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.