Copyright(c) Jan M.

Cox, 1981 Document: 2, GSIBM, December 24, 1981

ENTROPY
I'm going to give you the beginnings of a new description, based on the scientif
ic concept of entropy.
In the scientific community today, entropy is accepted as an absolute physical c
ertainty. It is a measure of the amount of organization in a closed system such
as the physical universe is considered to be. Specifically, entropy is a measure
of the amount of disorder in the system, of the degree to which everything is r
unning down, or losing energy. It is an accepted fact among physicists, and I'm
just giving you a crude retelling to use on the basis that science now accepts i
t. In a closed system, there is no new energy coming into the system, and entrop
y is a measure of how far the energy within the system has run down.
I want you to Neuralize this in a specific way having to do with each person. At
the ordinary level, the only observable, natural influx of new energy occurs wh
en a person is born. And this energy only runs so far. On the diagram, the energ
y runs from the little circle at the base of the spine, and up through the nervo
us system to the Line-Level drawn through the larger circle at the top. It is en
ergy continually flowing to this point that produces an ordinary Fred or Mary. T
his is each man's moment-by-moment, pulse-by-pulse consciousness. But I want you
to Neuralize this arrangement within the larger perspective of a man's life spa
n.
In a very real sense, you die once you become an adult -- once you give up the "
struggle." After that, what is felt as energy is in truth no more than friction
energy, which is not really energy at all. It is things which have already been
put into motion hitting one another, and running down. It is people's personalit
ies bumping into one another. It is the same tension which holds everything toge
ther and gives the sensation of movement. That is what I have described by sayin
g that everyone begins to die as soon as they are born.
Every nervous system is born with the full quota of energy necessary to develop
that system to maturity. It is the apportioning of this energy -- the continual
induction of new energy -- that sees a person through childhood and the teen yea
rs; it is the proper amount, degree and mixture of energy necessary for his phys
ical growth and development. And once that system -- that person -- has reached
maturity, he has, in a very real sense, used up his full quota of his life's ene
rgy. From that point onward, his life is a process of running down, of disintegr
ating. By the time a man reaches adulthood, he is at the Line-Level, and there i
s no ordinarily available energy to develop any further. That is the definition
of adulthood. After that, all a man feels to be energy is just friction -- it is
people bouncing off one another.
A man can continue to gather knowledge; he can go to school until he is 30 or 40
or 50 years old. But you should realize by now that without some sort of supern
atural effort -- an effort never possible at Line-Level -- all he is doing is ju
st putting in more information. No amount of ordinary education will ignite the
higher areas of the nervous system. Ordinarily, once a person is developed to Li
ne-Level, he is dead; he is incapable of further growth, and no amount of additi
onal information can change his condition.
Once you begin to See this, you also have the basis for seeing much of what you
already know in a completely new light. This is just an aside, but it is somethi
ng that you should take a look at. It is one of the reasons that in every societ
y there always seems to be one group of people destined to be on the bottom. And
 it's not just a matter of economics or politics. It's a matter of where the phy
sical, biological energy of Life develops a man to. Once you See it, you see tha
t the predominantly gut-oriented, physical people are forever doomed to be at th
e bottom of everything on the Horizontal level. You should recognize what I'm ta
lking about: it's the laborers and ditch diggers of the world, though physical t
ypes are by no means confined to such occupations. When you begin to See, you Se
e that such people are everywhere. They constitute a majority of the population.
They are, in a sense, the backbone of Life. But you should recognize that such
people are, in every society, everywhere in the world, considered to be at the b
ottom of the economic and social scale.
But again, the basis of this is not sociologic, or economic -- it's never what p
eople call it -- it's the point to which each individual man is developed. This
was as true 5,000 years ago as it is today. And it will continue to be true, tho
ugh on a mechanically higher level -- tomorrow. It is simply the way things move
. The only way things appear to move on this level is by a continual mechanical
expansion of the nervous system, but only to Line-Level. And then it stops.
We are all using parts of the nervous system right now -- parts of the literal,
physical brain -- that were essentially dormant 200 years ago. But you should ha
ve some idea by now of how everything is connected; it is a mechanical progressi
on and expansion, and you are no better off from the standpoint of This Thing th
an were your great-grandparents. It has all been done for you; it is contained i
n the energy you received when you were born. Your concern now is to learn to su
rpass the current Line- Level of consciousness.
