Real Awareness.

Actually the W.O.R.K awareness is easier than taking drugs. You don't have to worry about how much something costs, you don't have to worry about a steady supply, you don't have to worry about a bad trip. Remembering to remember is the only chance of not being a vegetable in a mechanized agribusiness transfer of energy. Of course this is not to suggest that success in the Way of Real Knowledge, the W.O.R.K (as Jan said "I call it WORK because it is work," avoids the vegetative end of all things, I could not say that, I would not say that. The idea of doing the W.O.R.K to avoid the common fate of Humanity is --- silly.

And yet the economy outlined above, the radical efficiency of, does not seem to be a persuasive point -- and this itself is something helpful to consider.

How Not to Do It

Two points regarding the death today of Aldous Huxley's wife: "The AP reports that Laura Archera Huxley, the wife to Aldous Huxley has just died at the age of 96. The article notes that she died of cancer, despite being in good shape and a regular exerciser." The first is just the amusing way the AP reported it---- "despite being in good shape..." Nobody lives forever, you are going to die of something. The article further states "that after her husband died of cancer in 1963, that she spent the rest of her own life promoting his legacy and his work." That legacy of course including the popular notion that you can trip your way to enlightenment. No, not the kind of tripping upstairs Jan Cox talked about, the 60's kind of tripping I have forgotten.

I suppose the subject of death could be worked into a comment on the mysticism taught by Jan Cox, I suppose, being as how so many schools work the contemplation of one's mortality into a serious method. Jan Cox did not however, although once he commented that such was a valid approach---contemplating one's own mortality. He said that this method had not worked for him though. (I cannot assume it never worked for him.) He died at 67 "despite being in good shape." Actually his life span was miraculous considering he was genetically programmed to die in his forties. Although regular exercise was something he encouraged, regular exercise was a minimum necessity---nothing that would of itself lead to enlightenment.

Nor can drugs lead to what is commonly called enlightenment. Recreational use was something he never encouraged, only allowing it under certain rare circumstances, and then, as with our beer drinking, with the proviso that you were not helping yourself in the quest, at all, by using drugs. Just don't pretend to yourself. Actually in these kind of comments he was pointing not to the drug and alcohol consumption, so much as trying to get us to notice the activity of our mechanical consciousness. Try and lift a mug while thinking 'this is hurting me.' Try it.

That "being in good shape" is your genetic programming, as is everything else. Exercise does not extend your life: Ms. Huxley dies at 96, Jan Cox at 67, both avid exercisers. Does this mean achieving a mystical awareness is hopeless. Yes. Keep that fact in your mind while thinking also: some have done so.

(And it sounds to me like the AP reporter just didn't want to jog today. )

How Not to do it--- such items won't get you anywhere, but help the quester perhaps in setting an internal background which allows for progress.

Clinical amnesia & ordinary consciousness

Is clinical amnesia just ordinary consciousness writ large. This thought came to me after reading an article in a recent New Yorker.
Oliver Sacks in his amnesia series in the New Yorker (September 24, 2007) describes a musician who cannot remember anything more than a few seconds. This is Clive Wearing, described as "an eminent English musician and musicologist," who became the "worst case of amnesia ever recorded."Even so he can conduct music and play well in an attentive talented manner. The interesting thing that comes to mind regarding the insights of Jan Cox as revealed in his writings is that this musician developed topics of conversation, a few topics, such as the solar system, and using these few topics, he could fit into a conversational setting. The amnesia was not less total, but the subject of the amnesia article had developed what his wife called "stepping stones" in his consciousness, -- these few topics which he repeated many many times. What occurred was that this amnesia and these few topics are not actually different from the condition Jan and others (one of the few instance where he did use a not totally original vocabulary), called 'being asleep,' the state of consciousness for normal people. If my surmise is correct then what the neurologists are flagging as defining characteristics of amnesia, are actually just a more extreme form of the human sleeping condition. The point is not that this poor fellow is not in a bad state, but rather that the description of his symptoms are merely those of ordinary consciousness, taken to a more extreme degree than is commonly seen on this planet of ours.

