Lesson 2
To start our second week we may review just a little bit of what we have discovered in one week’s work. We’ve been doing the work of keeping a few little notes as to what has been going on in certain areas of one’s existence. Some of the things that you have probably discovered is that you have no rights as much as one has always believed that one has from all the teachings of one’s environment. From the environment we have also been conditioned to believe, as a fundamental thing, that every human has free agency or free choice. But if we have observed we found that we may have intended to be peaceful all day, that was our choice, but something happened and we found that self was in quite a turmoil. One may have decided not to lose ones temper, that was ones choice, but somewhere during the week something happened and the old mechanical adaptation took place and one found one was angry – some Not-I taken in. So we may have discovered that at this moment we have no free agency or no free choice. One may have discovered that self is not one but it is really multiple. We have been taught to believe that we are one, that we can choose what we do, that we are 100% in charge and that if we did wrong it was because we knew better but went on and did wrong anyway, with due thought, consideration and total free agency or free choice.
However, if one has done the work of last week we may have discovered already that these ideas are not true, that we have believed something to be true that was not true. And we may have begun to see that that expression of vanity, which we defined as having a false picture of self, just may be about correct and that there is a certain amount of vanity in me and that there was quite an effort to defend it. We will continue to do the work of last week. This week we will add on some more material that will give it deeper meaning, make it easier, and will definitely give greater insight into it.
This week we are going to make a drawing, maybe two or three drawings. Take a sheet of paper and draw a large “V”. About a third of the way up draw a line across the “V,” and about two thirds of the way up from the bottom draw another line across the “V”. From the point of the “V” draw an arrow going out of it. What we are starting to do is draw a picture of man as he is designed. We’re going to study man as a unit not his physiology one time, his psychology another time, his biology another time and his spirit another time. We are going to put it all together. So now we have our “V” closed at the bottom, open at the top with two lines across it.
We will label these four things. In the closed portion at the bottom put PHYSICAL BODY. This represents the physical body. Label the middle portion the AWARENESS. That is the awareness function of the human being. Above the second line above the area labeled awareness put an X in the space, that no matter how far you extend those two lines that would still be X. It is the unlimited aspect of mind. The awareness is limited and the physical body is limited. From a circle drawn around this (the V) which represents, and label, the ENVIRONMENT, draw a line from the environment into the awareness. Draw another line from the physical body into the awareness. Put two arrows on the lines coming into the awareness, one from the environment and one from the physical body. Both of these will be labeled. On the one coming from the environment, write impression on it. One the one coming from the body, write sensations. All of them really are sensations because they do go through the body to get to the impressions, but certain ideologies we formed from the environment without necessarily having a sense of it first. There are impressions and sensations constantly impinging upon the awareness.
Now the awareness has two basic functions: It decides what is true and what is valuable. Write these down, “True” and “Valuable.” That information goes from awareness to X. Draw an arrow from awareness to X. The awareness evaluates any impression or sensation as being true or being false. Now you may have experienced at some time or other having some irritation to the nervous system and have a feeling of ants or insects crawling on the body. You could look and see that it was not true, so one wouldn’t use insecticides or start picking ants off oneself. One has had many sensations that one interpreted as not being true. There are many impressions that come into one that one says, “That is not true.” We might look out and see a rainbow and it looks very much like it’s a permanent structure when one first looks at it. But one knows and interprets it as being an optical illusion due to the breaking up of sunrays in a prism action and water vapor, and one knows that it is not a permanent structure. We may see the moon come up over a mountain or hill and it looks like the moon is lying on the hill or on the mountain. The senses say it is but we interpret that that is not the truth. Then we put value on every conceivable thing that one experiences. If you value that it is going to gain pleasure or comfort or value it as something that would produce pain, one begins to act upon it because one has given the impression to X.
