Happy New Thoughts

There's an impressive video on youtube with just shots of physical feats of a gravity defying nature. It is worth looking at. Watching these skiers, bikers, skaters, and divers led me to consider the similarities between these feats of physical skill and daring and the kind of cerebral activity Jan Cox knew and tried to share during his lifetime, called among many things, neuralizing. Though it might seem a polar opposite, the goal of those in history  like Jan Cox, is really the under the same tent as these dering-dos. Everything after all, is physical. And what Jan wanted his students to see was these gravity-less moments (for such is the start for either kind of physical feat) which involve accelerating through the roof. The differences between physically twirling as you fall into the water and maintaining a precious awareness of certain elements, are of course interesting: one feat is apparent and impressive to every onlooker. The other invisible to all, those who have no clue about cerebral possibilities. One must last seconds, the other has a potential for more.

Parent Contradictions

The complexity of reality, and the limitations of verbal tools, can perhaps be glimpsed in two things Jan Cox said, on different occasions, to his students: One--that everything everywhere affects you and TWO -- that the news of the world does not affect you. Sounds contradictory huh. One way, perhaps one way of many, to parse this is--

The wider world of events, does not affect you because your concern moment by moment should be on the vigor of your cranial composure. 

ALSO though, everything about you ripples in patterns affected by -- roadkill in Australia, -- and   everything else going on. 

What Other Hand

We quote David Brooks, as he reports on the winners of  "the Sidney Awards, named for the renowned philosopher Sidney Hook, go out to some of the best magazine essays of the year. "

Alan Lightman writes in “The Accidental Universe” in Harper’s that the existence of life is so incredibly improbable that there can be only two realistic explanations: Either there is a God who designed all this, or there exist many, many different universes, a vast majority of which are lifeless. Many physicists are gravitating to the latter theory. Our universe is just one of many. The universal laws of physics aren’t really universal. They are just the arbitrary arrangements that happen to prevail in our own little universe.


This is a wonderful example of binary thought---either you believe in a god who arranged the whole universe, or our universe is not improbable because it's a crap shoot.  One or the other is true; that my friends is binary thought. The first is no explanation, but a cop-out, an intellectual crutch for we can't figure it out, but don't want to admit this.  The second may be incoherent, -- when you run the numbers putting in an infinite, you often get a garbagey result, or so I have read. 


Well, there may well be way more than two alternatives here -- but how about just a third, for now: Self Knowledge. Our ignorance is data we can empirically investigate. We can live on surmises if we are tender with the edges of our knowledge. It takes guts to be objective, and self-knowledge is the giraffe on the porch.  

The Divine Right of Kings Had Nothing on the Imperialism of Words

Science and religion have much more in common than either party realizes, and this blindness hobbles fresh thought. In fundamental aspects science and religion are the same, and I will be pursuing this point soon. But here is an example of what I mean, and how I intend to argue.

When scientists say --- you can't ask what happened before the big bang because time wasn't created until the big bang, that is just like the religious saying something is true because 'it says so in the bible.'

In both we have a failure to resolutely pursue answers under a banner of unexaminable assumptions. Because the emperor has clothes on, is the reason you cannot wonder what the king looks like naked. This basic aspect of human binary thinking, unites science and religion. 

This situation reflects a reliance on linguistic sufficiency, my phrase for the assumption that words can cover reality. The smallest bit of empiricism points out how silly that idea is, and yet it is regnant not just in science, not just in formal religion, but in human life, as soon as people, "grow up." What is the smallest bit of empiricism I mention: you could take some seconds to look at a weed, and get that there are no words to adequately describe each segment, each curve, each hue. And that is just to start at the lowest level. Try it.

What Does Mechanical Mean

What Does Mechanical Mean, in the context of esoteric philosophy? The phrase mechanical man' is used by both Gurdjieff and Jan Cox, 20th century exemplars of the possibilities of knowledge in a potent personal context. 

The robotic, irresponsible connotations of the phrase are clear. The implications are interesting: if one is mechanical one is not responsible for one's actions, and no blame can accrue to such an agent. Nor can one speak coherently of mechanical man's self awareness. The glimpses of the lack of such can be a first rung of course. But the word of a mechanical man is worthless, and no blame occurs. He is not responsible for what he says. Only the wise and the lucky will take this to heart. Very often mechanical people, are nice, of course. We -- those who studied with Jan Cox -- were nice once.  Not only can no blames be attributed to mechanical action, the phrase can be applied to everyone, most, some, a lot, of the time. Everyone except those few-the statistically insignificant Real Teachers.

And what if it is --- easy

Do we think it is easy, this waking up bit, do we think it is easy because, everything, everything else, IS easy---the ease of the machinery of which ingests, which utilizes, which ultimately will spit out, 7 billion people, do we think since every single aspect of our lives, is in fact, easy, the studying for tests, the two jobs, the long bus rides, it is easy, or we would not be able to do it, the ease of being a part of a great machinery, what Jan Cox, called, the Magnus Machina, -- so we think, spiritual progress, oh yes, that's interesting, I will check into that, a worthy goal, and we just assume, it is easy. We will in fact, check into that, --- soon.

....

Sticky tricks

There is a janitor in an apartment complex nearby. His office has no sign on the door. No doubt this is ideal, for his own goals. Similarly a person with a real purpose will try to keep signs off his own thoughts. Trickier, yeah.