Jed Talks #2: Away from the Things of Man

Standing on the shoulders of Descartes, we can make the true statement sentio, ergo sum, I am aware, therefore I am. I Am/Consciousness. Now, armed with a true statement, we are able to divide the universe into two categories; known and believed. On the known side is awareness, and on the believed side is appearance. The pebble is not a fact, as we’d like to believe; it’s just a belief, and that’s a fact.

If philosophers were serious people, this would all be Philo 101 and there would be no need for Philo 102 because once you understand that you can’t understand anything, you’re free to leave the domain of egoic delusion and move on to more interesting realms of cocreative participation where you’ll discover your passion, your purpose, your function; the one lock for which you are the one key.

We can’t inquire into the nature of a thing without first proving the thing actually exists, which we never can. A simple pebble can be so obvious that no right-minded person would argue against its reality, but consensus doesn’t constitute proof and proceeding as if it does means that everything we ever learn or understand about that pebble is built on a foundation of belief, not fact. Before we can unravel the mystery of a pebble, we must determine with absolute certainty that there is a pebble, which we can’t, so we skip past that little detail and rush forward based on belief instead of turning back to figure out why we can’t prove the stupid pebble is real.

Just as Descartes did, we must start with a clean slate by determining what we know for sure. Can we ever be sure that the pebble actually exists? No, never, not possible, so what does that tell us about the nature of knowledge? Of reality? Of consciousness? Therein lies the real mystery of the pebble, but we just say yeah, sure, it’s just a pebble, it obviously exists, no great mystery, we can’t waste time on every little technicality when there’s a whole universe to explore. That whole universe, however, was right there in that pebble we just dismissed. Had we learned the real lesson of the pebble we might have moved on to more fertile ground for exploration, but instead we built a world based on the belief that the pebble is real and knowledge is possible. Science is thus reduced to a mere belief system, and since everyone believes, no one cries foul. That’s why philosophy can be king, while religion and science can never be more than a couple of jokers.

Carry that pebble in your pocket and whenever you hear philosophers, scientists, religious scholars, spiritual teachers or anyone else talking like they know something, take out the pebble to remind yourself that their authority is built on a foundation of belief and when you strip away their robes and diplomas and worshippers, they’re just daffy little kids playing dress-up. The world wants to be deceived so okay, let it be deceived, but what about you? What do you want?

It only makes sense that someone who is awake would live in a state of constant total amazement. You’d have to be asleep not to. You’d have to believe that hands, dogs, a drop of water, planets, order, emotion, ego, plankton – hell, life for chrissakes, life! – are all just normal everyday things deserving no special attention, but the fact is that if you’re awake to it, if you stop taking it for granted and allow yourself to fully appreciate this phantasmagorical dreamstate reality for even just a minute or two a day, then the whole thing explodes in you with such immensity that you just want to sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, and dedicate your life to life itself and never fall sleep again.

My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.

Patricia

The question is why are you here with me? Why are you listening to me? That’s a pretty good thing to ask yourself because this can get pretty crazy.

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If you don’t know there’s a problem, then there is no problem, right? You don’t have to fix a problem if you don’t know there is a problem. You are here making problems for yourself, so maybe don’t do that.

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You think it’s crazy to be crazy and not crazy to be not crazy, but the whole thing is crazy so it’s really the other way. Did that make any sense?

Anyone doing good thinking will wake up out of coma which no one does, so no one is doing very good thinking. Pretty simple.

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I would say about thinking that it’s possible but not encouraged. We are encouraged not to think. Thinking makes a lot of trouble.

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You think reality is obvious because you don’t think about it, but as soon as you think about it, it’s not so obvious anymore. The more you think about reality, the less obvious it is.

Here’s a backward thing you should know. Adding more always makes you less. You have to take away to be more. People mostly go the other way.

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Why nobody sees obvious stuff is not for words to say. I can tell you all day and it’s nothing. So anyway, your little world starts coming apart, that’s something to look forward to. I’m using sarcasm there.

Take anything apart to see what it’s made of, then you can understand whatever you want. You have to take things apart to understand them, but you can’t put them back together, so think about it first.

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Being free or not free only makes sense in coma. Out of coma there’s not these conditions. It’s just part of coma to think how great not being in coma is.

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What if you learn that right now you are really lying in a bed with your eyes closed for your whole life so far? You have a whole nice world in your head but what if you open your eyes it’s all gone? That would be a pretty big deal.

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Obviously, you think I’m wrong about this. If you didn’t think I was wrong then I would really be wrong, right? That’s the whole point.

You don’t know you’re programmed, so saying you’re not programmed is a bad way to start. You have to think you’re not programmed for the program to work, so that’s what emotion does for you. Your emotion makes you not think you’re programmed so you can be programmed like crazy.

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So you have this programing that you don’t know about. You have to have this secret part and a way to keep it secret, so that’s what we want to do is break in there and look at the really secret stuff.

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So I say go hack yourself. That’s what we’re doing now, breaking into your system, right? You don’t think so. You don’t believe it, but it’s happening right now. That’s what this really is. You’re hacking yourself, breaking into yourself. You’re stealing your own secrets. It’s quite an adventure.

“In a long process of cutting away emotional deadweight,” I continue, “the first thing to go is the illusion of connection to your herdmates. Then, once you’re selfborn out of the herd and into the adult state, your real life begins. You won’t send postcards home because everywhere is now home. You won’t be keeping friends and family apprised of your progress because they’re not really friends and family anymore, just people you huddled with in bad times. You believe your bonds to these people are real and can never be broken, but they’re not and they can. The parents of the halfborn child are not the parents of the fullborn adult. The adult is an entirely different order of being, like caterpillar and butterfly. New relationships may form, but not like they were because they will not be based on need and fear.

“I was just out in the parking lot and I saw coexist bumper stickers on a lot of the cars. That’s just more Lord Lion and Lady Gazelle tea party fantasy. You know what happens when gazelles sit down to tea with lions? They get killed and eaten. That’s not a system error, that’s how it’s supposed to be, but if you ask a gazelle, they’ll tell you it’s a very bad system because they’re judging from a low-level perspective. Those bumper stickers are spelled out with the iconography of major religions and belief systems, some of which seek to consume or eradicate the others, and none of which are concerned with truth. They symbolize the tyranny of delusion, why pretend otherwise? Why pretend at all?

“Futility, meaninglessness, and impermanence are the facts of life, but it doesn’t end there, that’s just the sign over the entrance. Why do so few awaken in or from the dreamstate? Why can no one find the only thing that can never be lost? Fear, always fear, and all your spirituality is really just burying your head in the sand because you’re afraid of your own life. Everyone prefers sham spirituality with all its pretty lies and sweet people, like living in a day spa, but real spirituality is not pretty and sweet, it’s scary and it ruins your nice little life, but when the transition to adulthood is complete you’ll be free to learn and develop and understand what you really are and what this place really is. The futility, meaninglessness, and impermanence will still be there, but they were never really the problem in the first place; denying them was.”

I flash them a peace sign but with three fingers.

“Make war, not love. Good night”