Now X always does the appropriate thing for the information it receives from awareness. Draw a line with an arrow from X to the physical body. X always does the appropriate thing for the information it received and then the appropriate function, of course, takes place into the environment and that cycle is completed. Impression comes into awareness. Awareness has the chores or the attribute or the function of interpreting every sensation, every impression as to its validity of truth and to its value. That is what goes to X. X is the life principal which no one can define. We do know that if it, X, is not present the living form ceases to exist. The body begins to rapidly disintegrate and no function or adaptation takes place. While X is present, if a very hot object should strike the skin there is a sensation which one knows as burn and probably interprets as being painful and dangerous and values getting away from it and X gets away from it and adapts; it will make a blister. If the same hot object is put on a physical structure that X does not inhabit it will start cooking it but it will not form a blister; there is no adaptation. At a later date we will take up some further study on the nature and the way X operates. In the meantime lets leave it without further theories or ideologies. We will try to observe what it does but we will not attribute any attributes other than it always does the appropriate thing for the information received.
Lets draw another “V” very similar to the one we have just drawn. We’ll label this one differently to give us a parallel, something we can understand by a parallel in our everyday existence. Instead of the Physical Body, lets put “Troops.” In Awareness lets put “Intelligence Corps,” and instead of X lets put “Wise General.”
The Intelligence Corps receives information from the environment and from the Troops. The IntelligenceCorps is well aware of what is going on in the Troops, morale, scuttlebutt etc. It is also aware of what is going on in the environment. It does not tell the Wise General what to do but it does relate what it considers to be true as it sees it, the Intelligence Corps, and that it also puts value or priorities on the information. If it feels that it is totally immaterial, puts no value on it, it is not reported. If it is valued it is reported immediately and the Wise General, of course, gives the orders down through his chain of command and the Troops carry out his orders and this aids in the survival and the advancement or the purpose of this organism called an army. It has a general; it has all his lines of command. He depends for his information on the intelligence corps. The function, of course, is to advance and survive for the army.
Lets draw this same drawing again with the same attributes, divisions and functions. This time we’re going to have a little further roadmap for our observation of self to see what really is going on and to give us an understanding of what goes on about us. We said in our first discussion that when a person had a fundamental purpose of living that was a basic programming and that the person always reacted from that basic programming or basic ideology of what is the purpose of living. At about the center of the line just above the physical body and inside the awareness lets make a half-circle and color it over. This is mans fundamental purpose of living. It was probably made in the process of being born. [For a video about this drawing, the Picture Man, please click here and for a frame-by-frame drawing, please click here.]
He had been existing and somewhat conscious in the prenatal world, the uterine world, where he floated around in a literal la-di-da existence. There were no challenges; there were no sudden loud sounds because they were muffled through the many layers of soft tissue and water that surrounded the child. He wasn’t subjected to sudden changes in temperature even if the mother’s temperature went up and down a degree or two, there were no drafts. He was never hungry because food was supplied to him before he could be hungry. He had no disturbance. He lived in the uterine world. But birth is a process of dying to the uterine world and being born into the earth world. On being born into the earth world, which is an entirely different world, nothing of which he was acquainted with, everything was strange. There are all kinds of unusual sensations, sudden changes in temperature, sudden blows, maybe an irritation in his eyes from having silver nitrate put in his eyes, being restricted by clothing being put on him and any number of other sudden unusual situations. So the infant “with feeling” of course, not with words, and we will put words on his feeling, comes to a very basic fundamental idea as to the purpose of living. He decides something like this: “The purpose of living is to regain the non-disturbed state by gaining and by escaping.” So we will put down below the basic idea, “Gain” on one side and “Escape” on the other. Lets see if we can find what each of us started in this world trying to gain and trying to escape in order to gain the non-disturbed state. First we want to gain comfort or pleasure. Those are sensation we like. Another person may not like the same things that are comfortable or pleasurable to one but is whatever is comfortable and pleasurable to the individual, whatever sensations one can gain. One wants to escape any sensation one calls painful. This you might say is the ideal that has been set up is to regain and have permanently in existence the non- disturbed state by gaining pleasure and comfort on all levels and escaping pain.
Very quickly the infant decides on a course of self-improvement. Draw a circle inside the awareness. On the right side draw a circle and put a 1 in it. This is the first idea that the infant had to improve his situation to gain more pleasure and more comfort and especially to escape pain. This is another decision, another Not-I. It decides that the way to gain pleasure and escape pain at this stage of the game is something like; “It is important to have my way now and the way to get it is to complain.” Now our little one starts by complaining, by crying. Most of us may at times still use crying when we are not getting our way, but mostly we have found more sophisticated methods of complaining. On a sheet of paper write down “My Ways of Complaining.” We will keep track this week of the ways we complain. It may be by pouting, putting on a hurt front, it may be overdoing something, by drinking too much, it may be by leaving the house and driving the car very speedily down the street etc. What ever it is we will keep a record of my ways of complaining. We are not going to show these notes to anybody. They are something very personal and for our own enlightenment and not for the idea that I’m are going to quit it, but to gain information. Before we can do anything about anything we have to know what’s going on. So now we want to know the many ways that we complain.