A glimpse of freedom--starting with a news report

Starting off with a Reuters news report:

DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - A crocodile that escaped from a travelling circus in Ukraine and evaded capture for six months died on Friday after two days back in captivity, officials said.
"The crocodile was lying in the water and suddenly he just floated to the surface," Oleksander Soldatov of Ukraine's Emergencies Ministry said in the eastern city of Donetsk.
"We pulled it out of the water and the body felt all cold. It seems clear he was alive before and just died."
Ministry officials, unsure whether the crocodile was comatose or dead, had earlier called in a vet to examine the reptile. Nicknamed Godzilla or Godzi, it was captured alive this week after escaping from a travelling circus in May.
It had been spotted several times lurking around industrial sites near the city of Mariupol, on the coast of the Sea of Azov. But it repeatedly eluded search teams.
It was finally found basking in a pool at a thermal power station, where the water was warmer than the nearby sea.
The crocodile, which was over a metre (yard) long, was then taken 100 km (60 miles) by car to Donetsk where it was freed into a fire service tank.
The crocodile's owner, quoted by the daily Segodnya, said he could only collect it on Monday because of circus commitments.
Soldatov said Godzilla would be cremated.
"This is an exotic animal. He simply cannot be buried," he said.
(Reporting by Lina Kushch; Writing by Ron Popeski; Editing by Michael Winfrey)"

Jan Cox would have understood the dying of this beast. Jan was this crocodile.
A thirst for freedom defines the life of Jan Cox. But looking at this story makes me wonder if perhaps this thirst, oh so feeble in most people, yet extends beyond the range of mammals on this planet. In most people, over 99%, this craving for freedom is satisfied by (deliberately produced) fiction. Very interesting.

Ordinary thought and the thought of scientists

Physicists are rock stars to the students of Jan Cox. Except any time someone else is viewed as a hero you are off track. But aside from that oft-repeated rule, what unites many of us on an ordinary level is an avid interest in the sciences. In the natural sciences the normative function of ordinary thought can be viewed -- the external world is reshuffled with a view to seeing what is going on. The thought of those in the natural sciences can produce an effect which is similar though not identical to that of the thinking of those on a "mystical path."

One of the main methods Jan Cox used with his students was pushing rational thought to its limits. Any sincere and persistent attempt to follow through on the implications of a train of thought will result in being closer to objective reality -- to keep pushing thought through to its limits is to position oneself for true insight. You cannot think too hard. Pushing the rational mind to its limits is a major tool for the so-called seeker.

What happens with the scientist is that the creativity involved in a sincere attempt to understand the external world produces effects similar to the glimpses one receives on the somewhat different path which is the subject of these shortl essays. These appercus are so lovely and satisfying that the scientist does not suspect they are mere trinkets compared to greater possibilities available to someone determined to push stoutly through to the ultimate implications of one's thinking. Trinkets, that distract. Yes we all love them -- we simply cannot settle for whipped cream only when there is vaster buffet.

The Real Alchemy

The alert reader will perhaps have reached the conclusion that progress in "This Kind of Stuff" is impossible -- how after all if the secret is fresh thought, can you communicate anything to anyone, and how, if the weight of an entire planet, the mechanical genetic heritage which we are born with, and which surrounds us, how with this weight can one speak of freedom at all.
Understand the reality of these strictures, contemplate the impossibility that is being pointed at.
And think about those stories of alchemists. Those alchemist who said they had transmuted lead to gold---those people understood first that lead would always be lead.

The fact is that progress in seeing point blank reality IS impossible. Perhaps that sentence should be rephrased to read sustaining the vision, remembering the quest, is impossible. Yet some men have succeeded.

Computer security and science fantasy

It just occurred to me that the reason there is no reliable rootkit protection for computers, is for the same reason Jan Cox said that maps cannot know their creator. This despite the widespread fantasy among the scientific world that computers are approaching a point that they will be as smart as their creators, that is, people. Won't happen, and that is because of the nature of our planet.

Holidays and Real Groups

Holidays are the very embodiment of habit and so to help his students see freshly Jan Cox mainly ignored the normal holidays --- he would say when he was finished talking, is anybody going to be around the 25th, and if enough were, we would meet and get to listen to him talk on Christmas day.

Enough folks meant a certain critical mass that was necessary or else he was wasting his time talking. He knew his own worth and would not speak if there were too few people present, but I do not recall that happening on a normal meeting night. Maybe once, in decades of talking. Sometimes we met 5 nights a week.