Surely all of you are familiar with the accepted scientific fact that men only u
se some small percentage of the brain. But the only thing that ordinary men can
make of this is that we should all somehow "do better." This is reflected in the
continual cries for more and better education -- we should learn more languages
, go back to school and read more books and learn to make use of this great pote
ntial, this 80 or 90% of the brain that's unused. But what I'm suggesting to you
is that the process of activating the higher areas of the nervous system is not
limited to some invisible "spiritual realm." It is an absolute physical reality
. But if a man's Aim is not to push the development of the nervous system itself
, then he is irreversibly locked into the law of entropy. He has stopped growing
, and so he will have no more energy for growth.
There have always been reflections of this idea on the ordinary level, and you'v
e heard, or read, various descriptions which come close -- stories pointing out
how things go in a certain direction for a while, and then begin to run downhill
; that everything sooner or later leads to disaster unless it is continually eng
aged in a process of straightening up, of re- aligning itself. I'm telling you t
he specific, physical reality of this to be seen in your own system. It is there
to be seen every time you seem to glimpse something extraordinary, every time y
ou See something new, every time you are -- through your own efforts -- freed fr
om being "you." And it produces a momentary wave of energy. I say momentary -- i
t can last six seconds or six hours. The point is that you will inevitably, it s
eems, snap right back to being your ordinary self, and there you remain for a we
ek, a month, six months. You can call this laziness; you can call it indulgence,
or personal problems. You call it all sorts of things, but I'm telling you what
it is. It is the physical reality that there is no new energy available in this
closed system. The energy is there only to bring you up to Line-Level, to devel
op the nervous system to the minimal degree appropriate and necessary to your ty
pe. And once that level is reached, there is nothing available with which to see
or be anything more. There is simply no energy available to push the nervous sy
stem any further.
At the ordinary level, people seem to be engaged in a continual struggle: in att
empts to change, to better themselves, to broaden their horizons. But you simply
 have to see that this is an illusion; that no change happens and there is no mo
vement. There is no new energy available by which an ordinary man can move.
You have only to See it. All you have to do is know enough about yourself to see
that there is nothing available outside your ordinary role that will make you m
ove. It is merely friction with outside pressure telling you, "I need to lose we
ight because people are calling me fat. I need to improve my station in Life, to
go back to school and improve my education." But it is always some mechanical f
riction with other people's roles that even gives the illusion of change. It is
the pressure of Life itself.
The only thing resembling any sort of new energy comes from the efforts you make
in This; and it is available only to one with the Aim to continually push the l
evel of their own nervous system beyond its present limits. That is the only thi
ng that comes close to being new energy, and then you have to steal it.
Everyone has the same kind of questions when they begin attempting to become wha
t I have described as being a kind of continual objective observer of oneself. T
he first sensation people have is that, "This is interfering with me; I feel tir
ed; it seems to fatigue me." There is the specific feeling in everybody in the b
eginning that, "I am expending energy." The feeling itself should have given som
e of you a clue or two as to what is really going on.
The energy that seems to come from your efforts in This, the energy that seems t
o be new, is in fact stolen from somewhere else. This is the beginning of the pr
ocess by which you have more energy for growth than was your mechanical allotmen
t. You are simply no longer locked into your mechanical, Line-Level role and its
mechanical expenditure of friction energy. But even this process does not take
you outside of the laws of the universe: everything, including a group dedicated
to the pursuit of This Thing -- including your own efforts here -- tends to run
down.
My descriptions thus far have been concerned with the energy that is an individu
al person's life span, the portioning of energy that limits one's development. B
ut now Neuralize it in terms of the life of any group that is part of This Effor
t. Energy must be produced and introduced into such a group -- continually and c
onstantly -- if it is not to run down and fall to the common level.