Some weeks later and not too many weeks later we all learned another technique. When complaining didn’t get our way because the parents got tired of the complaining, they said, “Let him cry,” we found another way. This one was because the infant felt he had a “right” to get rid of this discomfort, or he had a right to be picked up and cuddled which we could say was one form of comfort, or he had a right to be fed right now, and, of course, he began to stick up of his rights. In this the baby could only cry, hold his breath, get blue in the face and a number of other little tricks that the infant learns. Very quickly his mother learns that he or she is just mad and doesn’t exactly get carried away with taking care of him. However, he can be so obnoxious with this belligerent behavior and form of communication that usually it gets some results.
On another sheet of paper write down, How “I” stick up for “my” rights. Keep a little running diary of how I complain and how I stick up for my rights.
Now the infant was not in conflict with self, he was only in conflict with the environment. When mother has put up with about enough with this angry crying and complaining she begins to complain and stick up for her rights. So she insists that the young one make another fundamental effort at self-improvement. You know most self-improvement is getting other selves to improve so that I won’t be disturbed. For number 2 put it just above the 1 on the right side of the awareness and label it “Sticking up for my rights.”
Mother by her efforts is convincing by suggestion, possibly physical suggestion producing pleasure and pain and various other sensations in our young one, that this person must make another effort at self-improvement. And this one is, in order to get the pleasure and escape the pain, “It’s important to please them.” Now the little one smiles and grins and does various things because he is trying to hesitate from his belligerency because that has been bringing pain.
Now this brings the split in awareness. Lets draw a dotted line from the top line to the basic decision that the whole purpose of living is to be non-disturbed, to regain the non-disturbed state. Now we have two awarenesses. Label the one on the right A and the one on the left B. Obviously B is going to be out-numbered frequently. There are going to be many times when A gives the idea of what is true and valuable to X. A does this then B will shortly say, “Now you are in for it, you did wrong,” and the person begins to feel that basic emotion that was never intended for man, that man is not equipped to handle. He begins to feel guilt; another word for it would be regret. So one is in conflict now. There are two different ideas. A says, “Well, let’s do it.” Maybe B is asleep and there is no argument and A goes ahead and does it; gives the what’s true and what’s valuable to X. B wakes up and says, “Now you are in for it,” and sends the message to X that things are in a terrible state of affairs and one feels pretty terrible. Maybe B gets the word in first then A wakes up and says, “We never get to do anything we want to do, we just have to do what they want to do.” This is a feeling, of course, of inferiority or self-pity; a better word today is depression; one is depressed. Very early the infant starts into this a state of conflict, state of struggle within. He’s trying to find a way where there is oneness. So we start very early in life trying to find one.
A little bit later one is brought into contact with various people in the environment that say, “You must do so and so in order to please or something terrible will happen.” Suggestion Begins. If you are good Santa will bring you gifts, if you are not good Santa won’t bring you gifts. If you are not good you will have all manner of trouble. If you don’t please the teacher you will be flunked. If you please the teacher she will give you a good grade. If you cross the street the policeman will put you in jail, so you stay on this side of the street. When in school the teacher says you must go to the principal if you don’t do well; so the principal becomes a bugaboo. Now the little one comes up with a decision very similar to this: “It is important to believe and do everything I am told by my authorities.”
On two more sheets of paper write down: How I try to please and what I believe because it was from something or someone I considered an authority. We were all sent to school and we had to repeat what was in the book, so we began to believe that the printed word is an authority.
We have four sheets of paper, one which says, How I complain, one, How I stick up for my rights, one, How I tried to please, and another one, Why I believe this or that or the other. This will keep us pretty busy this week along with what we did the first week, observing those. Have fun.
Copyright © 1973 by Rhondell. All rights reserved. This material is for an individual student’s personal use; it is not to be duplicated or loaned to another.
