June
23, 2001.
SATURDAY MORNING -- AT HOME
_______________________
The father turned from his computer
screen
after reading the day’s, Fresh
Real News, and said to the son:
“Mention is made here of a subject
that should be of
particular interest to you,
and one relevant to our recent talks:
the necessity of, ‘original-thinking’
to make this extraordinary mental
adventure you have stepped into,
ever actually go any where.
The view from our family’s traditional
involvement in this activity
is even wider in scope &
description, and says that,
compared to what is possible
for some: men do not, think
-- period.
Never mind, ‘original,’ or,
‘non original’ terminologies & distinctions, from one quite sound perspective
it can be said, (just among us),
that from our private traditional
view: men do not normally engage in what our family considers to BE
-- thinking.
As always, this is not a criticism
of man,
nor a professed notice of some
flaw in life’s arrangement of his affairs,
it is simply that what ordinary
men, (under directions from life),
call, ‘thinking,’
and what our family considers to be so,
are two different things.
In the world outside our family,
what people call, ‘thinking’
is that instinctive, thus, automatic
activity that goes on continually in everyone’s brain, (not unlike
the beating of the heart,
or the breathing of the lungs);
this, ‘thinking’ is one
of man’s many reflexive reactions to -- being
alive,
and it plainly serves him well
-- in the collective
sense,
(which of course is where we
all are radically based & dependent),
but on a strictly individual
basis,
this physiological activity
in the brain,
can be ever so slightly shifted,
by ever so few people,
to produce results unknown to
ordinary men.
That this private, individual
alteration in the brain’s normal operation
presents such a dramatically
different view of life
is the valid justification of
me saying that men do not ordinarily, think;
an automatic physical process
goes on in them
that they call,‘thinking,’
but it is not something that
individual people ordinarily
promote in themselves, nor actively
contribute-to,
nor personally participate-in;
it is something that just happens
to them,
and just so happens to happen
in them,
thus the sensation, (since they
be conscious of the activity),
that they are DOING it,
rather than it HAPPENING
to them.
What they experience as, ‘thinking’
is like a man standing before
a billboard,
watching an ever running electronic
tickertape
that continuously reports the
news --
this is a fair description of
what ordinary men refer to as,
‘THEM
-- thinking.’
This is as passive an activity
as the human creature can be part of,
and does not make full use of
the brain’s potential,
(at least in a few men),
and thus does not constitute,
‘thinking’
as it could be,
(in those few people).
Accepting this automatic physiological
activity in your brain to be
the full report of what it is
capable of doing
will keep you from ever getting
everything settled in your mind;
if your mental sight & analysis
of life is limited to what passes through your head on that endless electronic
tickertape,
nothing is ever concluded
-- nothing is ever understood in its satisfying entirety;
you indeed, (as the mystics
say): ‘Live as though in a fitful dream.’
The first -- and
always, most profitable step is to -- think
--
think originally --
think for yourself.
It is impossible for ordinary
men to do, (and damn-near so for us),
and you, (that is, your brain),
cannot be told by someone else’s
brain -- How-to-do-it;
there are no, ‘How-to-do-it
instructions' available -- nay,
possible;
for if the present state of
your brain’s operations was capable of
hearing, and actually comprehending
such information
it would already know it and
be using it -- (which it obviously is not).
You cannot teach
a boulder to swim;
if it could swim
-- it would be swimming;
and you cannot teach
someone how to
open their eyes/I's to the untorted
essence of everything,
all you can do is encourage
them to take up, real-thinking,
which will inevitably lead one
out of the land of nod and fog.
Even though, how to actually
think-for-yourself
cannot be described,
how NOT to can;
all you have to do is think,
one way or the other,
about what other people --
think-about,
(as they call it).
The thinking that automatically
runs through other people
never conveys information of
the sort needed to arouse a man,
nor even to lead him to learn
how to -- think,
(in the sense of our family’s
tradition),
so anything you might
THINK
about what they ‘think,’
is nothing but fog poured into
fog.
If the rest of the world is embroiled
in a debate over
which direction is up,
and you think about the possibilities
that your neural tickertape
posits as being: ‘Up,’ and then,
‘Down’
you have become as befuddled
& disoriented as them,
and same with all discussions
of what is, ‘true or false’
regarding any subject whatsoever.
To ever get things finally settled,
give no attention to what other
people are talking/thinking about –
and certainly none to what your
own automatic, so-called, 'thinking’
might have to say about theirs.
This is how you discover what
real thinking IS,
and how to DO
IT for yourself,
and once you are firmly on that
path,
the road not only levels off,
but in fact
goes into a most refreshing
downhill slope
as you make your way on home.”
The father and son exchanged warm, pleasant glances --
as will those similar areas in your brain do
when you begin to actually
think.
J
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