And a party on Saturday night. Beer was the drink of choice for most. It meant of course being less conscious, and he reminded us of this sometimes. The beer drinking is an example of the reality of 'no rules.' The enjoinment was to struggle constantly to be aware, to extend that moment when you are able to remember both your internal and the external environment. Yet the bonds of community which encouraged the struggle were helped by partying together. Even if the drinking meant lowering your potential to be aware. And he knew the reality that folks were perfect. Hmm -- can't seem to phrase that so it is not ordinary cant. So skip that last point, perhaps I will come back to it.

The group of people Jan gathered around himself were he said sometimes, the equivalent together of an awakened man. The group was not, could not, be an ordinary social group, that would be mechanical and the opposite of our aims. One way he insured that the group was not ordinary was the composition --- staying in the group meant being around people who were not your type. This does not happen in an ordinary social group---those are formed with some communality among the types of people composing the group. I like to think of the Friends sitcom to explain this better: In real life an anthropologist and a afternoon tv actor would not be best buddies. This would only happen in tv land, and in a real work group. Remember the women on that show-- actually they could have really been friends, despite the differences which fed the comedic purpose. That says something about women though. It does not invalidate my point.

And the mechanicalness of holidays does not diminish the warm feelings I have for people who have already been reading my words.

Who is this Jan Cox?

Dear Anonymous, you have raised excellent questions. First--who is Jan Cox. A contemporary writer, dead now for two years. During his life he gathered students interested in following him on a path of mysticism. Those students, of whom I am one, are tasked with making sure his words reach as wide an audience as possible. Of course while he was alive this was a major goal of his, he referred to it as shooting blinding into the woods in the hopes of hitting something. This description points to the difficulty of attracting folks since the interest in this area of human experience, while genetically based, is unpredictable, often undecipherable, to an external observer. It is hard to know who will be interested and so the publicizer is "shooting blind." Finding a real teacher is an incredible lucky life event, and this is NOT what his students are offering now. We do have though an enormous amount of his writing and videotapes, and they are what remains of a unique life, the writings and the effect he had on the people around him.

Okay -- he has a web site we maintain==
www.jancox.com, where an huge quantity of material is available. This though is only a small part of his written and taped words and those are currently being prepared for archival storage and public distribution. And also there is an email list mainly populated by his students, plus those who encountered his writing after his death. I will gladly send anyone the link to this list, privately, since it is set up as a private yahoo group, but all are welcome there.

You also asked why "American" mysticism, when this aspect of human experience transcends transitory geographical bounds. My intent here is to focus attention on Jan's position in a continuum of mystics. Specifically in recent history (twentieth century) there has just been Georges Gurdjieff and Jan Cox. Between them they brought mysticism out of the church and into the scientific era. These contentions of mine will be discussed more fully soon. So I myself picture Gurdjieff as bringing eastern mysticism to Europe, and Jan picking up the mantle and positioning mysticism in the modern American dominated world.

Though since there were no other teachers alive of his stature, he welcomed everyone with the proper sincerity, or what he perceived as potential. In fact, he was incapable of resisting someone who sincerely asked for help on "The Path."

Anonymous -- thank you for the questions.

Horror vacuii 2

The following quote from a book review quotes Eliot's reaction to Gurdjieff. It seems like the reviewer has categorized Eliot's attitude well.
...
the publisher's reports - relaxed, unbuttoned, but (on the basis of the samples Schuchard gives) carefully thought out none the less - give insight into what Eliot thought about the barren shores of mysticism. "The addiction to Asiatic mysticism, separated from Asiatic religion, produced... something which to me is very much ... repellent in Gurdjieff and Ouspensky."
from
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,,2212357,00.html

and more:
"Eliot's suspicions were aroused by any form of mysticism which had not evolved out of, and was not supported by, a religion."

Ah yes, mysticism not supported by a religion. What could this mean -- what could a mysticism be which was not supported by --- words. And yet what mysticism COULD be supported in any healthy way by ---words???

It is a barren place we seek, barren of the past, barren of words, ...

Upcoming topics

in our blog about Jan Cox.

The arguments that suggest his significance is of the century defining kind.