What you will see, and must see, is that all the time you are attempting to teac
h yourself to learn -- while you're initially attempting the methods and tricks,
while you're learning how to extend your own system -- you are not producing en
ergy. All the energy comes from me. You are stealing energy which ordinarily kee
ps you as you have always been; stealing it to use to learn about yourself. But
at this stage of the game, you are producing nothing new. I have to produce it -
- it's got to come from somewhere, and right now it comes from me. And this is a
most proper arrangement, because in a sense it leaves you free to use your newl
y stolen energy as it must be used: to learn how to produce new energy. But ther
e is a limit to how long this can go on. Right now this is all that is required,
because it is all that is possible. But eventually, you must start producing th
e new energy you need for continued growth.
In a sense, the effort required is like putting up a new scaffolding. The Line o
n my diagram -- the level of ordinary Life-produced consciousness -- is literall
y like a mechanical ceiling. An ordinary man cannot move through it; he has no e
nergy to call on for such a feat. A man can apparently have new experiences: cha
nge jobs, go back to school, change hairstyles or go on long trips. But all the
information he encounters is mechanically digested in the same old ordinary fash
ion, and it all serves merely to further cement his position on the Line. All th
e energy ordinarily available is limited to that level; it cannot go any higher.
The attempt to ignite the higher areas of the nervous system -- to extend your
system -- is to start pushing at that Line, to start poking out holes in this me
chanical ceiling. Above the existing ceiling -- that is where your potential lie
s. There is the site, the physical locale, of the reality behind all your dreams
of enlightened, supra-natural states. But when you first get up there, it is ba
rren territory; there is nothing there -- no furniture, no pieces of clothing, n
o pots and pans -- because no one has ever lived there. There is nothing even re
cognizable up there -- in the beginning.
It is a common, ordinary belief that if one could but reach such a place, he wou
ld immediately be in such a strange and wondrous state that everything he had ev
er imagined would be instantly available. "I would be all-knowing, all-seeing, a
ll- powerful." But if it were actually possible to take someone, and with no pre
paration force him above the Line, it would do him no good. He would have been s
tripped of everything he knows, and left with nothing in its place. He would be
lost. He would not, to put it mildly, be "all-knowing," and he would certainly n
ot be powerful. He would, to be sure, have been relieved of all that he now conc
eives to be his burdens, his problems, his warts and foibles. But in the process
, he, himself, would have been erased. Everything he thought he knew -- everythi
ng recognizable -- would be gone, and with nothing in return. Stripping a man of
what he considers to be his problems and faults does not automatically activate
a higher consciousness.
In all ordinary religions, there is some notion of a "conversion"; a rebirth, a
new life. But you should See that all such notions in ordinary life always come
with a built-in suggestion: that if a man could be relieved of some of this illu
sion, he would automatically be in touch with the gods; that he will undergo som
e great change. You are told in advance what you will feel: "You will feel chang
ed, refreshed. Your burdens will be lifted; your sins washed away." You are told
the what, the why, and the who: "The gods will talk to you and listen to you, a
nd comfort you..." And justice always prevails -- those who feel it are converte
d, and those who don't are not. Some go off to a new church, but those who stay
have bought the suggestion that this is what will do it. And once they've bought
the story, then whatever happens after that will be experienced in terms of the
suggestions that were made in the beginning. Those who were told of heavenly vo
ices will hear voices; those who were told of angels will see angels; those who
have been promised Nirvana -- or Satori, or Nothingness -- will, quite predictab
ly, experience that which has been predicted. It is all suggestion, and it never
gets above the mechanical ceiling of Line-Level consciousness.
In This Thing, there is no suggestion of what will happen once you push your hea
d above the ceiling. There is only preparation -- preparation for being able to
stand on your own and explore the new territory for yourself once you get there.
For someone who begins to push above that level, to begin to get into a new are
a, it is like putting up a scaffolding piece by piece. It is like climbing up a
great spider web into areas of the brain that have not been used. You go up and
you fall down. And you dust yourself off, and go up again, and you look around a
nd you think you See something, and you drop again. And you get back up and clim
b up a different way, and suddenly you see something else, and you reach out and
grab it and you feel it tug, and suddenly you realize it's connected to somethi
ng way far off that you never saw before. That is the moment of the great intern
al "AHA!" And you are beginning to teach yourself. But you are in an area for wh
ich there is no common basis, for which there are no ordinary descriptions. And
there can be no predictions of what you will See when you get there.
