JAN’S FRESH REAL NEWS
                         © 2001: Jan Cox
                                         *********************************************

August 8, 2001.
 
 
 
 
 

The father & son were in town seeing to some business,
and had stopped for coffee in a sidewalk café
and after sitting in silence for a while,
watching the normal activity of the city go on around them,
the elder began to speak to the younger.

“Something else interesting is the idea that
what we are after is hidden.
For thousands of years our interest was known as,
‘The Occult’ --  literally: That which is concealed, secret, hidden:
a notion readily accepted by participants & outsiders alike.

In simpler times  (and even now, amongst simpler minds)
it was commonly lumped together with the practice of Magic, (that is): of trying to supernaturally affect conditions in the physical world, (produce rain; raise the dead; turn tin into gold, and so on),
which of course, from the perspective of our aim,
represents attention turned in the antipodally misguided direction.”

The waiter appeared to refill their cups,
and the increasing warmth of a new day was felt
as the father continued his comments:
”The history of man is replete with myths telling of people who
went in search of something hidden --  which was of great value;
the feeling that there be such is demonstratively deep in our genes.
Earlier men whose sense of reality was less centered around thought
perceived the hiding place to be within nature itself: the change of seasons; the cycle of birth, aging & ultimately death:
all matters pertinent to physical survival and materially visible;
then (going along with cartoon history) as men became more mentally oriented & analytical of life, some turned their attention inward,
and concluded that the hidden prize was within themselves:
thus day did break on religion, philosophy & psychological mythology.

As inevitably and naturally happens when something is to become a relatively permanent part of human life,
the idea of a hidden boon was gradually standardized, codified, sanitized, and turned into another background feature of
everyday life that was non threatening to the general population,
(the at least theoretical, ‘mystical possibilities’ of divinity homage).

So the staging was well in place long ago:
on one hand you still had the small faction of men –
the Alchemists  (who labeled their interest, ‘The Great Work)
who believed the occult treasure to be material,
and who worked to literally turn common place materials into gold,
(and who were dismissed as cranks by the majority);
then you had those, fascinated with the notion of a hidden prize,
whose focus turned inward, toward the intangible,
who most commonly sought their grail within the borders of their
predominately accepted religion (reclused, contemplative monks, nuns, and orthodox mystics of all sectarian stripes) --  but -- there was & is,
a third, much, much small group of people who
fit not in, nor follow either of these two parades,
but who share a belief with both  --   a  thought virus that is fatal!
……(Well --  curious & time consuming.”)
 

As the noon hour ticked nearer,
the cosmopolitan bustle about them picked up tempo,
as did the father’s commentary.
”The third group I refer to is obviously the bloodline of our family:
people born with the cellular desire to
turn the fragmented into the unified --
not saltpeter into platinum;
not a sinful spirit into a redeemed one,
but something that is possible and pertinent.

Any adult truly of our tree
has by now a fairly present awareness (or strong suspicion) that
the hidden prize that fuels his mad cow desire has nothing to do with
supernatural gods, or supernatural powers to alter the physical world;
if he really deserves to claim kinship,
he Knows  --
with some sort of unspeakable --  but not, supernatural certainty
that what dogs him  --  is IN him;
that what he is after --  is after him,
and that what he is actually looking for exists nowhere else in the
entire universe --  except in him, (somewhere in his head, to be exact).

The weaker links in our family chain suffer from regressive genes
which produce in them, hold-over beliefs that even if the treasure is
within them, it is so hidden that a man must have
outside instructions on how to find, from other men & their teachings.
To a child, an idiot and a normal person --  this sounds reasonable,”
 

and as increased the sound of lunchtime traffic,
so too did the essence of the father’s verbalizing.
”Those few of us humans with that, Certain-Hunger
all go through the inescapable, mindless initiatory rite of automatically
accepting the unquestioned need for instructions on how to
find this hidden treat that will finally satisfy our unique desire.
Due to an undiscovered, dorsomedial, sub cortical tumor
common to our family (just a joke) due to the ordinary working of 
the normal brain  --  this surely must be so  --  because:
since my mind feels like it is seeking it,
then by operational definition, it certainly does not already have it --'cause
if it did --  it would not be feeling a need to go searching for it.

If the job of the mind is to --  know things – then at the top of
the list would be to know that you know a particular thing;
how can the brain know something and not KNOW that it knows it?
(some shortcake mystics aver that our unenlightened mind has, forgotten the great secret it once knew, but, come on:
in thousands of men?! --   over thousands of years?! --  anyway),
it is patently ridiculous to accept as explanatory fact the possibility that your mind knows something that it doesn’t know it knows,
or has totally forgotten something --  this important --  that it knows.

May I be so bold & familiar with you my son,
(am I being too familiar to call you, son?), as to say that this is not
the key to the puzzling mental lock that raises our family barges.
Describing what drives us as being: 'The search for a hidden prize'
is as valid as any,
and it is certainly correct to say that whatever it may be,
is in us  --  in our head,
but to then say --  and with apparent rationality, conclude that –
--  It is hidden --
is the supreme hand-buzzer, whoopee-cushion,
and bladder-bag to your own head.”
 

The elder made a gesture to the waiter, (which he took in stride)
and pulled the kid right up to his face, (the kid’s face).
”The --  Bam-o! --  the, Thing! --  the secret piece of human info
for which all of our family hungers is not only --   not hidden –  but
COULDN’T be hidden by a thousand teams of Easter Bunnies
working through eternity.
 

The difficulty in realizing this
is only matched by the difficulty of talking about it.
I can offer you two allegorical pictures:
it is as though the, ground on which we must at all times stand,
and which covers entirely, the planet  --  is the hidden prize,
but man’s mind has given it another name, ‘dirt,’
and now cannot make the needed translation & connection;
an internal version would be that it is the brain,
(which is behind all of this of course),
looking as always, in matters requiring more attention than is
provided by mere instinctive reactions,
through the eyes of its thoughts,
and that it, the brain, is the actual one hungry-for & searching-for
some unidentified something  --  some elusive piece of knowledge –
which it turns out --  it is sitting on already:
the brain has named the hidden prize it seeks, a secret idea,
which is another name for its own gyri & sulci.”
 

The father stood and knocked over his chair, (well – someone’s chair).
”It is as though the brain named its own surface, ‘thoughts,’
and is now in search of the, Supreme One which it considers will be the great hidden prize,
when what it is actually looking for is all over itself like
cheap suits on a polka band.
Allegorically: the secret knowledge prize is to the brain, ‘the ground,’
and thoughts are what it has named, ‘dirt,’ and now it appears
unable to make a ready connection between the two concepts.
 

It looks afar --  when what it seeks, it stands on,
(and here is the really droolingly delicious part),
the ultimate revelation is not some piece of knowledge,
but in realizing the nature of knowledge.
Neither you nor your mind, finds the hidden prize –
you one day suddenly glance down and realize:
’I am standing on the only dirt, ground & thought-machine there is.’”

The waiter challenged them to a duel.
 

                                                    J