A glance of a history of mysticism----what can such a phrase mean? His words on the subject
ref other mystics, his points about history

What is history---the nature of progress

Conspiracies -- their nature, the nonsense of thinking an ordinary person could pursue such, or that you as an ordinary thinker could detect such, his interest in, his hints about (Peru?)

His significance in terms of American history on the political level. Did he give Jimmy Carter the idea to run for president.

The Nature of Ordinary Thought

The nature of ordinary mentation

Ordinary thought, that mentation of which most people are unaware of an alternative, operates solely on the principle of polar opposition, and this is a main reason it cannot be relied upon to assess reality. There are uncountable and unaccountable so called causes for any (so-called) event. In these circumstances to single out ONE cause, and think something has been explained is illusory. The complexity of the surrounding and internals worlds of man is simplified by the mind or the ordinary intellect could not function. The intellect has a proper function, but that is not describing reality. The failure to understand the appropriate uses of the intellect is a source of pain ultimately.

The mind of man simplifies reality, and enables itself to function, by defining any and everything in terms of opposition. It never really specifies anything at all, in itself (the things self is what I mean). It uses words and these words only make sense at all if they are defined in contrast to something else. Take the word "table." A definition opposes this piece of furniture to a chair, or to the floor. This is called binary logic. It makes computers work fine. Computers do not assess reality either.

Fanfare for the common dog

My dog belongs to the same pack as Dmitri Shostakovich and Aaron Copland. Both composers have inspired in Sunny the sing along urge. It is so cute, -- I did not say euphonious, I said cute. Last night on the telly we watched a special on wolves, and the sound of howling puzzled and riveted him. But only at the sound of the masters did he add his voice to the pack.

The sound of my dog gurgling to classical symphonies presents the spectre of gaps, gaps of which if we are unaware, we risk a punitive ignorance. The gap I mean is the gap between what you consider the known world and what the world actually is. The mystic participates in point blank reality, on occasion. The distance between ordinary humanity and someone like someone like Jan Cox is at least the distance between a canine and a classical composer.

This is not elitism. The world is as it is. I did not invent this planet. I am merely trying to point with fluffy words to a certain spotless reality. As inhabitants of this planet it behooves us to struggle to know what is. If for no other reason than to avoid getting our heads knocked through ignorance of the surrounding structure.

Walking the Plank

Jan Cox did not, to my recollection, ever dwell on a peculiar resistance to pursuing This Kind of Stuff, as he sometimes called the quest. Now perhaps he did in Magnus Machina, and I just missed it, but regardless, I am referring to what some mystical writers called the horror vacuii. The picture that came to mind is of walking across a wooden floor. Your feet may easily stay on one plank and your transit be the kind of mechanical repetition that vanishes without notice. But imagine this----your path is the same but you are crossing on a plank which has no adjoining lumber. You are not crossing a floor, but a narrow beam. For most, (not all) this would immediately change the stakes. For some a mechanical motion would become a challenging feat.

The balance that was careless and effective, becomes a goal perhaps out of reach, and the failure to attain it has penalties. The awareness of emptiness can become debilitating. The surroundings which insulated one, but were unnoticed, become desirable in their absence. This physical picture also outlines a mental complexity when the action is not physical but mental---the action is maintaining one's attention, and the sketch just drawn can illuminate the resistance to keeping one's balance on the mental beam of focused attention. The barest glimpse of success, the diminishment of thought,can be repellent and the glimpse exemplify a meaning of the phrase horror vacuii. One reason Jan may not have mentioned it is that I am wrong. Regardless, my story points to a nice summary. Walking the plank, maintaining a focused attention, implies death: a death which may be scary, but the death talked about here is the death of the irrelevant and unnecessary, -- the death of the self.

Of course he did talk about the misconceptions surrounding this phrase, the death of the self, and we can discuss that soon. Of course you could just go to his web site, now. Soon I will be linking this blog to his site but for now you could just type, www.jancox.com.

Overlooking the obvious

Quoting again the New York Times (and Jason Epstein) to make a point about how the ordinary intellect operates:
"...A few weeks after being released, in June 1981, Mr. Abbott, now a darling in leftist literary circles, stabbed to death a waiter in a Lower East Side restaurant, and his champion [that is, Norman Mailer] became a target of national outrage...