Religious and mystical writings are filled with descriptions of people who had o
ne-time -- what I call "accidental" -- experiences above the Line. This can happ
en through drugs or through some great shock, but the point is that it is accide
ntal; it is not based on proper preparation and Understanding. The people themse
lves don't know what happened, and they don't know how to get back there, becaus
e they don't know how they got there in the first place. But however it happens,
 it is almost as though it pushes a man's head through the ceiling, and people c
ome back with these wondrous tales. Except that the tales are either absolutely
incomprehensible -- "I don't know; I just saw things that were absolutely astoun
ding!" -- or else they attempt to explain the experience and convey it to others
on the basis of their prior suggestion -- "The gods took me to heaven." In eith
er case he did not know what happened; he did not benefit from it.
If a man gets above Line-Level and he has nothing to grab hold of, then nothing
happens. It is simply a one-time accident, and it benefits no one. Without the n
ecessary preparation, there is nothing you can do while you are there, no way to
make use of the experience once you're back in your ordinary state, and no way
to willfully repeat the experience. But once you learn the proper and necessary
way to get up there, and you learn how to start fooling around a bit while you'r
e there, it is like putting up a scaffold as you go.
As far as an ordinary man is concerned, there is no above; it just stops. The ce
iling is the limit. But for someone attempting to do This Thing, erecting this s
caffolding -- constructed out of your own efforts, and fitted together out of th
e bits and pieces of your own understanding -- is what all of your energy must b
e directed toward. A man must build it as he goes; he must put it together himse
lf. He gets up there and he has to put in a temporary peg, to put in one piece o
f upright and then try to climb it, and stay up there without falling. He doesn'
t even know where he is going, except he gets up there and it's, "Well, this is
what I have been looking for." But it has to happen on the basis that a man alre
ady has one piece of understanding on which to begin to build. And it cannot be
on the basis of prior suggestion, because you are in an area for which there is
no known basis, no established, no prior knowledge. You're building your way up
the unexplored territory of your own nervous system. You stand on what you've al
ready constructed -- on your own growing understanding -- and you build as you g
o. And after a while, to put it non-metaphysically, things begin to click -- and
you find you are able to stay up there without falling.
If a man is not involved in continual construction to unknown areas, i.e., if a
man is not involved in This, he has literally died. It's not just the physical d
eath of which all systems carry an awareness and fear. It is the unrecognized de
ath that occurs long before the death of the body. It is the cessation of the fl
ow of energy into new areas: it is the obstruction of its continuation; it is th
e cessation of your own further growth and development. And it is a very real de
ath.
When you begin to get beyond the initial struggle, and begin to shake loose from
some of your mechanically produced connections with Life, you feel much better.
Or at least you feel so much less bad than you did, things now seem so much eas
ier, that you begin to look back and think, "I'm not nearly as upset as I was ba
ck in college. I'm not out there running some gigantic rat race like I was five
years ago." Not that any of this is untrue, but it can turn into what I have ref
erred to as the old comfortable sofa club. It becomes just as much a habit as an
y of your previous connections.
If you are not continually producing new energy, you are subject to that absolut
e so-called law of entropy. If you aren't continually "under construction," you'
re falling apart, because there is no new energy available below the Line.
Once you begin to See, you can look back at yourself, or rather, you can look do
wn the length of your own nervous system and See that what always appeared to be
you was a specific energy. It was the pressures of friction, the great tension
of Life, directed, channeled, and molded into your nervous system. And with this
same vision into the past of your own nervous system, you See that after your p
ersonality was set and molded -- after you solidified, at the time when you reac
hed maturity -- those formative pressures were no longer applied. It was simply
that there was no more energy available for further growth. Looking back or look
ing down on it, it may now seem as though something died. Certainly you grew up,
you became a somebody, but at a very dear cost. You may validly consider this i
n conjunction with the recognized tension and upheaval that attend the teen year
s. All of you should be able to remember the kind of energy you had as a child,
as a teenager. And not just a physical energy. Everyone had great dreams: "I'll
be the greatest writer the world has ever known; I'll have a Corvette, and a cas
tle in Spain and a home in Malibu, with a tall blonde installed in each one..."
