[The manufacturer’s label on the side names it a Progress Machine,
but it just as well could be called a Change Machine –
more precise still: A Change Of Circumstances Machine,
or even better: Men’s Mental Reactions To Changes Of Circumstances Machine,
but let it slide for the moment and call it life’s Progress Machine.])

The minds of men on Earth say, think and profess to believe that they
(men or minds one?!?) are responsible for all progress realized here;
were it not for man’s active interference in the planet’s natural circumstances
nothing would ever change --  there would be no such thing as progress;
the milieu in which man lives would be the same as it was twenty thousand years ago (just as the situation still is with all other creatures),
but through man’s own planning and efforts have beneficial changes been wrought
to the physical environment into which he was born;
without man, this orb on which he exists would never change
(save through the universe’s own undulations rather than life’s, via man).

To all normal minds and standard ways of thinking,
man is the engine of change  --  life’s progress machine,
but not so: man is its local outlet  --  representative  --  sub-station  --  franchisee.
What ordinary men’s minds perceive as progress seems to come on the scene
discretely (Edison created the light bulb, The Greeks, Philosophy, Salk, his vaccine, Jesus, Christianity, Oppenheimer, the bomb);
first it’s raining --  next thing you know  --  Bam! --  the umbrella appears  --
and it didn’t fall down from the sky: a man somewhere thought of the idea for one,
and then made it from the materials the universe has left laying around here,
but a man with sight unnatural for this time and place can see that what is
really going on is something else altogether;
he can see that place wherein sits life’s Progress Machine;
he can see it actively at work  --   perceive its methods of distribution,
comprehend its operating costs, and recognize its seamless nature,
(same as he sees true for the machine in his head).

While normal minds stare at their feet while attempting to analyze walking,
the man with the certain sight looks at the brain  --  walking to explain,
and ultimately (as his sight fully ripens)
he looks even beyond that  --  he looks directly to the Progress Machine.

Everybody can understand how everything man-made came into existence
(e.g. the building of an automobile from the initial mining of iron ore
to its cosmetic touch ups at the end of the assembly line,
or the construction and programming of a computer, etc.),
but there is one exception, and it concerns the very thing that makes cars, computers, and everything else man has and uses that is not found in nature  --  ideas.

No one understands where their ideas come from, and no one’s mind will
think about the matter  --  with one exception: the man with that certain hunger
(he apparently is the only one whose brain can tolerate the strain involved,
and calling it a strain is a gargantuan understatement;
more like an omnipresent, insufferable, self-generated, mental flummoxing).
No matter their I.Q. or training, standard minds will not, cannot pursue the question:
how did their thoughts come into existence:
from where did their thoughts come:
what was their elemental origin, and how were they turned into the finished product that now appears in their consciousness?

Though they do not recognize it, men’s creation of mythology, religion and psychiatry are mind’s attempts to address this perplexity  --
which yield nothing better than a camouflaged restating of the question,
(“In the beginning was God,”
“Men’s psychological lives being driven by forgotten forces,”
even science is drawn in via The Big Bang theory, which takes a slightly different tack by admitting they have no idea of what came before and produced it,
thus simply abandoning the problem all over again).
 

If your greatest desire in life was to know how an automobile does what it does,
you would achieve same through the study of how it comes to exist:
it is not a natural occurrence like a tree, or a frog,
but something which men (using available inanimate material) entirely built:
understand its construction from start to completion, and you will understand everything there is to know about the workings of an automobile
(or anything else, man produced),
but if you are one of the non standard few whose prime desire in life
is to understand what is going on with life,
you will only succeed by understanding how thoughts do what they do,
gained through a study of how they come into existence  --
a totally unnatural undertaking  --
pre reminiscent of a tipsy, one legged, man in a house of mirrors.

Without you thoroughly investigate how the thoughts that appear in your mind
come to be  --   you will never understand what is really going on;
without you realize how the first word in a sentence came into existence  --
you can never understand the sentence,
(that is: the idea it is ostensibly attempting to convey),
which constructively means that without you have this understanding,
nothing you ever think, or hear of others thinking will be of any benefit to you;
this is why, under mankind’s normal, collective conditions,
individual men cannot understand life (which in fact is to say):
they cannot make sense of the images the thoughts in their mind present as life.
 
 

In the sea of life there are fish and there are ships:
hormones are fish, neurons, ships;
the first appears at the mercy of the sea  --  the second, to be captain of its destiny;
fish is man’s nervous system below consciousness  --  ships, thoughts;
the two live in the same milieu  --  buffeted by the same conditions  --
in sight of the same horizons, but oh what different lives the ships think they live.
Fish and ships are inseparably connected, and they both tied irrevocably to the sea, whose actions are swayed by their presence.
This surveys the situation of man in a style not normally noted –
but those familiar therewith, find the waters a bit less worrisome.
 

One man said: “Life wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for circumstances,”
and circumstances said:
“Thank god for humans, or I’d have no one to push around,”
    “But how about all the other animals?”
“They can’t talk about circumstances  --  so they don’t count.