The episode was the last great controversy of Mr. Mailer’s career. Chastened perhaps, and stabilized by what would prove to be a marriage with Ms. Church, a former model whom he wed in November 1980, Mr. Mailer mellowed and even turned sedate. The former hostess-baiter and scourge of parties became a regular guest at black-tie benefits and dinners given by the likes of William S. Paley, Gloria Vanderbilt ... His editor, Jason Epstein, said of this period, 'There are two sides to Norman Mailer, and the good side has won.'"

Epstein's evaluation is just silly, and yet who would question his point until it was pointed out that what happened to alter Mailer's behavior, was not -- that his good side won -- what happened to Mailer was that his hormones calmed down as he aged. Of course it is no credit to me to have noticed this bald fact, Jan Cox used examples like this often.

The Extreme Empiricism of Jan Cox

A radical empiricism underlies one of the tools Jan used to help people explore the world and themselves. What is often called 'self observation' was variously described by Jan to his students. Regardless of the emphasis in his descriptions, attention to the so-called inner world of man was critical. He carried the scientist's empiricism to the job of understanding one's internal thoughts.

This approach is unpopular in the scientific arena since often scientists are unwilling to credit this approach, labeling it as subjective. Had they tried it, the scientists of the physical external world would have realized that subjective is not a good adjective. Had they sincerely directed their curiosity on themselves they would have realized one's thoughts are not any kind of unique phenomena, in content, or in source.

The ordinary thoughts of one man are about as unique as one chicken in a noisy hen house.
The internal cackling is not subjective since it typifies a species. Is not the typical sound of species an interesting important and relevant field of study?? Just because with man there is an internal quieter side to the typical human chatter does not make it a less scientific subject. The internal chatter, if studied, reveals that man's internal life is not original, not autonomous, and not for the purpose the thinker assumes. The scientists of the external world miss these crucial facts, and since they have not turned a systematic attention to their own internal world, or wondering about the soundness of the positivistic aversion to internal study, their caveats about this approach lack intellectual weight.

There are complications to the intellectuals' interior experience also, which prevent them often pursuing the path of self-knowledge, but we can talk about that later. And later we can discuss Sagan's rather amazing contention that the human brain has stopped evolving. Oh really, and how could we test that statement? So check back.

The Meaning of religion

This just came to my attention, a quote from the New York Times, dated August 19, 2007 (by Mark Lilla, but that is irrelevant, he is typical of the academic establishment in this regard.) The quote: "We in the West find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still inflame the minds of men....We..assumed that...human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that political theology had died in 16th century Europe..."
What is interesting here is the lack of knowledge of what religion could be. The obvious assumption is that Islamic extremism is religious:, religiously motivated, concerned with theology.

Actually the motivation of these people (what I am calling Islamic extremism) has nothing to do with a sane definition of religion. This battle between cultures is hormonal. Bin Laden is no more religious than, oh, Pat Robertson. These desicated ideas are merely the wallpaper over the surge to dominate. Without understanding the basis for the conflict any solutions will be equally accidental and temporary. In another's phrase: "Ignorant armies clashing by night." And history continues. Academe continues. It all fits and is appropriate. Some people with a particular intent though can profit from looking beneath the wallpaper to the actual stucture of the room.

The Death of Socrates

written by Plato, is an account that produces shivers for some. Find it and read it. One thing that struck me was the ending of Plato's account and his use of adjectives. The effect was identical to the attempts I might have made to describe Jan Cox. But adjectives, modifiers, are beside the vision. They are fill-ins for one's ignorance of an actual present reality. His use of modifiers underscores that Plato missed the point. Just interesting. One is tempted to draw parallels, perhaps introduce the topic of Gurdjieff's handling of "the passing on of his legacy." The temptation is not irresistible. For now.

What is the point of being Plato, what is the point of being Paul....

Be fruitful

How interesting it is the many ways plants and animals react to stressful situations. Magnolia trees will bloom in drought conditions, construction site conditions with cement dust sinking into every timbery pore. They will bloom white blossoms although the leaves are shrunken and sparse and the naked skeleton of the tree sticks out like some famine victim.

