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.