Local Conditions

Local Conditions are everywhere.

Can the sausage factory be the source of "words"?

Can the sausage factory be the source of "words"?

But then, how can it not.

To say that everything is consciousness is to pretend to solve a problem without grasping what the problem really is.

For whether you start with matter or consciousness, you have to account for the other, to be, minimally plausible.

Jan Cox early in his career, pointed out that all was matter, that there was no "spiritual nature in man."

For some the view from the precipice is energizing.

Thinking Two Things at the Same Time

The ability to do this is one of the impossible things that the Work attempts to convey. In fact, let me point out that I have other explanations than the following, which is good also. But something just occurred to me when reading this discussion of Ecclesiastes in Wikipedia:

Some passages of Ecclesiastes seem to contradict other portions of the Old Testament, and even itself. One suggestion for resolving the contradictions is to read the book as the record of Koheleth's quest for knowledge: opposing judgements (e.g. the dead are better off than the living (4:2) vs. a living dog is better off than a dead lion (9:4)) are therefore provisional....

What occurred to me is that the ability to think two things at once, is only contradictory at the level of binary thought, AND-- you could think of the ability to think two things at the same time,  as an alphabet block with different letters on each side. Thinking two thoughts at the same time is then just like looking at such a block from a certain angle: an angle which includes multiple sides of the block. To paraphrase somebody else, if six impossible things before breakfast is too hard, try thinking twelve, before lunch.

Yesterday? Or Tomorrow?

Here is a typeface from 1650. The link gives more details, but not a possible significance of this style. What I like is that this style does not let you ignore the fact you are at the level of words. None of this modern pretension that words can accurately reflect reality. This typeface says, "Yeah, I'm part of a word, what are you gonna do about it!". All this while suggesting, in the floral marine swirling patterns, that everything is part of everything else. Everything is connected, at a basic physical level. A fact that is incontrovertible and largely ignored today. I want what this artist was having. 

Walking the walk

There's the talk and there's the walk. Jan Cox was only interested in -- the alk. The alk is all. For the few. 

So what is NOT behavior?

External behavior is an arbitrary measurement. You cannot divide external and internal action. It is just that the ordinary have no internal action--- just the tumbling of blocks.

Not speaking, that is behavior too.

Thinking is behavior, even though it must be imaginary.

Not thinking, that is --- neuralizing, or as Jan and Gurdjieff called it, self-remembering---is  the behavior which alone gives you an objective glimpse.

Knowing what is going on--- I call that behavior.

To suggest a real teacher can be measured in bourgeois terms -- that is behavior which reflects on a follower, not on the teacher. It may be like a Real Teacher, a Socrates, or a Jan Cox, is aware of lines of force which indicate which paths of action are appropriate at which times. I am making that up, but it fits with the daemon one reads about in reference to Socrates. The action of a real teacher is pure in a way which baffles the ordinary. Let's not be ordinary. 

The action of being alert internally is not just the goal, it is visible to one who knows. Jan Cox said he could look at the eyes of another and know their level of consciousness. 

More -- or less perhaps -- than this, is posture, which also--- reflect one's inner attention. I call this behavior. 

Who writes this stuff

Like everyone we know I am glued to the new Cosmos series during its time slot. Only now though (after three episodes) does come to mind a larger significance of that opening scene where people (drawings of people as the graphic mode is introduced to historical reconstructions) are cowering as they look up to the sky. The creators of Cosmos are heralding the theme of the whole series in this shot. That theme being man can go from fear to courage. I suspect this absurd view of history is designed to counter the climate change deniers. And here we see the limitations of binary thought, that is, the mechanical rational thought which is all most people know as thinking. The clarity of binary thought is seen in this division into brave modern science loving people and bad dumb people clinging to theistic models. Binary thought forces the listener into such silly divisions. Are you a science lover or a climate denier? I suspect this division is taken seriously by many working scientists, and maybe ALL science popularizers.

Perhaps I will come back to my theme: what is wrong with this picture-- science lovers versus climate change deniers. We could discuss--

1. Why this division obscures the important points, like how these first people may have been smarter and braver than we are now.

2. Is the underlying theme really that man can become himself, a god, rather than that science needs to get beyond religion?

3. Does the vista of the starry sky at night make man seem tiny and insignificant and is this perspective realistic? Or could this vista be, as those careful of their phrasing might say: the beginning of wisdom.

4. If the traditional definition of god is that being who is eternal, all-knowing, all powerful, ubiquitous, what does it mean to suggest these descriptions could be applied to man. 

I might return to these questions. Meanwhile I will not miss the next episodes. And how clever of the directors to cast Neil deGrasse Tyson in the main role, that adorable teddybear sweet and gentle and glowing with smartness guy. Brilliant casting. I can hardly wait.