Now females of the most complex primate species, they, will lose the ability to have children in quite stressful situations. What is the difference? The flow of life goes through each species, and a certain struggle to survive persists in both these examples. The tree blooms in an almost conscious attempt to leave seeds for another tree to grow. All of the tree's energy must be going to that seed. The woman, in constrast, must be around herself to nurse and protect a child for more than a decade after the child is born. Therefore in sub survival situations it makes no sense for the whole species if a woman has a child, and she then dies. A magnolia seed drops on the ground and may start a new tree. An human infant must have surrounding adults to live.

The contrasting reactions, having seeds or not having seeds, work for the same goal. The tree blooms to carry on a whole species, and the woman does not bloom to carry on the species. In our example, it is better to protect the life of the woman by having her not conceive, in sub survivial conditions, since her odds of surviving herself are improved by her not having a child in these rough conditions: her survival enlarges the chances of later conception in perhaps better conditions. Thus her not being fertile in famine conditions protects the whole species speaking of species survival as a whole.

Be fruitful, for the species at the physical level --- and at other levels also, an interesting admonition.

The limitations of a dual reality sketch

A new picture of the relation between the so-called mental and physical realms of man's existence comes to mind after reading this article at the bbc website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7073807.stm
There is a creature called a colugo described as a 'furry kite' for the way it glides from tree to tree. Sounds like a flying squirrel to me, though it doesn't look like a flying squirrel, and the substance of the article is that this creature is man's nearest relative after primates. Anyway what a good picture of the reality of thoughts. Thoughts are better described as "gliding," if we picture the ordinary conception of thought as "flying" in polar opposition to the physical, gravity-bound earthly world. In my picture of the relation of thought and physical reality, the ordinary view is of thought as something not gravity bound. The colugol points to a picture of something gliding, that is, it could appear to be flying, but, really, the motion is gravity bound, the motion is falling, and so the motion of the colugol, and I would argue, human ordinary mentation, is physical, gravity defined like all matter, despite the opinion of most. A limited metaphor perhaps but already I like the idea of an new adjective: colugolic. "Colugolic" is something made of the same substance as that composing that which it is supposedly the opposite of; an only apparent opposition.

The nature of thought

The nature that is of ordinary, mechanical thought, --- is binary. It's purpose is NOT to investigate reality, not to convey anything remotely covered by the adjective 'truth.' Binary means everything is compared, everything is one of two things. This dualism is inappropriately used to define anything except the external world. Reality is complex in a way which must be seen and cannot be conveyed accurately with so-called rational thought. Mechanical rational thinking is a useful tool, of course, and mechanical thought has served man well from an evolutionary perspective--- it is the tool of humanity's progress-- because this binary function does well the thought required to imagine the external world in a new way, and by this ability to picture changes in the physical world around us, most of what we call progress has been achieved.

The importance of destructive energy

found a lovely example of the importance of the "destructive" flow of energy, as he often called it, or as you could also say, "the defining" force. A couple of centuries ago there was a group of intellectuals in New England of whom Ralph Waldo Emerson is now best remembered. One of that circle, Henry Ward Beecher wrote, "it is an honorable thing thing for a man to acquire several books a year." Or close to. Now what I am pointing to is that this sentence, while it still makes sense, has no staying power, no magnetism. Like portions of many manuscripts from earlier times, this sentence seems to be on the border of making sense. Most of the time reading historical documents, we misinterpret them because we are not aware that we are only hearing one side of a dialogue. In the present example of Beecher's sentiment, we do not, two centuries later, need to defend the manliess of reading. Such was not the case in the 19th century America. Then it was worth writing down, worth quoting. It could be used as a cudgel in an argument. Today it has no force, and is easily forgotten, for it is no longer part of the dance of the three forces which the mystic this blog is about identified. To exist you need to draw resistance. There was resistance to the idea of owning books two hundred years ago. There is not now, and so this sentiment is forgotten. Not even part of history really, just on the brink of non-existence, because it is non debatable. Every thing that lives needs resistance, the glow of destructive energy.

dear dear poets

Keillor quotes John Hollander as saying
"I want my poems to be wiser than I am, to know more about themselves than I do."
Well I am sure the poems do, because everything anyone says reveals more, alludes to more than the speaker realizes. That and less.

