HOW DO YOU TELL THE IDIOTS FROM THE IMBECILES?
 
 

A rich and powerful prince once asked a man 
who many believed to be awake, 
to teach him how to become enlightened --
which he declined to do; 
his unspoken reason being that he 
had no interest in being around anyone dumb enough 
to make such a request.
As titillating as smart asses may find the story,
its real eroticism comes from seeing it not as a relationship between a prince, and a wise man, but between that portion of man’s collective mind that operates in your head, and that renegade slice of your brain that faults same.
 

Only pinheads hire themselves out to tutor pinheads;
only the thoroughly lost act as guides to the 
irredeemably misplaced,
and only boulders tell trees how to walk.
 

People, (and things), too dense to realize what is going on can never be made to realize; 
the practical feature of this fact is in you finally recognizing that your own thoughts can never
enlighten themselves,
and that totally captive thing in you that says, ”I” 
will never lead you to liberation.
 

No doctor can ever cure himself 
who is not ill to begin with;
no sleeper can be awakened 
whose natural state is slumber,
and no cave dweller can be enticed into the light
who has no eyes with which to see.
 

In rational communities: plumbers don’t work on cars, 
nor eunuchs teach sex ed,
but in routine neural neighborhoods
patent idiots publicly denounce idiocy amidst the
cheers and jeers of other obvious idiots.
(You are keeping in mind that the real tale being told here concerns activities within the folds of your brain, and nowhere else, right?!)
 

The few people on this planet at any given time who want to understand what is going on strongly enough to engage in some consistent, 
and not totally insane effort to that end 
begin in the same position as anyone else desirous of 
knowing something they do not presently know:
they seek to be told about it  by someone who 
does know  --
but in this singular instance --  no one does know,
for the one big question that eternally dogs the few 
has no answer -- 
not in the context as mind pictures a relationship between questions-&-answers, and between
not-knowing-something, and  then learning-about it.
 
 

Routine people and princes think that there are many questions to be answered about life:
about why humans are so blind in certain affairs;
why they are so stupid concerning other particular matters, but the sundry examples of mortal thought and speech that all men find inexplicable in other men
are all but reflected variations of a single question:
”Why is life like THIS?” 
with, “this” being a blank space that each man’s mind  continually fills, and re-fills in 
as dictated by never-still circumstances.
 

”Why is life like THIS?”:  that is the one, 
all encompassing question proffered by philosophers, princes, priests, and plebeians alike,
which in most instances is actually a criticism 
rather than a question, and yet, 
if the person engaged in the criticism understood 
what is going on in life
the question, even if unstated, would be operationally
answered, and their criticism erased.
No man would express any complaint about life if he knew what was going on in life.
The answer to: “Why is life like THIS?”
is the answer to everything;
the answer to that question reveals to the few --
everything they have always longed to know  --  but --
 --  What ho?! --  have you already forgotten?!
There IS no answer to the big question!
 

The enlightenment, and liberation that comes to those
who see their interest through to the end,
lands on their head, not in the form of an answer to that question, but through the sudden realization
of the question’s origin.
 

Being asleep, dumb, and in-the-dark 
is not the problem of the successful genealogist;
he who gets to the roots of things 
is free of the vines that strangle the trees.
 

The irritating mental condition that 
fuels the interests of the few
is no longer so irritating when its origins, 
and real nature are recognized. 
 

”Being asleep” is not what it once was --
after you suddenly realize who it is who’s been 
telling you that you’re asleep, all these years. 
 

Forget the promise of prizes for answering the questions on life’s quiz show  --
do nothing but keep your eye on the one apparently hosting the show and reading out the questions --
finally recognizing who "he" is   --  IS the prize.

                                          J
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

…......”I’ll take any letter, Pat,  as long as it doesn’t appear in the word, ‘I’.”