That is recognized as the excitement indigenous to the teen years and all of you
went through it. I'm telling you now what happened to it -- what happened to yo
u. Life -- the pressures, the tension, the energy of Life -- developed you up to
the necessary, minimal point, and then you stopped. You solidified, and you wer
e left to crumble. It is the individual parallel of the law of entropy: there wa
s no new construction going on; there was no new energy entering the system, and
so you began to disintegrate.
The only exception lives in one attempting to extend his own nervous system. But
look how quickly, even after you've had a bout of understanding something new -
- look how quickly you seem to run down. And it may literally feel as though you
suddenly just ran out of energy. Can you see that the very point at which you b
ecome stable and solidified, whether in your ordinary life or in some place of n
ew understanding, is the point where you start coming apart? Once you stop somew
here -- anywhere -- you're back in the process of disintegration. You're subject
again to the law of entropy. Everything within you becomes more disorganized, w
hile appearing to become more and more stable. And it happens even with your eff
orts in This Thing.
What moves an ordinary man through his life, and what moved all of you before yo
u found This, is the energy of friction. It is the mechanical tension of Life. I
t is not real energy, and so it does not produce real movement. Consider again t
he common observation and feeling that attempting to interfere with your mechani
cal role, attempting to be a constant observer of yourself, produces not only a
kind of irritation, but a kind of fatigue as well. Consider that these efforts t
ake you outside the normal flow. You are, to whatever degree you make effort, no
longer subject to the friction-tension of Life. And so it is no longer Life tha
t moves you. To put it in plain terms, you are no longer driven to "get ahead in
life"; you no longer have the illusion that, "I'll be a great writer, or musici
an, and change the world." You are suddenly stripped of that which drove you, an
d it is reflected very validly in the feeling that, "I just don't feel right; th
ese extraordinary efforts seem to tire me in some way..."
I might suggest to you that this is the basis for closed, monastic schools. This
Thing has, of course, appeared in human history in various forms, and it has be
en frequently reported as being associated with a monastic environment. I point
out to you the possibility that such reports, if they are true, do not necessari
ly point to those activities based on some great objective understanding, but ra
ther to the fact that the people involved had lost their primary engagement with
the way things run in ordinary Life. They had placed themselves outside the pre
ssures and tensions that mechanically provided the illusion that they were doing
something. And it turns into a kind of communal feeling of, "Well, I'm no longe
r particularly upset about anything, but life no longer has any great meaning. T
he kinds of things that used to seem so important no longer have the same effect
." And so they retire to a desert island, or seclude themselves behind closed wa
lls.
I will insist to you that there are alternatives to that. In fact, we here are t
he living alternative to a hermitized school. But it requires that there be a co
ntinual infusion of new energy into This. It requires that right now. We can't c
ontinue to live like this forever, with me bearing the entire burden of producin
g the shocks to keep This moving. On the individual level, you should at least b
e aware of, and continually moving toward, the possibility of producing your own
shocks. That is the way to introduce new energy into your own system. And it is
the only energy available for your growth -- the energy that comes of the indiv
idual person attempting to push the development of his own nervous system beyond
the point where it has already been developed. If one isn't doing this, then no
thing is happening.
If someone had the least bit of understanding, he would understand that it would
be better to devote himself to the perfection of one great flaw than to sit aro
und dreaming about "how much better I feel since I found This." If he could pick
out one aspect of completely mechanical behavior, and apply his single-minded d
evoted effort to the perfection of that flaw, he would come closer to producing
energy for himself. And if that were the only way he could produce new energy th
en he could decide that: "I'll be the world's most jealous person; I'll raise gr
eed and anger to the level of absolute beautiful perfection." Do you understand
that it gets to the point that the particulars don't matter? The encompassing qu
estion becomes one of, "How can I produce new energy?" And I'm telling you one s
ure, immediate, practical way to start. Pick out anything -- the most foolish, t
he most irrelevant, the most frivolous of aims -- and pursue it to perfection. I
t doesn't matter what you call the aim, because if you're involved in This, ther
e is only one Aim. And that is to produce new energy.