There is no separate mental realm, no duplex reality, in reality

Conjuring up pictures to help convey this: like a blanket, with one side physical, and one mental, or,
a black globe (the body, hormones) with the colors through a prism appearing (the so-called 'mental',
and here is one of his pictures, called the neural history of mankind which pertains:

"The Fable-ist's Neural History Of Man

At first there was only lightning,
Then came thunder,
Who, for the first time, made lightning aware of its own existence --
Then (in a hard-to-explain manner),
Lightning's original existence was diminished.

And all normal minds within hearing distance said:
"We don't get it!
And even if we did, we wouldn't like it!
And even if we did get it (and thus didn't like it),
We wouldn't believe it...since we'd be certain you just made it up!"

Copyright 2007, the unpublished writings of Jan Cox.

The Nature of Psychic Phenomena

Sitting here watching the rain mist here in drought proclaimed Snellville, and remembering I heard something on the radio last Friday night, some preacher or somebody, saying to his listeners (and me as I surfed across the radio dials) pray for rain in Atlanta. And here it is misting for three days now. Do I think the thoughts of the listeners were responsible for this?? They could have played a part. Really I have no idea if they did have an effect on this lovely rain event. But so-called thoughts affect the weather. A few points though, about such inquiries. They almost always flounder in confusion on the question of the nature of psychic phenomena. First, there is only a physical realm, if you are going to describe reality. There is no separate mental stuff. So what could have happened with the good folks thinking rain for Atlanta? You have to picture somewhat the unpictureable complexity of 'what is' and grasp that while 'thoughts' (whatever they are, but certainly not some cumulousy thing) are part of a huge machinery, they are not the only part, so they could have an effect, but being only a part of a bigger machinery the question of causality turns out to be NOT possible to be contained within a binary sentence--you just cannot say yes, thoughts caused the rain or no, thoughts did not cause the rain. The fact is they were just one swirl in a hugely larger structure.

The hostility inherent in words

After writing that last post, it struck me how hostile it sounded. Although there may be a good reason to mention those he kicked out, still, this might sound like anger on my part.
Words after all, divide, that is basic, and dividing is fallacious, dividing is angry. Dividing, is not what this century defining teacher was about. Even punctuation, he would point out, had to be misleading, and a lie. There are no boundaries. And that period makes the last sentence, itself, a fib. Still, rereading my second post, it was not as hostile as I had remembered it a few hours after writing it.

Avoiding hero worship

Speaking of names, one tool he used with students was to insist (at certain periods of his life) they call him by a name he designated, like "Timex." This discouraged mechanical identification with him, something he always fought, because the human need to follow a leader, the deep genetic basis for this craving, this mechanical flow, operated against the things he was trying to show us.

Like so much he did, this was difficult to convey because it was his voice and example against the entire population of the planet. Most of his students did not continue. A lot were kicked out. A great number were handled during the initial interview in such a manner that they fled. Many people imagine themselves to be looking for a real teacher, until they have the fortune to encounter one.

He knew the worth of his time, and discouraged the namby pamby types, who he could perceive had no talent beyond their imaginary view of themselves of seekers. Of course by namby pamby we are speaking of a certain mental shift; many of those who fit this label were the blustering chatterboxes, the wolves and bums. These are two of the personality types he would outline for us in an attempt to encourage us in our goals. But internally these two types, imperceptible to any but a few, were subject to the same hapless mechanical tides that swept the planets peoples. These tides have of course a crucial place in maintaining civilized order. Such order though is the enemy of those struggling toward a still focused inner sight.

Why call this essay "American" mysticism??

The title deserves an explanation: there are two reasons for describing the topic of this writing as "American" mysticism. Although mysticism would have to be global, perhaps cosmic, in point of historical fact, a century defining person affected these thoughts, and calling these essays American, highlights an echo of Georges Gurdjieff. Also these writings are intended to publicize a century defining personage who will shortly be named, and this person was born in Georgia, USA. For the time being though, I am not mentioning this person by name; I am curious as to how much publicity can be generating without mentioning his name. I am tagging this with his name, and will not long continue neglecting his name. Of course though, a true tribute would embody his teachings, and he did refrain from using his name to avoid that ugly phenomenon of hero worship.