Men do not want to live in straightjackets, yet men cannot imagine life otherwise;
note that imagining is an activity conducted only by the brain,
so consider: is it men in toto who do not want to live in straightjackets,
or is their brain speaking on behalf of selected parts of man which do not,
or is the brain speaking solely for itself?
The body and all its organs and operations by nature work automatically,
which is to say their range of activity is specifically limited; the heart, lungs, kidneys, circulatory, respiratory and endocrine systems function in straightjackets;
their activities are mechanically held within certain ranges, and illness (even death) occurs when these are exceeded;
thus a healthy body lives in a straightjacket  --  so what gives with the brain? --
(more precisely): what’s going on with a certain area of the brain? --
for all of its work other than takes place in its area of consciousness and thought
is carried out as involuntarily as is that of the liver.

No other organ or activity of the human body has part of its operations
running mechanically and with no resistance thereto,
and another part rebelling against the inherent restrictions of automation  --
as far as is observable, in the entirety of the universe,
this occurs only in the mortal brain.
Not incomparable to an automobile, which operates purely mechanically,
(or it operates not at all),
having a radio (in a strict sense, a non essential feature)
which broadcasts continual, though often quite subtle,
sometimes even coded messages in opposition to mechanical behavior  --
the specific, vital feature of a running automobile.

In the majority of car owners (sorry), ordinary men,
this in-built, localized resistance to life’s overall survival straightjacket is managed by man’s involvement in the various arts, and entertainments
his brain, via thought, has created;
in a few men however, the available drain-off distractions prove inadequate,
and their brains strain against the natural restrictions and seek another outlet,
which they have found/created for themselves, and which seems so unusual
from the majority’s view that they have historically dismissed it
pejoratively as mystical --  irrational, to say the least,
for the apparent goal therein does strike routine brains as an impossibility,

A specific part of all brains wants to be free of the straightjacket,
and collectively they settle for the illusions produced by diddling around in religion, fiction, and other flights of harmless fantasies,
but when a brain shows up that tries to actually GET free,
and not just play around with it  --   common brains scorn its efforts,
completely understandable and predictable  --
but still interesting and useful to consider --

The brain is constructed to incessantly talk and see inner images;
it wants to relax, sit back, take in and enjoy the thoughts fed to it;
to think those thoughts  --  not think about its thinking of the thoughts,
trying to do so screws up everything  --  stops the show.
                               Fred Astaire doesn’t want to stop dancing  --
                                     Fred Astaire was born to dance.*
The brain was born to think, and doesn’t ever want to stop,
and unfaceable is the fact that while it will instinctively think the same thoughts
over and over again, part of it is bored thereby,
and constantly hungers for something new, but you must put “new” in
quotation marks since ready observation shows that the new electrochemical energy it wishes to experience can’t be all THAT new, but must still fit into its
already established mental straightjacket structure (in other, in-practice words):
the new thoughts the brain wants to have cannot be so different from current ones
as to threaten the integrity of the innate straightjacket in which
the brain normally operates to produce thought;
(in even plainer terms): an automobile engine that wished to improve its performance by increasing the potency of its fuel,  still cannot permit in that
whose combustibility potential is so high as to blow apart the engine  --

The last statement is in general application to mankind,
but a reality from which a few have some liberty;
certain men’s brains have a natural tolerance for mental fuel with a flammability,
and combustibility that would be totally unacceptable in humanity’s collective norm;
a part of their brain not only wants to be free of the straightjacket necessary
for routine intellectual functioning,
but theirs actually has the ability to find, to create thoughts that are truly
outside the ordinary confines, and then to use the new thoughts to refuel,
and reproduce themselves in a never-ending private expansion
in an area of consciousness unfettered and normally untouched.
 

By birth, all men’s brains dream of Shangri La, but only a few are programmed with
a hunger for the place sufficient to make them try to actually go there  --
everyone else is satisfied by talking about it, by reading about it, by imagining it,
and often by pretending that they are in fact there,
but for the certain man, this is a no-go  --
the way-of-the-ordinary simply doesn’t work for him;
if there is an inner Promised Land, a place of freedom from humdrum,
electrochemical bondage;
open, Elysian Fields beyond the grounds of the collective asylum
wherein straightjackets are the required dress of all residents,
then he, by-gawd, is going to go there (or as it more accurately were):

Wanting to awaken, to achieve-enlightenment, to get-to-the-bottom-of-things
is your brain wanting out of the straightjacket in which all men’s thinking is born,
and only in which all routine thinking can take place;
it is your brain’s consciousness expressing its unusual hunger for fuel that is of
a completely different quality than that which produces the thinking needed to
run the common life of man as common man knows it;
your mind thirsts for thoughts no one has ever tasted before –
the only thinking that will set it free;
all pre-thought thoughts strengthen the straightjacket;

The certain man simply will not, cannot stand still for all this normal, frustrating, namby-pamby, pass-it-off-to-someone-else, candy-ass, shit way to mentally live;
impossible though it must be on paper, he & his thinking finds a way to think itself
out of the straightjacket that is the natural home of human thinking;
more improbably than carrying coal to Newcastle,
he throws at the place its own native fossil fuel, causing its eventual downfall;

* Just look at your routine consciousness vis a vis your own head.

* A curious facet to Fred is the perverse pleasure he receives in doing a step that is painful to him, over & over again.
 
 

Said a son to a father: “Pa pa, is not a fraud being perpetuated on us
vis a vis the brain giving the impression (via thought) that it is in charge,
(or at least is responsible for what appears in our consciousness)
when the essential energy of thought clearly must originate much further back,
in our genes to be specific, and first manifests itself in our hormones,
which in turn are behind all thoughts that appear in the mind;
making thought nothing more than a reflection, a representation in consciousness
of how we at the moment feel.